Memorial Day

This holiday, as well as Veteran's Day, are supposed to honor soldiers who served and/or died in war, but if I'm going to be solemn and mindful today, it's going to be about the bloodshed in Buffalo and Uvalde. The news gets worse and worse, and by coincidence, this Sunday's episode of The First Lady featured the Sandy Hook massacre during Obama's administration. The killings just go on and on, year after year. And fucking Ted Cruz makes stupid suggestions about one door, secured by armed guards. And we just saw how useless those guards and police were. Republicans are outraged at us for politicizing tragedy when we just want to prevent the next one. Will any of them listen this time, or just continue to dismiss Beto and anyone else trying to speak truth to them? We'll have to vote them out.

Meanwhile, I was on vacation last week but had trouble sleeping. Hotels have too many pillows and not enough blankets. Living out of a suitcase is annoying, so it is good to be home again.

Texas Primary Runoffs

Tomorrow is another Primary Day for a lot of states, plus Texas is having runoffs from our primaries back in March. I already early voted last week.

This is actually the 2nd election this month, which confused me. Texas already had local elections on May 7th for constitutional amendments, city council places, and school board elections. It's extremely difficult to get any info about these local races because the major newspapers (Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Star Telegram) that might publish background information about such candidates are paywalled. So it was annoying and confusing why we couldn't combine the elections. The political ads on TV have been infuriating too, with Republicans accusing each other of being liberal or woke. Plus I hate whenever Trump comes to campaign in Texas.

Meanwhile Greg Abbott continues to be horrible, but at least the Treasury Dept are investigating him for using federal Covid money to pay for his border security stunt. I hope they can make him refund the money or at least make him send the border troops home to actually do something useful.

Duke Kahanamoku

I recently watched a PBS documentary on Duke Kahanamoku, the Olympic swimmer and famous surfer from Hawaii. It's an episode of American Masters called "Waterman-- Duke: Ambassador of Aloha," and Jason Mamoa narrates it. I had never heard of Duke before and didn't know the history of surfing, so this was fascinating to watch. The show is organized around an old episode of This is Your Life honoring Duke.

Like Jim Thorpe, Duke was forced to attend a boarding school that tried to erase his native culture and forbid his native language. He dropped out of school to become a traditional waterman, who fished, swam, and knew all the traditional ways of living off the sea. He made his own surfboard out of wood and became a trainer at a local whites-only sports club. They invited him to a swimming competition and he broke a world record, but skeptical sports officials insisted that it had to be fluke or mistake with the stopwatch; they wanted him to prove his skill again with elite white swimmers. So the Hawaiian community raised money to send him to the mainland US to compete, and he got a coach, and eventually entered the Olympics where he could finally prove himself according to the European standards.

Because of the Olympic rules about athletes having to be amateurs, Duke found it hard to find work, so his community had to support him, or he had to try various non-swimming jobs, like movie acting. But of course Hollywood only gave him bit parts and would not make him a leading man. He experienced a lot of racial discrimination in his life, but he didn't complain, living by a philosophy to keep it in his heart and bottle things up. It's sad, but at least he did make many genuine friends and helped break down racial barriers with his sheer talent and goodness. Duke was also highly influential in popularizing surfing in Australia, and saved many people from drowning. Really good documentary for Asian American Pacific Islander month.

Nuance

Seth Meyer's show has been meh for about a week, with continuing defeatism. His recent monologue against Democrats said "it's not their fault" but they're gonna lose the midterm elections because they're doing nothing about inflation. And then he had the nerve to bring up Joe Manchin and say "call his bluff" by passing whatever bills he'd agree too, even if he'd betray them, then they could "move on." Have you been fucking asleep through the negotiations for Build Back Better and the voting rights bill? They already called his bluff many times. There were months I would see nothing but Joe Manchin articles every day with press asking him what he and Sinema wanted. Congress had to whittle down ambitious bills to what he wanted for "bipartisanship", only for him to suddenly say, "Nope" and demand more concessions. So they've already called his bluff and already moved on. Why is Seth so dishonest and lazy about this? Why are you being a chicken little, panicking that they've got to do something, anything, as if they haven't done anything their entire term? I mean, if you don't want to root for Democrats, then fucking talk about something else like the TV cancellation bloodbath ahead of upfronts, or the Marvel  movies. Don't fucking bring me down when I'm wanting comedy. When even Amber buys into your BS take, then fine, I'll cancel my fucking season pass. This is just like why I stopped watch Colbert regularly.

Speaking of Marvel movies, I saw the Multiverse of Madness (even though I've never seen the first Dr. Strange) since it's essentially a continuation of Wanda's story. I've seen a bunch of fans disappointed that she became the evil villain of the movie, and that they wanted more nuance like the TV show. They wanted more of a "transition" or something to explain her change. But I thought the TV show already had a transition, when we saw her in the cabin reading the evil book. Did they think that was a happy ending, her reading the evil book she got from Agnes? Plus Wanda was essentially not punished for what she did at Westview and I always thought Monica Rambeau's line, "don't let him make you the villain" strange, as it essentially gave Wanda a pass, ignoring her sins while emphasizing the S.W.O.R.D guy's misdeeds. So already Wanda was well into the gray, in danger of going much darker by possessing the evil book. Most concerning was that she went to that cabin by herself without going to say, Sorcerer Supreme Wong, for help training her with her powers. Isolated, it would be so easy to let herself get obsessed. One could even argue that her hearing her boys call out to her for help, was just a hallucination brought by the Darkhold to corrupt her and make her use the darkest spells.

SPOILER

Grumbling

Meanwhile, a bunch of TV shows are cancelled, including Batwoman. I was skeptical at first about them writing out Kate Kane, but they managed it all right and moved on. What's weird are these commenters on the internet spamming every cancellation article to declare "justice" for Kate Kane and be angry at the show for "betraying the source material." You mean the comics? Aren't comics famously convoluted, resetting every few years, with multiverses allowing many versions of each character? There's multiple kids who became Robin, multiple Batgirls, multiple Supergirls, and yes, multiple Batwomen in the comics. So why are you so upset about Kate Kane getting written out of one TV show? They didn't even kill her off. Weirdos.

My HBO Max stopped working for a week or so, but then just as mysteriously, it fixed itself. So I tried to catch up on shows I wanted to see. Both Julia and Moonshot were disappointments. First, Moonshot was a stupid title for a romcom about going to Mars, and Lana Condor's character Sophie did not feel equal to her costar's. The movie definitely started out from Walt's perspective and spent maybe half an hour on his mediocre feelings and dreams before finally getting to Sophie's feelings about her boyfriend Calvin. It's complicated, because Calvin's mother took Sophie in when she became an orphan, and it felt strange that the entire family moved with him to Mars and left her behind, while still pretending that she was family to them. Why should she date Calvin, when he should be more of a foster brother? It felt like she was with him out of gratitude to the family. Very cringey. Plus all the shenanigans on the spaceship were solved with a dumb reveal, and "you can never escape yourself" cliches left the Mars trip feeling very pointless.

Julia tried to cultivate this girl power energy, but the writing was so strangely illogical, and they acted like PBS was full of self-important snobs who don't get good television. It acted like that lady producer personally invented syndication when she kept selling the TV show to other stations. Plus, if you have been removed from Julia's show to work on another show, the way to ingratiate yourself is to sell the hell out of the book show, not the cooking show you've been removed from. The way you prove you're valuable, is to do the job you were given. Also, they kept talking about how Julia's husband was so supportive, but they kept showing how her husband was jealous of her increasing fame and success. It makes me angry and irritated all the time, and I haven't even finished all the episodes. Definitely not going to see season 2.

Defeatism

I usually enjoy Seth Meyer's show, especially when Amber Ruffin appears, because she's usually positive and upbeat. (Of course sometimes Amber is more scathing during serious segments on her own Peacock show.) So I thought that Seth's show on May 3rd would have a great take on the Supreme Court draft ruling, especially since so many of the writing staff are women. But no. They were fucking horrible. First Seth pooh-poohed Biden's statement that voters needed to elect more pro-choice politicians. That's a simple statement of fact. What the fuck is wrong with that? Just one or two more pro-choice Senators, and we could override Manchin and Sinema. They'd be irrelevant. But Meyers made it sound like Biden is shifting blame over something that's somehow his fault. It's his fault he doesn't have a bigger majority in Congress? The fuck is wrong with you, Seth?

Then Jenny and Amber played generic Democratic politicians and their whole "comedy" segment was to say that Democrats can't do anything, can't fix anything; why do you bother believing in these stupid failures who never deliver? What the fuck is that? At the very moment we're trying to win elections for midterms, you come out with shit that makes people stop voting, because apparently it's fucking futile to even try or care about issues. What the fuck is your solution, then? Do nothing? Move to Canada? (This is just like climate change deniers saying, "it's too late. We're all doomed. Why do anything?")

From Amber and Jenny, I was expecting something more feminist and rallying, like Elizabeth Warren's rage or Kamala Harris saying, "how dare they?" Instead I get fucking defeatism. At least have Amber show some incandescent rage, like she'll get worked up against other injustices. Is this cynical apathy a symptom of New York people? Because I've found other late night comedians talk that way before. They need to experience how bad it can get in a red state, when you don't have any good choices to vote for. What a bad fucking taste you've left in my mouth.

Keep Fighting

So, that Supreme Court leak gives us a glimpse of the horrible future. I guess the ruling doesn't become official until June or so, when it officially gets released?

But already the GOP are trying to shift the narrative, trying to make the leak itself the outrage instead of the ruling. A lot of the mainstream media articles were trying to help the GOP paint this decision as "neutral" as letting abortion be "left up to the states" to decide, as if we don't remember "states' rights" arguments for slavery. But that's bullshit, anyway, because plenty of Republicans are willing to talk up their plans about retaking Congress so they can pass a nationwide abortion ban. So no, they're not even willing to let us have safe havens in blue states. They're coming for us all.

As I said in my previous post:

If Roe V. Wade gets struck down, Republicans are going to continue trying to pass worse and worse laws. Not just against abortion, but against trans rights, civil rights, education, etc. No place will be safe.

So yep, no place is going to be safe, and there's no minority rights that they won't try to overturn. So I hope blue state Democrats will stop talking about letting Texas secede, abandoning vulnerable people who can't leave. We gotta fight for all the states, or we'll have none.

Oh, and apparently there were some primary elections on Tuesday. Hope for good results.