Dear Vincent O'Hern and Bill Lueders: Go Light a Candle

A couple of Isthmus' grizzled veterans, with the emphasis on grizzled, have decided that now is a good time to coordinate efforts at lashing out at many of the publication's readers by denouncing blogging, social networking sites, and the like.

Bill Lueders launched the first salvo a week or so ago with his invocation of Henry David Thoreau. This was followed up yesterday with the bloviating of publisher Vincent O'Hern in a spectacular display of hypocrisy worthy of Isthmus' own (gasp!) blogger David Blaska.

O'Hern uses as his starting point the cover story of this week's issue, a profile of Madison blogger Ann Althouse which isn't even a profile of the woman. The beleaguered publisher writes:

Judging by the title of the article, "The Ego Has Landed," and the fact that Ms. Althouse would not stand still for a typical interview, we'd have to say that camaraderie is not a part of the ethos of the blogosphere.

Judging by O'Hern's use of the hasty generalization, I'd have to say that critical thinking is not a part of the ethos of Isthmus. Would he publish an article that generalized in order to traduce the character of other groups with a nebulous membership? Using O'Hern's logic, it is completely fair and consistent to say that Jayson Blair represents the whole of journalism.

Furthermore, his whole tirade smacks of hypocrisy. On the one hand, we bloggers are a paperless menace to the pulpy arbiters of truth in addition to lacking camaraderie but, on the other, O'Hern has recently bolstered the Isthmus stable of bloggers so that there are now three. To make matters worse, he launches his SCUD missile of opprobrium as a preface to the paper's cover story: a blogger, Jack Craver, pouring over someone else's blog. O'Hern describes himself as someone who "labor(s) at turning dead trees into public knowledge". With such a grand epistemological purpose in life, you'd think he could dedicate the front page story of his publication to something more than a profile of a blog. Thanks, Mr. O'Hern. Your paper's fluff piece has enhanced the realm of public knowledge immeasurably and we are forever in your debt.

Lueders, to his credit, is more considered. Still, I find his "you're either with the print culture or against it" mentality sad. He says:

The pace of modern information dissemination has become blindingly fast, which has blinded providers and purveyors to considerations of quality. And yes, I blame Twitter and Facebook and the blogosphere, mediums that glorify shallow expression. Our pretty toys have become toxic.

Either you use the Internet in handy, wholesome, Lueders-approved ways or you're hurried, shallow, and unwise. I can't help but think of Glenn Greenwald who maintains a blog at Salon.com and whose posts are lengthy, researched, and well-written. Well, lo and behold, Greenwald now has a Twitter account.

Another thought: when was this golden age of wise news-givers, anyway? How far back must we go to find a news utopia? As was noted in Slate, The French statesman Malesherbes railed against the fashion for getting news from the printed page, arguing that it socially isolated readers and detracted from the spiritually uplifting group practice of getting news from the pulpit." Am I supposed to look at the Hearst newspapers from the first half of the 20th century for a good dose of fair and balanced? Does Lueders seriously mean to say that CNN and the 24-hour news channel didn't make information dissemination much, much faster? I recently read Heat Wave by Eric Klinenberg and he had some choice words for the pre-Internet media of 1995 in terms of shallowness and an unwillingness to let important in-depth reporting happen because of time constraints and people's desire for the novelty of the new. Neil Postman was inveighing against the primacy of image over the word and the ascendancy of shallowness in our news back in 1985 yet Lueders maintains that Twitter, Facebook, and blogs are to blame.

Lueder's quote above comes in the context of the mainstream media's coverage of the Tiger Woods brouhaha. He references an article which

recounts how major media organizations essentially shucked all standards of responsible journalism in covering the Tiger Woods eruption. While the central fact of Woods' infidelity was affirmed, much of what was reported (including the ever-escalating number of women with whom he allegedly trysted) was unsubstantiated and, it now appears, untrue.

And it's all Facebook's fault. Since when has the media not tried to create the most sensationalistic stories out of the personal lives of celebrities? Has anyone ever studied how the media dealt with the Lindbergh baby case? Was it a paragon of slow, deliberate investigative reporting? Or did it have its share of sensationalism? Did Hearst papers give Fatty Arbuckle a fair shake during his scandal?

If journalism has declined – it is shallow, gives primacy to images instead of words, and the like – it is not Facebook's fault. Perhaps all the parts of the Internet that Bill Lueders hates have exacerbated things but the trend started long before the World Wide Web. Instead of laying the collapse of civilization at the doorstep of bloggers, perhaps Lueders can start looking in his own backyard. Because, if anyone has made the news less informative and more prone to sensationalism, it is the journalists, editors, publishers, producers, etc. You make the news, not us. You run hours and hours and pages and pages about Tiger Woods without any blogger or social networking person holding a gun to your head. You wrote the articles full of anonymous and virtually unchallenged sources that galvanized support for invading Iraq. It is you who follow every step of Brett Favre and put his every move on the front page and not us bloggers.

Perhaps instead of cursing the darkness by insulting a chunk of your readership you can light a candle instead.

Madison Poverty: The Food Pantry Addendum

My post yesterday on poverty in Madison drew comments from a foodie named Jenna. In it she said, "Madison has the LOWEST unemployment rate of any city in Wisconsin at 7% right now - take a look at Janesville in comparison at 12%. I know that poverty and unemployment are not the same thing, but it is an indicator..." The idea was that since Madison has a low unemployment rate, poverty and the disparity between the have and have nots here is probably not greater than it was in the past.

Today the Daily Cardinal posted an article called "Food pantries struggle for resources". Here are some important parts:

Food pantries are valuable resources that continue to feel a strain on their services, in large part because of the ailing economy. Over the last several years, St. Vincent de Paul, the largest food pantry in Dane County, has seen many people using its services for the first time.

Second Harvest Foodbank of Southern Wisconsin, a private, nonprofit organization that distributes food to 16 counties in southwestern Wisconsin, including Dane County, has also been stretched in terms of fundraising, according to Dan Stein, its president and CEO.

According to a hunger study compiled every four years on both a national and state level, Second Harvest had formerly served an estimated 78,000 unique people per year. Today that number has increased to 141,000, of which about 43 percent are children.

According to Chris Brockel, food and gardens manager at Community Action Coalition, also a nonprofit organization, 65 percent of all households—including seniors and people with disabilities—who visit food pantries in Dane County have at least one working person.

“It’s not that they’re not working, they’re just not getting paid enough for a living wage,” he said. “People who visit pantries spend 50 percent of wages on their household, including paying bills, and this is too much.”

The emphases here are mine. They correlate to a statistic I cited yesterday which is that 50% of students in the Madison public schools are receiving subsidized lunches and my reply to Jenna, who I would add is sensitive to the issues here, which was that being employed according to the government doesn't mean you're not poor or not having problems putting food on the table. Poverty is increasing here in Madison and southwestern Wisconsin generally. As I noted in my review of Eric Klinenberg's Heat Wave yesterday, I perceive that Madison is adopting a "big city" attitude that poverty is acceptable and simply a part of urban life and the struggles of area food pantries in light of a proliferation of stores and restaurants proffering expensive organic/locally-sourced foods reinforces this notion.

Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago by Eric Klinenberg

With summer edging closer I decided to read Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, in which author and sociologist Eric Klinenberg analyzes the week-long heat wave which descended upon Chicago in July 1995 and resulted in the deaths of over 700 people from heat-related causes. While the intense heat (highs in the 90s-100s) and humidity serve as the proximate cause of death, Klinenberg digs deeper than the weather to look at the social environments of many of the decedents to find man-made causes of death.

While it was true, as the city claimed, that people from all area of Chicago died from the heat, most of them were elderly, black, poor, or some combination thereof. Indeed, blacks were more likely to die from the heat than any other racial group. Why should this be so? The real meat of the book comes when Klinenberg discusses the "social ecology" where these "typical" decedents lived. He compares and contrasts North Lawndale, a predominantly black neighborhood on the west side, and South Lawndale, a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood bordering North Lawndale. Despite having similar numbers of elderly living alone, South Lawndale had a very low death rate from the heat whereas North Lawndale had the ignominious distinction of having one of the highest.

Klinenberg goes into great depth about the large numbers of elderly living alone. Children grow up and move away to seek their fortunes while their parents "age in place", as they say. But what we learn from comparing the two neighborhoods is that, depending on the social ecology, the experiences of the elderly can vary dramatically. In addition to health issues, many older people are fearful to leave their homes. North Lawndale is ridden with empty buildings and lots which fosters gangs and crime. Seniors are often afraid to go out because they're afraid of being mugged. And, when the heat wave came along, opening a window meant exposing oneself to intruders. Poverty enters the picture as we discover that some seniors who are lucky enough to have an air conditioner refused to turn it on because it would generate bills they could not afford to pay with the end result being their electricity would be cut off.
South Lawndale, on the other hand, had a social ecology which included busy streets full of people, shops, restaurants, etc. People in the neighborhood were out and about which contributed to a much lower crime rate than its neighbor to the north and less gang activity. The elderly of South Lawndale weren't anywhere near as afraid or isolated and so were more likely to leave their homes, open windows, and the like.

When Klinenberg looks at the role of the city in the disaster, he cites "five key features of the current mode of urban governance":

1) The delegation of key health and support services to paramilitary organizations, such as the Fire and Police Departments, where administrative systems and top officials are not always attuned to the new demands for such "soft services".

2) The lack of an effective system for organizing and coordinating the service programs of different city, county, state, and federal agencies.

3) The lack of political will and public commitment to provide basic resources for the protection of city resident.

4) The expectation that city residents, including the elderly and frail, will be active consumers of public goods, expert "customers" of city services made available in the market rather than "citizens" entitled to social protection.

5) The practice of governing by public relations.

It was #4 that struck me the most, although it certainly goes hand-in-hand with #3. (Klinenberg notes that #3 is the result of attitudes which find such things acceptable and a "taken-for-granted feature of urban life". I think that these attitudes are beginning to permeate Madison, hence my previous post about poverty here.) The heat wave happened in 1995 and I wonder if things have gotten better or worse as far as the notion of citizens being consumers in a marketplace as the Internet has rapidly spread. The first thing that springs to mind is the recent Greyhound pick-up spot debacle here in Madison. Yes, this is not strictly about the government, but it gets to a larger concern of mine which is that Internet access is becoming more and more important for people to understand their options in any given marketplace. As Brenda Konkel noted when the Greyhound pick-up spot dust settled: "you still can't buy tickets without internet access and a credit card".

As more and more citizens gather information about city services on the Internet, are cities also responding to those who don't have Internet access? If a heat wave hits Madison, what would be the city's response? Will it simply send out text messages saying "Go to the library to cool down" or would it actively seek out the most vulnerable and most likely to not be on the Internet (presumably with the help of various governmental and non-governmental groups) to check in on them or offer a ride?

Lastly, the book takes on the media. I've read plenty of books which critique the media so, although the content was new to me, the ideas weren't. That is, I understand ideas about image-obsessiveness, deadlines, and framing the story. Klinenberg is pretty harsh on the Sun-Times and Tribune for essentially using pictures of the dead bodies piling up at the morgue as a launching pad for framing the disaster in non-social terms with city officials getting their views out loud and clear. Plus he also chides editorial opinions which simply blame families for abandoning their elderly relatives. And it was interesting to see that the Tribune used photos of white kids trying to keep cool for suburban editions of the paper while those in the city got photos of Latinas.

Tellingly though, neighborhood rags and the Chicago Defender brought the issues of poverty and fear into the mix when explaining the disaster.

Heat Wave was an eminently fascinating book. I bought it because it pertained to my hometown but being a native son of Chicago certainly isn't necessary in understanding Klinenberg's social autopsy. It gave me much food for thought including how my home – Madison – is dealing with a growing population and a growing population of the poor. Furthermore, the Baby Boomers are aging which means more elderly than ever before. Will this simply mean more marginalized people? Lastly, I recalled my grandmother who died last year. Luckily she did not die isolated from family, unlike hundreds of people in Chicago in July 1995. And now that my mother is in her 70s, what obligations does that entail for me?

Madison: Sourdough and Poverty

The A.V. Club has a brief review of Madison Sourdough which just opened on Willy Street in the space vacated by Escape Java Joint. The Dulcinea and I stopped by there on Sunday to grab some go-juice and here are some thoughts.

Firstly, I am a Just Coffee fan and am glad to see them carrying it. Secondly, the almond and chocolate croissants that she and I had, respectively, were quite tasty.

Now for the gripes. My first is that, while they had all of their other breads in stock, there was no rye bread. I was told that there was probably some day-old left but it was unclear to me as to whether it had sold out by 9:30AM or whether they just didn't bother to bake any. I mean, everyone knows rye is the superior bread eaten by Slavs everywhere. So where the hell was it? Lastly, their sandwich board advertised an almond butter and jelly sandwich which I was told went for $7. For that kind of money, it had better be made of organic almond butter and the jelly of berries picked by virgins. (Nichole – there's your cue.)

I recently read that the richest 1% of Americans now own more of the country's wealth than ever before and I'm sure that many an Isthmus liberal will recite this when confronting Republicans over one issue or another. But I can't help but think that a $7 AB&J sandwich on Willy Street as well as the seemingly ever-increasing numbers of people who buy organics and Madison's growing poverty rate are indicative of something similar. One moment I read that one out of two students in the Madison schools is having their lunch subsidized and the next I see Kobe beef tenderloins for $45.98/lb. I don't have numbers but it feels like Madison is becoming more balkanized. Perhaps it isn't but it seems that the gap between the poor and not poor is becoming more pronounced. I hear about how it's a scandal that so few Americans own so much wealth but am I alone in feeling that a similar situation is developing here in Madison?

Again, this may all be a problem with my perception but, speaking as a voter, watching Mayor Dave offering up $16 million in TIF money for a public patio and then heading out to bicycle in Europe on lobbyists' dimes while poverty grows just puts a bad taste in my mouth. It's not that he can't address poverty and move on the Edgewater project and learn about Copenhagen's bicycle infrastructure all at the same time, but I see him putting a lot more effort into the latter two than the former. He's the mayor so he can make anything he wants an issue. All he has to do is open his mouth. Perhaps instead of blasting the landmark commission for being undemocratic, he can instead start making poverty in our community an issue.

I offer this not to begrudge those with money but to note how Madison has changed in my eyes. It seems that at one time the Broadway/Simpson and the poor in general was a much more prominent issue than the poor and, say, Allied Drive are today. I think Madison has moved from being a big town to a small city. The poor and marginalized tend to get press only when the middle class don't want to see them panhandling on State Street and when a co-ed gets murdered.

Can the fact that one-half of Madison students are receiving a subsidized lunch simply be attributed to an influx of poor people? Or is it possible that more and more middle class parents are sending their kids elsewhere? I don't know but poverty is increasing here in Madison and as a community I don't think we're making it an issue. I suspect we're seeing the first inkling of white flight now but that remains to be seen. Either Madison addresses poverty now or we're going to become an increasingly divided city with the organic/bike path crowd further distancing itself from the rest.

WFF '10: Sawan baan na (Agrarian Utopia)

A commenter noted at another review that they felt that the film festival guide's description of Cooking History was way off base and I agreed with them. However, the guide hit the nail on the head when it came to Sawan baan na (Agrarian Utopia). The shots of the landscape certainly remind one of Terrence Malick's work and the movie does have a documentary feel.

We see the plight of two Thai families who are sharecroppers and scrape together an existence from the land. The two fathers complain about their poverty, debts owed to the bank, and the meager government loan schemes which do little but push them further into debt. They feel used and helpless. From here we get a look at their lives out in the rice paddies. The families live in shacks without power or plumbing. And working the paddies is back-breaking work. We see the families planting and harvesting without the aid of modern technology and instead try to deal with a temperamental water buffalo. Mushrooms are gathered for extra money. The Michael Pollan crowd would be pleased to see the families catching a snake to roast and grabbing honey straight from the beehive. To say that life is tough for these people is an understatement and some scenes of political protest that take place in a city show that the poor farmers are not at the top of the government's list of priorities.

Their lives are contrasted with that of another landowner nearby who is a professor clad in spectacles and pony tail. Like many hippies here in America, he has gone back to the land. He is trying his hand at subsistence agriculture. When the families' landlord tells them that he must sell the land in order to make car payments, the professor offers them the use of some of his land but his charity comes with strings attached such as that they cannot use chemicals of any kind. It all has to be "natural".

While there are some scenes, such as of children playing in the mud, with detract from the harsh existence these families eek out, the movie concentrates on how rough their lives are. This is certainly one of those films where some knowledge of the country in which it was made would help understanding it. I get the general point but I think that knowing more about Thailand – its government, its political movements, and overall economic situation – would help illuminate the protest scenes as well as why the fathers have so little faith in the government.

Even so, I enjoyed Agrarian Utopia. Stylistically I found it quite interesting. In addition to the beautiful shots of the sky and rice paddies, I noted that it was shot with a very high frame rate. It has that hyper-real look where you can see every droplet of water – like the opening of Saving Private Ryan. This takes away from the illusion that what you're watching is strictly a documentary but it also plays on the irony of the movie's title. Just as what we witness is anything but a utopia, the look of the film conveys the idea that it is unattainable. Utopias exist only in movies.

WFF '10: Chega de Saudade

My Saturday at the Wisconsin Film Festival began with the Brazilian film Chega de Saudade by Laís Bodanzky. According to Wikipedia, "Chega de Saudade" is the first bossa nova song and roughly translates to "enough longing", of which there is plenty in the film.

It opens with a host of people including a well-dressed older couple, Álvaro and Alice, as well as a young DJ and his girlfriend, Marquinhos and Bel, arriving at an old dance hall for an evening of drinks, dance, and fun. Once in the hall we are introduced to an Altman-like menagerie of characters – men and women – who dance or are not asked to dance, drink, and reminisce about their younger days. People gossip with one another and relationships are exposed.

Among them are Álvaro who has a bum foot and we learn that he was a dance hall champion in his younger days winning multiple competitions. But now he is a curmudgeon who must be dragged to the hall and is content to sit and quaff his drinks while lashing out at others. Elza with her low cut blouse awaits a man to ask her to dance but there are seemingly no takers for this self-imposed wallflower. Gordo Ferreira, an older man with a gut we Wisconsonians can be proud of gleefully inveigles Bel to dance the night away with him.

This brings me to one of the interesting elements of the film. Excepting a waiter, it is only Marquinhos and Bel who are under 50. The older cast adds another dimension to the story that is lacking with most American films which are preoccupied with people in their 20s. There is a lot of sexuality and sexual tension in the air and the vast majority of it is among older people. Cinematographer Walter Carvalho uses yellows and oranges, which along with the sweat visible on actors, gives the viewer a palpable sense of the heat. Then we have Rita, the wife of a rich man who comes to the hall to rendezvous with her lover. At one point in the film, Alice, who is a matron, of sorts, of the dance hall tells Álvaro, "Some things only happen when you're young" and immediately following this we see Rita, no spring chicken, touching herself in the bathroom.

Chega de Saudade keeps the action inside the dance hall and it all happens on one night. This allows Bodanzky to explore multiple characters but hone in on a few of the aspects of aging. The need for love and physical affection never diminishes and being middle-aged doesn't mean the loss of one's sexuality. In addition to companionship, growing old means coping with the past. Some things are the province of youth but the films tells us to not let that distract us from making the present worth living.

In addition to the lively, vivid characters, there was some ribald humor to be had which lightened things up. And I can't forget the great music. Chega de Saudade was a wonderfully poignant film which dealt with a subject matter all-too often avoided.

What's Happening in Atlanta?

First I read that Katjusa Cisar of 77 Square is leaving for Atlanta:

Later this week, I'm leaving my home since 1986 and moving to Atlanta.

...and now I find out that Scott Gordon of the AV Club Madison is doing the same:

I'm moving off to Atlanta at the end of the week...

Was a deal made somewhere that Madison would get Spectrum HQ in return for two entertainment writers and a six-pack to be named later?

What is happening in Atlanta?

UPDATE: I guess Ms. Cisar and Mr. Gordon are romantically involved, hence the illusion of coincidence. Well, best of luck to them both.

WFF '10: The Scenesters

The Scenesters opens with a mock trailer for a film called Nothing But Everything which promises "Three people, two hours, one conversation" which, I presume, is meant to spoof mumblecore. As we find out, The Scenesters is out to parody another genre as well – the murder mystery. But it's not content with that and continues to poke fun at Hollywood and perhaps indie movie makers everywhere.

The director of the mock trailer is one Wallace Cotton who, along with his producer Roger Graham, is unable to find funding for their next movie. And so Cotton takes a job as a videographer for the Los Angeles Police Department. Bumbling from one crime scene to the next, Cotton befriends Charlie Newton who cleans up the blood and gore after the police are finished. Newton notices that a series of recent murders all have something in common: a CD at the scene by a band whose name pertains to the way the victims were murdered. Graham reckons him a genuine sleuth and convinces Cotton to shoot a movie about Newton tracking down the serial killer.

Along the way Newton meets an old flame named Jewell Wright who is now a TV reporter covering the murders. They strike up their relationship once again much to Graham's delight as he now has a beautiful woman in the story. Things get even crazier as the killer starts sending videos of his crimes to Graham and Cotton. Whoever he is, he knows what's happening and wants to join in on the fun.

What makes The Scenesters really interesting is how the story is told. A courtroom scene bookends the proceedings with Sherilyn Fenn (Audrey from Twin Peaks) as the prosecutor trying to get to the bottom of what happened. Both Graham and Cotton take turns on the stand. Then there's the movie within a movie at the core of The Scenesters. Following a crime scene cleaner turned gumshoe in an attempt to make a new Chinatown was really funny. Behind the scenes footage shot by two interns found on Craigslist as well as other bits such as a training video from the crime scene clean up company that employs Newton round out the bill in a way that would make Oliver Stone proud. The scenes where our filmmakers realize the killer is on to them were genuinely creepy and suspenseful.

Although the movie dragged a bit in the middle, the interesting style, an endless parade of parodies, and the humorous rapport between Cotton and Graham made for some great entertainment.

WFF '10: Harmony and Me

I bought a ticket for Harmony and Me based on the review given it by UW film prof J.J. Murphy. In it he says, "Yet if I were to pick one indie film of the past year that I would jump at the chance to see over and over again, it would be Harmony and Me…"

The movie is a comedy which follows the trials and tribulations of Harmony, a 20-something guy who has recently broken up with the lovely Jessica. There's not much of a plot to be had here and it is instead a series of vignettes of Harmony dealing with family, having his friends try to help him over his loss, and the odd brief encounter with his ex. Justin Rice plays Harmony and he makes the character a self-centered sad sack who seems little different from many of the people who surround him. He constantly bleats "She broke my heart, but she’s still at it" while his mother is diagnosed with cancer and his boss is given but one day to live.

I did not find Harmony's slacker misadventures funny and I think I was the only person in the audience who felt this way. Not once did I laugh, although I smiled a couple times. By far the funniest moment was near the beginning when Jessica is talking to a friend of hers on the phone. She tells her that, while she and Harmony had dated for about a year, she knew it was over by 9 months in and got a leg up on the grieving process by starting while they were still dating. And while I felt the comic timing of the movie was good, I simply just didn't find much humor to be had which was worth laughing about.

Harmony's boss is a jerk and at one point makes a comment that he likes his women young. And so at Brad's funeral Harmony says a few words about his former employer and concludes by shouting that the guy was a paedophile before storming off. This got big laughs from the audience but I found it puerile and distasteful. Similarly, one of Harmony's friends, Mike(?), is in a loveless marriage and scenes at Mike's house invariably involve him berating his wife mercilessly until tears begin to flow. Again, not funny yet these scenes got big laughs.

The only redeeming feature to be had is how Harmony begins taking piano lessons and pieces together a song over the course the movie. It was (vaguely) poignant and provided something akin to a narrative thread.

Despite really wanting to like Harmony and Me I ended up feeling like director Bob Byington tried way too hard to create a childish movie and ended up succeeding. I mean this literally. While I like things crass, this movie was something my 10-year old stepson would probably fall over laughing at. I mean, I like The Three Stooges but this just gave shallow and insulting a bad name.

Byington gave a post-screening Q&A in which he gave some good info on production but he put me off. He came across as a really droll, self-important hipster, not unlike Harmony, so I can at least partly understand why I thought the movie was so bad.

WFF '10: Izulu Lami (My Secret Sky)

Izulu Lami (My Secret Sky) follows two orphaned children, Thembi, 10, and Khwezi, 8, as they leave their rural farm in the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa and journey to the big city. Initially, their mother's death means that they are left in the care of their Aunt Jabu. AJ had not come to visit the mother in her illness and she has no interest in being caretaker for her niece and nephew so the kids are left to fend for themselves. Thembi recalls that her mother had made a particularly beautiful Zulu mat that gained the interest of a white priest from the city. So she gathers the mat and her brother and sets off for the city to find the holy man hoping that he'd buy the mat.

The journey begins with the kids trekking through the gorgeous fields of South Africa. Everything is green except for the big sky overhead which dwarfs the children. They eat dinner beneath a tree as a dimming sun sets behind them. Eventually the pair make their way to a main road which takes them to a train station. There they sneak aboard a train for the last part of their journey. Arriving in the big city, these country bumpkins are overcome with awe at the large buildings and the hustle and bustle of city life. After Khwezi follows a couple street urchins who have robbed a pair of street performers, he and Thembi become acquainted with Chili-Bite, the leader of a small gang of kids.

C-B and his gang are antagonistic towards the rural refugees but they become integrated nonetheless. Thembi proves strong and gains C-B's respect by not caving in to his tricks and overcoming great adversity such as being rented to a paedophile. Plus she simply is able to adapt and survive on the streets. All the while Thembi maintains her search for the priest and watches over her little brother.

Both Sobahle Mkhabase and Sibonelo Malinga who played Thembi and Khwezi, respectively, gave wonderful performances. Considering that the movie concerned itself with the plight of two orphans, I didn't find it to be sappy. I felt more invested in Thembi's quest to find the priest than I did feeling sorry for any of the children left to fend for themselves on the streets. The scenes in the country are suitably beautiful while those in the city give the necessary opposition with overcrowding and cramped quarters.

My only criticism is the ending. Thembi's determination and ingenuity are once more on display – and rightly so – but I thought that her craftiness here fell a bit on the side of a deus ex machine, a bit contrived. Despite this, Izulu Lami was a nice portrait of a girl on the cusp of womanhood who is forced by fate to take on adult responsibilities and proves to be up to the task. It is likely that many elements of the movie went over my head with my stunning ignorance of South Africa, its people, and its culture, but Thembi's story will resonate with everyone.

WFF '10: Cooking History

Cooking History is, if my memory serves, the only documentary I'll be seeing this year at the WFF. I chose it because A) it sounded like an interesting topic and B) I was hoping for something other than a he said-she said bit of agit prop which the big names such as The Art of the Steal and The Most Dangerous Man in America promised to be. And the film didn't disappoint.

Conflicts of the second half of the 20th century are viewed from the bottom up as men and women who cooked for the combatants describe their experiences and their views of food as symbols of their side. It sounds like an odd premise and difficult to realize onscreen but director Péter Kerekes does a great job of combining testimony with staged footage and staged scenarios.

The film begins with a helicopter taking off with an army field kitchen as its payload. We then witness Russian soldiers being trained to cook on the battlefield. A voiceover from a soldier recalls eating mostly porridge during his tour in Chechnya until one day his fellow soldiers killed a cow belonging to a local. As you can imagine, this only made the situation worse. Over this recollection the trainees slit the throat of a cow and are shown butchering it. This opening epilogue gives us the template for the rest of the film as the airborne field kitchen returns periodically as does another element here: the recipe. In this case, it is for shashlik. Ingredient amounts are adjusted for the size of the army. In addition, it is notable that at least some of the scenes of the trainees are staged as evidenced by the camera angles.

We then jump back to World War II with an old German man who is measuring flour. He says, "German bread is the best in the world" and recalls the Kommist bread eaten by German soldiers during the war. His story is told side by side with that of an old Russian woman who declares that "bread is bread, regardless of nationality. She fed Russian soldiers bread and blini pancakes during the Seige of Stalingrad. (I think it was this battle, anyway.) The two talk of the horrific things that war brings and they both end up shedding tears.

I really appreciated how the interviews were done in staged scenes. One man who was a concentration camp survivor baked bread for captured SS officers and laced his loaves with arsenic. He killed about 300 of them. His interview is shown on a television that sits atop a counter in a kitchen. Another man, a cook on a German submarine in the 1960s, describes being the boat's only survivor after an accident on the North Sea. He talks of his experience as he prepares schnitzel on a beach with a rising tide. Eventually the water sweeps his food and takes the table away. In another instance, a French veteran of their conflict in Algeria has some toy figures of soldiers and they move briefly in an animated scene on the guy's coffee table.



In eschewing stock footage to illustrate the events at the time, such theatrical interviews personalize the accounts given by cooks in the front of the camera. The opening and its cow slaughter sequence reminded us of the dirty business that is war while the staged elements add a little humor to distance us a bit from the grim realities these people endured.

Food is also shown to have uses other than simply preparing men for war. The personal food taster for Joseph Tito, president of the former Yugoslavia, describes the deterioration of that country as Serbian and Croatian cuisines became weapons. During talks to keep the country from splitting apart, Serbs would serve food that was sure to displease the Croatian delegates and vice versa. We know how well that turned out.

The film ends with the story of the gentleman above who was the lone survivor of the submarine disaster. It stands as a stark reminder that, above all else, food is necessary for survival.

WFF '10: Thursday Night Shorts

The series of five shorts Thursday night at Vilas Hall were all from the UK and tended to focus on children. There was a goodly amount of humor as well as some deadly seriousness.

Bale lead off the program. Three boys bicycle out to a large mound of hay bales and enjoy the youthful pursuit of pretending to be in a fort. Their fun is spoiled, however, when a group of joy riding teenagers arrives and decides to pick on one of the boys, Tom, with a battery of torments that includes flicking lit matches at him.

Shot in 35mm, Bales is gorgeous and the ensemble of young actors does a great job. It's a brief yet poignant portrait of youth in different stages discovering that life gets all-too real very quickly.

Next came Love Does Grow On Trees. It opens with a humorous disclaimer that the story takes place in a time of innocence – the pre-Internet era of the 1980s. The story revolves around a pubescent boy who finds the photo of a nude woman from a porno magazine caught in the webbing of a football (soccer) net and stumbles upon the Porn Fairy as he goes hunting for more to satiate his budding sexual desires.

Also shot on 35mm, Love Does Grow On Trees looks really nice. Luke Ward-Wilkinson does a bang-up job as the young lad with his facial expressions of amazement and delight at the sight of naked women. A very funny film that, like highlights an awkwardness of youth.

The laughs continued with Oscar and Jim. At 28 minutes, it was the longest short of the set. It follows a young couple who are on a holiday in Paris wandering the Pierre Lachaise Cemetery in search of the graves of Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison. The map they have has proven useless and they're lost. The two bicker with one another and trade clever insults as closing time approaches.

This one was less intriguing to me on a technical level because of my bias for film and this was shot on video. Still, it was definitely good for some laughs despite my not having found the couple to be all that interesting.

The penultimate movie of the night was Rule 2 which, in a paltry nine minutes, tries to give some sense of how a British soldier serving in the Middle East changes as he sees more and more of what war has to offer. Scenes of him chatting with his mum and girlfriend via webcam alternate with those of him reciting a monologue to the camera as images are projected onto his face and the screen behind him.

While I liked the style, Rule 2 just didn't gel. Projecting the images on the man's face worked for me in Natural Born Killers and it worked for me here. But nine minutes is just not enough time to convincingly explore the profound changes that war has on people. The movie's reach exceeds its grasp.

Lastly we saw Edward's Turmoil. Here we return to youth as a young lad accompanies his grandfather on a day out. The granddad is rather crotchety and prone to use of profanity. Unfortunately, the f-bomb causes the good, Bible-reading boy to have uncontrollable spasms. Things come to a head at a restaurant as the grandfather's attempt at provoking the boy into swearing himself ends with a punch to the face.

A funny glimpse at the eternal struggle between youth and age and a great way to end the night.

FIB's Cart Hits the Big Time

Doug Moe accompanied Paul Soglin to the FIB's cart on the Square and has the results. Soglin, a Chicago dog connoisseur, gave it a B.

It's a nice little profile of FIB's owner, John Handley, and explains why I haven't seen the cart down at Library Mall. I think he throws together a pretty good Italian beef and am sorry to see him relocate but he's is apparently doing well at the new location. Handley was always extremely friendly so I wish him all the best.

As for me, I am still working my way through my stash of Italian beef that I got in Chicago last time I was down there. Five pounds of tender beef goodness from Joseph's Finest Meats on Addison near Harlem.

WFF '10: Lourdes

My Wisconsin Film Festival 2010 began last night with a screening of Lourdes.

The opening shot established the deliberate pace of the film with a view of a dining room. Slowly waitstaff wheel carts in and begin to place food at the tables. Following them are those who are to dine. First comes a man who uses a walker. Then another man zips into the frame in his motorized wheelchair. Soon the room is bustling as the sick and infirm are led to tables by their attendants. All of this activity takes place in a single static shot before a slow zoom begins and moves towards a nurse at the center who announces that the visit to the grotto will be delayed until the following day. The scene had a very Altman-esque feel.

Lourdes centers on Christine, a woman in her late-30s who is afflicted with Multiple Sclerosis. She, like her fellow diners, is a pilgrim has come to Lourdes, a town at the base of the Pyrenees, seeking hope and healing. The sick and infirm began making the trek after a young woman named Bernadette Soubirous claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary in a nearby grotto in 1858. A spring at the site supposedly had miraculous healing powers and things snowballed from there as ever more Catholics made the pilgrimage seeking to be free of their illnesses.

Christine has lost the use of her limbs and is tended to by a young woman who also spends a lot of time flirting with one of the men who assists the nurses that care for the pilgrims. Indeed, amidst the search for healing, most of the staff seems more concerned with the opposite sex playing cards, and drinking. The film's humor is very dry as illustrated by scenes of the infirm alternating with those showing the extreme commercial nature of the town. Statues of Mary are for sale everywhere and the lobby of the building where Christine is staying has a large statue with a neon halo above the head.

A routine is begun as the pilgrims eat, venture out to the grotto, go to a blessing, or some other activity, and then back for the night. As we follow Christine, we are introduced to other characters. There's a priest who is unable to satisfactorily answer questions about suffering and why certain people are healed while others are not as well as a male attendant who seeks skeptical of religion and never fails to poke fun at the priest. The head nurse is a Nurse Ratched-like woman who seems to spend most of her time enforcing discipline instead of comforting the ill. And there's also the pair of older women who are the gossip hounds of the group. The holy is contrasted with the profane constantly.

Despite not being particularly religious and making the pilgrimage simply to get away from the Sturm und Drang of her life, Christine appears to have been healed. Now able-bodied, she can make a trek up the mountain. There her own flirtation with the attendant for whom her nurse had eyes comes to fruition and they kiss. Later at the farewell party they are able to dance. But the film ends ambiguously. Christine falls while dancing and retreats to the side to recover herself. Her date is extremely uncomfortable and excuses himself. Christine retreats to her wheelchair, her future unknown as the screen goes black.

Lourdes is a slow movie that utilizes little camera movement and revels in long takes. Christine is very quiet and the film invites the viewer into contemplation as it gives mostly glances and facial expression as clues into her state of mind. Considering all the sick and infirm, the movie never makes a pitch for us to feel sorry for anyone and it manages to never lapse into raw sentimentality by mixing things up with its dry humor and the occasional jab at the hypocrisy of the place.

All in all, a good start to the festival.

The Secret of Kells

Now that I'm gearing up for the Wisconsin Film Festival, I don't want to forget my cinema adventure last week - The Secret of Kells. This Irish-French-Belgian production was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film.

It concerns young Brendan, nephew of Abbot Cellach. The abbot is a former illuminator who now concerns himself with designing and building a wall around the monastery and surrounding village to keep out the Viking hordes that are running roughshod over the land. Brendan hears the story of Aidan of Iona who is famed as the best illuminator in all of Christendom. When Aidan shows up at the monastery doors with his latest work in progress, The Book of Kells, Brendan is entranced. But the man is growing old and so he enlists the boy to his cause.

Brendan's first task is to gather some gall nuts outside the walls in order to make ink. The abbot has expressly forbidden Brendan from leaving the friendly confines so he must gather his resolve as well and disobey his uncle. Out in the forest he encounters a faerie who can take the shape of a wolf and she gives him a grand tour of the world outside the walls of his home before directing him to the nuts and eventually getting him home to finish the book.

The Secret of Kells is aimed at children and is not the deepest or most nuanced coming of age tale. Nonetheless it is a fun story of a boy maturing and coming into his own in the face of a strict guardian and moving to realize his dream. Furthermore the animation is absolutely splendid. Modeled after medieval illumination, it is unrealistic yet ornate and simply beautiful. Flames are rendered not as mercurial swathes of orange but rather as identical shapes with perfectly symmetrical curves and bordered in gold. It even utilizes the odd 2-D perspective of medieval art.



Unfortunately The Secret of Kells was only here for a week so be sure to catch it on DVD.

LOST: Wherein Desmond Willfully Ignores ADA Laws

Compared to last week's LOST in which we see the show's Black Iron Prison receive its first frontal assault, this week's was more of a mixed bag. On the one hand, we learned that the whispers are the voices of the dead, their souls unable to continue their journey. On the other, we get that bag with the draw string that Hurley finds eminently interesting but about which he keeps mum. Another mystery to ponder as the show caroms to its end.



The title was "Everybody Loves Hugo" and we find out via a Citizen Kane-like montage that in the flash sideways world the fried chicken magnate has donated lots of money to worthy causes. And the voice narrating was instantly familiar – Pierre Chang. It turns out that Hurley was being given a civic award of some kind and the montage was shown at the ceremony. Afterwards, his mother chastises him for not having a woman in his life and sets him up on a blind date. The date apparently bailed on him but Libby shows up and engages the lonely billionaire. He looks familiar to her – she has been undergoing anamnesis. Unfortunately Hurley has not. But a brief appearance by Desmond spurs him to meet Libby again and they end up having the picnic denied them on the Island. A kiss from her proves to be just what the doctor ordered to kickstart Hurley's memory and images from the Island come flooding into his mind.

Back on the Island, Ilana retrieves four sticks of dynamite from the Black Rock and tries to rally the troops for a voyage to the Hydra island where they'll blow-up the defenseless Ajira 316 to prevent Smokey from being able make his way to the real world. But in her haste and frustration at having to justify the plan, the candidates' guardian drops the backpack containing the explosives and she ends up pulling a Doc Arzt. A rather ignominious exit, if you ask me.

But it allows Hurley to rifle through her belongings and find a copy of Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground and the bag I mentioned above. My theory is that the bag contains Jacob's ashes. Although why Hurley looks at them like he's discovered the super-secret jackpot is something I haven't figured out yet.

Our hero who communes with the dead hears the whispers at the beginning of the episode when he is at the Losties' Island boneyard and encounters Michael who tells him that he must not blow up the Ajira plane or else everyone will die. Later the whispers and Michael return. We are told that they are the voices of the dead who cannot move on.

But is the apparition of Michael trustworthy? Considering that the whispers have been heard in a variety of situations before, it seems odd for one of the souls to suddenly appear and offer advice. I don't remember hearing whispers when the ghost of Richard's beloved Isabella appeared. Then again, she only warned not to let Smokey off the Island – the whole idea of blowing up the plane was Richard's. Perhaps the ghostly Michael is trustworthy after all. The idea of using the plane to escape could be just another one of Smokey's subterfuges, a ploy to kill off the candidates. Maybe that is what Michael is warning against when he told Hurley that he wanted to make sure he didn't get everyone killed.

Back in "Ab Aeterno", Smokey convinced Richard that the Island was Hell and now an ethereal Michael maintains that the Island houses the souls of the dead who cannot reach their final destination. Perhaps the Island really is Hell. Jacob said that it was like a cork keeping malevolence bottled up. Well, evil incarnate resides in Hell so perhaps Smokey getting off the Island is the equivalent of that bottle being uncorked. And is Hell not thought to be underground? That's the pun behind the Dostoevsky book. In this scenario it is Jacob and not Smokey who is Cerberus for it is he who keeps Smokey from leaving.

Lastly, in the flash sideways we see that Desmond's crusade to find his fellow Flight 815 passengers and get them started down the path of anamnesis worked on Hurley but why hit the wheelchair-bound Locke with his car? I wonder if the two Desmonds are now one or are floating freely between each other. The on-Island version feels no fear and is one of the happiest-go-lucky people ever while the flash sideways incarnation feels motivated to run over Locke. Has the hit and run Desmond taken a leap of faith and decided that the two worlds are connected? If so, does this really account for his malevolent action against the disabled?



Some things for next week. First, Locke thinks that, with the arrival of the Hurley-led group, that he has his candidates and can now get moving on that whole busting out of Dodge plan of his. But does he? We know "Kwon" was on the list but was it Jin or Sun or both? I think Smokey will soon find out that he requires Jin who is being detained by Widmore.

And since most of the Losties are now at Camp Smokey, we'll no doubt find out more about the Widmore Energy Stratagem. I wonder if the old man's team is going to head to the Orchid Station as Smokey's gang make a dash for the Hydra island.

Lastly, who will die? The end of the show is nigh and I am thinking that more folks are going to bite the dust. My guess is that Sayid is next. Ever since his resurrection, he's been a heartless automaton with a darkness that's growing inside him.

I Wanna Be Your Beast of Burden

I must admit that I was much more impressed with Doctor Who this past weekend than with the series premiere. "The Beast Below" addressed my main criticism of Matt Smith's debut, namely, too much in the histrionics department. Here he is still incredibly passionate but less hyper. And very funny.

The Doctor and Amy land on Starship UK which looks like a conglomeration of skyscrapers and contains the population of England (not Scotland, though) who are fleeing Earth which is under assault by solar flares. In seeking to console a girl who is crying, our heroes discover that not all is as it seems on the interstellar nation of shopkeepers. For one thing, there is no vibration from an engine. So what is propelling the ark? The Doctor and Amy must go below decks to the Tower of London to find the answer.

This should sound somewhat familiar as The Doctor and Martha visited New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New New York in "Gridlock" and the answer to the conundrum in that story lay below the surface just as here. Without wanting to spoil the story, I'll say that the two stories have some similarities but are quite different. Writer Steven Moffat cleverly plays against our expectations in "The Beast Below" and does so very well.

This story was a hoot. Much of what was done physically in "The Eleventh Hour" is now done verbally. The Doctor spends less time running around, spitting food, and hitting his own forehead and more time off-handedly dropping quips like the one to Amy about how he never interferes in the affairs of the places he visits. He has seemingly gotten over any post-regeneration hiccups and can now concentrate on enjoying himself and getting Amy acclimated to her new role as companion. Mania has been replaced by an avuncular congeniality. Considering his age, there were times when Smith's Doctor showed signs of Jon Pertwee as the third incarnation of the character. Tellingly, he avoids answering her queries as to whether he is a father but The Doctor does explain that he is the last of his kind.

Amy showed a lot of promise in her first episode but it focused on The Doctor. "The Beast Below" showed her to be adventurous and intelligent. We see her picking a padlock to go poking around that tent where she shouldn't be and she also overrides The Doctor's plan of pseudo-euthanasia after having pieced together what she could of the puzzle and then taking a leap of faith. Plus, since she is Scottish, there's always room for jokes about the Scots such as the aforementioned one about them building their own ark to flee the Earth instead of joining the Brits.



Sophie Okonedo was great as the badass Queen Elizabeth X. (Above w/The Doctor.) She proves herself to be a real gunslinger in the face of two menacing Smilers and recounts some previous encounters with The Doctor had by past British monarchs such as Victoria in "Tooth and Claw".

In addition to the slimy Star Wars-like garbage chute scene, I also appreciated the above "Smilers", which are surveillance devices that use clown-like faces to register official approval or opprobrium. They scared The Dulcinea and Miles pretty good. Plus I liked the vaguely Blade Runneresque sets. They retrofitted the English city really well.

Lastly I'll mention that the crack motif continues here. Introduced in "The Eleventh Hour" with the crack in young Amy's bedroom wall and Prisoner Zero intoning "the Pandorica will open, silence will fall", we see a large crack in the Starship UK.

This series may have gotten off to a bit of a slow start but "The Beast Below" gets things moving once again. To top things off, it ends with an introduction to next week's installment which is to feature the Daleks.

Mistress of the Art of Death

When I think of medieval mystery stories, my mind immediately jumps to Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. I heard about Ariana Franklin's Mistress of the Art of Death when it was published in 2007 and resolved to check it out. I finally got around to doing and found that, while it is a very different book in contrast to The Name of the Rose but was nonetheless an extremely fun read.

It is 1171 and a group of pilgrims who had celebrated Easter at Canterbury are returning to Cambridge. Among them are the prioress and prior of the local nunnery and monastery, respectively, three knights who are former crusaders, a tax collector, and a trio of foreigners. This latter group has been sent to Cambridge by the King of Sicily at the behest of Henry II to investigate the murder of a young boy in the town. In addition, other children have gone missing. The townspeople have leveled accusations of blood libel against Cambridge's Jews who have been given refuge in the castle. For his part, Henry is perturbed at the loss of income as his Jewish servants who engage in usury are no longer paying taxes.

Simon of Naples, a Jew who is renowned in his homeland for his sleuthing skills, leads the investigation. With him is Adelia Aguilar, a doctor who is able to examine corpses to determine cause of death, and her manservant Mansur, a Saracen. While Franklin's story isn't concerned with metaphysics, extended metaphors, and philosophical conflicts as was Eco's, she does weave a great tale which touches on a variety of issues by using Adelia as a focal point.

The book's opening introduces us to the main figures in the town but also showcases Adelia's unique talents and her temperament. Prior Geoffrey has a prostate problem and cannot urinate. In a land where practicing medicine generally means preparing herbal remedies, Adelia is able to draw upon texts she's read and jury-rig a catheter to relieve the prior of his fullness. We learn that in her native Salerno, women are allowed to be doctors, unlike in England, and that a rational, scientific approach to medicine holds sway. Adelia is an intelligent, dedicated doctor who does not suffer fools easily.

At the heart of the story is a murder mystery and our investigators suspect everyone at first. The plot meanders as more information is gathered and the list of suspects narrows. But aside from simply being an engaging story, Mistress of the Art of Death touches on many issues, though it shies away from the metaphysical. Being a stranger in a strange land, Adelia's observations of 12th century life in Cambridge are in direct opposition to life in Salerno. The meals are heavy on the animal flesh and light on salad and people don't bathe much. But the book also gives anti-Semitism a prominent role as well as the subordinate role of women in England. These themes are not delved into deeply but rather are present throughout where they sit next to many others issues such as that of class and the dichotomies of superstition vs. reason and the individual vs. society.

With so many themes and issues abutting the basic detective story, Franklin creates a very vivid portrait of Cambridge in 1171. Sure, there are anachronisms but, overall, the world of the story is absorbing. And while there is a whole host of characters, she manages to flesh out a fair number of them. Simon is a Jew in a town seething with hatred of Jews, Adelia is a beacon of gender equality and rationalism in a town of misogyny and superstition, and Mansur is a Saracen. Franklin deftly tells us about the townspeople by how they react to the foreigners.

I don't mean to imply here that Mistress of the Art of Death is The Name of the Rose-lite because Franklin and Eco had very different motivations for their stories. Franklin has managed to create an intriguing protagonist in Adelia and placed her in a lovingly detailed world. Her mystery draws the reader in and is richly adorned with thematic elements that will resonate with contemporary readers.

I am looking forward to reading the three sequels.

Go ahead and call us insane, but we Midwesterners just love a train (and so does the rest of America)

Check out this Amtrak press release (PDF). Midwestern highlights:

In the Chicago hub, ridership on Lincoln Service (Chicago – St. Louis) showed significant growth with an 18 percent jump in March and 11.6 percent for the six month period. Hiawatha Service (Chicago – Milwaukee) continues to grow with a 14.3 percent increase in March and up 4.8 percent fiscal year to date. Elsewhere in the Midwest, the Missouri River Runner (Kansas City - St. Louis) is up 24.2 percent for March and 15.8 percent for the first half of the Amtrak fiscal year, while the Blue Water (Chicago - Port Huron) increased by 21.7 percent in March and 5.2 percent for fiscal year to date.

Similar ridership increases can be seen throughout the country. Hence Amtrak is on track to break its annual ridership record.

More Priestly Revelations

Pope Fritzy can whine about conspiracies all he wants and Spanish bishops can continue to blame the children for priests who can't keep their dicks in their pants ("There are 13 year old adolescents who are under age and who are perfectly in agreement with, and what’s more wanting it, and if you are careless they will even provoke you," he said.) but, sadly, the ruined lives and the paperwork showing that the Church aided and abetted paedophiles keeps piling up.

Close to home, Rev. Thomas Brundage has been caught lying, er, misremembering, details relating to the child rapist Father Lawrence Murphy in Milwaukee.

Brundage wrote a March 29 article disputing media reports that he had been ordered to freeze the judicial process.

But new documents that were first reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel show he penned a rough draft of the very letter saying he had been instructed to abate the process.

Brundage apologized Friday, saying he misremembered something that happened so long ago.

Then we have news from Norway. Despite almost being able to count the number of Catholics on one hand, they still have a priestly child rapist.

Lastly comes the disgusting revelations in "The 'Pedophile's Paradise'". Native Alaskan villages became "dumping grounds" for pedophilic priests. Suicides followed. The Catholic Church even had a "fixer" up there named Patrick Wall. Luckily his conscience got the better of him and he left the Church. Here are some of his choice statements:

These abusers in Alaska, Wall said, were specifically sent to Alaska "to get them off the grid, where they could do the least amount of damage" to the church's public image.

Why does the church keep sending these priests, who have come to be such a major liability, back into ministry? "It's all about keeping the stores open, keeping the revenue rolling," Wall says. The Alaskan provinces in particular, Wall says, were a source of revenue—not from the Native population living there, but from parishioners in the lower 48 who were encouraged to donate for the Native ministry up north. "You could raise thousands to fund a mission that cost very little to run," Wall says. "The profit margin is huge."

Oh wait. We can't forget Pope Fritzy's stalling when it came to a California priest named Stephen Kiesle. And why would he hold back on defrocking a paedophile? Why it's the "good of the universal Church" at stake, of course.

I am hoping for a schism within the Catholic Church but I won't be holding my breath for this nor for justice ever being served for the victims of these priests and the higher ups like Fritzy who put the image of the Church before the lives of the children.

Errol Morris Coming To Madison

The A.V. Club Madison has the scoop:

The biggest non-musical event on the docket seems to be filmmaker Errol Morris' (Standard Operating Procedure, Vernon, Florida, The Fog Of War, and many other important documentaries) lecture at the Union Theater on October 21.

Obama to CIA: Terminate With Extreme Prejudice

Barack Obama learned a thing or two during his time in Chicago. Just as the CPD saw fit to dispatch Fred Hampton, Obama is happy to have the CIA assassinate American citizens without due process. No trial – nothing. To wit:

A Muslim cleric tied to the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner has become the first U.S. citizen added to a list of suspected terrorists the CIA is authorized to kill, a U.S. official said Tuesday.

Because he is a U.S. citizen, adding Aulaqi to the CIA list required special approval from the White House, officials said. The move means that Aulaqi would be considered a legitimate target not only for a military strike carried out by U.S. and Yemeni forces, but also for lethal CIA operations.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said: "This agency conducts its counterterrorism operations in strict accord with the law."

Doesn't the law say that U.S. citizens cannot be deprived of life without due process? Or does the 14th Amendment not apply when Big Daddy in the White House says it doesn't? This coming from a man who taught Constitutional law. Here's a take on the issue from Keith Olbermann.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

So where are all the Madison progressives on this? Where is John Nichols' rant? He wrote a book about impeachment when he was none too happy with George Bush so where is his outrage about Obama's presidential assassination program? I searched The Cap Times and The Nation and came up with nothing.

LOST's Black Iron Prison

It was back in season 4 when John Locke gave a copy of Philip K. Dick’s VALIS to Ben Linus but it was this week's episode, "Happily Ever After", that really showed the influence of PKD. It was Desmond-centric and cements his place as one of the best characters on the show. He is special with regards to electromagnetic radiation and is used rather sparingly. His love for Penny seems the most genuine of all the relationships and he doesn't seem to have an active daddy issue, though he does, admittedly, have a father-in-law problem. Desmond is a Lostie, but different.

In his flash sideways, all is well between him and his boss Charles Widmore. Hell, he even gets to sample the pukka scotch denied to him in "Flashes Before Your Eyes". But he is tasked with chaperoning Charley, fresh from his near overdose and a stint in a jail cell. As they're driving, the rock star grabs the car's steering wheel causing it to plunge into the ocean. Desmond escapes the sinking car and attempts to rescue Charley but the pop star merely sits there behind the glass until he puts his palm up to it. Desmond flashes back to Charley's death at the Looking Glass station and sees his hand with "Not Penny's Boat" scrawled upon it.

Eloise Hawking is Eloise Widmore in this world and Desmond and Penny do not know one another. After an MRI results in flashes back to his time with Penny, Desmond must confront Ms. Widmore about Charley's absence at a social function he was to perform at. Eloise proves to be special in her own way. While Charley and Desmond both have a gut feeling that something is amiss, Eloise seems to be above the fray and fully knowledgeable about what is going on. Desmond asks her to see a list of musicians which includes a Penny but Eloise denies him saying that it would be a violation and that he isn't ready. A violation of what?

The flash sideways world is something akin to PKD's Black Iron Prison but it's not about social or political control. I'm not sure what it's about, to be honest. Desmond has Widmore's approval while Jack seems to be living up to his father's hope that he would be a better father to his children than Christian was to Jack. For Locke, this world means coming to grips with his disability and being with Helen. On the flip side, Kate is still on the run. While unable to escape his past, Sayid still has Nadia for some consolation. Sawyer is still seeking revenge but at least he's on the straight and narrow. But Jin & Sun are obviously having problems with Mr. Paik and Keamy. There doesn't seem to be a commonality to their flash sideways plights other than not having landed on the Island.

But our Losties are beginning to see through the world of the flash sideways. As Dick would have said, they are undergoing anamnesis – they are losing their forgetfulness. For the author, it meant seeing that time had stopped in 70C.E. and a simulacrum of reality had taken its place. In LOST, we have the flash sideways with the Island underwater. If, as Jacob said, our little paradise is like a cork keeping a swell of evil and malevolence at bay, then it follows that this new "reality" is subject to those sinister forces. Could the violation Eloise mentioned be that of the universe's self-correction mechanism?

At the end of "Happily Ever After" Desmond asked Minkowski to get a hold of flight 815's manifest, the idea being that he would demonstrate to his fellow passengers that all is not what it seems and that they have a common past (present?) on the Island. I postulate that getting the rest of the Losties to understand this will be key to defeating the forces of darkness that have been loosed upon the world.

The New Doctor Is In the House

Matt Smith's tenure as The Doctor began this past weekend with the episode "The Eleventh Hour". At an hour, it was longer than the normal DW episode but it had to squeeze a lot into that hour. Firstly, there's the story. Secondly introducing the new Doctor and his new companion.

As for the first, it was alright.

It begins with The Doctor hanging from the doorway of the TARDIS as it tumbles over London before crashing into the backyard of a house in a rural village. He emerges (above) and meets little Amelia Pond. Left home alone, she welcomes the stranger in and attempts to satisfy his weird culinary cravings. (Fish fingers and custard finally does the trick.) The Doctor learns about the large crack in the wall in Amelia's bedroom which is no mere masonry problem. It is actually a crack in time and space which leads to an Atraxi prison. A voice echoes, "Prisoner Zero has escaped."

Before he can mend the time-space continuum, The Doctor is alerted by the TARDIS' Cloister Bell signifying immanent destruction. And so he races to its aid and promises Adelia that he'll return in five minutes. In an unsurprising bit of time dilation, five minutes turns into 12 years but The Doctor does return. He discovers that little Amelia has grown up into Amy and that Prisoner Zero has, in fact, been living in her house the whole time but has avoided detection by placing a perception filter on one of the rooms. Furthermore, the escapee has been mimicking coma patients in the local hospital. The Atraxi find out Prisoner Zero's location and threaten to destroy the Earth if it doesn't surrender. Lo and behold, it's up to The Doctor to save humanity once more.

If anything, the story mirrors "Smith and Jones", the episode which kicked off Series 3 and gave us Martha Jones. Alien hiding out on Earth trying to avoid captors who are of another alien race. Arguably, most of Doctor Who is recycled from previous episodes and a myriad of other stories but this one just seemed average. It wasn't particularly fresh to my mind. Not bad, just seemed to be more of the same without any twists of the plot.

“The Eleventh Hour” also serves as a good example of how the show suffers from the new shorter format. As I noted above, Prisoner Zero utilizes the thoughts of coma patients in order to co-opt their physical form. There was one brief scene when they all began speaking at once. It seems to me that reducing the show’s running time meant that it wasn’t able to utilize these spooky verbal vegetables to their full extent. They were a wasted opportunity to add some chills to the thrills and spills.

One thing that I really enjoyed was a scene that takes place on the village green. People are there taking photos of the Atraxi ship in the sky and The Doctor scans the scene for Prisoner Zero who has taken human form. Not seeing it, he traces back in his memory scanning all the details he's observed thus far. This was shown with a jerky stop-motion sequence that was accomplished with a still camera and it is really great. Stylistically speaking, Doctor Who is not notably adventurous. There are occasional flashbacks but, for the most part, it utilizes conventional narrative techniques in a very linear way. This scene, however, really sticks out.



As for Matt Smith…I was a bit disappointed that the new Doctor seemed just like the previous one. Instead of something new we got that wacky professor thing – always talking to himself very quickly and some very physical goofiness. The whole food spitting thing grew very old very quickly for me, although the line about Adelia being Scottish so she should fry something was funny. It's not that he was unlikable but rather that I was expecting his regeneration to yield a completely different personality. But I realize that his new look is only one episode old and I’m hopeful the histrionics will be toned down.

Amy Pond, the new companion, is a beautiful lass with a sexy brogue. As with all the companions in the new series, she is dependent on The Doctor yet very much her own woman. Here, she relies on The Doctor for figuring out the alien angles of the situation but she knocked him out when he had returned 12 years late and thought he was a simple intruder. In addition, once she overcomes the perception field and is finally able to see the door that she has been blind to all these years, she overcomes her fear and enters it to investigate despite The Doctor's pleas against doing so. She will no doubt make an able companion.

Despite "The Eleventh Hour" being a bit of a letdown, it is just one episode. Smith has only just begun to grow into the role and I fully expect him to make it his own. And I, for one, dig the new outfit – professorial jacket and bow tie. Good, nerdy stuff. Also new are the TARDIS interior, show logo, and theme song. Here are the latter two:

I Made My Stepson Cry This Morning (And Further Ruminations On Windows 7)

Yes, I made the kid cry this morning. While I suppose I can be an evil stepfather, these were, in fact, tears of joy.

Yesterday evening he and The Dulcinea were bickering over his use of the laptop. It's been an ongoing issue. Well, last night I'd had enough and so I went and bought a laptop for the kid. He was asleep when I got home and I spent a couple hours removing bloatware, updating, installing, and configuring. I installed his one of his favorite programs Stykz, a stick figure animation program. Miles is the creative type and he likes to animate stick figures being killed in various ways. His other killer app, Blockland, a 3D Lego-like building game, would have to wait until we found his reg code for the Mac version he has.

The poor kid had a bad night last night which meant that I was awoken from my slumbers 2-3 times by his exceedingly forlorn voice asking for his mother who was fast asleep. I am now aware that we have a centipede of extraordinary magnitude roaming our place (why hasn't the cat caught it?) and that Miles must be the only 10-year old boy who doesn't like squashing them. Since he'd fallen asleep on the couch early he was up fairly early this morning and I decided to lay the laptop on him. At first he just looked at it with his tired, crusty eyes not knowing what to make of it

"What's this?"

"It's a laptop I bought for you."

"Really?!"

"Really."

He was in shock. I figured he'd get over it quickly and went to get myself a cup of coffee because I felt like the walking dead suffering from a yawning attack. When I emerged from the kitchen he was staring at the Windows splash screen, his mouth agog at his good luck. And tears had welled in his eyes. He was crying. Now, I've made him cry before just not out of happiness. It was a very touching moment. I tried to recall how I reacted when I got my first computer – a Commodore 64 – back in the 1980s but couldn't. Very similarly, I'd imagine. It felt good to see him so happy. I'm not the best stepfather ever to walk the Earth and I realize that buying a laptop doesn't make up for my failings otherwise but I'm working on them.

Miles is 10 years old so I don't have to change diapers or bathe him. He's in good shape so I'm not driving him to the hospital once a week for kidney dialysis or any such thing. All in all, I've got it easy or at least not more difficult than average. But it's those easy things which often prove the most difficult. As I remarked above, I'm working on them. I'm working on giving him more of my time, paying attention to his endeavors, and being complimentary. To be sure, I've got a long way to go but I think I've gotten better over the past couple months. Nowhere near perfect, but better. My own father showed little interest in my activities when I was a kid – he was more keen on getting us to do work around the house and acting as disciplinarian – so I'm starting from a bit of a disadvantage here.

Part of the problem was that, when I moved in with The D and Miles, I focused on living with my girlfriend and gave too little consideration to being a stepfather. So there's work to do. But the way I figure it, if Miles turns out badly, I can blame his parents. And if he turns out well, I can take some credit. (Ahem.)

Of course now that Miles has his own computer, he'll not want to spend any time with me at all. What's a poor stepparent to do?

Setting the laptop up was my first go at Windows 7. Being used to Vista, it wasn't too difficult but I discovered that nothing makes an IT person feel old like configuring parental controls. I didn't have parental controls on my C64 and have never needed them. Until now. I created an account for Miles and set it so that he gets booted off at 8PM on school nights. This will hopefully put an end to his not getting ready for bed due to having to just one more thing to do in Blockland. I also installed the Windows Live Family Safety pack. It allows me to monitor his web usage, restrict sites, view a log of all the programs he runs, etc. I'm not particularly worried about this stuff right now but I suppose installing it makes me feel like a responsible adult or something like that.

The built-in parental controls give you the ability to restrict what programs a user can run. It presents a list of all the executables in the Program Files folder and their paths. Being in IT, I appreciate the rather granular nature of the list but I can imagine less than computer literate parents being confronted by the list and throwing their hands up in the air in total confusion. We got Blockland installed this morning but it didn't end up in the list for whatever reason. I'd like to limit the apps the kid can run just to make sure he doesn't accidentally do something which forces me to fix the thing. Aside from this, the only other snafu I ran into was that the laptop couldn't connect to our wireless network unless I turned off the firewall. I'll have to reenable it and create an exception.

My only other worry at this point is that now is viruses. I have phishing filters enabled, pop-up blockers are on, and MS Security Essentials is running. Still, he got a couple of those fake anti-virus pop-ups already this morning. Hopefully the firewall and the fact that he does not have admin rights will curtail viruses/malware.

Here are some of my first impressions on Winders 7.

1) It took me a long time to find the laptop's MAC address. While it is probably in the same spot as it is in Vista, I don't have wireless on my desktop so it took some hunting and pecking. Technical info should be easy to get at.

2) Presumably because of anti-trust lawsuits, Windows Movie Maker isn't included in Windows 7 and for some reason the latest version you download from Windows Live doesn't include the ability to record from a webcam. I bought a laptop with one built-in because Miles likes to make videos so I had to search the Net to discover that the utility included with the image called Lifeframe will capture the footage. Couldn't they have chosen a name that indicated just what the hell the program did instead of one that was creepy in an Oprah kind of way? This must be easier on a Mac.

3) The new Mac-like taskbar. I hate it less than I thought I would. But I haven't filled it up. On my Vista box, my Quick Launch bar is full and I've got tons of shortcuts pinned to my Start Menu. Not sure how the shiny new taskbar would handle all that. Also, there are some new icons so I have to concentrate on a few to figure out what they are. Not sure if you can use text labels or not here.

So let us hope that my investment will help keep the peace at home and ensure the undying love of my stepson.

Next projects: get him to use the bathroom's exhaust fan and to turn off lights and the TV when he's not watching it. The advantage of the former is obvious. As for the latter, my dad got all anal about such things during the energy crisis of the late 1970s so all I can say is that the sins of the father are visited upon the stepson.

Look At Latest Metropolis Restoration

Almost two years ago 25 or so minutes of footage from Fritz Lang's classic film Metropolis had been discovered in Argentina. It was restored and integrated back into the film.

UW film prof David Bordwell has seen this latest iteration of the film and has posted a review.

Military Covers Up More Fiascoes

Glenn Greenwald has a great post today called "How Americans are propagandized about Afghanistan". In it he describes how the mainstream media covered an incident which took place on 12 February of this year in which Iraqi civilians were killed outside a home where the celebration of a new birth was ongoing. Two men, two women (both of whom were pregnant), and a teenage girl were all slaughtered.

The Pentagon then issued a statement claiming that (a) the dead males were "insurgents" or terrorists, (b) the bodies of the three women had been found by U.S. forces bound and gagged inside the home, and (c) suggested that the women had already been killed by the time the U.S. had arrived, likely the victim of "honor killings" by the Taliban militants killed in the attack. Fiascoes

Although numerous witnesses on the scene as well as local investigators vehemently disputed the Pentagon's version, and insisted that all of the dead (including the women) were civilians and were killed by U.S. forces, the American media largely adopted the Pentagon's version, often without any questions. But enough evidence has now emerged disproving those claims such that the Pentagon was forced yesterday to admit that their original version was totally false and that it was U.S. troops who killed the women…

This is the New York Times article which documents the Pentagon's 180. But, when the incident happened in February, the NYT simply echoed the official line of the Pentagon that the men who were killed were bad guys and the women their victims. Instead it was a NATO coverup and afterwards the United States offered the victims' families $2,000 per death. Is this how to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people?

For too many of us such incidents are simply what fellow Madisonian Gregory Humphrey calls "realities on the ground", a phrase steeped in that kind of political language which Orwell noted "makes murder respectable". They rally behind a daddy figures like Gen. Stanley McChrystal when he says we need to really hit the insurgents but ignore him when he notes that in regard to U.S. soldiers killing locals at checkpoints in Afghanistan "We've shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force."

Concomitant to this is a video from 2007 showing an Apache helicopter opening up on a group of ostensibly peaceful civilians in Iraq, including two Reuters journalists. You can watch the realities on the ground as they are murdered in cold blood. And, of course, our government did its best to sell the story that it is blameless.



Again, way to win the hearts and minds over there. If you were a friend or relative of any of the above people who were killed would you be welcoming of our troops in your country?

Lastly, did anyone notice the flags around town at half-staff last Monday? They were that way in honor of this man:



Army Spc. Robert Rieckhoff of Kenosha was killed in Iraq last month. R.I.P.

ADDENDUM: From Boing Boing, a look at CNN's webpage v. Al Jazeera's when this story broke here. iPad vs. military cover-up. Guess who ran with the iPad.

African American Store Now Open

On a recent trek down E. Wash I noticed that a new store had opened in the Eken Park neighborhood - African American Store. It's at 2750 E. Johnson - the intersection with North Lawn Ave. Could it replace Chicago's Kukulu Market to satiate my chechebsa cravings?

Unfortunately, no. The African American Store is mostly devoted to clothing, jewelry, musical instruments, et al but also carries health care products, DVDs of African movies, and some grocery items.

As far as the foodstuffs go, there are tea, some snacks such as fried plantains as well as herbs/spices and lots of grains, many of which I'd never heard of and so have no idea how they're prepared. The store can also meet all of your palm oil needs. Fresh vegetables are limited to sweet potatoes, plantains, and another which I cannot remember. I'll add that staff were very friendly. Although they seemed to have emigrated here from Africa, they all spoke perfectly fine English.

I walked out with a bag of fried plantains, some jerk paste, and a sack of teff flour so I can try to make some injera bread at home.

Winging It With Nichole and JM

Last Thursday The Dulcinea and I joined Nichole and JM of Eating Madison A to Z at Quaker Steak and Lube. My meal is below. Keep an eye on their webpage for my erudite take on the wings.

I Am Inspired By the Devil!

Father Gabriele Amorth, an exorcist, blames Satan for all of Pope Fritzy's bad press.

“There is no doubt about it. Because he is a marvelous Pope and worthy successor to John Paul II, it is clear that the devil wants to ‘grab hold’ of him.”

Of course Satan is. It has nothing to do with Fritzy standing idly by as child rapists are sent from one group of victims to another. Nope. That can't be it. People can't legitimately be angry at someone who let paedophiles roam free in favor of trying to maintain the Church's image. It just has to be the Devil.

The Coming Olive Oil Crisis

We will soon reach peak olive oil and some salads will go undressed.

Ashes to Ashes Series 3 Preview

The Gene Genie returns tomorrow!

I Think the Starkweather-Moore Expedition Missed This

That's a 50' waterfall of crimson primordial ooze.

Roughly 2 million years ago, the Taylor Glacier sealed beneath it a small body of water which contained an ancient community of microbes. Trapped below a thick layer of ice, they have remained there ever since, isolated inside a natural time capsule. Evolving independently of the rest of the living world, these microbes exist without heat, light, or oxygen, and are essentially the definition of "primordial ooze." The trapped lake has very high salinity and is rich in iron, which gives the waterfall its red color. A fissure in the glacier allows the subglacial lake to flow out, forming the falls without contaminating the ecosystem within.

If you're planning an expedition to investigate the ooze, don't forget to pack lots of Cthulhu snacks. Dealing with all those Shoggoths and the Mi-go is tough work.

Tough Times in Brew City

It's been very depressing and worrying lately to read about Milwaukee. Last year the state assumed control of Milwaukee County's public assistance programs and now I read about some terribly disheartening studies. The one that seemed to get the most press showed that black fourth graders in Brew City have the worst reading scores in whole country.

Reading scores for Wisconsin's African-American fourth-graders trail those of their racial peers in every other state and the District of Columbia, according to a national government report that delivered dire news Wednesday about how Wisconsin prepares its students.

Further, fourth-graders as a whole in Wisconsin are losing ground in reading while other states make gains, as measured by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the nation's report card. Only 33% of the state's fourth-graders scored at a level considered proficient or advanced by the test; the rest scored at a basic level or lower.

This is an embarrassment. We are the richest country in human history yet here we are in the 21st century struggling with literacy and the state I call home is racing to the very bottom with black children essentially there already. While the majority of black children are in Milwaukee-Kenosha-Racine, I don't doubt that we face a similar problem here in Madison but with a smaller population.

Another study which I didn't discover until recently and doesn't seem have gotten any mention in Madison's newspapers was done on eviction in Milwaukee and it was carried out by a UW-Madison student named Matt Desmond. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel ran a story about it but the timing was unfortunate as it hit the paper on New Year's Day. The results showed that eviction is to black women and prison is for black men. (Wisconsin has the highest percentage of black prisoners in the nation.)

The study found that one renter-occupied household in 20 is evicted each year in Milwaukee. In neighborhoods where blacks are the majority, the study found that number jumps to one in 10 renter-occupied households evicted every year.

The study was undertaken by Matt Desmond, a doctoral student in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He analyzed court records and a did a year's worth of field work that included living in a south side trailer park and in a rooming house on the city's north side.

During his research, Desmond spent time with tenants fighting evictions and packing their belongings. He also spent time with landlords to get their side of the eviction story.

"This is a unique study because there's a lot of information about foreclosures, but not much on evictions," said Timothy Smeeding, director of the Institute for Research on Poverty and a professor in UW-Madison's La Follette School of Public Affairs.

And to add Pelion upon Ossa, I have discovered a report which notes that single women of color are incredibly poor.

The study, "Lifting As We Climb: Women of Color, Wealth, and America's Future," found that while the median net worth of single white women ages 36-49 is $42,600 -- 61 percent of the median wealth for same-aged, single white men -- single women of color in the same age group have a median wealth of just $5.

Black and Hispanic women are also drastically worse off in a broader age bracket, with almost half of single black and single Hispanic women ages 18-64 reporting zero or negative wealth (46 percent and 45 percent, respectively), compared with 23 percent of single white women, according to the report.

Mind you, these are not Milwaukee-specific numbers but Milwaukee's black population is 35-40%.

Because Madison is largely white and comparatively well-off because we have a Big 10 university and the state government apparatus we don't see these conditions very much. A lot of people here tend to think of these problems as Milwaukee's problems but I have to wonder exactly how our state can prosper when its largest city is in such dire straits. And let us not forget that poverty is growing here in Madison as well.