2016 can bite me

You know...this year didn't start out too bad. Husband and I drove to Florida for our 10th (!) anniversary, spending four nights on Sanibel Island and two at (a mind-boggingly crowded) Disney World, where we rung in the new year. 

For the record: yes to Sanibel, any time, even during a hurricane. Disney at the holidays? Fuck no, never again. 

We don't have actual human children, so that means I'm not destroying someone's burgeoning psyche by refusing to put myself through that crushing hell of humanity ever again. 

And from January onward, 2016 rolled along as mostly usual. I traveled to the UK on a work thing, which was cool and fun. And ended the same contract with two of my favorite folks at K-Paul's in NOLA, which I had been dying to go to for years. 

Then, as late June rolled around, I finished up what had basically been four months of non-stop work and before I knew it, it was time for our planned Fourth of July getaway to Michigan.

The week we spent outside Coloma was restful and a nice chance to catch up with old friends.

And then...

Yeah. Couple of things: 1. yes, we're lucky to have survived and 2. I do wish all sorts of ill upon the driver who was probably high and/or on her fucking cell phone when she came barreling directly at us, after crossing a double yellow line, at 60 miles an hour. My belief in karma prevents me from hunting her down and exacting my retribution. (But on the off chance that dummy happens to read this (if you can read, you hillbilly fuck) just know that you'll never again have a moment's peace. Your soul is fucked and I weep for you.)

Fortunately, I was blissfully unconscious for the impact and most of the extraction the first responders had to do to get me out of the car. That's probably a good thing as when you have two open fractures, you really don't want to be actively aware of it.

All I can tell you is the net result for me was: a tibia plateau fracture, a fracture in my femur (which after my initial 6 hour emergency surgery, required another surgery two weeks later to correct the first one), a staph infection from the fractures that required six weeks of not-at-all fun IV antibiotics, a broken humerus in my right arm which stretched my radial nerve, which has severely limited the motor function in my right hand (thank god I can still peck at the keys with one finger on that hand), three broken ribs, a fractured orbital bone below my right eye and a broken front tooth, oddly on the left side.

The hand is the most distressing injury as: I fucking need my right hand. It's my favorite and always has been. Hopefully the nerve will completely heal, returning all or most of my motor function. But the prospect of recovery is loooong—bones heal, nerves take FORever, at the rate of an inch a month. So, while I've gotten back some motor function that the radial controls, it will likely be another 6 months or so until it all returns.

Since late September, I've been spending 3 hours a week going to 'occupational therapy,' which is code for 'bending your wrist and fingers in directions they haven't wanted to go in months.' It's painful and tedious, but there's apparently no other way forward. Likewise with my right knee, which will bend, but only if you drug it up and ask nicely.

And then...

Another car crash. Seriously, I am so fucking angry with Michigan for fucking up my life twice this year, I may never set foot there again.

(And I'm still unclear how a year that starts under warm Florida skies ends in complete carnage.)

So, yeah. That was 2016. It wasn't all terrible, but the sooner it's over, the better. 

We're done now

If you're a carbon-based life form with half a functioning brain stem, then this has been the most dispiriting few weeks, certainly of your year and quite possibly of your adult life.

If not, I'm guessing you're either a Trump voter, delusional third-party candidate voter or somebody who didn't vote because, "they're both bad" or some variation on that sentiment.

And if you're any of those, then move along.

No, really. Go away.

Because it's not my job to educate you or introduce you to widely available facts—particularly that The Orange One is a lying liar—or argue with you or try to change your mind.

And I speak from experience when it comes to living among the 47% of you who not only voted to wallow in your own ignorance, but are angry that the rest of us—the folks who have Hillary winning the popular vote by the third largest margin in U.S. history—have no interest in joining you, worrying about your 'economic anxieties,' er, racism or listening to your ill-informed bullshit.

In the aftermath of this shitstorm of an election, there's no shortage of hand wringing/flagellation/magical thinking about what the direction forward should be for Democrats. (Really Thomas Frank? Joe Biden was the secret all along...I don't think so)

Here's my advice to you: stop it.

Because there is always going to be just enough of a segment in this country that is just stupid enough to respond to dogwhistle racism, casual sexism, blinkered nationalism and cheer on a profound contempt for anything that smacks of being 'intellectual.'

My personal experience with this comes out of growing up in one of the most racially segregated regions in the country—Northwest Indiana. For years, I listened to embittered working class white people bemoan the death of Gary and place all of the blame on 'the blacks.' African Americans who had the temerity to elect the nation's first black mayor of a major city and won the (cue the inchoate horror/protests of whitey back in the day) right to live wherever they chose.

Nevermind the fact that the true unraveling of Gary, as a company town born of US Steel, started when the jobs flowed overseas in the 60s and continued to disappear as automation allowed for high outputs with fewer human hands involved through the 1980s and today.

Nope. The "good"[1] suburban folks who I grew up around in Crown Point, a majority white suburban enclave roughly 15 miles to the south, resolutely stood by their narrative that Gary's downfall was all on African Americans.

This time, aggrieved whitey is in Ohio, West Virginia and they're angry at: Mexicans, the Chinese and, because it never ends in this country, "the blacks." As was the case during my growing up in the 80s, the 'good' folks of in the Rust Belt are still wrong. Blame the loss of manufacturing jobs on automation, not globalization.

And while the fear and loathing about jobs among working class whites in these hollowed out communities may be legit...their expression of rage against the government is wildly misplaced; in the south particularly, its also wildly dishonest: because they get more help from the federal government than other states. 

The truth of the matter is: these people 1. want to be lied to about "morning in America" and long-gone jobs magically coming back and 2. have swallowed the Fox News talking points so whole heartedly, they wouldn't know policies that would actually help them and their situations if they were hit over the head with them.

The correct answer this election is: stupid is as stupid does.

The root of this is that the GOP has, for years, used stupidity as a handy pose to condescendingly appeal to 'common' voters. By doing so, the GOP has emboldened enough of a tribe of know-nothings to now elect someone who really (and arrogantly, dangerously) doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.  

So, congratulations, morons. Enjoy your shit sandwich, which your president will keep insisting is really filet mignon.

[1] See 'the banality of evil.' Even if Hannah Arendt's take on Eichmann was way off, the phrase is useful and quite aptly describes the sort of placidly ignorant beliefs of a distressing number of people in this country.

Can the unwinding be rewound?

It's been unseasonably cloudy and rainy here in the middle west these past few weeks. And while it's been great for the crops in our (vastly smaller) version of a back forty, the weather does dampen the usual carefree summer exuberance a bit.

And, in part, because I'm not crazy from the heat this year, it gives me the inclination to reflect on the state of the nation in these waning days of June before the 4th is upon us.

In the big picture, there are things to celebrate: the Supreme Court finally knocking down DOMA, this past week is a big one. (For a great piece on the heart of the 'debate' over the rights of gays to marry, read Mr. Sulu/George Takei's Op-Ed this week in the Washington Post. He succinctly identifies the stance of people opposed to the notion of two men or two women marrying, rightly, as 'the ick' factor. And while that reaction might be fine for the demographic that watches Sesame Street--i.e. little kids who don't know any better--thank GOD the Court finally (albeit narrowly, sigh) came to its senses that a bullshit, childish, uneducated, narrowminded reaction shouldn't be the basis for laws that discriminate against millions of this country's citizens. Also: I give little kids more credit than that--they, by nature, are not homophobes. Unfortunately, that shit is taught and reinforced by a chilish not a childlike mentality.) [1]

Then there was Obama (possibly just for show and definitely late) making his big speech on climate change. Good for him, because I predict that despite abundant evidence to support the notion that the weather is seriously messed up—see recent examples like the Moore, OK EF5 tornado, raging wildfires in Colorado and well, the recent rainy conditions here in the Midwest—it's going to, grievously and unfortunately, take another Hurricane Sandy-level event to finally knock some sense into the climate change deniers.

Not until Megyn Kelly is all but drowning in Fox's Times Square studio will the Koch Brothers and their moneyed cronies of the same ideological bent—many of whom have anonymously funded the messaging campaign against climate change—stop with their jihad of nonsense and get on-board with reality all-fucking-ready.

(By the by if you're like me, you enjoy daydreaming about Megyn Kelly disappearing under the waves, never to be seen or heard from again. According to this study by Climate Central, that day could be just a blessed 7 years off. Perchance to dream. I just mourn the fact that most of New York would go down with her.)

Again, maybe it's been the moody skies or maybe it's because I'm pushing onward to 40 during this year's trip around the sun...but I've been thinking a lot about the tone of this country and how we came to be where we are: saddled with a completely dysfunctional Congress, years behind the rest of the world on social and environmental issues and still arguing about whether we can 'afford' to pay for elements in the social contract that, duh, led to the rise of the middle class, which, in turn, fueled the great wealth engine that's driven the whole damned thing since the end of WWII.

New York Times staffer George Packer calls all this and his new book, "The Unwinding." It is still summer, so if you're not down with being down over the (sorta sorry-ass) state of these United States, then just read this article in the Guardian by Packer that neatly sums up his book's thesis. He identifies 1978 as the year the American character changed from one that at least acted like it cared about the welfare of its citizens to the more unabashedly mean-spirited, gleefully greedy, recklessly short-sighted one that reigns today.

I was 5 in 1978 and far too caught up in Bert & Ernie and the rest of the Sesame Street gang to know about or understand what was going on in this country. (I'm sure I even thought B&E were straight then...)

But I do vividly remember August 1981—that's when Ronald Reagan fired the air traffic controllers, breaking their strike. And was the moment when my Dad, a union electrician who had, in fact, voted for Reagan in 1980 (which he remembered as 'the biggest mistake of my life') turned to the 7-year old me and said:

"This country is screwed."

He probably got, in a way that I couldn't possibly have at the time, that the tone, the character of this country was changing and not for the better. That with a sweep of Ronnie's hand, the pendulum swung away from workers and the middle class, firmly into the corner of business and its strictly bottom line-driven interests. And the swing in that direction has only become more profound and more debilitating for this country in the thirty plus years since.

Needless to say, the book is next on my list.

And it's a good reminder, as we head into another Fourth with cookouts and fireworks and some justifiable national pride—made sweeter this year with DOMA gone and Obama hopefully, finally taking up the issues his base voted him in for in the first place—that the reality of The Unwinding means there is still a profound amount of work to be done in this country to put us back on...well, not even 'the right' track, but any track that doesn't lead us further into despair, decay and dysfunction.

Can The Unwinding be rewound?

This is 'merica and I do have hope—but my guess is it'll take double the time (probably more) to build back up all that has been undone in those 30 years. And if we're talking at least 60 years to make things better, then there's a good chance I won't be around to see the change.

Which is maybe why, for me anyway, things like DOMA coming down are sweet and to be savored.

Because progress is slow...and summer is short. And we have to enjoy our victories in the moment, for as long as we can.

Happy July 4th, everyone.


[1] Personally, I think the Court should next take up the issue of whether or not girls have 'cooties.' If they did, you can bet all the usual suspects of the lunatic fringe Right would be screaming that God, Ronald Reagan and the Founding Fathers all agree both should be banished from this fine nation of ours. Think of how much fun it would be to watch Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin insist on Fox that 'girls have cooties and cooties are against God's law and what makes this country great!'

If that day ever comes, I'd happily vote those two morons off the island of girldom/womanhood in a heartbeat. If only because they drag the fucking bell curve down, big time.

Happy Father's Day

As I sit here on our deck in da 'burbs, beer in hand with the sun slowly fading in the west just below the treeline, I'm thinking about my father today. 

Dennis Akers

It's not just Father's Day that I reflect on my dad and his life: since his (completely untimely and universally unfair) death in 2005 at 65, there's scarcely a day that goes by where I don't think about him and all the stuff he tried to teach me.

My dad was a working class guy--dropped out of high school at 17, got his GED in the Marine Corps and was an IBEW union electrician for nearly 40 years.

Sure, he worked hard for what he earned. One of my memories of him as a little kid—on the rare occasions I'd be up early enough—was him packing his lunch bucket and methodically putting on his workboots at 5:30AM. In the summer heat, in the dead of winter, the calendar didn't matter, he worked.

But beyond the solid, working class man story (all too rare now and he knew he was one of the last generations to enjoy a very good pay for a good day's work) was the other, essential side to my dad:  he was an extremely engaged father and his speciality was what I like to think of as 'long-game parenting.'

He had a knack for saying stuff that sticks with me to this day.

To wit—on dealing with life's frustrations, recriminations and just general bullshit he'd say:  "The sun comes up in the east and sets in the west." Meaning, time passes, wounds heal. And if you hang in there long enough, you see that time marches on...with or without you.

On money: "It only costs a nickel more to go first class." Even though he came from a working class background, it was my dad who taught me to enjoy good food, good hotels and that money, essentially, is a tool. It passes through your hands for a little while and if you're smart, you'll see it as a mechanism to get where you want to go, while not letting the pursuit of it rule your entire existence.

But the thing that he said to me that sticks with me the most was, "You're a writer. You are." 

This came out of a conversation with him, during my waning college days (days that he paid for, all of it, out-of-pocket) where I lamented to him that I had no idea where I was going or what I was going to do professionally. 

At the time, I argued with him, "But I haven't written anything that's been published...and you can't be a writer if you aren't recognized as such by other people."

I remember him being so insistent, "No. You write, that's what you do." 

On the writing part and getting published:  I'm still working on it. 

But for me, now in hindsight, that conversation was more about my father saying that he knew he was financing my dreams and the only thing he asked for in exchange...was that I go do the thing I wanted to do. And to try to find some happiness in the pursuit.

And so. That's my charge—and believe you me, just being happy in the moment has been a big enough job these past few months.

But I have the benefit, now, of being able to conjure his voice, his words, his wisdom...his keen sense of the world and the daughter he raised.

It's a vast understatement to say that I was lucky to have him as a father.

So Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there...and remember that the time you spend with your kids is so very important. And if you do it right, your efforts will far outlast you. 

And your words will continue to serve your children throughout their lives.

And here I thought Bokeh was just for old people...

*bah-dah-bump*

Thanks, I'll be here all week.

ANYway, it's been a few weeks since I've posted. But I've been busy playing with various camera goodies I've acquired.

The big one is the Canon 5D Mark III. I mostly bought it for video, as there's so much amazing DSLR-shot documentary work out there now...

But of course/duh:  this thing takes freaking amazing stills, too.

I've never been a huge shutterbug, but I think I may be turning into one with this camera—even though I'm still learning (feeling blindly?) through the menus and the whole world of adjusting ISO vs. aperture vs. f-stops.

(I have to say, though, I'm going to check out Scott Kelby's books—he's a pro photog who has a series of very down-to-earth books that present real world scenarios with tips on improving your shooting...)

Along with the body, I went ahead and got a really nice lens, the 50mm f/1.2L, and I've been blown away (again, even with marginal skills) at the image quality.

My other favorite new toy is the GoPro Hero 3 Black. These little cameras (and they are tiny) are cool for landscape shots, driving shots (with a suction cup mount) and for timelapse. The Black edition also has a WiFi remote and with the free app on my iPad, I can control the camera remotely and get a preview of the shot—helpful, since monitors for the GoPros are an add-on.

I shot a timelapse as I planted our small vegetable plot yesterday. Everything went swimmingly until the damned suction cup gave out... But in a bit of nice serendipity, it falling gave me a second angle, at near ground level.

Next up:  doggie cam....brace yourselves.

I'm not a businessman/I'm a business...man!

The immortal words of Jay-Z have never been truer.

Particularly in the days when celebrities are finding new and different ways of flexing their creative muscles across genres—like Johnny Depp and Chelsea Handler getting into publishing, Whoopi Goldberg getting into documentaries, and the most erstwhile of the Kardashians, Robert, developing a premium sock line.

(I'm kidding on that last one...the first two have actual economic/creative potential, while R-Dash's sox sux, as Variety would have, no doubt, put it back in the day.)

Good on these guys for leveraging their brands...the typical shelf lives of careers for actors and comedians can be short—best to get while the getting is good.

And yet...

Note allllll the rage lately around the Zach Braff Kickstarter campaign.

Now, the point of this post isn't to argue for or against Braff's right to be on Kickstarter—personally, I don't love it and wish he wouldn't (as much because I don't see the need for a second installment of what was a solid, but unremarkable movie), but I can see the merits of the counter-argument.

I guess my bigger concern here is this: with media companies and traditional sources of funding already so tight...it seems like there's an inherent bias toward giving book deals and documentary greenlights and product lines to folks who already have made a name for themselves.

Basically, like Jay-Z says...it's all about extending your brand.

And that's great...when you actually have something to bring to that new arena you're pursuing.

But really:  is there a need for 'Garden State II:  This Time, the Moping and Overriding Angst Get Personal?' Does there need to be more than one book by Chelsea Handler about how much she loves to drink and screw?

Probably not.

But these items will continue to vie for your money and your time...why?

Well, I believe it's because most media gatekeeper types—and I'm casting a wide net:  cable network execs, publishers, advertisers, movie studio heads—all are in positions where, if they want to keep their jobs, they need to make money on surefire hits/shows and movies that draw maximum eyeballs.

And thus, your best bet for making money? Is by going with tried-and-true brands, things that have already proven their worth in the marketplace.

Thus, this is why you see 70 iterations of hillbilly family reality shows on cable (this is a running joke in the industry and um...pretty much everywhere else), this is why sequels exist...

It takes time, money and guts (and yet more money) to really look for and develop unknown talent and allow it to grow.

Gawker recently featured a long piece by Tom Socca touching on some of this same space. The article focused on Frank Rich's spawn and the author mused (angrily and not necessarily wrongly) about how he's got book deals out the wazoo, tons of press in the pages of the NY Times (where dad used to work), which is interesting since the kid is all of about 28.

The phenomena of the spawn of famous people having a much easier entry point into the pages of the Times or onto major TV shows can easily be viewed as straight up nepotism, as Tom Socca seems to indicate in his Gawker piece.

But for me, there's something much more insidious going on here—for me, it's more about an overall trend amongst the decision makers about what they're willing to take a chance on...

...and what they're not. My big takeaway:  nobody's really interested in taking chances these days.

And that's a shame. Books, movies, TV shows are littered with admirable attempts at trying something new, but that are, incontrovertibly...failures. 

Not to get all overly romantic/maudlin here, but:  the good stuff comes from the failures, dammit. And then there's the related point:  without failures, it's hard to find really, really good, NEW stuff.  From new voices.

And I think that's where a lot of the anger over the Zach Braffs of the world pleading that they need money from the internet to maintain their 'creative freedom' comes from.

Zach's had his shot and unless he's going to give me something absolutely unheard of that is going to blow my mind...then he best go back to the business of figuring out how to leverage his shit and be 'a business, man.'

Again, I can't hate on Zach too hard...cuz after, all, Ice-T said it best:  don't hate the playa, hate the game.

Documentaries: NOT coming to a theater near you...

So, if you ask most folks who make documentaries what their hope is for their lil' baby they've grown up, nurtured and fed, often for years on end and sometimes with their own money and always with a lot of blood/sweat/tears, they'll tell you: Sundance, baby...or the Oscars! and they'll invariably also talk about the wide theatrical release that goes with festivals and big time awards.

But here's the thing: getting your film into theaters, while not totally impossible is an uphill, expensive battle that may not really yield you much in the way of financial return or even guarantee lots of eyeballs seeing the thing. (I say this notwithstanding the recent (and thoroughly stomach-churning) success of longtime, rightwing hack Dinesh D'Souza's 2016: Obama's America)

Enter the web. If you're like me, (and Allah help you, if you are) you see most of your docs on Netflix, for which you pay a monthly premium or maybe you visit new sites like Snagfilms.com, Splitsider.com, or Chill.com—the pay-per-play model is in full effect on those last two. (Chill.com, in particular, puts more money back into the hands of the content creators, which in and of itself is a reason to rejoice over/support their efforts.)

Meanwhile, I've been waiting for a well-known doc maker to embrace the brave 'new' (but not really) world of online content.

And more importantly, I've been waiting for someone to announce, officially, that the old model of producing documentaries as a single thing and then begging/bowing/scraping to distributors in an expensive/fraught effort to get the thing into theaters...is mostly dead.

That and docmakers have to think more like content creators and well, marketers/entrepreneurs who work across various media and fully embrace social engagement/community outreach programs.

Ask and you shall receive: Ondi Timoner, the filmmaker behind DiG! and We Live in Public has a new venture (for which she's launched the obligatory Kickstarter campaign to raise funds/awareness)—A Total Disruption.

The project itself is indirectly related to documentary film, but is primarily a talk show about new technologies/inventors across a variety of disciplines. And well, we'll see about that: her Kickstarter pitch seems more than a little overheated with phrases like, 'these people are disrupting everything that's old and inefficient, solving some of our biggest problems,' and 'it's a web channel and a portal and an archive!'

(That last bit reminds me of similarly vigorous pitches from 1970s TV for pretty much anything ever sold by Ronco.)

You can read more about Timoner's recent talk/manifesto at the 2013 Hot Docs Festival in Toronto, on RealScreen's site here.

Of note, from that talk:

“We need to think differently about making films before we start shooting and we should be distributing as we go,” the two-time Sundance-winner told a packed house on Monday morning (April 29). “You can reach one billion people but we need to find our audiences where they live, which is on their devices.”

Amen to that, sister.