Awful

Shit! Bill Cosby is free after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his conviction. I've read the legal explanation on Wonkette about why they ruled this way, but it's still devastating to rape survivors. Can the prosecutors correct the problem somehow and try him again based on evidence from someone who didn't testify at the tainted trial? Even worse, Phylicia Rashad was sickeningly happy about his release; I've often wondered why people didn't rebuke her more after #MeToo for defending Cosby. She still somehow thinks he's innocent. Fuck.

Anyway, the worst stuff that I expected to happen today was Trump meeting Abbott in Texas for more whining about the border wall. Abbott has scheduled the special session for July 8th, but I don't know how he can do that when he just defunded the Texas Legislature? Fuck him. He's become so cartoon villainous that he even vetoed a bipartisan bill to protect dogs from being chained up outside in the Texas heat with no shelter or water. Apparently humane treatment of animals is "micromanaging" to him. Please, Beto, please fucking run against him.

The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo

I recently discovered this old Nickelodeon show about a teen girl detective working as an intern for the police department. Shelby Woo is sort of like Nancy Drew, only Chinese, and Pat Morita played her grandfather who runs a bed and breakfast. My family didn't have cable TV, and I was probably too old for the show in the 1990s anyway; the first few seasons seem more sitcommy, geared toward young kids, around the age of Encyclopedia Brown. The last season, set in Boston, has better production values, with no more shaky single-cam, and the acting is less slapsticky and exaggerated. It's as if the show grew up and got better with her.

I do like that the Chinese girl is the star, solving crimes with her sidekick friends Cindy and Noah. The local police detective tries to discourage her from investigating cases, but she never listens, even when she gets into life-threatening danger. Each case plays out as if they're videos on her computer screen, and after the usual formula of gathering clues on 3 suspects, she finally solves the case and gets the police to arrest the culprit. I like the variety of cases, like robbery, fraud, kidnapping, assault, etc. Too many detective shows are snobby, acting as though a mystery isn't really intriguing or important unless it has a murder in it. Anyway, it was sad when Shelby had to move to Boston with her grandfather, but at least she got to say goodbye to her Florida friends before making new sidekick friends Angie and Vince. I'm not finished with all the DVDs yet, but I'm getting close.

Meanwhile, I had to find time to finish Lupin on Netflix too. It's been so long since Part 1 that I forgot who Dumont was, but I figured it out once I saw him in context as a police commissioner. The first episode of Part 2 really depressed me, so I had to go seek out spoilers to assure myself that the show really didn't suddenly get dark and horrible. After that fakeout, the show went back to charming heists, and Lupin's revenge on Pellegrini. I enjoyed it.

Batwoman brought back the awful Safiyah again and her stupid quest for more Desert Rose. Plus it was stuffed into an episode with Kate Kane, and Luke's crisis about wanting to die. There just seemed to be way too many things going on at the same time, and it looks like major stuff going into the season finale too. I mean, I get why the writers have to get rid of the Desert Rose plant, so that there's no easy way to cheat death again. I won't miss Ocean either, but I wish the Coryana stuff could have been offscreen so that Kate and Alice could have more time together. We'll see if Alice can pull Kate back next week, I hope, or things are going to get a lot more messy.

12 Mighty Orphans

Speaking of Fort Worth, there's a new movie out called 12 Mighty Orphans. Based on a book about the Mighty Mites, a Depression-era football team from an orphanage, this film opened in Texas first, but will expand nationwide soon. It's your typical inspiring sports movie about underdogs. Still, I couldn't resist the local connection, and if you go, you will certainly hear about UIL sports, towns in DFW, and famous Texans such as Amon Carter. There's also mention of FDR being a fan of the team. Luke Wilson plays Rusty Russell, a teacher and a football coach for the Masonic home for orphans, and he leads his team to success.

There's a lot of fictionalization, though the Fort Worth Star Telegram review claims that some of the facts are true. Still, the movie compresses about a decade of time into one 1938 season, and it ramps up the drama with a villain. The movie shows a 17-year old Hardy Brown coming to the orphanage right after witnessing his father being murdered, but in real life he witnessed this murder when he was 4 years old, not a teenager. That's a huge difference, and no more details are given about this trauma. And alas, this movie focuses mostly on the white members of the team while the darker skinned Hispanic team members stay in the background with little dialogue. I suppose the filmmakers didn't even want to address issues about race and how football would have been segregated at least black vs. white in the 1930s. I suppose that would dilute their feel-good movie drama.

But Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights also suffers a similar problem of having mostly light skinned actors starring, while relegating darker skinned cast to background roles. Still, I was impressed by the huge dance numbers, along with a sequence set at the community pool, looking like old Busby Berkeley musical numbers. I did like the romance between Benny and Nina, and Stephanie Beatriz has a minor part at the hair salon. I didn't really care for the frame device of Usnavi narrating the story to a bunch of kids including his daughter.

Juneteenth

Wow, what a stunning and quick turn of events. The Senate and the House passed the bill to make Juneteenth a federal holiday, then Biden returned from Europe in time to sign the bill. It's very last minute, and there's not even a wait to go into effect next year. The first observance is Friday, due to the 19th falling on Saturday this year. So it's an unexpected 3-day weekend for federal employees. Hope they enjoy it.

Yes, I did see grumbling from activists about how this is performative, and that what would really help is reparations, voting rights, accurate history in schools, etc. Sure Congress just did a symbolic gesture, to avoid more substantive, difficult reform. But that doesn't mean we have to accept that. Yes there is more work to do, and we can use Juneteenth for that work. We can celebrate with parades and cookouts of course, but we can also spend the day educating people on history, and registering voters. Just like we already use Martin Luther King Day for voter drives and solemn observances. It's a good thing to celebrate, and the symbol does mean something to Opal Lee, whose own family had their house burned down in the 1939. She knows the power of symbolism, with her symbolic walk from Fort Worth to Washington D.C. a few years ago. I'm glad she got to see her mission accomplished at last.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court dismissed the case against Obamacare, and they ruled against gay foster parents in a different case. But that ruling is narrow, so it won't set a precedent; it's almost like they want to tread lightly in the culture war that conservatives are demanding. It's not great, but better than the disaster we've all been dreading. I hope we get more judges confirmed soon.

New Day

Israel finally has a new prime minister and a new government. Yes, it's a fragile coalition, and the new PM is right-wing, but this Tablet article claims that the centrist Yair Lapid has veto power over Bennet's decisions, and that the center and left parliament members can block rightwing agenda. So the outlook seems a bit more optimistic. Even if the coalition falls apart later, there will be new elections, and by then we can hope that Netanyahu might be in prison.

More locally, here's an article about Texas progressives targeting midsize cities such as Grand Prairie, and they mention the recent victory of two Black city council members. So I'm glad they actually proved they could win local elections. I hope they can make a difference in turning the state blue.

Abbott keeps forbidding anyone to have a mask mandate, and has been threatening to build a border wall in Texas--does he even have power to do that? I'm sure the federal government will stop him, but it's still a fucking headache that he continues his saber rattling. At least the federal judge ruled that those suing hospital workers must be vaccinated; at will employment on the side of good for once. Nurses certainly shouldn't go around spreading conspiracy theories about the "experimental" vaccine, when we're still fighting the pandemic.

Movies

There's a new Vietnamese movie called Bố Già, which is a hit in Vietnam and is now released in the US as a subtitled version. It's based on a Youtube series that I've never heard of, and it's partly comedy, partly soap opera. When I watched it I found it episodic and meandering at first, until it finally focused on its core story between Sang and his son Woan. Then the tone shifts to the conflicted family melodrama. Eventually there's a tragic need for an organ transplant, but I found that this health crisis dragged on too long to milk the drama and suspense. It definitely felt too long to me, and I would have liked it to be more concise. Still, it's intriguing that the film is doing so well at the box office, probably due to all the Vietnamese immigrant community turning out to see it. My dad seems to like it, anyway. Plus its focus on fatherhood is appealing with Father's Day coming up.

There's a new Spirit horse movie out now, but it's not exactly a sequel. I saw the first movie almost 20 years ago, and back then it had a strong Native American story from John Fusco. At the end of that movie, the Lakota character Little Creek sets the horse free to live in the wild with his mare Rain. The new movie has a clean slate, with new characters interacting with the horse, who doesn't have a narrating voice. Therefore it is more related to the Netflix TV show, than to the previous film. Wikipedia also claims that this Spirit is son of the original stallion Spirit-Who-Could-Not-Be-Broken. I guess that makes sense, because original Spirit did not want people to ride him, while this new Spirit is going to let girls ride him. It looks more like a kiddie movie for young girls who love ponies, so I don't think I'll see it, but I did hear the soundtrack of the first movie playing at my local mall.

Tulsa and more trauma

I'm disappointed that Deborah Peoples didn't win the runoff election for Ft Worth mayor. But I was hugely surprised that Steve "Junior" Ezeonu won a City Council election in Grand Prairie. He's a 22-year old immigrant from Nigeria, who ran as a progressive. I didn't think he could do it in such a conservative city, and I was pissed off that his Republican opponent sent flyers describing him as a "radical" leftist candidate. Congrats to Junior on his win!

Meanwhile I watched the PBS documentary about the Tulsa Race Massacre The Fire and the Forgotten. Mostly filmed in 2020, it focused on the effort to excavate mass grave sites and looked forward to the upcoming centennial anniversary. They also discussed issues around reparations and the way the interstate highway deliberately segregated the city to cut Blacks off from wealthy neighborhoods. The legacy of this racial divide manifests in the local police treating Black areas as "war zones" and killing citizens with impunity. Tulsa apparently removed "Black Lives Matter" when people painted it on the street like that street in Washington D.C. Not a good move.

All the talk of mass graves reminded me about Canada recently discovering a mass grave of children's bodies at an Indian boarding school. It's quite horrifying and shameful, but America too had tons of those boarding schools where Native children were taken from their families to be force-fed white culture and have their tribal identity erased, all in the name of assimilation into society. It was deeply harmful to so many children, and I recently learned there was a similar practice with aboriginal children in Australia. So many lost children.

Cruella Sequel

Deadline reports that Disney is working on a sequel to Cruella, due to its good box office performance. I did like the movie, and would like to see how they continue the story, because when she gifts the Pongo and Perdita puppies at the end, it doesn't really make sense for how it connects to 101 Dalmatians. Someone online suggested that the sequel could have the Baroness come back wanting to kill the dalmatians in revenge, while blaming Cruella, so that might work. The music and costumes were great, and I'd love to see more about Anita and Roger.

They revised Cruella's origin story like Maleficent did, so she's no longer a puppy-killer (not that she ever succeeded in skinning the puppies in the Dalmatians movie). In the new movie, Estella/Cruella likes dogs, and even though she witnesses a pack of dalmatians killing her mother, Estella blames herself for the death, not the dogs. (So it's not as simplistic and stupid as the memes make it seem. It's not "I hate dalmatians and want to kill them because they killed my mother"; it's "I don't hate dogs. I hate the Baroness and want revenge.") She starts blaming the Baroness when she sees the heirloom necklace and remembers more details from the cliff murder. At no point does she blame the dogs for the murder, recognizing that they're not culpable for human actions.

June already

Well with Memorial Day, I forgot to early vote for the June runoffs. Luckily I can still vote on election day tomorrow. I was happy to hear about the Texas Democrats walking out on the Republican voting restrictions bill. They haven't done something like that for years. Abbott wants to call a special session (even though he didn't do it for the pandemic or the winter storm emergency) to pass the bill, and he made threats to cut their pay. But TX state legislators don't get paid a lot anyway, and it's only every other year when they're in session. I remember Chris Turner explaining to me once that you have to either have a different real job to sustain you, or you live off your spouse's salary instead. I was also pleased to hear about the high school valedictorian who gave her speech about abortion rights. That makes for two good things in Texas this week.

I'm glad that the New Mexico special election went well. What a huge win. Even though Oklahoma cancelled their Tulsa Massacre event, Biden gave a speech, and plenty of other media outlets marked the solemn anniversary. I noticed that PBS has a documentary about it on their streaming service, so I'll have to catch it this weekend now that I'm off work. It's so hard to keep track of what's streaming where.

Israel has formed a new coalition government to oust Netanyahu as Prime Minister. He's apparently threatening to resist, so we'll have to see if they can really get rid of him next week. It's just incredible that he continues to cling to power despite his corruption scandal and his general unpopularity. I am a little afraid that the new government will be more right-wing and pro-settler, but they might temper some decisions to try to keep the coalition together.