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Ethan Crumbley's Fine Parents
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
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For those of you not paying attention, Ethan Crumbley was the Oxford, Michigan student who killed 4 students and wounded another 7 in a schoolyard shooting. Prosecutors later sought to hold the parents responsible.
Link here: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/oxford-school-shooting-ethan-crumbley-parents.html
And here: https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/03/us/crumbley-parents-michigan-shooting-prosecutors-sentence/index.html
Note the phrases "Chilling Lack of Remorse" and "Threatened Prosecutors".
Ethan Crumbley was the victim of incredibly negligent and indifferent parents. His mother too busy swinging with strangers to heed his pleas for mental help, his parents instead "placating" him by buying him a gun.
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This is long overdue. While there are "Bad Seeds", Children who despite the best of parenting grow up to be murderers and monsters, this is the exception, not the rule. And just as those dog-owners who allow their animals to maul, maim and kill innocent children and elderly people, they should be held culpable. Ethan Crumbley was more a victim and his parents were the villains.
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This case reminds me of the 2019 manhunt for Bryer Schmegelsky and Kam McLeod, the two young men who murdered 3 people across Northern BC, disappeared, and were found dead after an intense manhunt across 4 provinces.
You can read the details here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/northern-bc-murders-ito-1.5401732
And watch the interview with Kam McLeod's father here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HGJWr_Ycis
It doesn't take long to realize how this situation developed. Again, the fact that the young men were guilty of atrocities does not diminish the fact they were also victims of appalling parenting that should in some ways be held accountable.
But accountability is an idea so far beyond the pale of our judicial system it doesn't bear mention.
The Green Door
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 328
And this, at the thrift shop, a donation of a hand painted door. 
Kootenay Style, perfect for the "Budding" entrepreneur or your mushroom dispensary. Please, admire the detail. And Speculation as to what will end up going on behind the "Green Door" and suggesting perhaps a movie treatment when one of the older female volunteers assures me that it's already been done...
A Shopping Cart with a Roadkill Skunk
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Images
- Hits: 289
Found in the vacant lot across front street, exactly what the title describes. And sometimes I feel as if I've been brought here from very, very far away, Alpha Centuri maybe even, to witness the absurdity of life on earth....
I mean - how did it get there? Why? And for what purpose? An air freshener for the Finley's?
Once Upon a Time in The West - Sergio Leone
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 335
I'd seen this about 10 years ago, but nonetheless watched it again.
And was impressed. This film is a masterpiece, after which the Mythology of the American West was molded.
In everything - in the soundtrack: the flies, the spinning of a weathervane, the gunfire, the harmonica, the sound of the Steam-Engines and Clocks all driving the movie forward...
This is not even slightly accidental, most, if not the entire, soundtrack and dialogue were added in post production. Watch the lips.
The opening - 3 Outlaws come to murder Charles Bronson aka 'Harmonica' - how long? 5? Maybe even 10, no, 12 minutes the film builds, the camera focusing on the flies on their faces, on the heat of the day, on the long wait for their intended target. Minimum speaking, none at all from the the 3 outlaws, merely waiting, character exposition. Then when Harmonica arrives they apologize, by way of making light, for bringing only 3 horses, one short, to which Bronson laconically replies "You brought 2 too many".
Leone sends up every cliche - the good guy in white, the bad guy in black, the whore with a heart of gold, the grasping and murderous railway tycoon, gunfight at high noon, the train to Yuma, the anticipation waiting for the final blow of the auctioneers gavel, and yet he does it so well that - while the characters aren't in any way real, they're archetypes, conventions, you are nonetheless heavily invested.
In every instance he shows, doesn't tell, spells nothing out for you that you should be able to see for yourself (**Note - audiences were clearly a little more clever then. "Dumbing Us Down" is a very real thing in the media as well as in School).
The cast, in places hundreds, the attention to detail - in the recreation of historical settings, props, historical costumes, etc - the scenes that Use the Monument Valley, the Cave Dwelling of the Ute people, in the execution of every trivial detail he's finishing off a masterpiece, and - well, he, succeeds. An Italian Film Director redefines the "Old West", the history, the mythology, sums it all up in the most epic Western ever made, and the world has by and large believed him.
I found it interesting that - having received similar reviews in France and Germany, the year of its release saw it panned in America, and only the fullness of time has proven his vision.
Anyways, if you've never seen this, you should, and if you have, maybe it's time to watch it again. There's a lot worse on Netflix, lemme tell you...
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