WISDOM OF THE
SAGES
EPISODE FOUR
– SPRING 2015
Hello People of the World;
Spring has sprung. The temps have warmed and it has
rained a couple of time and sometimes we are hit with a cold front and every
freaks the f*ck out that SNOWMAGEDDON is back and let’s just eat the dead now
and be done with it. Calm down people. Global weather energies are simply
disrupted thanks to all the shit we pump into the atmosphere. Which is why we
still get snow in an era stupidly referred to as “Global Warming”.
Just goes to show what I have been saying for
decades (?) on Wisdom of the Sages, “The weather… maaaaan. Right?”
Let’s get this month’s edition started, shall we:
1 :[ ICONOCLASTS: Well, my short, short tenure as a
Native Arts Curator has come to an ignoble and quiet end. I had curated a show
of Native art that did not use cultural motifs to promote the art as Native. It
was up for just five days at in the main thoroughfare of the James R Thompson
Center in the loop, a very public state government building with a lot of foot
traffic. So, I am sure the works of the artists were seen more so than the art
in the Chicago Gallery of the Illinois State Museum. At least, that is how
Curator Stevens put it. I have to thank the two artists that put up work to be
view, very brave in the face of expectations of Native artists.
Monica Rickert and Margaret Lanternman were the
only two that came forward to show work that stood against the typical,
stereotypical imagery-laced work that pervade even modern Native art that
purports to be critical of stereotypes. Margaret answered a call for artists
while Monica responded to a personal request. Our show was a critique on the
very concept of “Native American Art” itself…. Thanks, again.
2 :[ Something I noticed about myself: I realized
that in the story of my life I will never be able to control how people react
to or view the things I do or write. I have come to learn through my last
attempt at a relationship, also through many other experiences since, that my
side of the story will never get heard. Mainly due to the fact that most
people, some of them friends, are egotistical enough to believe that they HAVE
TO choose a side.
Now, typically, they will almost always NEVER
choose the side that is right and factual, but whichever side that makes them
look good in supporting; feel good in that their choosing this side makes them
more important than they really are, or that their choice of side actually
brings something to the side they chose. But that is the fallacy of egoism.
I will just have to sit here and do nothing as my
life moves on, because as much of the truth I can bring to any situation will
only make me look worse in their eyes. I have had a recent incident like this
happen and it seems I have lost the trust of a friend due to how myself have
been represented, though it is entirely a lie. I have the facts but now the
damage has been done to my reputation and the trust others have in me, and my
side of the issue, has been muddied and sullied. I guess I will have to endure and,
like that attempt earlier in my life, I will have to sit back and be the bad
guy in this even though if I ever simply get a chance to provide the facts, it
will show that I am really not….
3 :[ I have to admit that while I enjoyed them, the
teaser trailers for both “Star Wars: the Force Awakens” and “Batman v. Superman:
Dawn of Justice” left me flat. They did not really spark my interest in seeing
either of them. And this is coming from a huge fan of both Star Wars and
Batman! The Star Wars one shows no originality in its visuals. A desert planet,
voiceover by Luke, x-Wings, Sith, lightsabers, stormtroopers, and Han and Chewie
and the Millennium Falcon. All things we have seen before. It is sad that they
are trading on nostalgia instead of creating new enemies and cool new ships and
things, like Lucas tried with his prequels. Seeing all the idiots crying over
Star Wars is silly.
All I can think is: The Marketing is working
It is the same with the Batman/Superman trailer.
Looks, as a Batman fan, I have to say, they are treating the Superman stuff
great, as they should, as a follow up to “Man of Steel” he is facing the
consequences of his sudden appearance on Earth. Some think he is a god, others,
a threat. Which is great fodder, FOR A “MAN OF STEEL” SEQUEL. Shoehorning
Batman into it now seem unnecessary, this coming from someone who defending the
pairing when announced a year ago. I guess I am just upset that they chose the
stupidest actor to play Batman this time.
Everyone says that we cannot judge Affleck until
the movie comes out. Bullshit, I say. We can absolutely make a judgment based
on prior evidence: not only his shitty performance in “Daredevil” but almost
every damn movie he has done where he simply plays a variation of a mouth-breathing
Ben Affleck, especially counting his work with Kevin Smith.
Yeah, the Batman Costume looks great, admittedly,
but it only goes to show, you can put ANYONE in it, say, Paul Reubens, and they
will still look awesome, let alone a mouth-breathing man-ape like Affleck, who
has been terrible in all but two movies, or so I have been told, “The Town”,
which he directed and played to his strength of being a Bostonian Meathead, and
maybe “Gone Girl” where he plays a not-smart, meathead. Looking good in the
Batman suit proves nothing. West, Keaton, Kilmer, Bale, even Clooney, all
looked good in the suit. Did not make them great actors. But, I knew once they
showed the costume the naysayers would flip-flop simply because it looks cool.
I know that will only last until he opens his mouth and Affleck-voice comes out
of that stupid face of his.
But then they even had to disguise his stupid
mouth-breather voice using a synthesizer, which made me laugh out loud at his
meathead line of “Do you bleed? You will.” They devolved Batman into a
shit-talking frat boy, mouth-breathing meathead. Way to go. They couldn’t even
trust Affleck to get the voice right because HE CAN’T ACT!
But I am once again the dissenting voice. What can
I say: these trailers really just left me flat. I know, “Don’t see them”. I
probably won’t….
4 :[ Looks like, not only will I be out of a job by
the end of this current school year, but I will not be teaching “Native
Americans in Media” this fall due to the Governor of Wisconsin’s budget cuts to
the University of Wisconsin System. I recently learned that Adobe is shifting
its Adobe Youth Voices model to a more teacher-driven, digital format and will
be doing away with the Media Mentors and staff globally.
So, that is how the ball bounces. Whenever I get a
new job I know that my time there is extremely limited. I go in knowing that I
am expendable and that leads to a sort of needed concentration to do the best I
can without the baggage of ego that seems to take hold of younger workers who
act like it is something personal, or as if their genius has been questioned,
that the students will crumble and fail without them to prevent it. Grow up.
They will all quit better jobs in the future, as they are young yet. Me? I’ll
just pack it up and move on to the next thing….
5 :[ Coffee Shop: I keep recalling this sort of
discussion I had with a friend of mine and why she would never meet up at a
Starbucks. She said that they were such grave signs of gentrification that,
that was one of the reason she will not support them. I countered that there
were no indie coffee shops on the south side either. But I am not writing this
to rehash that debate. What made me think of this was that today on my way to
an interview in Evanston, I stopped into a shop on Noyce and could not believe
the completely differing clientele than the Starbucks I frequent in Rogers
Park.
At the RP SB people are fighting over
relationships, talking about finding jobs, students are studying for school,
life is happening to a variety of people of all stripes there. But at this
particular shop called “The Coffee Lab”, where they on the spot brew your
coffee, I overheard: a dude throwing his friend under the bus over a f*cking
stage show to try to get this woman on his side. (See item #2) Next to me, a
group of young women were chatting noisily. You can tell what type of
neighborhood you are in when one of the first things you over hear is, “They
are looking for ethnically diverse people and I think that’s a problem.” Then,
later, “I hate this new Instragram, I am totally unsatisfied” and “I really
want something sweet and gluten-free!” You can tell what type of neighborhood
you are in when a young woman states: “I really want to be a barista.”
So, after my job interview I retreat to the Barnes
& Noble café, my people and their really real lives. Hah! Right now, as I
write this, this old dude is walking around hitting on all the hot chicks in
the café… more power to him. He’s made progress and at least he is out there
making the effort….
6 :[ The other day I was putting on my sweat pants.
I pulled the waistband laces to tie it up as they are very large and prone to
slipping down, but when I pulled one of the laces, it broke off. Now, the lace
is made of cotton-like shoelace material and the wear of it finally caused it
to break. I was saddened, as I owned this pair of sweats for several years now.
Possibly one of my first clothing purchases here in Chicago. They are Converse
brand, black with a deep red stripe down both pant legs. I bought them while
living in my old Sedgwick apartment my first year here, thinking that I had to
get back into running again. Nope.
Last night the other lace broke making me even
sadder about it. Up until then, I had been making due tying the shorter lace to
the longer. Which mean that now I have to stop wearing it. But broken laces on
an otherwise intact pair of sweatpants is hardly a reason to throw them out.
What can I do?
All of this made me think about how much
sentimental value I place on inconsequential stuff. I still have two broken
fans in my place gathering dust because I cannot bring myself to throw them
away. My ex-wife gave one fan to me when we split and the other I bought years
ago in Wyoming when my mother still lived.
We live in a disposable society, they say. We toss
aside fully functional cell phones to buy more expensive ones simply because
they are new. My folks taught me to get the most usage from something before
you throw it out. I do. I still have a VHS player and analog TV that have been
with me for years. I still wear clothes that I moved to Chicago with. I still
use a radio alarm clock that my mom got me for Christmas well over twelve years
ago. I still play music on a cassette tape player I bought with money from one
of my first jobs.
Admittedly, I did get caught up in the cell phone
thing for a couple a months when I was first married and ended up with my
current phone Floyd. But he, or “it” rather, has been working ever since, going
on ten years. I do not need a new phone yet because this one has not stopped
working properly. Which is an idea I find that people now cannot wrap their heads
around.
Which makes me King of the Hypocrites when I cannot
bring myself to throw away useless stuff when they no longer have a use all
because they remind me of the people in my life at the time I received them.
7 :[ Been my habit of late to watch movies on a
loop. What I find fascinating it the juxtaposition of the last shoot of the
movie then seeing the first show again. I think this is a great way to measure
character development in a movie. To see the change happen, then when the film
loops to the beginning, to see them at their starting point again to see how
much a character has changed. Here are some of the films I have been watching
in this manner lately:
Kurosawa’s “Red Beard”, the last of his so-called
hero film right before his work turn a cynical turn. On a loop, it shows the
growth of the main character, a young doctor showing up to pay a visit to a
free clinic, as both shots show him walking towards the gate of the clinic
where the movie takes place. At the beginning he is vain and callow and
certainly does nto want to be there. On the final scene, he is arguing with Red
Beard, the director of the clinic played by the awesome Toshiro Mifune, having
his life change and his ideals of being of use to the poor ignited. Great film.
I am writing up another film article on this one.
Another film I have been watching on a loop is
another Kurosawa film, an earlier post-WWII film called “No Regret for our
Youth” starring my cross culture, cross time crush, Setsuko Hara, who here
plays another callow and shallow youth, who does not understand the
happening going on in Japan after the Manchurian Incident. The opening shot
sees her in her school clothes walking a trail with a group of boys, all of
whom adore her. Then, they wait for her as she picks flowers in a field. Then,
after years of learning how to make sacrifices and taking on challenges of
living on her own away from her well-off parents, she ends up at her deceased
husband’s parent’s farm working the rice fields, become this tough, hardcore worker.
We see her planting rice in the muddy field, to elegantly foreshadowed by her
flower picking, the last shot is climbing aboard a truck with other farmers
heading back to her in-law’s farm. It is another great film that I recommend.
I also keep Ozu’s “Noriko Trilogy” on a loop
whenever I play either “Tokyo Story”, “Late Spring”, or “Early Summer”. Each
film begins and ends with Ozu’s now-famous “Pillow Shot”, the opening of each
film we see the family in bliss before the big dramatic action occurs. But by the
end I noticed, that each ends with a crying Noriko, played by the beautiful
Setsuko Hara. Just the nice contrast of blissful ignorance of family function,
off-set my the growth of characters and the changes of family dynamics. I
recommend all three. You can rad my article “Mother’s Watch: the Sad Truth ofNoriko in ‘Tokyo Story’” on my other weblog.
I have been watching other films such a both
Olivier’s and Branagh’s versions of “Hamlet”, Renior’s “Grand Illusion” and as I
type this Pierre-Melville’s “Le Samouraï”, one of my all-time favorite films. I
recommend watching your favorite films on a loop and then you can really see
the character development as you watch the film, see the last shot, then, seeing
the opening shot again. Only then can you really appreciate the growth of
characters, the changes of situations, and the work placed into bringing these
things about….
8 :[ I want to mention my new Internet show – The Ernest Bear Show: a reaction/review show, which are all the rage years ago,
hosted by my childhood stuffed bear name Ernest Bear. Yes, he is the actual
stuffed toy I owned as a child. Some time ago, I had the idea, inspired by
“Calvin and Hobbes” and the movie “Ted” to express my thoughts about things
using my stuffed bear as my mouthpiece, both, as a way to deflect criticism of
an opinion (which is stupidity) and as a critique on this whole reaction
video/everyone’s opinion matters society we have on the Internet.
One of the shows we did as a reaction video to the
last “Man of Steel” movie last year was added to a compilation video and that
video’s viewership increased. Later, I found that the video we did in reaction
to the Batman costume reveal, was listed as a recommend video on an Internet
article cover that. Which made me smile that my childhood stuff bear is having
a better film career than I am….
So that is it for this month. Keeping it short and
sweet these days. I really have not been sharing these or making them public.
If you are reading this after looking for it, or you came upon it by chance,
thank you! Feel free to comment, correct, or contradict anything you read here.
I am a grown up, I can take it….
Until next month, remember “I try to show the
schemers how pathetic their attempts to control everything really are.”
2015 Ernest M Whiteman III
