Hello People of the World;
Another year has begun, so I hope everything is
going well. Here we are with our second “cold and snowy” winter in Chicago in
as many years. And everyone is losing their shit! It’s hilarious to see all
these “Chicagoans” freak out over it being winter during winter! Gasp! I was
always led to believe that this is what the “typical Chicago winter” is
supposed to be like. But every year, we are all surprised that the earth moved
around the sun again and tilted towards the shady side.
Witchery! It’s not supposed snow during winter!
As I expected, the rains have come, as of this
typing and the big snows are melting. I think we will have a short but intense
winter with a rainy second half leading into a longer and warmer spring and when
summer comes, it will reach over 100 degrees for a few days and once again,
people will go IN-sane because - oh’s-no! – it gets hot in the summer! Oh well.
You cannot please everyone, even though we have learned that the weather
changes in both the summer and the winter. (In the Spring and Fall too? Double
GASP!) Enough of this.
Let’s get this edition started, shall we?
1:[ First
Item of the Month:
The Passing Smile
Have you ever passed that good-looking someone in
the street and for a second you lock eyes and there is a recognition, a spark
of something that could happen if you just stop and say something. They even
give you that coy half-smile of recognition and you think, what would happen if
I say hello? Then, that moment is passed, the person far down the street by the
time you decide to look back.
Then you have to wonder, does everybody get that
sort of passing smile in that instant of eye contact, an acknowledgement that
you indeed connected, at least on a superficial level of two strangers passing.
Does everyone get the half-smile? Or does ego make you think that it was just
you and your aura of confidence and swagger? Yes, everyone does get and give
that friendly half-smile, because people are, when it comes down to it, good
folk that would choose to give a smile to a passing stranger. Does that ever
happen to you and all of that goes through your head? No? Uh, me neither….
2:[ My Truthfulness Stuffs:
My Useless Self: Ego &
GETTING OLDER
I remember Spider-Man sunglasses. These cheap,
black plastic monstrosities, which were supposed to be shaped like the
eyepieces of the Spider-Man mask but looked more like Dame Edna’s cat eyes. For
some reason, I remember owning more than one pair when I was a kid. I cannot
remember if I asked for them or if they were given to me as a gift because I
hated how they looked. But I remember having more than one pair. Or maybe I did
run around with them on pretending to be Spider-man. I don’t know. I was a kid
then.
I remember the Woothworth’s store on Main Street when
I was a kid in Riverton. It had everything and I notice that as I grew older,
the section I visited was reflected by my age. They had a basement area where
all the cool, new toys were. My parents would let me run loose there. Then, as
I got older, it became the music section, with its vinyl albums and 8-tracks
and cassette tapes. I remember buying many a 45 singles there. I believe that
is where I remember seeing those Spider-man sunglasses too. Thinking back on
it, I probably asked for them. They never had Batman sunglasses.
We got our MEGO figures there. It even had a lunch
counter. My mom took us little ones there once and I think I had a hamburger
and fries. But that store is gone now. I don’t even know what is there now. The
town I grew up in has changed so much since I left it. But that is typical of
any town or city. Looking back on it now, I realize how old I am. I will
indulge my nostalgia this once in looking at how not only the times have
changed, but at how I have changed since my youth on the reservation and being
a part of that town of Riverton.
At my core, at my sense of self, I feel that I am
practically the same person I have been as a child running around that store.
Yet, looking in the mirror these days I realize, I am different. I do not think
I am an adult, really, maybe physically, but mentally, I believe I am just a
person. Not a grown up or an elder or a young person in an old person’s body.
None of that. I think I am a person with my own ideas and beliefs and morals
that I have come to through my own experience. A person who has EARNED every
gray hair, and who, instead of trying to get rid of them, I celebrate them.
Like the feathers of the “old days”. I got them through accumulated knowledge
and experience and I try to keep my ego in check by hanging on to them.
There is an irrigation ditch that runs across our
acreage back home. As a child, it seemed like a river, though looking back I
thought it was wider than most ditches I saw. Every spring we would try to hold
back the oncoming water with sand dams and just would spend the whole afternoon
doing that. Once it was flowing, my brothers would leap across it easily. I
would be too scared. As a kid, I was typically scared of such things, jumping
ditches, riding tall horses, climbing the tool shed. I hated jumping off that
tool shed.
Now, I have to wonder, as our memories, take us on
our trips in ever-widening circles, will I ever get back to that, that sense of
awe at the world? Yes, I think I can. I am ever curious about how much we will
change as a species and how our life and society will evolve. I hope it is for
the better. Then, maybe one day, I’ll be able to go home and see if I can jump
that ditch….
Updates from my other Truthfulness Projects:
+ NAMELESS: The Authentic and Magical Ledger Art of EW3
A Treatise on
American Indian Art
“All you care
about is money. This city deserves a better class of artist. And I’m going to
give it to them.”
Though I am nearing to completing the Artist
Statement, this project has slowed down in the sense that I have not been able
to get any drawings done lately. I had a system down of planning, sketching,
inking, scanning, converting and posting the images that once I lost my scanner
the whole project just seems to have slowed to a crawl.
But we will see. I still do not see any one else
doing anything remotely the same. We all want to put our “culture” into our
arts. But the more Native Artists sell out and place Native culture in their
works, the more you know they are doing it for an audience that will readily
identify them as “Native”. We all like to say that we only make art for
ourselves yet hypocritically sell our crap to people.
Which is why I try and give away my works. I am
trying to circumvent the expectation of, not only Native American art, but art
in general and this tie to consumerism that mires it in mediocrity. To quote
the great man, ‘It’s not about money.
It’s about sending a message…’.
+ The Five Six SEVEN Hypocrisies of Native America:
(Because Seven is a sacred
number):
I have noticed how much most Native Americans
dislike other races. I mean for many years, it has become the Oppression
Olympics in terms of who is the Biggest Victim. For example, look at all the
cultural appropriation we do to African-Americans, especially their Hip-hop and
gang lifestyles, yet we tend to not care about them as a people otherwise….
+ ONE: A Spoken Word Piece
This is the spoken word piece I am working on that
involves how Crazy Horse showed up at my door the other day and how he has had
it with all the hypocrisy of Natives today.
I keep working on this but every time I want to put
the finishing touches to it, more hypocrisies and contradictions fly to the
forefront of Native culture. I can’t keep up. I keep piling on and one after
another I fall deeper into this piece. Hopefully, I will make a barebones
presentation soon. Still looking for that Open Mic event to try this out….
NEXT MONTH’S TRUTHFULNESS:
Ego and _____?
Let me know what I should
cover next in my series on Truthfulness.
3:[ More MOVIE TIME ADVENTURES:
+ Redbox Reviews: As usual, my new year will begin with a leave of
absence from movie-going. This is simply a matter of cost. So, I go to my back
up plan. The Redbox. I know the uber-cool-film-ass always hates the Redbox. But
they put some good stuff in there next to the crap. Redbox is the great Cinema
Leveler. So, here are some DVD I rented from them and other that I was given by
friends:
The Wolverine: I thought the first
two-thirds of this was way more fun than it should have been and I found myself
actually enjoying a Hugh Jackman Wolverine movie that was self-contained and
separate from the rest of the Fox/Marvel movies. Which was refreshing. But,
then it got mired down by a lame fight with ninjas and sloppy third act where
the twist really led nowhere because it did not succeed. When I heard they were
adapting the Japan storyline from the Miller-penned story arc, this image
immediately sprang to mind. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. We got this instead. When something that is supposed to be hard and gritty gets all sci-fi
shiny, I tend to tune out. On the plus side, you get a kick-ass ninja lady that
actually doesn’t need help or fall in love with the hero. (Take that GI JOE 2:
GI JOE-ier) This was a fun romp that suffers the standard Marvel Movie Curse of
Weak Ass Third Acts. Don’t really recommend.
Fruitvale
Station:
As good a drama as it was, I could not get over the fact of how manipulative
and exploitative the movie felt. I made the mistake of watching one of the
extra features first, where they showed the film getting standing ovations at
Sundance and Cannes. But then watching the movie’s opening, which shows the
actual footage of Oscar Grant III’s arrest up to the point of the shooting,
made the whole affair seem manipulated. The sense of doom that seeped into the
movie, adding unearned drama, tension and gravitas to every little thing made
it all seemed forced. Of course you are going to get standing ovations when
your emotions are manipulated with the added real footage. All of the dramatic
peaks and personal moments are then viewed through this lens giving it an added
weight that it probably could not achieve without the sense that: remember,
this guy died.
Exploitative, in the sense that the impending death
is what is driving your reactions, using his death to make the movie more
emotional felt cheap. You see, there is a reason that movies about people who
were murdered or killed, e.i. Dr. King, Malcolm X, John Kennedy and Gandhi,
have their lives shown before their deaths. So you can see that the paths they
took may have led them there. Exploitative, in the sense that at the time this
movie opened, the nation was divided over the shooting of Oscar Grant and
Trayvon Martin and again, the raw emotions still felt were carried over into
audiences viewing this film, having never earned it. You cheapen his real death
when you use his real death to provide depth to the grief porn about his death.
It is anchored by a good and subtle performance by
Michael B. Jordan and a great feel for the urban surroundings. It really did
not need the opening or the closing videos. If you really wanted to expose the
emotion of his last 24 hours and make it about the randomness of the event, you
never should have opened with that raw video footage. It was a cheap trick,
ALMOST as cheap as closing the movie on footage of his still-little girl
attending the one-year memorial. No matter how authentic you will feel about
the urban environment and people, the fact that you are being manipulated into
your moral outrage rather than coming to that on your own on the strength of
the film and performances but NOT the video, made me like the movie less.
Sorry. Recommend, but be skeptical.
Reign of
Assassins:
I finally got to watch this. It was a fun kung fu movie about crime gangs,
altered identities and the severed body of a king fu monk that grants power.
Michelle Yeoh, stunning as always as Drizzle, the crime gang member that goes
through a change of heart, steals one half of the body and goes into hiding.
Filled with fun fight scenes and clever and at times, “whoa, what the hell?”
twists. Recommend.
+ You can read my BEST OF
2013 by CLICKING HERE. You know, if you are interested in that sort of thing.
+ I had some weird dreams of
late: Some of the most vivid are about making movies. The first one I had was
about my making the new Star Wars movies with JJ and Oprah. I know, right? I
remember sitting at the table and trying to steer Abrams and Oprah away from
the Expanded Universe. Then, we were on stage under the lights on some sort of
TV show explaining what we were doing. Weird. Why Oprah?
Another dream I had was that I was remaking HERO AT
LARGE. Remember that movie? It was about a low-rent actor that makes ends meet
doing promotional appearances at theater openings for a superhero movie. One
night, in costume, he stops a store robbery and begins using the costume to try
and fight crime and inspire people. But, he gets manipulated by the Mayor (for
reasons I cannot remember) and loses the trust of the people and at the end he
gains it back by saving a child from a fire. It starred John Ritter and had
Bert Convey (Remember him?) but I remake it with a license from DC to use the Batman
character and turning the movie into a “Day of the Doctor” cameo-fest with all
the past Batman actors making an appearance at the end. Still I wrote the idea
down and maybe I can pitch the remake…
4:[ So, Conan O’Brian on his
show CONAN recently made a joke on similar news readings on lots of local news
broadcasts. CLICK HERE to see that. People were outraged at it and it made a
ton of website pages as if it was some kind of smoking gun. Well, no, not a
smoking gun in the sense that we would actually
change anything, but in the sense that we can light up our sense of moral
outrage about it and then share it on Facebook and then forget about it.
For those of us who like to watch how media
manipulates, we have always known about it. We would write warnings and try to
vote in the right people to re-regulate the media conglomerates and their
buying up all local media outlets. But again, nothing happens. People seem to love their new Reality TV shows and
Comic Book Shows and Remakes and Reboots. So, it’s all cool.
Back in 2004, NOW with Bill Moyers talked about it
when they looked into how consolidated media is becoming a singular voice and
how that could be used for political reasons and propaganda. You can visit
their website HERE. NOW was way ahead of its time looking into issues of PTSD
and Veteran’s Care, Media Consolidation and Manipulation, The Influence of Big
Oil, Filibuster Reform, the Criminalization of Whistleblowers, even the Housing
Bubble as early as 2005 and no one paid attention. As PBS’ funding was
threatened, more shows like NOW were cancelled and more cooking shows and BBC
reruns were put on.
For years now, many news outlets are not really
reporting news but actually rebroadcasting video press releases from some
certain companies. Did you ever wonder why it seems like the news is covering a
new cure for something or a new technological gadget every week? It is because
drug and tech companies are their biggest suppliers of VPRs. They were
basically ads disguised as news reports. “Infomercials”, I think is the correct
term. And here we have CONAN sort of pointing that out 9 years later.
I am surprised that no one realized this before
now. Strange that it took dumbing down into a joke for people to even think
about and even comment on how much the news is not even the news anymore.
Strange, indeed….
5:[ Ah yes, settle in Dear
Readers for more of:
Adventures in
the Coffee Shop and/or on the CTA!
+ VENTRA is unnecessary. Let’s face it. The CTA
Farecard was as good as it was ever going to get. You can add money to it and
buy new ones and check balances very easily. But with the Ventra, it has a very
convoluted sign-in system, the station machines have a ton of extra steps and
button-pushing to go through to even add any cash to your card. Worse that
that, it works like a debit card in that once you put money into your account,
your card does not always register that balance right away. The worst thing is
that it does not make getting on the
train any faster as promised.
You still have to go to a machine to add money.
People will say, “Just attach your credit card to
it.” Sure. But you still have to wait for the readers to register a “tap” and
you still have to wait to go through a turnstile. There has not been any change
at all in the amount of time it takes to go through a f*cking turnstile! In
fact, if your card did not register an account debit, it will not let you
through. Plus, if you tap it many times to the reader, it will in some cases
read those as added fares and take that off your account, because get this: you
can use your Ventra for more than one passenger. You just have to hand back
your card to your companion and they can tap it and get through. Hah!
I know it is not cool to march in the street and
bang drums for such things, but these little things such as parking meters,
transit cards matter because if we do not fight them, we allow others to
dictate where we go and where we park all for the sake of a perceived
convenience. Let’s wake up….
+ Sitting in my local Starbucks once again and
listening to the baristas complaining about the police. “We look out for them
by giving them freebies, why can’t they get here sooner when we call?”
One even thinks that stopping giving them free
coffees is somehow a threat that the
cops will suddenly go “oh shit! Really? No! We’ll drop this accident
investigation and get right over there. That one loud customer is way more
important than catching a shooter. You’re right, you’re absolutely right! Just
don’t take away my free coffee. Please. Please…! PLEASE!!”
You just know that when that cop comes back in that
barista will say NOTHING and give up the free coffee anyways. Besides, when has
giving a police officer a free cup of coffee been considered “looking out for
them”? It is not like the officer will come back and say, “You know that free
cup of coffee you gave me? Yeah, it shot a robber. Great looking out man!” Get
real….
+ My sister Val sent me a Starbucks Card for my
birthday which has sent me back into the coffee shops once more. So, every one
can thank Val that I can now sit in quiet judgment of others at the coffee shop
once more! (Just kidding, Thanks Val!)
6:[ I stopped by the Disney
Store the other day to look for a gift for one of my girls. I was looking for
something Mulan-related as it was a favorite movie back in the day. But walking
through the store I noticed: no Mulan. I figured it might be that was because
the movie was “old” because they had a ton of “Frozen” and “Tangled” stuff in
them. But then I found lots of Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, The
Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast stuff in there. I also noticed, no
Tiana or Jasmine or Pocahontas merch either…. Weird.
7:[ And now Wisdom of the
Sages presents:
“An Ever-growing List of Things That MUST Stop!”
+ This not looking both ways has to stop. I mean,
not in the street but in life. People have a tendency to focus on things like
causes and politics that only affect them personally. While we were looking the
other way, many voters in the south lost their right to vote via
re-districting. While we were looking the other way, people lost their
unemployment and cannot feed their families. While looking the other way, we
see people getting fired for standing up for better wages. While looking the
other way, some are trying to derail peace talks.
Unless it directly affects us, we don’t care. We
will wage a Twitter war against a stupid TV show or post petitions to Facebook
that governors will ignore or worse yet, we will march and drum miles way from
the danger of being shot at or arrested. Look both ways, see everything folks.
We need to carry each other. This, “I’ll only support my cause” needs to stop….
+ I do enjoy a TED Talk every now and then. But I
was never a big fan of how they really don’t do anything. This video is a
prefect example of what I get out of TED Talks.
Recently, Benjamin Bratton did a recent TED Talk on how they are not very
effective. The Internets lost its shit coming to TED’s defense. Even at a meeting
at work, one of my co-workers defends TED with the “They are not responsible
for creating solution but raising the questions…”
But that is all we do as a society. In the end it
all comes back to ego. You are only in it for ego’s sake if all you do is
espouse a problem and nothing else. The big sin of TED, to me, is that it amplified
our apathetic activism, where we can just look smart by posting TED Talks and
pretend we are doing something about it by “raising awareness”. When all we are
doing is “I post shit to Facebook anyway, but there is no one there is go ‘way
to go man’, ‘so important’, ‘sharing….’, making me more important than I really
am sitting at home posting stuff.
I also sense an added level of privilege that I
will not go into, but TED allows us to stroke our own egos in that we think reposting
the questions but not working for the solutions is something to be proud of. At
the very least, TED gives us something to quote in our daily discussions. Okay,
so what is my solution? Be more critical. TED Talk exaltation must stop….
+ I was sitting in the downtown DD when I started
to pay attention to the music playing over the speaker system. Typical radio.
Listening, I have come to realize that today’s “new” music has de-evolved and
become nothing but privileged teens making callbacks to pop culture set to
manufactured beats. In the two songs I heard, the singers referenced:
The Eye of the Tiger
We Are the Champions
I Am Woman
One even had to ruin “The Dark Knight” for me by
calling out the Joker’s catchphrase “Why so serious?”
I guess making references to pop culture is how you
garner an audience. Thanks Tarantino. That is all the media is now days. Isn’t
that where “sampling” started, because DJs were not creative enough to make
their own music? Pretty soon “music” will be nothing but “singers” listing off
Nostalgic Pop Culture References and call them songs. That should stop now….
8:[ I am thinking of starting
a new segment on here called “THE TIN
FOIL HAT CHRONICLES”.
Here is where I can just go off on all these stupid
conspiracies I see out there just to show people how screwy my thinking can be
and maybe you Dear Readers, will steer me back on the path via discussion and
dissent. Let me know if you want to hear my theory about catalytic converters
and how they tie to RFIDs.
It will probably get way out of hand but the whole
ideal in almost everything I do, is be more skeptical, more critical. Not
“Critical” where you just bash something or some one, but to look at things
from as many sides as possible to get a firmer picture. So what do you think?
Should I go conspiracy crazy and write about it?
9:[ From the “This Just In” Department: Warner
Brothers has delayed the long-gestating “Man of Steel 2”. Word is that Ben
Affleck injured his leg in preparation but the official word from the studio is
to allow 'filmmakers to realize fully their vision.' Yay! Now the end of the
world has been delayed by eleven months!
I still say: you can end your misery with a simple
decision. Just decide not to see it.
10:[ Last Item of the Month: The “Unified Star Wars Universe” is stupid.
Sorry, but the Expanded Universe, and in this I include the The Clone Wars
Series, to be the most convoluted, trashy, high-end fan-fiction ever committed
to media. Look, I do enjoy some of the books and comics but for me, nothing
else counts but the movies. Yes, even the sh*tty prequels. Too make it all a
unified universe like this article proclaims is just another way that will ruin
it. It will make it as stupid as the Marvel Movie Universe and the next series
will have stupid conspiracies and post-credit scenes and stupid shit like that.
Please, Lucasfilm, just make the damn movies….
That will do it for this month and this year.
Just so you know, I had a whole five-paragraph
diatribe written for the TIN FOIL HAT segment that I just decide to cut out at
the last minute because I thought it might bore you. You don’t want to hear
goofy stuff like that. But in case you do, let me know and I’ll post it in next
month’s edition. Anyways
Let me know how the new year is treating you. As always,
feel free to comment, correct and contradict anything you read here on this
webpage. I mean, we have to raise the questions. Am I right? Hey, think about
downloading the short stories collection I recently e-published as well.
Message me if you want a free download. Just trying to expand into literature.
I’m hypocrite enough to sell-out my writings. So there.
Until Next Time, “I try to show the schemers how
pathetic their attempts to control everything really are.”
2014 Ernest M. Whiteman III
