Yo

Youngstown gets a nod in this SALON article (in fact, two out of three of the cities referenced are in Ohio...

http://www.salon.com/2011/10/25/occupying_the_rust_belt/

Occupation with an expiration date

Youngstown, Ohio, is an elegiac city a few hundred miles to the west of Allentown. What was once the manufacturing district  is a mausoleum of industry. A brick smokestack stands sentinel over acres of cavernous shells that once poured out streams of goods. Crumbling brick buildings sprout trees two stories up, while inside pancakes of concrete drip toward the ground, suspended precariously by a bramble of rusted rebar.

Demolition is one of the few signs of economic life. Starting in 2006, the city tripled its budget for razing abandoned buildings. In an open-air yard in the industrial quarter, heavy machines whine and billow exhaust as they pound large concrete slabs, surrounded by small mountains of rubble sorted according to size.

With more than 43 percent of the land vacant, Youngstown is slowly being erased. In some neighborhoods boarded-up houses and empty lots island the remaining inhabited homes, which shrink behind spreading foliage lest they be next.

Since 1950, the population has declined from a high of 218,000 to less than 67,000 today. The poverty rate is a stratospheric 32 percent, and the median value of owner-occupied homes is a paltry $52,900. Manufacturing dropped from 50 percent of the workforce in 1950 to 16 percent in 2007. This includes a staggering loss of 31 percent of manufacturing jobs in the region from 2000 to 2007 – and that wasbefore the economy fell off the cliff.

At the downtown crossroads, Occupy Youngstown has taken up position in the shadow of three different banks, including a Chase branch. The occupation is a latecomer, having started on Oct. 15, with a rally more than 400 strong at its peak, according to Chuck Kettering Jr., an aspiring actor who has been unemployed for a year from his previous position as an HVAC technician.

“We were once a huge steel city for America,” says the cherubic, 27-year-old Kettering. “In the 1970s they started closing up all our steel mills, taking all the jobs and shipping them down south and overseas where labor is cheaper. Youngstown’s been a city that has been going through this economic struggle for almost 40 years now, and I think we have a valid voice of addressing these issues on a national scale.”

His family is living proof of the toll of deindustrialization. In a phone interview, Chuck Kettering Sr. calls himself “the poster boy for the Rust Belt.” A Youngstown native, he went to work in 1973 at age 19 and worked at two local U.S. Steel plants that shuttered, one in 1979, the other in 1982. Next, he landed a position with Packard Electronics in 1985 making electrical components for GM cars. After GM spun off Delphi in 1999, Packard was subsumed by the auto-parts maker. The company started moving jobs overseas.

“Local operations were pressured by wages, and most operations moved south of the border” because of NAFTA, he says. Following Delphi’s bankruptcy in 2008, Kettering and some co-workers were given a one-time chance to work for GM itself and keep their wages, benefits and pensions.

“It was a no-brainer,” he says, but their seniority did not transfer to plant assignments. Despite nearly 25 years at Packard and Delphi, Kettering says, “I found myself at the age of 54 starting at the bottom, working alongside 21-year-olds trying to keep up on the line. Many of us who transferred were not spring chickens and it was hard to keep up.”

His wife, hired by Packard in 1979, worked her way into management, was forced to retire after 30 years with a monthly pension that was slashed in half to $1,600 and with expectations of further cuts. Now he’s on disability.

“I’m really proud of our local guys,” he says. “The police and the firefighters really support the occupy movement. Our mayor supports it. We have a united front here in Ohio.”

Unlike the seven other occupations I have visited, Occupy Youngstown embraces electoral issues. Kettering and other occupiers wave signs and wear buttons opposing Issue 2, which would strip some 350,000 public sector workers of collective bargaining rights.

Karen Joseph, a soft-spoken 59-year-old mother of two whose family spends one-third of its household income on health insurance, is by no means the only one who is against Issue 3, which would exempt Ohio from the incoming national healthcare law.

Everyone is against privatizing the Ohio Turnpike, which is being pushed by Republican Gov. John Kasich. All the occupiers we talk to express dismay at the prospect of hydrofracking in Mill Creek Park, which Kettering describes as “the jewel of the area with waterfalls, streams and lots of wildlife.”

This occupation comes with an expiration date. The city asked the occupiers to “take down the tents before business hours on Monday, Oct. 17, when the banks were opening,” according to Chuck Kettering Jr. He says they complied, but Occupy Youngstown still maintains a 24-hour presence and has pledged to do so until Nov. 8, Election Day.

Tired

I saw "Rubber" (2010) this evening, which was billed as a horror comedy, but it annoyed me. It's basically about a killer tire. A tire comes to life and kills and kills and kills again. Now, I'm willing to go with that, sure, but the way the director (who also wrote it -- always a potential danger sign: too much creative power concentrated in one pair of hands) ran with it, it was just pretentious, unfunny, and un-horrific. It seems ridiculous to complain about a movie about a killer tire failing to meet one's expectations, but I think that's what the moviemaker was taking refuge in, that the concept was so "original" and "ridiculous" that he would be given the latitude to make a bulletproof movie.

I mean, there were some good shots, good use of visuals, and even some decent enough characterization (I know, I know) of the tire. But there was so much absurdist bullshit the writer-director threw into the mix that it scuttled what was good about the movie.

First, it wasn't remotely scary. Gory, certainly, but not scary. The tire makes various things explode with this psychokinetic powers (yes). Again and again. Mmmkay.

Second (and more damning), there was this ridiculous "fourth wall" bullshit going on, with the director talking through some of the characters directly to the audience -- and some of the audience were themselves spectators within the movie, who were busy watching and commenting on what was going on, Beavis & Butthead-style. That was just beyond pretentious bullshit, in my view. Like the writer-director wasn't confident enough in his work to let it stand on its own merits, he had to create a Greek Choir of "Spectators" commenting on the movie-within-the-movie (until they are nearly all poisoned midway through). These Spectators act as mediators of sorts, trying to either shape audience reaction to the movie, or else lampoon the audience, the equivalent of the writer-director flipping the audience off.

Third, for a horror-comedy, it wasn't nearly funny enough. So, in addition to being un-scary, it was unfunny, to boot. Like an asshole onstage trying to juggle and not being able to do it, and saying "Wait, I'll get it this time" and dropping plate after plate. It wasn't funny. It was weird, might even had pretensions toward zaniness (always what people opt for when they can't find the funny -- just as people opt for gore when they can't find horror or terror).

Fourth, the movie forced the viewer to swallow far too many conceits -- it's why you don't see alien zombie movies, or racing movie family dramas where somebody dies of a lingering illness. Aliens, sure. Zombies, sure. But don't put alien zombies in one movie, because it's asking the audience to suspend too much disbelief. This movie had:

1) a sentient, ambulatory, killer tire
2) which developed psychokinetic powers
3) and characters that addressed the audience directly, breaking the Fourth Wall
4) and another group of characters as Spectators who were stand-ins for the audience

That's just too much to put in one movie. Too many concepts stacked atop one another. There's a reason why they call it "High Concept" and not "High Concepts."

Bullshit movie. It didn't have to be -- even with such a ridiculous premise -- but the writer-director made it so. I knew, even without seeing the credits, that it was a French director. I actually love French moviemaking, but I can tell a French aesthetic in a movie when I run across it, especially a French Absurdist aesthetic. But, as crazy as it sounds, there is Absurdism and there is absurdity, and it's like the difference between good wine and grape juice. This movie was grape juice that thought it was fine wine.

It wasn't as smart, funny, silly, or scary as it thought it was. Flat tire. It's that pretentious. Not completely bereft of merit, but only in terms of technique, not in terms of story or good moviemaking in general. The moment the writer-director had a character addressing the viewer, directly (and, the audience's proxies in the form of these Spectators), I was like "Oh. No." Complete bullshit.

Ridin' the storm out

They opened the lake shore bike/jogging path in the wake of that gale we had (for lack of a better term). Pretty amazing damage was done all along the length of it, so those waves had to be something to see. At least 30 to 40 feet away from the shore, there was profound damage. A length of fence was crushed, too, all from the force of the waves (and, again, we're talking about 40 feet away at that juncture). Impressive and awe-inspiring amounts of force. There were big slabs of asphalt on the path, having been ripped out by the wave action. The city's been dealing with that pummeling for a long, long time, and the civic engineers know what to do about it, but it's still amazing to see the damage done. There's also an effective sand trap in place at Oak Street Beach, where copious sand had piled up along the path, making it particularly dicey riding.

But, in the wake of that big storm that blasted through here, it's a pretty nice day -- great light, and an imminent late autumn/early winter chill in the mix.

Today is B2's 6th birthday! Little man is becoming a big boy! B1 and I sang "Happy Birthday" to him this morning, which he clearly enjoyed (B1 was especially cute, hugging his baby brother -- B1's such an affectionate and loving big brother; B2 is so lucky to have him). The boys are with Exene tonight, so she'll likely do whatever birthday stuff she had lined up. I'm doing something for B2 over the weekend, including baking him a lemon cake, since he loves lemon cake. Also, I'm getting him a Lego set he's been wanting for, I dunno, six months. Perfecto!

Tomorrow'll be a busy day, as I'm doing a big grocery run, and, as I said, a birthday run for B2. Plus, I have some miscellaneous workaday errands to run, just stuff to take care of, that kind of deal.

Some of Chicago's homeless sell "Streetwise" -- it's a newspaper they sell in an attempt to make a bit of money. "Streetwise" vendors are ubiquitous in the city. Anyway, there's one who's a regular in my neighborhood, and he's clearly a guy who has had a tough life; you can just tell. Maybe a Vietnam War-era vet, that kind of thing. I usually give him a spare buck when I see him (that's the price of a copy of "Streetwise") but I always tell him to keep the issue. He recognizes me, usually says "Thanks, my big brother." One time, when I had the boys with me, and B2 was wearing his leather jacket and had his shades on, he called B2 "Hollywood," which amused me. Even now, B2 has that vibe. The kid has IT. He's got that presence. I would never, ever want him to be a child star, wouldn't be that kind of a parent, but I'll encourage him to do theatrical stuff while in school, and when he's 18, he's welcome to go do acting, if he wants. He'd be good. I still remember him role-playing a statue -- gosh, how old was he? Three? He let his face go blank, held himself perfectly still. It was so cute.

The other day, he was doing a voice for a character, and I said "Wow, that's great, [B2!] So actorly." and then he tried a few other things, and said "How about that, Daddy? Is THAT actorly?" Cracks me up to hear a kid asking that. Next I'll have him asking me what his motivation is for a scene. I can actually help him with that stuff, in my way, since I did some improv stuff in the 90s, have at least the rudiments of constructing a scene and what-not.

Really, B2 is too smart to be an actor. I mean, he might do it because he's good at it, but I can see him doing far more than that, down the road, because he's so sharp. His facility with language is amazing, and his understanding of people and situations is preternatural. And he knows it, the lil' stinker.

Anyway, this is his day, Birthday Boy. Same birthdate as Carrie Fisher. God help me. The Force is strong in this one! Bahah!

Another Ghost Walks These Halls

The traumatic thing I alluded to the other day (10/17), well, the person who had triggered that died. I found out late yesterday. So, she died two days after I saw her. Out of respect for the person's privacy, I won't go into details, but I definitely can say that having been in the same room with that person two days ago, death was very clearly in the room. And a bad death it was. My stepdad would always say that death was either the fulfillment of your dreams (assuming paradise and afterlife) or, if nothing else, the cessation of pain and suffering. In the case of this person, I can only assume the latter, but it sucks, because that person was suffering pain for months before her end, and the collective failure of her significant other and her family to take care of her in that time hangs like a shadow over her last days. She was semi-friends with Exene, and had called Exene for help the other day, and Exene had done so, but had needed my help, too, because she wasn't strong enough to move the dying woman, so I helped. I ran into her significant other the day before yesterday, and he'd thanked me for helping out in an "Aw, shucks" kind of way, and I just choked out "Yes, it's a terrible scene." I wanted to ask him why he wasn't there, but didn't. The whole situation was bad, and I can't talk about it without going into a lot of context and back story, but I couldn't help but feel like the building had gotten itself another ghost with the passing of this woman. I don't believe in ghosts, but the pain and suffering of that woman haunts the hallways, all the same. I walk by their apartment and I grimace, because I can feel that. And since they have a child who is a year older than B1, who used to be a playmate of his, it compounds the suffering -- I can only imagine what that kid is feeling, how much emotional damage she's suffered from her father's criminal neglect (or, at best grotesque bungling) of the welfare of her mother, and how that all shakes out. The woman is dead, and I imagine they'll move out of there; I can't imagine them staying in that tiny apartment, now, in the wake of this.

I'm a compassionate soul, and my heart bleeds. I freely admit that. I feel every emotion keenly; I think it's part of my own artistic temperament. It informs my work, the ability to feel things keenly. But in matters of suffering and anguish, it's a double-edged blade, because I feel agony as much as the rest of the emotional palette. And to see what I saw the other day, to know that a person was in such dire straits, and with only so much I could do, it's haunting. Like I said, a ghost. Ghosts haunt that way.

Howling

I think we're going to get hammered, winterwise, this year.

At least here in Chicago. It's been nasty all day, big-time howling winds, rain. A late fall monsoon, practically. Fierce. Seems like it's a herald of imminent winter! I was walking downtown and the wind gusts were nearly strong enough to stop me, which usually means the gust are at least 60 mph. People's umbrellas were pulsating, hyperextending and snapping back into shape, and then back again. Raincoats are a must in Chicago; umbrellas are always dicey.

Splashy

Wow, it's getting kinda yucky tonight. I saw this weather bulletin, too...

Lakeshore Flood Warning issued October 18 at 1:58PM CDT expiring October 18 at 10:00PM CDT by NWS Chicago ...LAKESHORE FLOOD WARNING IN EFFECT FROM 3 PM WEDNESDAY TO 4 PM CDT THURSDAY... THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN CHICAGO HAS ISSUED A LAKESHORE FLOOD WARNING...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 3 PM WEDNESDAY TO 4 PM CDT THURSDAY. * WAVES...WAVES WILL BUILD TO 12 TO 16 FEET WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON...BUILDING FURTHER TO 17 TO 22 FEET WEDNESDAY NIGHT. WAVES WILL GRADUALLY SUBSIDE TO LESS THAN 15 FEET BY LATE THURSDAY AFTERNOON. * IMPACTS...LARGE AND BATTERING WAVES WILL RESULT IN FLOODING OF AREAS NEAR THE LAKE...LIKELY WORSE THAN WHAT WAS SEEN WITH THE LATE SEPTEMBER STORM A FEW WEEKS AGO. WAVES COULD RESULT IN FLOODING ALONG THE MORE SUSCEPTIBLE PORTIONS OF LAKE SHORE DRIVE IN CHICAGO.

For sure, after getting creamed by those waves the other week, I'm going to stay the hell off the lakeshore path. Those waves in September were bad, so if this is worse, NFW am I going there. I mean, 17 to 22 foot waves?? Whoa!

I'm making a hodge-podge soup tonight -- using up various components I had around, like a big onion, some oyster mushrooms, fresh baby spinach, spices, and so forth. It's making my place smell so good right now. Must be patient, let it simmer. I love soup in the fall, and I love not wasting food, so soup is win-win!

Wakeup Call

Some drunken Chad woke me up. Thump thump thump on door across the hall. I went to the peephole to check. The guy was drunkenly trying to key into neighbor's apartment. When his key wouldn't work, he tried to get into my place, threw a shoulder on the door. I opened the door and the guy stepped back, startled, muttered "Oh, shit." I said "Wrong floor. What floor are you looking for?" and he said "MY floor." The guy's pants were half-off, and he'd pissed himself, clearly. I said "Well, it's not this floor." Then he tried my neighbor's door a couple more times before he lurched down the hallway.

Laundryman

Doing laundry this morning. Woo hoo! I put it off long enough. I don't honestly mind laundry; but I do tend to put it off, just because it's always a joust over getting to the machines at the right time and not having to contend with other tenants. Fortunately, as an early riser, I'm able to get down there in the morning, when it is (usually) clear.

Yesterday was traumatizing. I'm tempted to write about it, but shouldn't. Just end-of-life issues stuff, a dying person, and how one deals with that, or doesn't, and the boundaries of one's moral responsibility. I can't really write about it, it's far too fresh in my mind, too haunting. But I was definitely traumatized. I looked at the abyss, and the abyss looked right back at me. I'm not even being dramatic; I am calling it exactly as I saw it.

(taking a deliberate emotional step back)

B2's birthday is this week. Little man slowly becoming big boy. I'm going to have to punt his birthday present until the weekend, though, because of schedules and what-not. That'll be okay; he'll get extra birthday.

Fridave

I have the boys tonight. They are very happy to have a Daddy Night for Friday. They're watching "Wall*E" at the moment, all snuggled in with blankets and what-not, keeping warm.

Autumn chill is definitely here. I'm in a sweater and some flannel jammies, keeping warm. Brrr!

I may catch "The Thing" prequel tomorrow at a matinee. Will let you know how it is.

Fall always gets me in Writing Mode in earnest. I get antsy if I don't work on something. So, obviously, I will!

B2 likes to mix and match Lego Minifigures. Love to see what he comes up with.

Left Out

It's ironic that the Republican most-hated by the right-wingdings among the GOP's Brimstone Base, Mitt Romney, is easily the biggest threat to Obama. Because a mere conservative like Romney can stand just a whisker to Obama's right, which might confuse enough voters to thinking that there's little difference between them. In truth, yeah, there really is little to separate Romney from Obama, and that's largely Obama's fault, by his absolute refusal to tack anywhere near the left. What's worse is that HR Clinton was even more conservative than Obama, so the Democratic voters had a choice between somewhat conservative (Obama) and conservative (HR Clinton). And, if Romney wins the GOP nomination, the "choice" again will be between somewhat conservative and conservative. Lovely. Bringing yesterday's solutions to today's problems. What a mess.

Cannot believe B2's 6th birthday is next week. Oh, man. Little man will be SIX. Good lord. Am amazed that Halloween is right around the bend, too. That all feels so unreal to me.

Pezidential

Next year's presidential election is going to be a debacle. What our country actually needs is a New Deal-style massive, Keynesian spending spree to get the millions of unemployed Americans working, get our demand-driven economy surging again (keep in mind: 70% of our economy is driven by consumer spending). This is what it needs. Those folks need jobs. Tax rates on the top 1% must go up. This is what will get our economy rolling again.

However, this is not going to happen. Instead, both parties will offer non-solutions to real problems. The Democrats will ape Republican economic thinking, leashed to supposed deficit hawks (which really translates into folks who don't like social spending -- since deficit hawks never balk at Pentagon spending and bank bailouts). And the Republicans will continue their "more of the same" stuff -- lowering taxes on the top 1%, eliminating regulation of industry, and outright subversion and suppression of non-Republican voters through intimidation and actual disenfranchisement.

Anyway, neither party actually will offer a way out of this mess. Our country absolutely needs new thinking. You know we're in trouble when actual moderate/centrist thinking qualifies as "left-wing radicalism" in DC. That's how skewed our country's become. Here's a little graphic:

[Left]=======================[Center]=====["Left"]=====["Center"]=====[Right]

Our system has an ideological ratchet in place -- we are allowed to hew ever rightward, but when anybody tries to tack left, the ratchet locks. It's impermissible. Anyway, the false centrists are really conservatives, the false leftists are really right-moderates. And everybody to the left of those right-moderates (Obama's one of those, btw -- and he gets called a "socialist"), anybody to the left of Obama (and that's a lot of people) is completely left out of the political system.

That's a reality not lost on those Occupy Wall Street (OWS) folks. They get it. They understand that they've been left behind. It's not like the astroturf, reactionary billionaire-financed false populism of the Tea Party (who are really just the shock troops for the GOP). Rather, OWS is something very different. It is a movement that actually doesn't have a place within the "Beltway Consensus" diagrammed above.

Sure, the Democrats will pay lip service to them. Hell, they have to, in order to feign some kind of credibility with these folks. But today's Democratic Party is completely captive to Wall Street and the banking industry; they will have exactly nothing to offer OWS except empty words of support.

And the Republicans can't even pretend to have anything to say to them, because it's so clear that they are hostile to actual, practicing democracy. They are marching along with "War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength." as their political maxims, not even understanding just how Orwellian they are. Maybe some of their elite opinion leaders get it, but they have their own rank-and-file completely snowed.

So, going into 2012, we have a country on cruise control while driving toward a cliff. Barring a sweeping voting out of the Republicans and a massive change of heart on the part of the Democrats, neither party will offer a thing to improve things for the majority of Americans. And that is going to create armies of pissed-off, desolate, desperate people. Each election after 2012 is going to get messier and messier, until there is a proper political sea change and new thinking is brought in (or old thinking that has been disregarded because it challenges economic wrongthink).

Mulling

Now, I'd already complained about the random and hard-to-believe Dualla suicide, and about the shitty ending to "Galactica." But then I realized that what they should've done to end the series would be to do a fade-out with Dualla killing herself.

That would've ended the series on a perfect note. It would've completely outraged their fans, but it would've been so worth it. "Earth" is a disappointment, everybody's sad, Dualla shoots herself, fade to black. Break for commercial. And the commercial with the above is pretty unintentionally funny. The end.

I concur

Worst Ending in SF TV, Ever.

I agree with this, too...

Renowned fantasy author George R.R. Martin expressed his extreme disgust with the series' writers for producing this ending, saying on his livejournal: "Battlestar Galactica ends with 'God Did It.' Looks like somebody skipped Writing 101, when you learn that a deus ex machina is a crappy way to end a story...Yeah, yeah, sometimes the journey is its own reward. I certainly enjoyed much of the journey with BSG...but damn it, doesn't anybody know how to write an ending any more? Writing 101, kids. Adam and Eve, God Did It, It Was All a Dream? I've seen Clarion students left stunned and bleeding for turning in stories with those endings."

I think the "Danger, Will Robinson" moment to the show really came with some mix of the Final Five and, worst of all, when Ellen Tigh was revealed at the Final Fifth. Ellen "What the Fuck?" Tigh? She's the Fifth Cylon? Who could possibly give a shit about that? When that happened, I was like "Oh, no...." and it spoke volumes of what was coming down the pike. And really, the whole Final Five (hate that term for them, btw -- makes them sound like a playoff in basketball) plotline was a whole lot of nothing -- none of those Final Fivers really did a hell of a lot to justify the buildup surrounding them. Especially since all but two of them basically continue on being what they already were beforehand, more or less. Weak. The story got hijacked by the God(tm) shit and it gutted and filleted the story. And what's Starbuck? Is she a goddamned ghost? Or another of those fucking "angels" that get touted? Whatever. Lame. Weak. Bad.

Nothing worse than a bad case of Writer's Hand intruding on a story. I always avoid this in my stories, because it's annoying to have something happen because the Writer wants it to, or is at wit's end and cops out with "Because I said so." Lame. Some serious writer's fatigue must have set in on some level, or else the writers wrote themselves into a corner and decided to pull the ripcord and hope the cop-out wasn't caught by the majority of viewers/fans.

Seeing that ending made me very glad I didn't watch the show real-time, or I'd have been hugely pissed and would've felt cheated. Even when they were pimping out God(tm) in the story, I kept hoping that we'd see the  robot God(tm) as some grand AI (and, let's be honest, the closest we'd ever come to a god in this world is an AI -- the combination of omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence that equals "God" would be a singular quality of a powerful AI).

But, instead, it's kept all mystical and behind the curtain, subsuming the entire storyline and all of the characters, scuttling "Galactica." Whatever. Big disappointment. The first two seasons are solid. Third season is entertaining, before Hell's Bells being sounding and drowning everything out.