A word about Dave Grohl

 Well, more than a word. Maybe a complete thought.

I was listening to music last night and the Foo Fighters' version of Baker Street. I know that for the first album, Mr. Grohl played all the instruments. That's impressive to me. I really hope that this version of Baker Street was a track on which he played everything. The idea that this was a song/recording on which every part is presented as a part of a single individual and the single individual has felt the pain and joy, the yearning and the sweetness through every instrument makes a lot of sense to me. Though, yes, I would have preferred that the central riff stay on a brass or woodwind, so the breathiness could come true, but the overall sense of desperation comes through and makes me feel like Mr. Grohl was really feeling everything through this song.

If anyone knows Mr. Grohl, please let him know that I'm a fan. That probably won't change the schedule of his day, but just tell him anyway. Thanks bunches.

On why I'm bored of living here

I have a plan -- at some point in the future, I want to move to Israel. Last night, I came to terms with why I want to. I mean there are the obvious reasons: food, ease of practicing my religion, the possibility of better weather, being near family. Those are all well and/or good. I am driven by a religiously inspired vision of Zion and Zionism and I see the value of a strong state as a bulwark against the spread of anti-Semitism but that's not entirely it.

The average American doesn't wake up each morning and wonder about "what if there was no America?" People in the US go on living without a concern for their future existence. They generally do very little to keep up the country, and they get all the benefits of it, but they see it as a backdrop of facts on the ground that aren't going to change. People generally don't have the very real option of "not living" constantly 30 seconds away. Imagining a world without the US as we know it is the subject of many an alt.fanfic work about multi-verses and other timelines.

But in Israel, the threat is real and constant. Identity is crafted in the shade of a safe room. Personal voice is set to the pitch of an emergency siren. What makes the individual an Israeli is to understand that to be an Israeli is to be "not an individual." There is a collective experience that unites us all. We are all, automatically, on the same side of at least one conflict.. The average American doesn't place any inherent value on "being in America" because there is no concept of "not being in America." And the average American lacks the empathy required to appreciate that others live with existential worry. The world is supposed to be a just place, says the American, and he can't appreciate that the reality doesn't match up to the idea that privilege assures him is true.

Side note -- I get the sense that most criminals in the US would draw the line at victimizing family -- in Israel, everyone starts out as family. So maybe there is less "random" violence because the random person you are mugging will end up sitting next to you in a safe room for the next hour.

Maybe I'll feel safer because I'll live with the sense that the guy walking towards me with a gun deserves my thanks, not my fear, and with the knowledge that most of the people I see there have held that gun and all deserve my thanks. It's like "Cheers" -- I want to go where I know that the troubles are all the same. We may curse at each other but when push comes to shove, we all push or shove together. Maybe it is a cliche or my own naivette speaking, but I want to feel like I belong somewhere, that the perception of me that some stranger has of me doesn't include "automatically different because he is Jewish."

I want to feel like I automatically align in a very essential way with most of the people in my neighborhood, the people that I meet when I'm walking down the midrechov. I don't want to have to "be on" and be ready to explain myself, or be judged, or answer questions about Judaicarcana, or be an ambassador of anything. I feel like there are more places where I can simply exist there.

And maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like there is something special about waking up there and already being at the spiritual center of my world.

What I'm willing to Trade

No one wants a police state in which we are all under constant surveillance...but...

My feelings of nostalgia do a fine job of wiping away my concerns about Big Brother and all that because, as I age, I begin to wish for something to bolster my fading memories. If only there was some repository of hi-def spy video  of all the places from my youth so I could relive my childhood not in the fading pastels of a clouded past, but in all the vivid detail of a current image.

Maybe if there was an AI service that could take all of my snap shots and photos, correlate elements across images (like a particular intersection of a place) and then compare that place to the google street view as it is and has been over time. Then it could create a VR trip back in time to the way a street looked (in full color and glory) in a particular year. I want to stand in front of my house in 1978. I want to see the bright colors of an early summer's day in 1982. I want to stand next to my mother in 1971. I want to visit my apartment in 1976 or my car in 1990, in full 3-D. Why are we digitizing our past if not to give us somewhere to hide?

Movie review - A Complete Unknown

I saw the Bob Dylan movie this weekend. Here are some thoughts about it. (tl;dr: 2.5 out of 5 stars)

OK, so here we have a movie about Robert Zimmerman (though the entire issue of his name and heritage get 2 lines' worth of mention). I felt like I was watching some really excellent and compelling ACTING by masters of their craft, but I didn't see any care put into the storyline within whcih they were acting. As individual behaviors, I felt their acting was exemplary -- at times intimate and understated and at other times larger than life. But when the scenes tried to turn into a coherent movie, they failed.

When I watched the scene at the Newport Festival, as Bob is playing the opening chords of his third (and contractually required) song, I kept waiting for him to stop, pause, and dive into "Radio, Radio." True fact.

The simplest reqview I can provide is that I liked everything about it except IT.

Chalamet was great. Edward Norton was great. I would love to have these characters over and sit and talk to them. But I had no sense of why they were on screen and what story they were trying to tell me.

Baseball Thoughts

Opening day is here again so I have thoughts and reactions to baseball.

First, is there a statistical database which includes the stats for "has broken up the most ___________"? I'd like to know who leads the league in breaking up no-hitters, or perfect games, or shut outs, or Beatles.

Next, let's talk about the strike zone. I thought that it was batter dependent, higher or lowey based on the size of the guy at the plate, and shifting based on his physical attitude in his stance. But on the Yankee game, the TV coverage included that white rectangle which tells the viewer whether a pitch was a strike or not, and that rectangle did not move. So how can it be accurate?

I also caught a bunch of the Mets game. During the game, a player was up and G, K and R mentioned that he is a pull hitter. In fact, it was noted, all of this guy's 72 major league home runs were to left-center or left field. Within a minute or two, there was a graphic on the screen showing where each of his home rums went out of the park.

I don't know how they make visuals and graphics but I'm more confused by how they had this data, let alone handy. Is "point at which ball crosses the wall" a data point that is regularly recorded? For how long has this been collected? Was this something they had cooked up earlier and waited for a moment to introduce pre-packaged graphics, or can their stat whiz come up with anything at any time?

Anyway, the Mets lost. What else is new?

My review of Twisters

Into the pile of unnecessary sequels we throw Twisters, a movie with some sort of connection to the original but that isn't really discussed at all. The first movie was good and interesting though filled with obvious stereotypes and cliches. This movie goes a step further -- it is full of even more tropes and trite bits but has zero redeeming story to contextualize this.

This movie is a collection of all of the most over done lines and bits and pieces, each presented in the worst possible way. And the effects are surprisingly bad. This really is just bad on many, many levels. Every trope you can imagine pops up somewhere -- genre hopping, narrative twisting, focus shifting. You know how we sometimes share our vision in language of marriage? (eg. "that movie is like if Harry Potter had a baby with Rocky Horror and lived in Free Willy's house") This movie is involved in a polyamorous series of relationships, open to the public and some are abusive.

This is such a hot mess that I was actually retching while trying to dream up a proper analogy for how much of a warm puddle of vomit this film is. And it keeps getting worse. This is everything bad about good movies and everything good about bad movies, just done poorly.

It achieved what I thought was its ultimate form of utter crapulence in record time but the joke was on me -- it was not in its final form. No. Far from it. This movie had not even begun to dig down deeper. This piece of excrement sets constant records for the includion of random tropes and cliches. Every method, every twist, every everything and anything that doesn't make sense or get explained just bolsters the confusion. It treads well-established lines, each a distinct and discrete entry in a dictionary of devices. Every thing is intentional and clear. Just bad. All kinds of bad. In every sentence and at every juncture, there is something I have seem a million times before and always better.

This would make great fodder for a family game night -- play the movie for everyone, and whoever wants to spot or call out a trope, clicke or stereotype must pause the movie and explain it. Others vote on whether it counts as a well established device. Hint -- it is.

Is there a way to give it negative stars? Like, I want to send a bill to the movie guys for my time, which I wasted watching it. They owe me stars. Painfully bad.

Bad editting, lack of continuity, plot holes in the plot holes, and a constant stream of things you recognize, to make you wish you were watching literally anything else. It was horrible. Do not recommend.

Imagine if my commute was longer

 It's not that I'm not flattered

I enjoy seeing you and I want that to continue

and it isn't that you are too forward

it is just that I know what the future holds

you say something nice and you tell me

that you'd love it if I got more comfortable

you showed me a seat and asked me

if I wouldn't take off my shirt

there are two things you must keep in mind

and not that I've been hurt or that I'm afraid

I'll hurt you first. Not that I don't care

I do, I really do.

But anyone who asks to see me, really see me

will either be disappointed by what I am

or laugh at what little pride I have left

and that's not the basis for what I am praying will be

so, again, while I'm honored that

you would choose me, and that you

claim you accept me for who I am, I have to demure

and say that we really should get to know each other first,

Doctor.

-----------------------

I was listening to a commercial for some new wonder drug that helps people who have suffered with the heartbreak of some condition resume their normal drudgery and allows them to rejoin the rat race and pray for some other cause of death. The warnings include things like "side effects include ________" and then the reminder that if you have bloody or black stools, call your doctor. I really don't think I need your permission, Fred. If I see bloody or black stools, I'm calling a doctor -- even if they aren't mine! I mean, that's pretty serious. Who ISN'T calling a doctor in that case? What do we need? A fast talking announcer who reels off side effects that include death and then a caution, "if you have any signs of death, please contact your doctor."