MLK Day - Random Thoughts

A woman walks past the Sheriffs standing on duty in the Metro station.  Some of them are part of the K-9 unit, and have their dogs with them.  A certain big dog jumps up at the sight of the woman, not because she's African-American but because the dog loves sniffing her bicycle wheels.  She pets the dog, chats a second with the officers, and continues on to work with a smile that only petting a loving, goofy dog can bring out.

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At the top of our hike in Griffith Park today there were some people in their twenties singing, playing music and dancing.  The singing was some simple, African-sounding chant.  The instruments included a tambourine, a gourd covered in shaking beads, and something that looked like a bow.  But the dancing...it wasn't so much dancing as a kind of  couples t'ai chi - slow, rhythmic movements including taking turns swinging a leg over the partner's crouching body.  The seeming leader was a white guy in khaki shorts and sneakers; he took turns dancing with another white guy, a black girl, then a black guy.  At the end of each session he gave his opponent / partner a lovely platonic hug. 

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A mattress store is offering specials for its Martin Luther King sale.

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Cockatoo is off work tomorrow for Martin Luther King's birthday, a national holiday.  Cockatoo will spend the morning watching President Obama being sworn in for his second term.

Lewis Lapham - A Semi-Disagreement

It struck us as odd that the usually insightful journalist Lewis Lapham, whose "Notebook" essays in Harper's we devoured each month, dismissed President Obama as someone only interested in striking the right pose ("Here's the Thing" podcast with Alec Baldwin).  It's an indictment that gives one pause since Lapham's the first person we've heard of with a three-digit IQ who seems to see the president as an empty suit, a decorative speechifyer who (how the "moderate right-wingers wanted this phrase to stick!) is "in over his head". 

Was sweating blood - and more preciously, political capital - to get the Affordable Care Act passed just striking a pose?  Did he work like a demon to avert a financial catastrophe just to make himself look good?  Perhaps freeing up millions of dollars for college student loans was just something the president did when he got bored with practicing smiles.

One wonders if Mr. Lapham has joined the "Oh, I'm so jaded" club, the one where Gore Vidal (whom Cockatoo adored) insisted that there was no genuine difference between the Democrats and the Republicans.  Maybe a policy like aid for foreign women's health and family planning falls beneath one's radar if one is a male living in the United States.  Perhaps repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell isn't a big deal if you're a straight civilian.  And why would health care and student loans make a dent in the psyche of someone who probably never fretted about either? 

The point being, seeing PBO as a mannequin might say more about the observer's POV than about PBO.  So, no, there aren't any cornpone "Tear Down This Wall" moments coming from this White House, just the day-to-day work of dismantling as much W-Cheney asbestos as they can.

That being said....  (Cockatoo now thinks immediately of Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld when that segue is used.)

That being said, we have to admit that we do enjoy seeing PBO in action.  WhiteHouse.gov has clips of raw video, and a guilty pleasure is watching the President or First Lady, say, surprise a White House tour group, or pop unexpectedly into a diner in Iowa.  The people go nuts, and POTUS and FLOTUS are so gracious, so charming, it really makes one feel good that they are the First Couple. They seem completely natural, truly comfortable in their skin, yet humble and delighted to be representing the country.  One of our favorites?  The short and sweet clip of PBO inviting baseball great Willie Mays onto Air Force One.

So, yes, PBO does strike some nice, even heartwarming poses, but they don't overshadow the good of his policies.

Film Comment: Silver Linings Playbook...

...wherein Cockatoo settled down in our plush velvet chair and felt a twinge of guilt for being too cowardly to see "Django Unchained". Maybe next week. Nevermind. The film we did see, Silver Lining Playbook, had an off-beat charm, and if the mentally ill ever decide to run a public service campaign toward destigmatization they certainly could not find a more photogenic pair for the posters than Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. Both Mr. Cooper and Ms. Lawrence were nominated for Academy Awards and, on the surface, this film about kooky characters and family dynamics seems like Oscar-bait in the extreme. (There's even the de rigeur Public Big Event.) But we think it's richer than that.

Cooper's character Pat is released from a psychiatric hospital, his plea-bargain sentence in lieu of jail for assaulting his wife's boyfriend. He's bi-polar, and in the film this is expressed by a tendency to wake up in the wee hours jabbering to his parents, Robert DeNiro and Jackie Weaver (also nominated). Annoying, yet not so bad, but there's also the problem with flashback-induced edginess. Pat thinks if he can just exercise enough, cleanse his system of the meds, and force himself to be "normal" and attentive enough, he can win back his wife, Nikki.

He's invited to dinner, and his friend's wife's sister Tiffany is there. Recently widowed she sees right through Pat's attempt at normalcy and asks him, "What meds are you on?" She knows all about them, having mental health issues herself. Pat sees her as a possible conduit to his ex-wife and agrees to help her out with a project, a sort of hometown dance competition.

There is something quite lovely yet heartbreaking about watching these two practicing their moves - trying to concentrate, trying to help each other. One needn't have a diagnosed mental illness to have days where one thinks, If I can just hold it together then maybe, maybe it will all work out.

DeNiro of course if marvelous, and made the audience laugh when he went off on somebody with a GoodFellas-style threat. Ms. Lawrence was quite good, especially in two scenes: One, where she lets Cooper have it for thinking she's crazier than he is, and Two, where she fearlessly goes mano-a-mano with the great DeNIro. Perhaps she's too young to be scared of him.

There, we've reviewed the film. (We would just add, parenthetically, how helpful it is for the characters in the film to have families with resources and houses and a kindly, sympathetic police officer on their shoulders. How many poor, unappealing, unlucky [and non-white?] bi-polar people are on Main Street tonight, trying to find a bit of curb on which to stretch our their sleeping bags?)

Recommend.