Bill Walton Dies, Cracking Up At The Movies, Rejections

I pretty much blew out my knee last night walking from Ball State to McGalliard back down here. Work was a trip with the pain. 

 After work, it was off to Staples for an Ethernet cable and then to Payless for something to drink.

Back home, I finally got the Internet running at the house. I was about to smash the modem. Yes, I still have some minor temper issues. Now all I have to worry about is this headache that I've had since I got home tonight!

Ball State has the 1851 Constitutional Debates. I had those books, and they disappeared after my arrest. So did all my research on the Indiana Constitution. I used Google Scholar to get me back to 1950. There is a future for my article, yet.

I have had two rejections of “Only The Dead and The Dying”. One came tonight:

Thank you for your query. While your project doesn’t meet our editorial needs at this time, we encourage you to submit it elsewhere.

Keep writing. Keep submitting. Literature is a glorious enterprise, and we are proud to be part of it with you.

Kind regards,

Liza Olmsted​
Thinking Ink Press

This came in the past week, and I keep forgetting to post:

 Thank you for sending your manuscript Only The Dead and The Dying to The Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction. We’re grateful to have had the chance to read it. Unfortunately we’re writing to let you know that your manuscript is not proceeding to the next round of judging at this time.

As is always the case, the number of excellent submissions we received meant we had the difficult task of passing on many projects that showed promise. We remain committed to providing accessible submissions opportunities to writers, and we hope you will consider sending us your work again in the future. Each year our contest entries are given thoughtful and careful consideration by a new group of editorial panelists and a new final judge.

Thank you again for considering Sarabande as a home for your work.

All our best,

The Editors

Once more into the breach of my email. I might get it done, if I did not spend time reading! Here is a sample for you.

I had to take a look at The All-American Crack-Up in 1960s Hollywood Cinema from Jacobin. I guess not being that much of an ideologue makes a sucker for ideological reviews. 

There’s a riveting new Criterion Channel series called Hollywood Crack-Up: The Decade American Cinema Lost Its Mind. It’s a category of 1960s films featuring characters spinning out of control, breaking down, going insane. But from a socialist standpoint, the series is most compelling in the way these films expose the context for breakdown, showing the madness built into American social systems and the cultural cruelties that govern ordinary life here.

In the 1960s, more and more filmmakers were recognizing America as a place that seems designed to send its citizens right over the edge. The line-up of films includes cult favorites (Pretty Poison, Targets), interesting experiments by respected directors (Faces, Lilith, Uptight, The Chase), and very obscure but startling low-budget films (Pressure Point, The World’s Greatest Sinner) along with well-known studio productions (The Manchurian Candidate, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Shock Corridor, Seconds, Point Blank).

I know only the five movies I have seen, but have heard of Shock Corridor. Now, read the whole review, I wish I had the Criterion Channel - the best reviews always are those of people who love movies.

As highly charged as these films are, they’re strangely very soothing to watch — they represent a recognition and a grappling with the lunacy people were facing every day at the time. One of the most crazy-making aspects of American life now is the lack of acknowledgement in mainstream media and popular culture of how deranged everything has become. You’d never guess from watching most American-made news and movies and television that huge numbers of people working multiple jobs can’t afford decent housing or health care; that the entire educational system is falling apart; that the military is always fighting multiple wars that were never approved by Congress and that the populace is barely aware of; that the government in general is so far from representing what the majority of citizens want, it’s become surreal; or that we’re on the brink of a worldwide environmental catastrophe.

Also from Jacobin, On Gaza, the Media Constantly Parrots the US Government Line. I ahve been listening to NPR since I moved into the new place, and I find its coverage more even-handed than what is described by Liza Featherstone. I pause and remember that the New York Times was also rabid about WMD in Iraq. I suspect that Biden is trying his best to pull in Netanyahu who wants nothing more than to stay in power. This is not the Israel we have always supported. Even the Israelis want rid of their Prime Minister. But even more than poking the media, is her conclusion:

Walter Lippmann pointed out early last century that one of the main functions of the media in a democracy is to tell us what is happening in places we can’t visit. Without accurate information, he reasoned, how do we manage our civic duty to make decisions about foreign policy when we go to the polls? Looking at the state of the mainstream media and the concerted attack on its alternative, it’s easy to conclude that this is exactly what the foreign policy elite is trying to thwart us from doing.

I think that applies to more than American foreign policy in these days of Fox News and Trump.

One more review from Jacobin, Furiosa Fails the Mad Max Series — and the Summer Box Office, which should not be read by anyone into CGI.

Look, we’ll be the judge of whether or not a character gets legendary status. If anything, this sequel demotes Furiosa, and the reputation of the whole Mad Max saga shrinks. Here’s hoping that weak profits end it, at least until we get a neorealist backlash against our current visual hell of digitally prettifying, falsifying, and glossing over everything.

That was a fun read!

Some light history: Inside Roman Emperors’ Outrageously Lavish Dinner Parties. Mostly it made me wish I could read Mary Beard.

We were talking about the Amish today at work, which is why I picked on The Sweet and Sour Origins of Amish Soul Food. We have Amish and German Baptists and Mennnites in various parts of Indiana. I do not think they mix much with African Americans here.

This combination of Southern and Amish cooking hails from Coatesville, Pennsylvania, where Scott grew up. “We’ve been eating this since we were kids,” says Scott. “Our parents, [too.]” Coatesville is located in Chester County, Pennsylvania, home to long-standing Amish and African American communities whose cuisines have commingled over generations. Scott is on a mission to share the unique food of the area’s Black residents, along with the stories of resilience and creativity within their sweet, sour, and savory cuisine.

***

Are there any specific dishes that stick out in your mind as examples of Amish soul food, with its sweet-and-sour flavor palate?

When I was on Top Chef, I did a lemonade buttermilk fried chicken. Down south, everybody and their mama brines chicken with sweet tea. [I grew] up in a household where sweet tea was in my refrigerator, and so was Kool-Aid and so was lemonade. It makes [the fried chicken] super duper bright 

I fried up a chicken quarter for dinner, good thing. 

Bill Walton died. I do not know why this means much to me, other than I always identified Walton with my cousin Paul. They played different positions but they were about the same age. My cousin recently had his other leg amputated and no one seems to know what is going on with him. One purpose of the group therapy is to help me get re-integrated into society (that this is still needed after three years can only be explained by this being a requirement of my supervised release order and that is more important to bureaucrats than efficacy), but it seems more and more of the people I knew are gone. Not much left to reintegrate with.

I got the inbox down to 11. 

Since Firefox crashes 30 minutes after booting, I am shifting my default browser over to Chrome. That is even though I find Chrome much duller and clunkier.

I have stayed up far my bedtime, so good night.

sch