News of the World

Trump finally signed the bill he threatened to veto, but I think the Democrats will still try to vote for $2000 checks. I think the national defense bill is still vetoed, but I thought Congress passed that with a veto-proof majority? It's all confusing to me. Just want this chaos administration over with so he can stop wreaking havoc on everything for petty reasons. The Georgia senate runoffs are January 5, but I believe that early voting has already started.

Weirdly, my local radio station is still playing Christmas music. Are they going to keep doing it through New Year's, like some people wait to take their Christmas lights down?

Anyway I watched Tom Hanks in News of the World, but found it quite slow going and just liked hearing a lot of place names from Texas that I knew. Apparently the movie cut out some stuff from the book, such as Captain Kidd already having daughters in another state, and it makes the dramatic choice to have Johanna's original escort be lynched, rather than alive and able to hand her off to Kidd voluntarily. There's not much political nuance; much of the conflict is implied by locals complaining about the Union Blues not helping them with floods and Indians. And they rail against federal news about 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution, but it's like they're any generic deep South racists. The Kiowa don't have any speaking parts, just floating in and out of some scenes in the distance or during a sandstorm. Johanna speaks Kiowa, subtitled, but no one understands her until a white boarding house woman translates for her, then Johanna starts learning English from Kidd. So again a Western marginalizes Native Americans and doesn't let them have a say. Kidd just seems weary of all war and all killing, and wishes other people would stop being violent. When he mourns his dead wife, he confesses to his childhood friend that he thinks God has cursed him for his actions in the Civil war. The character John Calley has a few scenes and then leaves, with no hint of him returning to the story later. It's a bit muddled.

Wonder Woman 1984

So I watched the sequel on streaming, and I'm meh on it. It was nice seeing Steve Trevor again, but boy was his "resurrection" weird. Couldn't the magic of the Dreamstone bring him back to life without his soul/spirit taking over another man's body? Was it Quantum Leap style, where the original guy was off in a waiting room somewhere, or was he aware of being possessed, but helpless to stop Steve using his body for sex and everything else? Why the fuck would Patty Jenkins choose this creepy way to bring back Steve? And how come, in none of the arguments about renouncing the Dreamstone wishes, did Steve ever argue "I can't stay here forever, stealing this man's life from him"? Plus, the scene of Steve trying on different clothes just dragged way too long beyond being funny.

Meanwhile, I didn't much like either villain. Cheetah starting out being "Hollywood ugly" and teenage awkward, only to turn evil after she got her powers, was lame and trite. Plus she greedily got two wishes because she wished on the Dreamstone, then Maxwell Lord granted an extra wish after he got the powers. Most of the time, it seemed that Lord could only give one wish per person, which we saw when his son Alistair made a second wish during the TV broadcast. Speaking of which, it was stupid and hand-wavey for the satellite broadcast to somehow let Lord literally "touch" everyone with "particles". That's not how broadcasting works, no matter how the White House staff explain things in layman's terms to the President. It's not like any TV anchor can literally touch any viewer watching his/her news show.

Relapsed Carnivore

I tried for a while to be more vegetarian and meat-free lately due my fear that the meat industry was full of COVID, especially the stories about Tyson plants. Plus all the Beyond Meat and Impossible Burger stuff was in fashion, and that just made me realize that I could eat tofu and other soy-based products for a cheap alternative. Like any Asian American, I have lots of experience with tofu from childhood, so I don't avoid it like the plague. (Many white Americans seem to think tofu is terrible, but I'm sure they haven't had it cooked right. Of course it tastes bland when raw. That's the whole point of tofu--to have no flavor until you add your desired flavor to it! Then it'll soak up flavor wonderfully.)

So as I said, I tried going more meatless for a while, but I still felt hungry. And I couldn't often get to the Vietnamese grocery store to buy tofu or other stuff for recipes. But now I read an article (maybe it was on Vox) talking about how the soy industry is terrible for climate too, because farmers feed soy to their animals. So eating soy is no better than eating meat? I give up. I'll still be cautious about meat and boycott the hell out of Tyson, but I guess I'll alternate tofu with meat when I have a craving.

Happy Boxing Day

I had to work on Christmas, but had time afterward to watch the Italian live-action Pinocchio; it was dubbed in English with no subtitles, but the speakers had Italian accents. To be clear, this is the movie with Roberto Benigni as Geppetto; I didn't realize that Disney also has a new Pinocchio with Tom Hanks, and apparently Netflix is planning a Pinocchio too. Suddenly the puppet is in fashion.

Happy Solstice

I tried to see the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction tonight, but either the sky was too cloudy or even suburban lights are too bright to let me see "stars" in my area. I saw the moon and a fixed star up in the sky, but my constellation app said that was too high in the sky to be Jupiter. I guess it must have been Altair. I hope other people had more luck.

I was annoyed, though, that radio DJs kept calling it the "Christmas star" rather than the conjunction. If anything it should be the Solstice star. Winter festivals have always been centered around the solstice, before Christians absorbed the pagan customs for Christmas. Molly of Denali had an episode this year where Trini's birthday coincided with the solstice, so she got to enjoy festival fireworks that night.

Hopefully the year ahead will be better. Biden got his first vaccine shot today, and his administration will takeover Covid vaccine distribution in January. Also, due to legal threats, Fox News this weekend had to air fact-check videos to debunk all their election conspiracy mongering.

Content is King

Anyway, Disney decided to dump a lot of news on their investor day. They're ordering various Star Wars series, Marvel series, and animated TV shows for Disney+ so they'll be raising their price in March to pay for all this new content. I would be interested in the Lando series, but I don't really care about more obscure Star Wars characters. I guess it's not surprising for Disney to order Moana, Tiana and Zootopia tv shows, because there was a time in the 1990s when Disney had multiple Saturday morning cartoons based on recent hit movies. They always want to make sequels and such to maximize their brands. All their announcements just remind me of what a huge monopoly of intellectual property they have.

Meanwhile Warner Brothers recently announced that all their movies next year will be released on HBO Max and to the movie theaters at the same time. It's a bold, shocking move, and the theaters are all worried about the closing theatrical window. They have to get new content to survive.

Oh great

After the Supreme Court rejected the Paxton lawsuit, the Texas GOP suggested forming their own country with the other states that supported them. In other words, secession. That's obviously idiotic, but it prompted liberals on Daily Kos to say good riddance and write a parody diary about Joe Biden cutting Texas loose from all federal rights and privileges.

You fuckers! It wasn't ALL of Texas who wanted to secede. It wasn't ALL of Texas who sued to overturn the election. It was Paxton and the GOP. There are still plenty of Democrats in Texas who don't want to secede, and you talk about gleefully abandoning us to hell! Just this year Democrats were talking about turning Texas blue, like they would welcome us with open arms; we didn't succeed yet, but we are purple despite the gerrymandering. It's clear that the open arms are insincere, contingent on our delivering 38 electoral votes.

Stop shitting on Texas if you want to change things here. There's plenty of GOP dicks in your blue states that you can't get rid of either, like Susan Collins in Maine. So don't lecture us about Ted Cruz and Louie Gohmert when you've got treasonous traitors in your midst. Hypocritical bastards. This is why I don't join Daily Kos.

Political Madness

So our nutjob Attorney General Ken Paxton is trying to sue other states to overturn the election results. Way to make Texas look stupid again! I wish this rightwing idiot would learn some shame and resign. He's already indicted and accused of corruption, yet no one removes him from office. He might be angling for a pardon from Trump I guess.

And now a bunch of other states joined the ridiculous lawsuit! Why don't the rats leave the sinking ship instead of continuing to coddle Trump? Even if they want some pardon or other favor from Trump, why would they trust him to reciprocate? He turns on his allies all the time, like him souring on Fox News. He has no loyalty, only self-interest.

Chang'e Doll

Netflix apparently made some toy deals for its Over the Moon movie. Mattel has both plush and fashion dolls of the moon goddess and the heroine Fei Fei. I bought the cheaper, non-singing Chang'e doll because I loved her face, and her plastic hairpiece is removable. She looks cuter than the recent Mulan dolls that Hasbro made for Disney's live-action film. I don't like Hasbro's princess dolls in general because they have freakishly small shoulders and their dresses are too tight to fit any Barbie dolls with big breasts.

Unfortunately, the Chang'e doll has periwinkle blue legs and feet. I was planning to rebody her onto either a Barbie Made-to-Move doll or a WWE Superstars doll if the skin tone matched. The WWE doll (Eva Marie) is also by Mattel, so the muscular doll body is almost the same. When I compared them, the skin tone didn't match as well as I wanted, and the feet weren't the same size. The moon goddess's feet are bigger than Barbie's curvy feet, but smaller than the WWE feet. I took off her fantasy/spacey dress and tried on a Mulan dress that I already bought.

She looks amazing in it! This Mulan dress was made for the Hasbro doll, so it never fit my articulated Mulan doll (She was from the 1990s when Mattel made Disney princesses, and they used the big Barbie breast size). I had personally altered the dress by adding an extra strip of fabric and velcro to accommodate the Mulan doll. Anyway, so I tried this altered dress on Chang'e and it fits her perfectly! It covers up her blue legs, and it's loose enough on her chest that she could have worn Mulan's dress before I made the alteration. So now I guess I won't rebody Chang'e after all since I don't have a good skin tone match yet and found an outfit that hides her blue legs. This will do for now. Besides, my Mulan doll can wear her green Ping training clothes instead so she can be ready for battle. Meanwhile, the spacey dress actually fits my Moana doll pretty good.

Debunking Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving, PBS recently reaired their American Experience episode on The Pilgrims. The history special from 2015 heavily featured Roger Rees as William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony, and in fact the episode is dedicated to him after his death that year. He acts and reads out passages from Bradford's history in full Shakespearean mode like a tragic figure. But lest we glorify Bradford too much, the various historians point out his glaring omissions and mythmaking in his selective history of the colony. The show also includes Wampanoags who discuss the European plague that killed off most of the tribe, leaving the Patuxet area empty for the Plymouth settlers to move in. The Wampanoag chief at the time decided to make an alliance with the Englishmen in exchange for help with hostile tribes in the area.

A Native American perspective is welcome in dispelling the myths about the first Thanksgiving, and then examining the hypocrisy of how the supposedly peaceful Christian men murdered and beheaded other Indians who threatened them. Eventually the Plymouth settlers made enough of a profit from beaver trade that a much bigger colony of Puritans followed after them to take over more of New England. The myth of the Pilgrims as the founders of America grew to the point that 200 years later, Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving a holiday, making it part of our American folklore. Good to finally re-examine the past without the old biases.

TV Moves

Well the new TV season is slowly starting, after the pandemic delays. Some shows choose to address the pandemic and Black Lives Matter, while others choose not to, the better to provide escapism. So many channels are coming out with competing Christmas romcom movies, and I hear there will be another Disney Singalong special.

We've been getting teases about the new Batwoman lately, but still no explanation of how they'll write out Kate Kane. Maybe she'll disappear and go looking for her cousin Bruce Wayne, who's been gone all this time. But then how does the new girl become Batwoman and earn the trust of the Batcrew? Well, at least the writers won't still keep pushing Kate's romance with her ex Sophie, and maybe we can see more of Mary being awesome. Javicia Leslie was great in God Friended Me, so I do wish her well in the show.

Also, Black Lightning will end with the fourth season, making room for the Painkiller spinoff. I hope there will be a happy ending for Freeland. Just some hope and joy now that they joined the same universe as the other DC shows.

Herringford and Watts

I found a great historical mystery series about a pair of women detectives in Toronto, Canada. It's by Rachel McMillan, and it's set in the 1910s, like something in between Murdoch Mysteries and Frankie Drake Mysteries. Merinda Herringford and Jem Watts are fans of the Sherlock Holmes stories, so they often quote from it. They dress as men when out investigating, and they even have two girls serving as Baker Street Irregulars. Herringford and Watts also work with a police detective named Jasper Forth and a muckraking reporter named Ray DeLuca. It's whimsical and fun, and I love that Merinda often exclaims "Cracker jacks!" This is almost everything I wanted A Study in Honor to be--a genuine cozy mystery featuring a female Watson and Holmes. They are real detectives, not spies, and moreover, they do many pro bono cases to help women in need and build their reputation. They're not black though, nor lesbian, but one of their Irregulars is Asian. My only complaint is the author's frequent use of footnotes and the ambiguity about whether some characters are "real" historical people.

I read the first book, with the duo already established, and now I'm on the second book which is sort of a prequel, explaining how the ladies got started and first met Ray DeLuca, Kat and Mouse. Also, the author has used creative license to fashion morality officers into a Morality Squad with powers to arrest "incorrigible" women such as Herringford and Watts.

Speaking of lady detectives, I also recommend a present-day series about booksellers Molly and Emma. They have a lesbian romance while solving book-related mysteries, and it's charming. It's written by a couple writing under the pen name Lily Charles.

Purple States

Hooray for the Biden/Harris win! The networks were so slow to call it, and Trump is still threatening lawsuits. But a win is a win, and the celebrations were great. What a relief! The radio stations and stores started playing Christmas music too, and Trump's defeat definitely puts me in a more cheerful holiday mood.

I found this map of purple states that looks at historical trends. Nice to see Texas as very purple instead of red. I so wish we could get rid of the electoral college! Texas didn't get blue this time, probably because of the Republican gerrymandering, but also because of attack ads that called every democrat "radical" and "extreme." Regardless of the candidate's platform, every ad accused them of being anarchist liberals trying to abolish police. Heck, the governor threatened to freeze property taxes in order to punish liberal cities for trying to defund/reform police. They effectively scared voters off from even looking at moderate Democrats. The loss of straight ticket voting might have taken votes from downballot races too.

It's sad, but left wing candidates who would do well in California or New York don't do well here in Texas. We still have to figure out how to shift this battleground to blue. With the new Census I think the Republicans will gerrymander us even more. But Georgia managed to go blue and so did Arizona, so there's hope at least, and the Senate is still in play with the runoff elections.

Games and TV

In lighter news, there's a new Sherlock Holmes computer/phone game called Sherlock: Hidden Match-3 Cases. I'm playing it on my computer rather than my phone. It's pretty and bright, unlike the shitty macabre/horror themes that overtook all the hidden object games on Big Fish. The hidden object scenes have a timer, and objects can move locations, so they're not always in the same place each time you go to that scene. That makes it harder. If you can't win the hidden object scenes, you have a choice to play Match 3 instead, though those games also go to harder levels. Still, I can usually win them after a couple of tries, then it's just a matter of having enough energy before you have to stop playing for the day.

I mostly like the story, especially how they make Watson handsome and slim like Jude Law; at last the Nigel Bruce-type Watson is gone! However the game gets a little confusing because it keeps opening new quests on the left hand column, so you can easily start a new story before you've finished the old one. I'm currently doing both "Silver Blaze" and "Alice in Wonderland" at the same time.

I recently watched the Netflix movie Over the Moon. It's an all Asian cast telling a Chinese story about the legendary moon goddess Chang'e. It's a sad story of lost love and mourning, but apparently Chang'e is not alone on the moon. She has a companion Jade Rabbit who can perform magic spells. So he's turned all of the goddess's tears into animate beings called Lunarians who live as adoring fans to keep her company. The weird Lunarian society was too flashy and neon bright, but I guess I'm not the child demographic they're targeting. I also couldn't figure what species the green Gobi was, since he clearly wasn't the Space Dog. It turns out he's a Pangolin. I mean, it's an okay kids' film, but I didn't really connect with it, being Vietnamese and not familiar with this moon goddess. I hope we get more Asian movie and TV content soon.

Election counts

Well I finally got a good long sleep last night. I don't know when the counts will be done, but the AP election map says Biden has 264 electoral votes. Other maps from other places show a different number, so I'm not sure if they're being extra cautious or not. Regardless, they should finish counting. The polls were so wrong, because we didn't win the Senate, and lost some House seats. Maybe the Georgia runoff will help. But it will be so much better just to get a sane, competent adminstration working on the pandemic and all the other crises. 

Locally, Texas disappointed by not going blue again despite all the early votes and lawsuits. I wish we were like Nebraska, where we split the electoral votes so that you could see it's both blue and red, depending on where you live in the state. I was glad that Collin Allred and Marc Veasey won reelection, so we do still have some Dems. Wendy Davis didn't win her race though. When I went to bed on election night Candace Valenzuela had a big lead in votes, but now it seems her opponent got back on top and they're still counting. I guess all those TV ads calling Democrats extreme liberals worked on Texas voters. So sad. We'll have to try again next election and hope that all the new voters this year will keep voting, not go back to apathy.

Oh, another thing I learned: Vietnamese immigrants like my father tend to be staunchly Republican because they are anti-Communist due to the war they left behind. Fox News wingnuts have called Dems Communist and Socialist for a long time, so that's what influences my Dad I guess. I always wondered why he'd side with a party that is so white and racist. But the younger Asian Americans are more likely to be Democrats like me. I guess it's sort of like how Cuban immigrants remain anti-Communist because of Castro, so they don't vote like the rest of Hispanic/Latino voters.

No Justice

Well they stole yet another seat on the Supreme Court, the brazen hypocrites. There's talk about expanding the court so we can fill more seats, but I'm not sure if Biden, let alone more conservative Dems in Congress, will follow through. Can't get ahead of ourselves, anyway. We have to win this election first, then right this ship and get control of this pandemic.

Early voting is looking good, so much so that Bloomberg is buying ads in Texas to help out. The lawsuits and court rulings come so fast that I can't keep track. It's important for Texas Dems to win this year so we can have a say in the redistricting after the Census results.

Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble had some kind of hack recently, so that I couldn't connect and buy ebooks from the store for days. I think it's fixed now, and they're offering a coupon to make it up to members. That's nice, though I worry that eventually they're gonna shut down, and I have all my ebooks with them.

Vote for Change

I voted on Saturday. There was actually a line, though it moved fairly quickly. The early vote numbers are amazing this year in Texas. If only the courts had given us more wins against voter suppression, but I guess they've found workarounds such as the drive-through voting.

Even Cornyn decided to pretend that he disagreed with Trump, instead of voting for all his policies. Fucking bastard. Too little too late. What a coward. His TV ads also make cynical use of a sexual assault survivor, with Cornyn taking credit for a bipartisan bill that passed. Fuck him.

I finished watching Attenborough's new Netflix film. It includes footage of him over the years, contrasted with statistics about how the planet changed. The outlook is grim, but Attenborough ends on a hopeful note with tons of suggestions about how to combat climate change and reverse the damage. I do hope Biden can get us back on track with the rest of the world.

Vote Early

Well early voting starts in Texas today. I got mixed up about my work schedule and originally thought I would have the day off, but actually my day off was yesterday. So I'll have to wait until the weekend to vote.

I have seen some political ads on TV, and the Republicans are really trying to paint Democratic candidates as extremist liberals out to destroy the country. I heard that a court ruled we could have straight-ticket ballots, but I don't know if they actually had time to make the change to the ballots. The governor is still trying to limit drop-off boxes for absentee ballots; a court ruled against him, but he appealed. Just gotta keep screwing up the election to the last minute, huh?

Meanwhile, I saw the Yellow Rose movie last week. It's about a Filipina girl trying to be a country singer, but then her mom gets arrested by ICE, and she has to deal with being undocumented. Rose has an aunt that she tries to stay with, but the uncle doesn't want her there, so she has to look for other safe spaces to stay. Her boyfriend also gets her in touch with an immigration lawyer for advice. Country singer Dale Watson even plays himself, becoming Rose's mentor and helping her to make a demo tape. Sad, with nice songs.

Enola Holmes

This Netflix movie is very enjoyable despite its deviations from Sherlock Holmes canon. I've never read the original books by Nancy Springer, but the heroine is very likeable and clever, if a little naive at times. I was afraid that Helena Bonham Carter as the absent mother would be too quirky and wacky, but she was actually quite nice and used in small doses where appropriate. Wikipedia says the mother Eudoria left to live with the Romani, but this movie gives her a more compelling reason to disapear; she's a militant suffragist involved in making bombs, and no doubt thinks her daughter is safer without her.

Enola wakes on her 16th birthday in 1884 to find her mother gone without explanation. Her older brothers Mycroft and Sherlock come to the family estate, shocked to find it rundown, due to Eudoria having lied about upkeep expenses in order to squirrel money away for other purposes. Mycroft resolves to send Enola away to a finishing school, while tasking Sherlock to find their mother. The headmistress is modern enough to have a steampunk car, yet her ideas about women's education remain patriarchal and she even slaps Enola for talking back to her. Enola finds cryptic clues and money left by her mother, so she dresses up as a boy and runs away in the night. While escaping on a train to London, she meets another runaway, a young lord Tewksbury escaping his own family.

Hellscape

Still kind of stunned and numb about RBG's death. Fuck 2020. And with Trump recently blathering on about possible Supreme Court nominees, it looks dire. But Ted Cruz did say that he didn't want to be on the court, and there might be some senators we can pressure to hold the line against voting on a nominee so close to the election.

Meanwhile the issue of mail-in voting in Texas is still going though the courts. I am pessimistic that we'll get a favorable ruling (that's not appealed further) before election day. So I'm planning to early vote (as I always do) with a mask this time.

I'm told the Emmys are tomorrow as well as a fucking football game at the stadium in Arlington because Texas is stupid about coronavirus still.

September Rain

It's already Labor Day Weekend, and the hot weather is finally being broken up by thunderstorms. I guess this is what passes for fall in Texas.

Disney's new Mulan is now available for streaming. I wanted to see it, but $30 is a steep price to pay for one movie. I mean, I guess it's a good price for a family with kids, especially if you can see it multiple times, not just once, but you still have to stay subscribed to Disney+ to keep it. Also, I read that Disney plans on keeping it available for a month or so, putting it back in the vault for a month, then releasing it again in December without the $30 price tag. What kind of strategy is that? And if you paid the $30 in September, does that mean you can't watch it during November when it's unavailable to everyone else?

Meanwhile other movies are opening this weekend such as Tenet, but I don't care about Christopher Nolan. I did see that some theaters are showing Chadwick Boseman's 42 movie about Jackie Robinson too. I'm thinking of seeing the new Bill & Ted, but should probably rent the previous films first.

Wakanda Forever

I was stunned to hear about Chadwick Boseman's sudden death. Well, it was sudden to the public, since only his family knew he was sick for years. It's shocking to think that he continued to make films while still fighting cancer. I hope he didn't overwork himself in his quest to make the most of his career. Such a tragedy that he died so young.

He made a huge impact, though, and I was touched by the public outpouring of grief. I heard that some children held funerals for Black Panther with their toys, and I watched the ABC tribute special about him too. It's good to see fan appreciation for Chadwick, because I remember some people thinking that T'Challa was somewhat boring and less interesting than the complex villain Killmonger. Playing the hero can look deceptively easy and understated, but it's so important to grounding a film.

Boseman left a great legacy of other movies as well, and I hope he will continue to inspire generations to come. He certainly made the most of his brief time.

Personal History of David Copperfield

Most movie theaters have reopened now, and I went to see the new David Copperfield movie starring Dev Patel. I enjoy the colorblind casting, because too many period films try to pretend that history is all-white, excluding minority actors from these roles. Britain has had immigrants for centuries, and it needs to recognize them as authentic Brits too, able to participate in the U.K.'s cultural heritage. (I wonder when the full-length Mr. Malcolm's List will come out.)

Anyway I've never read the Dickens book, and apparently the movie's plot is much simplified; Dickens wrote his novels as serials, and I'd think you'd need a miniseries to cover all the meanderings of his plots. Dev Patel is great in the role, showing how David adapts to his changing circumstances by letting people give him nicknames. He suffers through many trials and tribulations, but feels real affection for his eccentric found families.

Meanwhile, I've been enjoying this incredible computer game called Criminal Case, by Pretty Simple. It's on Facebook, but also various appstores such as Android or Apple. I started out with the Grimsborough version, but I did find the murders too gory there, so I moved on to the "Mysteries of the Past" edition. It's so good, and the characters are diverse even though it's a steampunk world called Concordia (a stand-in for New York City), with a police squad based out of a flying blimp. So much fun, and I was able to choose an Asian avatar after the first few levels, unlike other games that make you wait. It's a hidden object game, but you also get to interview suspects and investigate clues to solve the mystery, so you really feel like a detective. I'm also pleased with the storylines about immigration, police corruption, and how people were racist against both Irish and blacks. That's how America really was, before suddenly Irish people "became white".

Conventions

I tried to watch some of the Democratic convention last week, but the TV commentators kept skipping parts to hold pointless discussions/analysis. I couldn't find the pure feed until it was too late. Congrats to Joe and Kamala anyway.

I'm not going to try to watch the Republican convention this week. If Trump is really going to do his speeches and campaigning from the White House, then it's disgustingly illegal. He really thinks he's a king, free to flout any laws.

Online, people have been complaining about Melania Trump redoing the rose garden, but I don't give a fuck. It's just a garden, and I heard the trees were replanted elsewhere. Why are people wasting their outrage on crap like that? I'm worried about the Post Office, the pandemic, the police brutality and racism, the fucking corruption at every level... Now we got hurricanes coming too. Feels like 2020 will never end.

I got to deal with the flood of fundraising emails too. I can't afford to donate to everyone, so I got to focus on local Texas races, to try to flip this state blue.

Political maneuvers

I'm happy that Joe Biden picked Kamala Harris for VP. The choice was dragging out too long, with rumors of an anti-Kamala faction of advisors trying to talk him out of it. Glad to see he didn't listen. We don't need petty infighting; we need unity. The Democratic convention will be next week, though I'll be working too much to see much of it.

Meanwhile Trump has been flailing but beneath all the manic bluster, there was news about some kind of peace deal between Israel and the UAE called the Abraham Accords. Some news sites make a big deal about it being historic, while others don't even mention it at all. Apparently Israel has agreed not to annex the West Bank, but I'm skeptical of any peace deal brokered by that idiot Jared. Also I read that Netanyahu still keeps talking like this is a temporary delay, not an outright abandonment of his plan. Is this some last ditch effort to save his position as Prime Minister? He was facing a trial for bribery and corruption, and I heard that his incompetent coronavirus response has led to widespread protests in Israel. Please can something oust him at last?

I wouldn't call this a real peace deal with real concessions from Israel. How about an agreement to stop the illegal settlements and give back land? How about an end to the blockade of the Gaza Strip? How about implementing the two-state solution at long last? That's what would impress me.

Diverse TV and games

I never read The Baby-Sitters Club books as a girl. I think I was the wrong age for them, or I thought that the protagonists were all white (in that age when fiction typically just had a blonde, a redhead, and brunette for variety, or used Italians for ethnicity). I was never aware of Claudia Kishi being Japanese American or that she broke Asian stereotypes by being fashionable, artsy, and bad at school. The closest character I ever saw to Claudia was Lisa Turtle on Saved by the Bell, but Lisa was black.

I watched the Netflix show out of curiosity and was appropriately awed by Claudia Kishi's style and coolness. I even watched the Claudia Kishi documentary afterward to see all the other Asian Americans who grew up with her as a role model while I was missing out. She is indeed awesome, and the show overall is great too, updated with more girls of color and modern issues, like standing up for trans rights. I was also touched by the story of Claudia's grandmother Mimi having a stroke, then remembering her internment in Manzanar.

Rest in Peace

So sad to hear about the passing of John Lewis this weekend. He was a great man and a civil rights hero. Why not a statue of him instead of all these Confederates? A pity that the Supreme Court recently ruled against the voting rights of ex-felons in Florida. Just a reminder that John Roberts is a fucking conservative, despite him voting for the good side on some issues.

Meanwhile Trump continues to be an imperial fascist, sending federal troops to invade Portland and trying to cut off all funding for testing and contract tracing. He really thinks he can make the pandemic disappear by not letting the public get tested. (While he gets tests on demand for himself and his staff.)

Congress is trying to hash out another pandemic relief bill. I don't know how much we can get through the Senate, let alone Trump's veto, but people need help.

At least the Texas primary runoff elections are done now. Fundraising for the general election is on, though we still don't know if we're going to be allowed to mail-in vote for November. The Post Office as ever remains in danger.

Under a Cloud

Early voting is open for the July primaries/runoffs in Texas. I voted last week. I wonder if there will be crowds on election day or if people will skip the primaries altogether to avoid another spike of cases. We can only hope that courts make a decision about mail-in voting before the November election.

I was shocked to hear that somebody toppled a statue of Frederick Douglass on Saturday. Revenge for the Confederate statues I suppose. Meanwhile, the Washington football team is now in talks about changing their name, though they still don't promise anything. About five years ago, the sci-fi show Minority Report was set in D.C. in 2065, and they changed the name of the team to Red Clouds. I hope the real life team finally changes its name.

I'm glad to hear that an advertiser boycott is forcing Facebook to finally start taking action against hate speech. They claimed they didn't want to censor free speech, all while ignoring the real harm in letting Nazis take over the internet.

Independence

Fireworks are going off in my neighborhood, and it's almost the end of July 4th. Seems relatively quiet for a Texas summer holiday. Abbott finally made masks mandatory for most counties. If only he'd learned his lesson early. Still not sure why he doesn't try to rein his Lt. Governor in, make him lie low for the rest of the pandemic. Meanwhile, no use expecting Trump to change his tune; same old shit at his ego-stroking rallies.

On July 1st, Netanyahu didn't go through with annexing the West Bank. There's speculation as to why, including the Covid crisis in Israel, Arab neighbors, etc. Hopefully the rest of the world can continue to pressure him to abandon the plan. Maybe Netanyahu can eventually be forced out of office by his corruption scandal. I have to hope.

I've been reading The Westing Game lately. I remembered reading it before as a kid, though I forgot most of the plot, except for America the Beautiful. Sam Westing being super-patriotic and using fireworks to burn his whole mansion to the ground is weird, though this time I was struck by the cast of characters being so diverse for 1973. There's an important theme of feminism too, with Angela Wexler struggling to become an independent, whole person instead of just a doctor's wife, Turtle becoming a business/stock market whiz with help from Sam Westing. Apparently the book has been adapted as a movie before, and I'd like to see it if I can find it available anywhere.

More Holmes lawsuits

It seems that the Conan Doyle Estate is back to suing people again. These extortionists regularly like to claim ownership of Sherlock Holmes in order to coerce TV, movie, and literary people to pay "license fees" for using the character. Back in 2013, Sherlockian Leslie Klinger learned that the Estate was trying to block one of his planned books, so he decided to sue the Estate to get Holmes declared a public domain character. The suit is chronicled on his Free Sherlock website, but basically Klinger won the case and the appeal, so Holmes and his related world are public domain.

Now in 2020, the Estate is trying to sue Netflix about a new Enola Holmes movie. This movie is based on a book series by Nancy Springer about Sherlock's younger sister Enola, but the Estate is only just now suing because it sees there's money in this. Also, they've changed tactics due to their previous defeat in court. The Estate used to argue that Sherlock evolved over time throughout all 60 stories, so because 10 of the original stories were still in copyright, the character as a whole should remain in copyright. This was rubbish because Conan Doyle was never that consistent in writing Sherlock. (The 10 cases are the Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, published after 1923. That's the cutoff year for copyright in the United States.)

In Klinger's lawsuit the judge ruled that while Holmes is public domain, the Casebook stories are still in copyright.  So any characteristic of Holmes found exclusively in this Casebook is not in public domain yet. That's what the Conan Doyle Estate is arguing now, claiming that Netflix's movie and Springer's books feature traits of Sherlock that are only found in the Casebook stories. It's flimsy, but they hope this will work based on the prior precedent. They're so greedy, trying to get as much money as they can before all the stories fall out of copyright in 2023.

Meanwhile, movie releases are getting shifted again, with Mulan going to August now. It's so frustrating because it did have a movie premiere in March just before theatres shut down, but most of the country hasn't seen it yet. We'll have to wait some more I guess.

I knew it

Not all Supreme Court rulings will be good, especially with this court. They already ruled to deport asylum seekers, and now they ruled against hearing the vote-by-mail case. Ignorant people are claiming that the Texas Democrats jumped the gun by trying to skip the 5th circuit. But we have primary elections in July, and it's kind of an emergency to get a definitive ruling NOW before we have a disastrous election as seen in other states.

I mean, the hospitals here are so overwhelmed with cases that Gov. Abbott finally decided to reimpose some restrictions, by closing bars and making restaurants go back to 50% capacity. If it's that bad, then why the fuck can't we vote by mail in July to prevent more infections? But I was always pessimistic, and it's probably too late anyway now to print up enough mail-in ballots for the primary. We just have to hope that the 5th Circuit doesn't slow-walk this case so that we don't have time to prepare for the November election.

This is all Abbott's fault for reopening in May instead of waiting until June, and then, continuing to reopen wider despite the huge spike in cases every single day. (He had claimed that with each phase, he would stop to evaluate the situation, but no, he never did pause until after it became a severe crisis.) It seems only after Trump threatened to pull federal funding for testing, that the governor and our motherfucker senators realized that "Hey, we need to do something!" "Maybe I should encourage people to wear masks. Maybe I should let the local cities and counties do stricter stay-at-home rules, instead of propping up Trump's shit narrative?"

So because of that, we have to reverse the reopening I guess. I wonder what July 4th is going to be like? I'm working that day so I won't be out and about. I wonder if the rightwing loonies are going to be out partying in defiance of new restrictions? What's it gonna take for Abbott and Paxton to voluntarily let us do vote-by-mail? A fucking disastrous July primary? Ugh.

Typical

So because Trump threatened to end federal funding for Covid testing sites, a bunch of Texas officials panicked and wanted that funding continued. That's all well and good, but Governor Abbott talked about how Texas is going through a severe crisis now. Even though he's the fucking one who pushed forward with reopening quickly, and he's been steadily claiming that the higher infection rates were just due to higher testing. He and the Lt. Governor even scolded local cities and counties for trying to enforce tighter stay-at-home restrictions. So now we end up with huge spikes in infections, and our hospitals will be overloaded. Fucking dumbass hypocrites! You're the ones who made this crisis, not the Black Lives Matter protestors.

Meanwhile, some animated shows wisely decided to stop having the white actors play black and biracial parts, and the Bojack creator reiterated his mea culpa bout casting Alison Brie as Diane Nguyen. Bastard knew that he was doing yellowface and felt guilty about it, but never stopped. Then he never had Vietnamese writers on staff, even after he realized the problem of ignoring her race. Stop whitewashing characters or relying on that stupid "cast the best actress for the part" colorblindness. Nobody believes white people who misguidedly talk about about "I don't see race." It's there. It's always there, no matter how you try to minimize the issue.

Also, apparently a surprising number of sitcoms had blackface episodes, which they now are ashamedly removing. Even if their intent in these episodes was satire, the fact that they kept going to the well again and again shows comic writers getting into lazy tropes and feeling morally superior about being avant-garde and defiant against "political correctness." How about you just be human? How about you think about your white privilege, sitting in a room of mostly white writers congratulating yourselves for not being as bad as "the real racists"? They'd rather get a tone-deaf laugh than be sensitive to their ignorance.

I did in the past enjoy Tropic Thunder, with RDJ as an Australian actor in blackface. Their defense has always been that it was done ironically to lampoon a crazy, pretentious, method actor who thinks that this is "what they're allowed to do on occasion." But if you have to go that far to explain the joke, doesn't that defeat the purpose a little? And isn't the excuse of "my black friends told me it was okay," a little too similar to "I'm not racist; I have black friends"?

I think about it a little like how Asian parts still get cast with white actors, and fucking Scarlett Johansson defiantly claimed that she's such an awesome actress that she should be allowed to play anybody and anything, ignoring the fact that Asian women aren't allowed to play anybody and anything. There's barely anything written for us that's a lead role. It's the theft we mind, stealing what few things even belong to us. That's what made Crazy Rich Asians such an important film, and what made Disney casting Mulan correctly so meaningful. Typical Hollywood would have rewritten Rachel Chu as a white woman, or written a white savior/love interest into Mulan. It's so rare that they let us have the whole experience without watering it down with a white point of view. Typical Hollywood is what that Bojack creator did to Diane Nguyen, trying so hard to not play to stereotypes that he erased her race, made her culture invisible. At least he owned up to his mistakes, however belatedly.

Happy Juneteenth

Suddenly a lot of companies are jumping on the bandwagon for Juneteenth, to try to show solidarity with Black Lives Matter. Some content will be free and there will be TV specials to celebrate. This may be an opportunistic move for these networks and brands, but at least they're trying not to be actively offensive like Trump and his Tulsa rally.

I was pleased also to hear about protesters tearing down statues of Christopher Columbus too. Maybe this might be the year that Columbus Day can really be universally changed to Indigenous Peoples Day? Meanwhile the Supreme Court decided to keep DACA for now. I know it's on a procedural technicality, but it does mean keep the Dreamers from being deported for now. Trump is really so incompetent, he'll not get it done correctly before the election. This ruling and the other one on LGBTQ discrimination helps give us hope and boost our morale, so we can keep fighting for more.

Meanwhile, some movie theaters are reopening today, though it looks to be Dallas and Plano first before the rest of Texas opens in July. Cinemark is going to show old classics like The Goonies and have low prices to attract people back. Then everything's riding on the new releases like Mulan and Tenet. I hope things won't get delayed again.

Happy Pride

The Supreme Court ruling on LGBTQ discrimination was an unexpected bit of good news! Conservatives were raging and venting about the betrayal, and that only makes the victory sweeter.

Meanwhile the BLM protests continue, and more statues are coming down. Juneteenth is this Friday, and some companies are saying they'll make it a paid holiday. Trump also moved his Tulsa rally to Saturday instead. Couldn't handle the criticism, I guess. They don't want him there either, and it's sure to cause a spike in new infections.

I've been reading more mysteries, and then recently saw a recommendation for The Westing Game, which I read as a kid, but I've forgotten most of the plot. I'll have to reread it and see if I can figure it out more easily or not. Wonder if Raskin's other mystery/puzzle books are as good too.

Good riddance to Confederates

Ugh, Donald Trump came to Dallas yesterday for a fundraiser. I try to avoid news of him, so it was a shock when I read that he was in Dallas for some kind of stunt about race and police brutality. Totally useless of course, and excluding black voices. I guess the Republicans are panicking about Texas turning blue this year. (But he's going to go to an even more useless rally in Oklahoma next week on Juneteenth in Tulsa of all places! The gall. The fucking unmitigated gall.)

Meanwhile, some DFW counties have voted to take down some Confederate memorials this week. The local news says they want to get them dismantled and stored away before people vandalize or topple them. (It's been inspiring to see other statues come down with people power, and even NASCAR decided to ban Confederate flags and symbols.) I've been shocked that the Black Lives Matter protests have spread not just to Europe or Australia, but also Syria and Japan. Palestinians are even showing solidarity while they're suffering in Israel, and facing annexation in July.

Unfortunately LGBT pride month is getting overshadowed, and they can't have parades like normal. It will be virtual I guess, or in solidarity with the BLM protests. There's also a new acronym that I've been seeing lately, called BIPOC for Black, Indigenous, People of Color. I thought black and indigenous people were already included as people of color, but I guess they want further emphasis. Anyway, voting in Georgia's primary was a disaster, which makes me fear for what the elections in Texas will be if we don't get vote by mail. Republicans really want us to risk our lives in the middle of the pandemic.

I heard that voter registration was down due to COVID-19, but that the BLM protests created a surge. I hope that will continue. I haven't heard anything about the Census lately. Did they finish that?

Stay Safe

Texas Democrats have been holding a virtual convention this week. I haven't been able to watch because I'm back at work now. Even when I am home at night, I'm too fatigued from all the disturbing news lately about racism, coronavirus, and the militaristic response from the police to watch the Convention too. Of course I'll vote in November, and I've got to donate some funds for our candidates in runoffs. I think we should be able to vote by mail, but I think the Texas courts are going to continue ruling against us. Not like the Republicans are gonna help us out in time for the election.

George Floyd is going to have 3 different services in three different cities. Yesterday's memorial was Minneapolis, then he'll go to his place of birth in North Carolina Saturday, then he'll come to Houston where he lived most of his life. It's almost like a nationwide funeral, a high-ranking official lying in state. It's a tragedy that he was murdered, but his death has become a symbol of so much more than just himself, and there's hope that real change and police reform might come of these protests.

I do really hope that this movement succeeds, and that it's not just co-opted by the brands/franchises pretending that they really care. We hoped that we could get gun reform before due the school shootings, but we're still waiting on that until the election.

Disgusted

Some Texas water parks are now open, and there's been obnoxious commercials for them lately. How can that be safe? (Especially since gyms are supposed to keep their shower facilities closed right now.) Who's gonna wear a mask or keep social distancing in a water park? Even if they check people's temperature before allowing them in, they may be asymptomatic but passing on the virus through the water. This whole reopening thing is totally rushed and irrational. We don't have adequate testing and contract tracing for this, but Republicans are so eager to restart the economy rather than pass another stimulus bill to help people.

The economy's so damn precious, but not people's health. I keep seeing people in grocery stores not wearing masks either, apparently thinking everything's safe now. I guess it depends on which city you live in as well. Plus apparently troublemakers are taking advantage of the Floyd protests to loot and vandalize, and the police come out in riot gear rather than try to de-escalate the situation. It's a powder keg.

It's June now. We're only halfway through the year.

Black Lives Matter

The nationwide protests and marches about George Floyd have come to DFW. It's upsetting that police brutality continues so frequently and regularly that one outrage is followed quickly by another, forcing people to choose between pandemic safety and protesting the horrific murder in broad daylight. (Texas is technically reopened, though we should still be social distancing. I do understand that in the oppressive Texas heat, wearing masks would make it uncomfortable and even muffle the chants of "I can't breathe.") It's a trade off, what you're willing to risk.

I just don't understand the police's obstinancy; if there was enough evidence to fire all four officers on Monday, then why not arrest and charge them immediately on that day? Why delay and only arrest one man after all the nights of protest?

I did follow the news, and was glad that Joe Biden made a statement about the "open wound" of the country. He made sure to name other victims, not just Floyd, and trace the "original sin" back 400 years. I hope that his sincerity will help make up for his recent gaffe speaking to a black audience. He means well, and certainly will follow through on his promise to seek justice.

Meanwhile, the coward in the White House tried to deflect entirely from Minneapolis by withdrawing from the World Health Organization and blaming China again for the coronavirus. Fuck him and his stupid war with Twitter too. They should have deleted him long ago, but they give him special treatment because he's "newsworthy" and they don't even delete the tweets inciting violence. I hear there was a military drone flying overhead of the protests for a while too. It's so fucked up.

Allegiance coming to streaming

There's a new streaming service called Broadway on Demand, and this Friday, they're going to have the Allegiance musical available. Apparently this Broadway service has a free tier, so I might sign up for that if they have enough interesting shows I want to see. By coincidence I had recently listened to my Allegiance soundtrack CD again, and I do like several songs in it, especially the ones sung by Lea Salonga.

The fictional story of the Kimura family is somewhat similar to the historical story of the Uno family, in PBS's Asian Americans special. The Uno family were split apart not only by the Japanese internment camps, but also by questions of loyalty. Disillusioned by American racism, Buddy Uno had moved to Japan to become a war correspondent, losing his American citizenship and making Japanese propaganda. Meanwhile, part of his family were in the camps, while two of his brothers enlisted in the U.S. army and publically called their brother Buddy a traitor in an interview. So it was like a Civil War tragedy, pitting brother against brother. Anyway, I didn't know of the Uno family's history when I watched Allegiance years ago, so maybe rewatching it will add new meaning to the conflict of the fictional Kimura family, where brother and sister become estranged.

I still have some ambivalence about George Takei, but he has a small role. I do think the rest of the cast and production are worthy of being seen.

Staycation TV

So I was shocked to hear that Ruby Rose was leaving Batwoman, and they were going to recast her. People are speculating about why she's leaving, such as her stunt injury or the long working hours, etc. I just hope she'll go on to other good things, and that they get a good actress to replace her. The last few episodes of the show have been kind of bleak, with Alice killing Mouse, and Jake Kane being so mad. I wish he would get written out of the show! I liked the stepmother character more.

Meanwhile, Supergirl also ended early, and I don't understand why Brainy had to kill himself. Why didn't he just load the virus like the original plan? Would that have been faster, so he didn't need to stay in the lethal room so long? And why did that one goddess not get sucked into the shrink bottle? It's getting too convoluted. I'm glad that Kara and Lena finally made up and are on the same team again. Hopefully, the rift is gone for good, so next season can be less frustrating.

Speaking of frustrating TV, I stumbled onto a two-hour Youtube rant of why BBC's Sherlock show is bad, with long digressions about how Stephen Moffat ruined other shows like Doctor Who and Jekyll with the same writing/plotting flaws. I couldn't always follow what he said, having not seen the other shows, but I did love how he talked about the original books as well as episodic adaptations like Elementary. Most of the commentators agree that they hated season 4 and now looking back, they realize they were strung along with promises of a resolution, only to get mocked. Complicated plot twists can work, but the mystery has to make sense in the end to satisfy the viewers. It's why people loved Knives Out and even rewatched it so many times.

Asian Americans

May is AAPI heritage month, so PBS has been airing their new Asian Americans special this week. It covers a lot of fascinating history that I hadn't heard of before, and it focuses on many immigrant communities such as Filipinos, Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, etc. The episodes are narrated alternatingly by Daniel Dae Kim and Tamlyn Tomita.

It does cover Anna May Wong and Hollywood's practice of yellowface, then later mentions Margaret Cho's sitcom, and The Joy Luck Club, but mostly the show spends its time on political, social, and legal issues about citizenship and discrimination. In the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis, a number of Filipino people lived in a human zoo, on exhibit for the curious tourists to watch scripted "savage" culture such as dog-eating. Meanwhile, Chinese immigrants come for the Gold Rush but ended up staying as railroad workers, and other laborers. Because of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the fact that they are denied citizenship, the Chinese are forced to essentially become undocumented immigrants, forging identity papers and trying not to get deported. Being unable to vote also meant that they had to sue for legal rights, such as the case of Wong Kim Ark establishing birthright citizenship. Unfortunately, because U.S. legal rights were so often tied to either black or white race, that created contradictory treatment for people of yellow or brown races, trying to figure out their rights with respect to that dichotomy.

The episode on WW2 covers the Japanese internment camps through the saga of the divided Uno family, but also points out that Korean Americans were angry about Japan's imperial occupation of Korea. Philip Ahn, a Korean American, plays Japanese villains in propaganda movies while his sister Susan enlists in the Navy and becomes a gunnery officer. After the war, when China becomes communist, the McCarthy era makes Asian Americans fearful of being targeted as the enemy, just as the Japanese were during the war. Asians in general are looked on as sneaky and suspicious, perpetual foreigners who can't be trusted no matter how many years we've lived in America.

In the 1960s, Asian Americans become inspired by the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Movement to speak up and to unify. Filipinos join with Hispanic farm workers to strike for better working conditions, while college students on campus form a Third World Liberation Front to protest for ethnic studies classes. In the 70s, with the collapse of the American auto industry, a lot of people blame the Japanese for putting them out of work. As usual, white Americans can't tell us apart, so someone brutally murdered Vincent Chin, mistaking him for Japanese. (Not that murder would have been okay if Chin actually were Japanese, or in anyway connected to a Japanese automaker.) I was too young to have heard of Vincent Chin at the time, but apparently this hate crime attracted widespread outrage. Diverse activists have a vision of a Rainbow Coalition promoting peace and harmony among all races. However, we're far from such a utopia. In the wake of Rodney King's beating, racial tensions arise when Koreans and blacks are pitted against each other during the L.A. riots, instead of working against their mutual enemy, the racist whites committing police brutality.

Even today minorities are still trying to join together and put differences aside for the greater good. And we're trying with our white liberal allies to ensure that we vote out all these Trumpists and sycophants trying to kill us before the election. I read a news article that Governor Abbott and the indicted Lt. Governor are claiming that their reopen orders override all the local shelter-in-place orders by cities and counties. Republicans say they want local control, except when it's democratic officials in our big cities trying to save us. Fuck them!

More Historical Fiction

So I watched the Thousand Pieces of Gold virtual screening and it was pretty good. It reminded me a little bit of the Iron Road miniseries. I liked seeing Rosalind Chao in a lead role, and it's supposedly based on a true story. Actually the film is based on a novel by an author who researched the life of Polly Bemis née Lalu Nathoy. In the movie, Lalu is sold to America to be a bride for saloonkeeper Hong King in a remote mining town. He tries to prostitute her out, too, but she refuses and threatens to kill herself rather than be a whore. Hong King backs down, and she works diligently to earn her freedom while being courted by two different men who want to rescue her. A black man, possibly a former slave, even tells her that slavery is illegal now since the Civil War.

The Devil You Know

Last night I had a dream, which I only recall pieces of, and there was a villain in it. For some reason the phrase "the devil you know" kept repeating in my head, enough that I remembered it when I woke up. I did recently read a book with that phrase in it, too, because the protagonist chose to stay with a blackmailing, disloyal literary agent rather than try to find someone new. She had lost a lot of clients recently due to her manipulative schemes falling apart, so the narrator now had power to force her to sign a new contract that would make her behave better to him. He also had said that some of her aggressive behavior did actually help get him better book sales, so he'd rather stay with the devil he knew.

But anyway, I was thinking of this phrase in relation to Trump, wondering if that accounts for all the sycophant Republicans who remain loyal to him despite him stabbing them in the back, such as Ted Cruz or Jeff Sessions. It's crazy that they cling to his chaos, instead of impeaching him and getting Mike Pence instead, so they could continue their Republican agenda, appoint conservative justices, etc., yet not be a laughing stock to the world. I don't understand that loyalty, especially lately to reopen America at the risk of their own health. But he's used rhetoric like the pandemic is a war, and that people have to be willing to be casualties out of patriotism. It's crazy, but I remember how Bush used the Iraq War and "stay the course" slogans to convince the country give him a 2nd term, instead of voting him out. Was that also "the devil you know" reasoning? I don't know, I just know that the current "devil" is killing us to save the economy, and he's so erratic there's no telling what he'll do next. It's an outrage that he gets constant coronavirus tests on demand for his whole entourage, but he won't distribute tests to everyone else or wear a mask to set an example.

Fuck, we got to vote for Biden, and get the Senate. Justin Amash talks about a third party run, which is not helpful. Someday there may be a viable third party in the US, but now is not the time, when the country itself is in danger, and the rule of law is flouted constantly. We need to right the ship, change the course... God, I need a vacation. (I've been continuing to work in an essential industry all through this pandemic.) I do have a vacation already scheduled, fortunately. I can't really travel anywhere, but I don't care as long as I can rest, then come back fresh to the fight ahead.

Open-Ended

So apparently the Texas governor is okay with movie theaters reopening in May at 25% capacity, but I doubt a lot of theaters will open yet. Maybe just small independent theaters and drive-ins that have old movies they can show. The big chains like AMC are going to wait until maybe June, July, when new movies will be available.

I do miss going out to the theaters, but have been trying to watch the free stuff available on TV. I was able to finally rewatch Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase on HBO NOW. I couldn't get it to load on the app, but I could watch it in a browser on my laptop. Though there is a scary scene in the "haunted house", the movie actually has real detective work, not just stumbling around getting clues from ghosts. I wish they would make a sequel to that. On my day off, I'll try to watch Thousand Pieces of Gold on the "virtual screening" website. Some arthouse theaters are doing this kind of thing so they can sell tickets but show the films online. You just pick whichever theater you want to buy from.

Also, God Friended Me just ended on Sunday. The episode was clearly cobbled together from old footage, glossing over how Miles and Cara got back together. I don't really mind, because all the love-triangle drama and the God Account coming in between them this season was really tiresome and frustrating. I liked that they brought Jaya back too. They left the ending ambiguous so you could either imagine that the "she" was God, or the ghost of Miles's mother, or even simply a mortal female programmer/hacker capable of of stealing that code and starting the account. I was a bit surprised when the creators said that they had already shot that footage of Miles on the mountain during the pilot episode, and just have been holding it back all this time for the series finale. That's cool.

Free for Now

A lot of streaming services are offering free shows lately, so I'm trying to catch what I can. I checked out AppleTV+ (which is a terrible name that confuses me vs the hardware device) and I need to binge some Dickinson and the Little America series, but I also want to rewatch that Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase on HBO. Definitely a much better movie than the ghost-obsessed CW show.

I saw the story about Disney doing a "live-action" CGI remake of Robin Hood, and I wondered how could that possibly work? But then somebody proposed Zootopia's Nick Wilde as the model for the foxy Robin, and that's not a bad idea at all. I don't hate it. They just gotta be careful that it doesn't veer into Cats territory.

Anyway, I watched the Tigertail movie on Netflix, and it was a very poignant tale about what-might-have-beens and a father's inability to communicate with his daughter. Told in Mandarin and Taiwanese with English subtitles, we explore the backstory and the present of a Taiwanese immigrant played by Tzi Ma. He passes on bad parental advice like "crying never solves anything" and avoids heartache by working nonstop so he'll barely see his family. The timeline is a little confusing with some of the present-day vs near-present flashbacks, but overall it's a great, tragic tale, and something Asian-focused to hold me over until Mulan arrives.

I'm trying to find a new cozy mystery series, too, and I've watched the Frankie Drake Mysteries from Canada. They've started airing on PBS lately. I was lukewarm to the first couple of episodes, but the 3rd is starting to feel better. I'm trying not to compare it too much to the Miss Fisher Mysteries that I miss so much, and I am annoyed about them having Ernest Hemingway as a character. But it is nice to see that actress from Houdini and Doyle having fun. Really, I'm missing a Murder She Wrote-type show or an adaptation of Encyclopedia Brown and Sally Kimball in all her glory. But the problem is when I search for mysteries or whodunnits to watch, all I get are recommendations for cop procedurals or true crime series, and that is NOT the same! Especially those tedious shows that drag a mystery out all season.

The Black Prince

I only just found out that Netflix has that international biopic The Black Prince, about the Duleep Singh, the last maharaja of Punjab. All the dialogue is dubbed in Hindi, but the subtitles are in English, making it a bilingual film. You can sometimes tell when a character speaks English names and phrases, though. It's written and directed by an Indian filmaker, so it looks at the British Raj with a more critical, less nostalgic viewpoint than the rose-colored glasses of movies like Victoria and Abdul.

I found the movie fascinating, though a little hard to follow at points, because I didn't know Indian history that well, and I didn't know terms like Khalsa, which apparently means the whole community of Sikh believers--like saying "all of Christendom" for Christianity. Duleep was crowned Maharajah when he was 5, with his mother as regent, after years of succession struggles among his father's heirs. The British East India Company took advantage of the power vacuum by arresting Duleep's mother and annexing Punjab after a couple of Anglo-Sikh wars. Young Duleep was apparently made to sign the peace treaty of Lahore and "gift" the Koh-i-Noor diamond to Queen Victoria. After he was deposed at 10, Duleep was sent to live with an army surgeon Dr. John Login and his wife. The Logins encouraged Duleep to convert to Christianity, and ultimately took him to England to live far away from any connection to his home country. Queen Victoria met him and developed a friendship with him, giving him a pension to live on. Strange how Queen Victoria had so many Indian favorites in her life, yet she never gave back that diamond, given how dubious it was to force the boy to sign any treaty or gift any of his family's wealth away.

Colorism and Historical Fiction

I watched all of Netflix's Self-Made and then the movie The Sapphires. Both of these are "inspired by" true stories of black women.

Self-Made stars Octavia Spencer as Madam C. J. Walker, originally born as Sarah Breedlove. Sometimes there are fantasy sequences as she imagines building her business empire up. The first episode especially frames her competition with Addie Munroe as a boxing match like Jack Johnson and his match with "the great white hope" often mentioned by the characters. I liked the lesbian storyline with her daughter Leila, and also her lawyer/business partner Freeman Ransom. The miniseries touches on important issues of racism, feminism, sexism, respectability politics, and lynching. Colorism is also frequently touched on with Addie Munroe as a "high yellow" black woman, but there is also a light-skinned Dora who betrays Sarah with her husband and her business rival. When Sarah's husband starts talking about a black "Walker Girl" to compete with the Gibson Girl ideal, Sarah starts to feel jealous and threatened, as if she's being compared to a thin, light-skinned ideal.

Addie Munroe is made to be such a prominent villain in the story that I was disappointed afterward to read that she was a heavy fictionalization of the real life Annie Malone. Annie Turnbo Malone was not half-white, and she actually employed Sarah as a sales agent, so the depiction of Addie Munroe laughing and sneering at the idea of hiring Sarah is a big lie. That's why they changed Annie's name, because they changed her character so much from real life. I do see why they wanted to touch on colorism between light-skinned and dark-skinned black women, but surely they could have done that with just the Dora character and other fictional characters?

Meanwhile The Sapphires concerns four Australian Aboriginal women who sang in Vietnam for US troops, and it too touches on colorism. For many years, the Australian government had a racist policy to remove light-skinned Aborigines from their families, and give them to white boarding schools and white families to raise them white. (Very similar to what the US did to Native Americans.) One of the characters in the film is part of these Stolen Generations, though she remembers how she used to sing with her darker cousins as a child. When two of her cousins come invite her to sing with them again, Kay is at first hesitant, but later sneaks away from her current white friends and jumps wholeheartedly into singing with them. Yet she still fights with mamabear Gail, who calls her a "coconut" confused and ashamed about her race. Gail even slaps her for dating a black American soldier, and I keep thinking, "Why? It's not Kay's fault that she was stolen from home, and you're the one who invited her to join you guys on the singing tour." Kay sincerely is trying to reconnect with her Aboriginal identity. She makes a point of telling Robby, "I'm black. I'm just pale black." Anyway, the movie is fairly enjoyable, with great songs and romance. It also touches on racism among the American soldiers against the Vietnamese as well as against the black soldiers.

However, just like Self-Made, this is historical fiction. The white character Dave is complete fiction, and the fact that he as the manager tells the girls to switch from country-western to soul music is rather insulting. In real life, The Sapphires had been touring in Australia for some time, and they switched to soul music after meeting a New Zealand Maori band. No white assistance needed. Plus, in real life, only two sisters toured Vietnam, because the other sisters stayed behind in protest of the Vietnam War. I mean, the movie was co-written by one of the Sapphire's sons, but I wish he had tried to be as faithful to real life as The African Doctor was. Why let Hollywood fuck up the important details so much?

Don't Panic

Coronavirus has been dominating the news lately, and they even canceled the St. Patrick's Day parade. Some states are even shutting down schools, bars, restaurants, etc. All the movie theaters have shut down and sports seasons were delayed rather than play without audiences. I mean, I know the pandemic is serious and people should do "social distancing" but I think some of this should be voluntary, not mandatory. Think of all the workers that can't work from home, that can't get childcare and/or food if schools are shut down. Not everyone can order stuff online in good times, much less without money since they don't have paid leave.

As for testing, it's so pathetic in the US, that Chinese billionaire Jack Ma had to donate tests and masks to the US. Trump is such a failure, that I was surprised he put Mike Pence in charge instead of Jared Kushner. Even Israel had to postpone Netanyahu's bribery trial and they are still struggling to form a government.

Meanwhile, the Census mailed me a packet, so I'll have to fill that out when I get a chance to go through it. I'm glad that the citizenship question was blocked. I am naturalized, but we still need an accurate count of undocumented people as well to draw voting districts, provide adequate government services, etc.

Miss Fisher and The Banker

With so many movies getting delayed by the coronavirus, like Lovebirds and Mulan, I worried that a lot of movie theaters might close or cancel more showings, so I decided to see as much as I could before it's too late. I decided to go see The Banker after all, since I was going to be in the area anyway. It's an interesting period drama, though the story is more complicated than suggested by the trailer. Bernard Garrett and his wife move to Los Angeles and live in a relative's shed temporarily while he sets up his real estate business. Colm Meaney plays his first white business partner, and they make a lot of money. But then he dies, and the widow forces Bernard to sell his half of the company back to her for a fraction of its worth. He can't sue, since his name is on none of the properties. Burned by this experience, Bernard asks Joe Morris, a black businessman, to invest with him in buying the Bankers Building. To clarify, he wants to be a landlord to several major banks, in order to have leverage when getting loans to buy more real estate. This is when they recruit the white man to front for them in the deal. Everything works wonderfully while they expand and fight segregation in Los Angeles. After the initial purchase, Bernard and Joe don't even hide their identities; everything is out in the open, and they succeed in their empire.

However, when Bernard goes home to visit his family in small town Texas, he feels he has to use his talents to help black businesses and homebuyers get fair treatment. He talks his partners into buying a small Texas bank with him. This time he doesn't want to be just a landlord; he wants to run the bank (through Matt) and get black people loans. This is where their scheme starts to unravel, due to resistance from within the bank, and also due to their inexperience with banking. This is where they have to keep up their secrecy and pose as chauffeurs and janitors. The white man Matt has good intentions but makes mistakes, trying to prove himself competent; his wife complains about having to move from Los Angeles, and he also wants to be his own man after this long apprenticeship. However, Matt is gullible and panicky, and through his reckless actions, he gets two different banks in federal trouble. Bernard and Joe have to figure out how to defend themselves from the disaster. They are offered immunity if they testify that they are guilty of intentional fraud, so that a Congressman can use their example to enact tough banking regulations. Bernard instead takes a principled stand, insisting that he was trying to do good, not cheat people out of their money. Bernard and Joe get convicted and sentenced to prison, but the movie suggests that their testimony helped get some fair housing legislation passed. And Matt partly redeems himself by calling Bernard and Joe out of guilt, and agreeing to do them a favor before all their assets are seized. I don't know if that part is true, and Bernard Garrett apparently had multiple wives, not just the one we see in the timeframe of the movie, so clearly there was some fictionalization. Interesting bit of history, nonetheless.

I also saw Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears. It was a pretty fun romp, though some of the dialogue is corny, and the final murderer reveal comes out of left field. Hugh, Dot, Bert and Cec have a brief cameo, but they remain in Australia while most of the story takes place in Palestine and England. Aunt Pru is in some of the England scenes, but the focus is mainly on Phryne, Jack, and the new characters. Apparently, after flying her father back to England, Phryne took a case for a sheikh who needs her to rescue his young niece from prison in Palestine. She rescues the niece, who reveals that her parents were murdered ten years ago; Phryne promises to help her solve the murder, and they escape, by the skin of their teeth. Phryne is mistakenly reported as killed, and Jack comes to England for her memorial.

For some reason the wealthy Lofton family is throwing the memorial with Aunt Pru, and the sheikh is visiting. Phryne shows up, is surprised that anyone thought she was dead, doesn't think to apologize for the misunderstanding, and doesn't greet Jack with enough enthusiasm for their long-awaited reunion. Jack is hurt and storms off, but eventually she is able to lure him back with the mystery, which starts to incorporate more murders and fantastical things like Alexander the Great's tomb, a giant emerald, and an ancient curse. The sheikh at first seems somewhat sinister, dismissing his niece's claims and conspiring with British people to sell out his country for a profitable railway, but later he nixes that deal and believes his niece enough to want to open an investigation. Of course, then he gets murdered, and eventually everyone heads back to Palestine to search for the legendary lost tomb. For some reason, they have to break the curse before the 7th solar eclipse since the emerald was stolen. Any way, it's a little muddled, but well worth seeing Jack and Phryne kiss and make up for their misunderstandings.

The African Doctor

I saw this French film on Netflix, and it's based on a true story of a Congolese doctor who moves his family to a small French village in the 1970s. Apparently The African Doctor came out in 2016, and I missed it. The movie is told in French with English subtitles (American English since they refer to soccer), and it's co-written by the doctor's son Kamini, who had a viral video in 2006 where he told his life story of growing up in Marly-Gomont.

If Not Now, When?

How is it that for 2 or so years, we've had too many people running for President, even billionaires jumping in late and buying their way into debates, yet now we've suddenly dropped down to too few? Super Tuesday was big, yeah, but there are still many many states that didn't vote yet, and they'll only have two candidates to choose from now. (Nobody considers Tulsi seriously.)

Elizabeth Warren dropped out of the race after much pressure. I'm sad and disappointed, but trying to look on the bright side. At least she battered Bloomberg enough that he dropped out too. At least she's still in the Senate and will keep doing good work there, unless the next President appoints her to something in his Cabinet. Plus, Warren crafted so many great plans, which can be reused as the party platform and drafts for legislation in Congress. In some ways it's a repeat of my disappointment about Kamala Harris dropping out, while I try to hope she'll get picked for VP or Attorney General. One can always hope.

I mean, Biden's okay I guess. He has faults and baggage like all the other candidates had, but I do think he's sincere and will appoint good people to all the critical posts and departments that Trump has fucked up with his criminal cronies. Just because Biden keeps talking about getting along with Republicans, it doesn't mean that Nancy Pelosi has to cave in the House; she can still be a badass getting stuff passed, hopefully with a new Senate that won't block legislation. Presidents can propose agendas all they like; it's still the Congress who has to make the proposals into concrete laws, so one can always push things that are more radical than what the President himself would do. We'll see.

Anyway, in all the Super Tuesday drama, I forgot about Israel's elections. Somehow Netanyahu's party got more votes, but the opposing parties might join together to form a government and get him out. I don't understand parliamentary government with multiple parties. I'll hope they can succeed, but no matter what, Netanyahu is scheduled for trial on fraud and bribery charges soon. Why is it so hard to defeat this guy? Is it like how in Texas we could never get rid of Rick Perry until he retired to run for President?

A Study in Honor

I was looking for a new mystery series and stumbled on a modern update of Holmes and Watson by Claire O'Dell. The book was classified as a cozy mystery, and I thought it would be a treat to get a gender-flipped, race-flipped modern pastiche. But it's not a cozy, not unless you count some cooking scenes, and it's not a mystery either. It's a near-future science fiction thriller about spies, elections, and war trauma. The writing is fine for what it is, but it's a jarring disappointment if you were expecting something completely different.

More than that, although there are nods to book canon in the names of characters like Jacob Bell, this novel reads more like it was influenced by BBC's Sherlock, dropping the name Anderson and casting the Irene Adler equivalent as a traitorous villain profiting off the war. (FUCK YOU, MOFFATT once again for making Irene Adler an amoral, greedy mercenary instead of a wronged woman whom Holmes respected and admired!! And FUCK Elementary too for making the leap to combine Irene with Moriarty as well. Fucking bastards need their sexy, crazy Catwoman, and need to convince everyone this is the correct interpretation of Irene!!)

But I digress. Back to A Study in Honor:

Primary Voting

I early voted this weekend as well as did my taxes. They were still so many candidates on the ballot who had already dropped out, that I had to keep paging down to find Elizabeth Warren. About the same number of primary candidates for US Senator too, to run against Cornyn. I had to do some research about the various judicial candidates on the ballot too, so I used the League of Women Voters guide. One week out from Super Tuesday, so I hope there are good results then. I'm so sick of seeing TV ads for Bloomberg. He needs to get out of the race and stop driving up prices for other candidates that need air time!

Meanwhile, I saw Call of the Wild recently and enjoyed it. The CGI/motion capture worked for the dog, and it was good to know that a real dog didn't have to act out the beatings and dogfights, even as pretend. Animal lovers are not going to like watching gratuitous dog abuse, so they toned down the gore and violent deaths from the book. (No dogs drown in the melting ice of a lake, for example.) Harrison Ford narrates the film, and appears as John Thornton, who has a tragic backstory and is an alcoholic. Buck saves him, as expected, then goes through his own transformation due to his ancestral wildness, represented as a ghostly black wolf spirit. It's a pretty good adventure, though they happen upon a cabin and a riverful of gold a little too easily. The movie also changed the villain due to Jack London's original story being too racist and vindictive to the imaginary Native tribe. I don't mind the changes, and other film adaptations have been even looser and more unfaithful. I really liked the diverse casting for the two postal delivery workers in Alaska. I mean, to run a dogsled, why wouldn't you seek out Native expertise? I wish the movie had spent some more time with these two before moving on to John Thornton.

I also rewatched Birds of Prey again and realized that I was wrong about the timeline; it isn't messed up. I was just confusing two different nights at Sionis's nightclub. The first night, apparently a week ago, was the one where Harley wore her hair up and had rhinestones in her eyebrow. The second night, she had her hair in ponytails, and she wore the rainbow sleeves/shrug thing. It's just, the movie didn't mark the change from one night to the next with narration or a "1 week later" title onscreen, so I thought Harley injured Sionis's driver the same night that she blew up ACE chemicals. Separating the two nights makes much more sense.

Birds of Prey

Black Lightning was doing so good for a couple of episodes post-Crisis, with lots of action and Lady Eve coming back to life, but then Monday's episode killed all the momentum. Starting with Jefferson morosely drinking, listening to records, and reminiscing about Lynn to Gambi via phone, the episode was slow and over-serious, wasting so much time on conflicts at the ASA, as the loosely assembled team trained to go to Markovia, while Lynn conspired with Jace to steal Gravedigger's power for an hour, like she borrowed other powers to escape the ASA. Stretching out the pre-mission time, and having people criticize the team's ability, only calls attention to why Black Lightning doesn't call for help from the Superfriends who are in his same universe now. One call and he could get Freeland out of quarantine, let alone have assistance in Markovia. I would say only the last 20 or so minutes actually showed the rescue in Markovia, and it was such a slog to get there. So disappointed.

Meanwhile I went to see a different team up at the movies. I was initially cool on Birds of Prey because there's no Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) in it. There is a Cassandra Cain, but I'm not familiar with her comic history, and in the movie she's mostly used just to steal the MacGuffin diamond and be a damsel in need of rescue and safety. However, there is Renee Montoya, whom I loved in the animated series, so I took a risk. The movie was pretty funny and action-packed. It has some timeline issues about whether the scenes at the nightclub were last night (six hours ago) or a week ago, and Harley says the bank account numbers are in the "atomic structure" of the diamond, when they're probably just laser engraved on it like they engrave diamond serial numbers. Besides these minor nitpicks, it's fun and exciting entertainment with a cool antiheroine lead. The fight scene in the jail cells, with the sprinkler malfunction, could have been so bad with a male director and male gaze. It could have been all wet t-shirt ogling, but with a female director, the focus is on Harley's impressive moves through the water. Such a great scene, then later in the evidence room she does a cool maneuver with a baseball bat that bounces back to her. Great fight staging with funny moments.

Cassandra, as I said, is largely used as a plot device, but at one point she does get fed up and picks up a gun herself when scared by that henchman Szaz who threatens to gut her to get the diamond. Black Canary gets a lot of development and backstory about her mother who died. Huntress gets a backstory too but her current adult self doesn't have much character beyond being socially awkward and intense about her assassinations. Renee Montoya has some history with both the police captain and her ex-partner the lawyer. She understandably takes to drinking when she gets suspended, but jumps into the fray when Black Canary calls her with info on the diamond exchange. Renee also fights well for someone older, with no superpowers or assassin training. Meanwhile, Harley is still criminal and bad in the sense that that she casually murdered someone for a pet hyena, and tries to turn in Cassandra to the Black Mask, but she does partly redeem herself and becomes a temporary ally to the other women in the final battle for survival.

I only had a hard time watching the scene when Szaz sliced off people's faces and another scene when Sionis screamed at and humiliated a woman in his nightclub, just because he thought she was laughing at him. Total creep and egotistical bastard. Harley and Cass run off with the diamond, but apparently do send the bank numbers back to Huntress to fund her new Birds of Prey venture with the other women, so Harley's still slightly good again. I enjoyed seeing Renee quit the police instead of staying stuck in that shitty place (like Agent Carter staying at the S.S.R. when people stole her credit in season 1---boo!). Overall the film is a very colorful, quirky diversion. Some dark moments as I said, but not nearly as grimdark as previous DC films that are so self-important, apocalyptic, and washed out of color. Please make the upcoming Batgirl movie like this.

Ada and the Engine

Last week I went to see Lauren Gunderson's play Ada and the Engine in Fort Worth. It's about Ada Lovelace making a name for herself while living in the shadow of her famous father Lord Byron. It's very imaginative, funny, dramatic, entertaining, and even musical. I liked it, with some reservations.

In the beginning, Ada is dominated by her mother Annabella, who thinks that Ada has inherited her father's reckless and sinful passions. Apparently Ada tried to elope with her mathematics tutor in the past, and she still likes to read Lord Byron's poetry. Annabella actually rips out pages in the book while lecturing Ada not to emulate her father. Ada eventually marries the wealthy Lord Lovelace, but her heart is truly captivated by Charles Babbage's Difference Engine and Analytical Engine, proto-computers that were not fully built in his lifetime. The play casts their relationship as an unconsummated romantic love, rather than an intellectual affinity between a mentor and his protege. In fact, the whole thing becomes a love triangle when Ada's husband Lord Lovelace objects to her friendship with Babbage. He eventually relents when Ada's illness (possibly post-partum depression) is relieved by Babbage's letters, which excite her and cheer her up about technological possibilities.

SPOILERS