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Crackheads & Tent City
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
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The town has become overrun.
Not just this town, everywhere I'm sure, but summer brings them out, and from where I wonder?
Walking home from dinner last night, along Front Street, Past City Hall and the homeless encampment set up there, for the most part the legitimately homeless, people with no other issues other than a want of reasonably priced housing.
And crossing Vernon towards Baker there's a homeless person, shopping cart tipped over in the middle of the street, walk over to help them upright it and reload their possessions...
A new face, although I can't see it, obscured between masses of matted hair, and she's swearing at me "FUCK OFF!! GIVE ME A MINUTE!! JUST GIVE ME A FUCKING MINUTE!!" and my helpful disposition expires, carry on, fuck you you little crackhead.
In the time I try to upright her shopping cart I notice her pants are down to her knees.
The locals, by and large, they're not like this, they're not this degree of sketchy, adversarial, violent, and we have all of that, you can tell summer's coming by the non-stop sirens, and I've asked before where they come from, and why here of all places, but to find out...
Everywhere, the alley behind the liquor store, the parking lot behind share, needles, single-use crack pipes, it's not just this town, it's the country, the world, that largely invisible but growing subset of the disenfranchised, the overlooked, the unhoused, the wedges have been set and the hammer's being pounded and we all pretend that nothing's wrong.
Netflix, Meh
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 57
I'm at a friends for dinner, the final episode of "The Brothers Sun".
File under "Action/Comedy/Drama", but it succeeds in none of these. 8 episodes, 8 hours, for a big "Meh".
She's a bit of a pothead, and I'd always attributed her inability to accurately remember or describe any of these things to her 'bad habits'. But the more I watch Netflix, Prime, the other media so often hyped, and I realize that it's not her. It's the fact that the programming is so unutterably mediocre. With the exception of the "Ballad of Buster Scruggs", Coen Brothers, masterpiece.
Talking about kids, and someone I have to catch up with from when I was young, and I suddenly remember the series "Seven (7) Up", a longitudinal study of British Children that I'd mentioned on this blog some 14 years ago.
You can read my original review here: https://rodboyle.com/index.php/archives/reviews/film/the-up-series?highlight=WyJzZXZlbiIsInVwIl0=
OK. No Bird-Dog Video. But still...
I was impressed. I still am.
And by now there should be another 2 episodes for me (us) to watch.
So I put her on to it, and maybe she gets it, maybe she doesn't. But it's a fucking damned sight better than anything else Netflix is offering. We watch the first two episodes together. Oddly enough I remember them both. And I'm keen to catch up.
Janet Sobel
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Other
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The under-rated female abstract/surrealist that preceded Jackson Pollock.
I love the abstractions and color harmonies.
Read the Wikipedia on her here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Sobel
the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220307-janet-sobel-the-woman-written-out-of-history
and a quick Google Image Search: Jane Sobel - Google Images
The Other Black Actor...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Conversations
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Watching Netflix at a friends, the price I have to pay for dinner.
It's my meal-of-the-day at the moment, and I don't want to miss it. And I don't mind the break from my head, it can get a little claustrophobic up there at the moment.
We'd started on "The Gentlemen", Guy Ritchie, then given up after 4 episodes, derivative, silly, Guy Ritchie has a knack for dialogue, stereotypes, but it was proving far too predictable, and even the presence of Giancarlo Esposito from "Breaking Bad" couldn't save it. It would have been a bad 90 minute movie, spread out over 8 1 hour episodes it was unbearable.
So we switched to "The Brothers Sun", absolutely no better, another "Crime Family" ala every other show on Television, the 'hook' is the fact that most or all of the actors are Asian. I sort of recognize some of them, but can't remember their names, and jokingly put it down to the fact that all Asian Actors look the same.
This is of course a heinous prejudice that I sincerely don't share, but it was funny at the time, most probably because there weren't any Asians present.
But you can see the room for confusion - I mean, I recognized all the black actors in "The Nutty Professor" and "Meet the Klumps", but other than Eddie Murphy I don't think I could name a single one...
But it recalled a certain interview - and I'm pretty sure my memory deceives me, but it's of Samuel L. Jackson on a talk show - David Letterman maybe? And the host, or perhaps one of the guests, congratulates him on his work in ... such & such a film, to which Samuel L. Jackson dead-eyes him and replies as only he can "You must mean the Other Black Actor", which from the movie I knew to be Morgan Freeman...
It sounds like something Ricky Gervais would do, and I thought it's be funny to confuse Samuel L. Jackson for Robert Downy JR's character of Kirk Lazarus from "Tropic Thunder", which would be even more offensive and therefore funny...
But since the memory is somehow compromised and I can't really say where it's from, or how it's compromised, but damn, I'm pretty sure Samuel L. Jackson would even have a laugh at that...
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