MAY - EPISODE FIVE: SPRING 2020

WISDOM OF THE SAGES
EPISODE V: SPRING 2020

Hello People of the World;

The skies have warmed and then cooled. But there are suddenly more important things to worry about right now, as of this posting, don’t you think.

As always: Stay safe. Stay home.

All right, let’s get going:

1:[ I don’t know, do you think that John Waters has his moustache tattooed to his lip…?

2:[ So, I started my own Movie Club because I thought I would like to give folks something to be distracted by and be made ot interact with a community. I started off with “Gojira”, then, “Unbreakable”, last week it was “Roma” and “Ixcanul”. I just finished “The Farewell”. I plan on one a week for the summer, at least. I have been enjoying it as it allows me to see my friends and family again…

3:[ I got a third typed draft of my novel done and have a few readers looking it through. No word yet other than from my sister and my Bonnie. I have always believed that I am a very bad writer. So much so that when I give folks my reading to read, they make no comment, neither positive or negative, nor even neutral. It might be that my writing is so terrible that they do not want to hurt my feelings by saying anything. “If you have nothing nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”

4:[ I recently caught two new movies online. The first was Alan Yang’s “Tiger Tail” about a father that has trouble connecting with his daughter. It was very good but I found the stopping every two minutes to have a flashback structure a bit taxing. I mean, the father had three flashbacks while putting his dish away from lunch. He’s at the table not eating> flashback> he gets up to put the dish away> flashback> he sits in the living room>flashback. I don’t know. It has a great performance by Tzi Ma. Recommend.

The other film I caught was “Capone” directed by Josh Trank and starring Tom Hardy as Al Capone. The film depicts Capone’s final year of life after being released from prison and suffering from neurosyphilis and dementia. Some of the people around him think he is faking to hide a large stash of money. But this comes of as a series of wayward anecdotes that are strung together to form a feature film. Hardy grunts his way through the movie. There is a huge shoot ‘em up ending because it’s Capone and gangsters and tommy guns. Do not recommend.

5:[ I hate it when I draft an outline of “Wisdom of the Sages” and then I loose that outline. It just happened to me again. I was late with April’s episode and made a bullet point outline of want I would write about for the month and then I did so for this month. Then I went and lost it. I have a deadline to keep, so I went ahead with what you are reading now. I will probably find it later on and find that what I wanted to write about was not all that interesting to begin with….

6:[ As an aside, I did start a new video series. “The Top Shelf” is a DVD review series where I review the “top shelf” of my collection, which contain my Criterion Collection DVD’s. I am up to 13 episodes now and have been posting them daily at YT. So, check it out…

7:[ What to do when such things are going on in the world. How do I contribute to the search for equality and justice? I feel in adequate and small. I keep thinking when the time to do something arrives, I will recognize it and make the effort. But what will it be and will I be brave enough to do so? I am tired. I am so interested in how this all turns out. What comes next when the big, foretold climactic event happens and we have to deal with the sun rising the next day. How will that day look? I can tell you, we can never go back to that “normal” of before. We just can’t…

That is it for this month.

Stay safe. Everyone.

As always, I invite you to comment, correct, or contradict anything I write here. I am open to a critical debate. Thanks for taking the time to check out what I write here and I will see you in a month.

Until next time, remember “I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control everything really are.”

2020 Ernest M Whiteman III