December 17, 2016 · 4:48 pm

“It’s a Hard-Knock Life… for Us”

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Yes, this is another in a series of reviews from the Uncritical Critic where I gush endlessly and almost mindlessly about movies, TV, books, and other sorts of stories that I love.  And just like other reviews that I have done, writing mainly to myself, this will probably bore you to the point of having to sandpaper  your tush just to stay conscious through it.  But I do, in fact, have a social conscience.  I do care about things moral and ethical.  That’s why I’m not going to talk about this Annie;

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I want to talk about this one;

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I am not sure how any of my white, conservative friends can work up such an angry fizzyblackengrrr about the remake of the musical using black actors as the principles.  I am not saying I don’t see color and I don’t notice the changes in the basic story to make it fit a more different-race-friendly cultural magnetism.  I am saying I love the changes.

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Quvenzhane Wallis is one of those little girls that, if she were actually an orphan, would be adopted in record time.  She sings, dances, and exudes a personal charisma to a degree that is not only perfect for this particular musical, but is not an act.  It is obviously her real, perky, upbeat self.  I would adopt her instantly even though I don’t have the finances, energy, or good health necessary to make that kind of commitment any more.  And the changes made to the songs, setting, and themes of the basic story I think are not only brilliant, but so very appropriate to our times.  The story of an orphan connecting to a lonely, power-hungry billionaire is transformed by the idea of finding the best way to connect the family that you not only want, but desperately need.  The Daddy Warbucks character, played brilliantly by Jamie Foxx, is able to realize his connection to his own lost father as he transforms himself into the father figure that Annie needs.  Songs are added and dialogue is changed in ways to bring out these complex themes of love and need.  It is a very different story from the one found in the Aileen Quinn/Carol Burnett film of the 1980’s.  And it is a story that needs to be told.

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“You are never fully dressed without a smile!” is an important theme for any person of color, or any outsider in our American society today.  The troubles and strife related to race tension, violence, and the American struggle to rid itself of racism are best faced with a kind of confident optimism that this musical was always intended to be a vehicle for.

It is a statement about the basic goodness of human beings.  This version of the musical even redeems the vile Miss Hannigan, leaving her at the end with a change of heart and a Hispanic boyfriend.  So, I really think that anyone who has a problem with this remake of a beloved musical made by Jay-Z, Will and Jada Pinkett Smith ought to examine the real reasons they feel troubled by it.  I think they really ought to let go of all baggage, especially the alligator-skin bags of racism, and just immerse themselves in this wonderful movie full of singy and dancy stuff.

 

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December 16, 2016 · 8:44 pm

Returning To The Sky

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Rumors of my death are premature, and probably all my fault.  Chest pains, with my family history of heart attacks, always make me think dark thoughts of mortality and impending doom.  Today, however, it was merely cold air in my lungs and continuing to remember Trump will soon be President.  I need to forget about the greedy old orangutan for a while, and let my heart and imagination soar again.  I drew this colored pencil Pegasus in 1980, before I became a teacher and planned on saving the world.  Back then I thought anything was possible since I was young and bright and talented.  But looking back on old artwork like this helps me remember too that once the future seemed bright.  And the days can be bright again even if the Cubs won the Series and the world has ended. Vicks Vapo-Rub and balancing my bloodsugar, combined with rest, put me back in the pink… even if it is still a rather pale pink.  Number two  son was not perfect either, but he got up and showered, and then, being tough-minded, went to school for the afternoon.  Some days are a little harder than others.   Sometimes you have to wonder when the last day will come.  But I am not dead yet.  And there is a lot more to do.  And somewhere, somehow, horses really can fly, right?

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December 16, 2016 · 3:41 pm

When Life Clips Your Wings

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There are days when things just don’t go the way you planned.  My chest is hurting, most likely from COPD meets cold air.  But my son will be home on leave tonight around midnight, back from his Marine base in Virginia.  My number two son has missed two days of school with a low-grade fever and general inability to get out of bed.  I don’t have time or money, for a doctor’s visit today, but may need two of them.  It is hard to soar when you can’t even take off from the ground.  It will get better, one way or another, but sometimes, life just sucks beans.

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December 15, 2016 · 4:24 pm

Crazy Head-Bashing List-Making

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Sometimes I have to stop and think where ideas for posts come from.  Yes, and that is usually the point at which my head is empty and I am out of ideas.  I spent years teaching the writing process and I advocated many different pre-writing idea-generating strategies.  I should be able to come up with something to write about without resorting to bashing my right temple with a hand-held blunt object.  After all, those ideas come out kinda wobbly and full of strangely-colored stars.  So, let me find a broom in the upstairs broom closet in the empty hallways of my mind and sweep together all the possible ideas I have in one pile to look at, grimace, and compare.

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There is a letter with a Martian stamp on it.  Inside it proposes I hold an aliens-only poetry writing contest and put the worst possible results into a post.  That could be worth a few chuckles, and possible a gazorpingwallow or two.  At least, that’s what the letter suggests.  It is from some Ixcanixian from the spinward edge of the Sagittarius Spiral Arm of the Milky Way.  20160508_113700

 

I have several ongoing cartoon projects.  I could be adding another page to the Hidden Kingdom graphic novel I have been working on for thirty years.  I could also do more action-figure comics to rationalize all the time I spend playing with dolls.  And I like to do novel illustrations to go along with the many bizarre and mentally warped novels I have created.

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Of course we have recently received the kind of political Christmas gift that most of us would like to track Santa down to his lair for and return back inside the reindeer butt that it came out of.  Insulting the new orangutan king is an easy source of insult-based humor that I don’t have to work too hard at or feel too guilty about.  But too much of that is like getting drunk on cough syrup.  You intended to cure the problem, but you have only managed to add new problems and a hangover headache to top it all off.blue-and-mike-in-color

I still have to fix the cracked and leaky swimming pool before next spring, so that should yield some cementing-your-feet-into-the-pool-wall stories later on.  And there are the numerous frustrations of living life with six incurable diseases to write about.  I can probably make the flaking off of all the skin on the back of my neck from psoriasis sound pretty funny if I try hard enough.  The family dog is still producing dog poop at Guiness-Book-of-World-Records rates… and, oh, yeah, I am still a long way from being done telling you about the bad jokes from more than a quarter of a century of classroom cut-ups.

You know, I think the way to deal with the problem is to simply make a list of ideas.  I can throw darts at the list if I still can’s decide.

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December 14, 2016 · 3:40 pm

Holiday Mixed Nuts

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I know what this is.  This is Grandma Aldrich’s holiday nut bowl with nut-cracker and silver walnut picks.  It brings back fond memories of Thanksgiving Day and Christmas reunions that were filled with nuts.  And, yes, I mean that figuratively as well as literally.  I tend to really love nuts.

And one of the most insidious things about Facebook is the fact that it connects you to all the nuts from your checkered past, and memories like this can come back to haunt you any day or any month… not just at holiday family gatherings.

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I probably don’t have to remind you that the incredible spray-tanned intellectual-fartgas-container this country elected as its next leader is not, and will never be, my president.  I reject him in his every detail.  He is anathema to everything I stand for and believe in.  And some of my lovely Iowegian Facebook friends are responsible for for helping him win.  I have not unfriended anybody as they may have done to me.  I am still constantly amused by them and their families, even though their choice offends me.  But I do get tired of being bombarded with Brazil nuts of “He won, get over it!  We endured 8 years of your president!”  I hate Brazil nuts.  They are difficult to crack open, especially with the skinny, silver nutcracker you see in the picture above.  And after you go to all that effort, they don’t taste very good.  Brazil nuts are always the last nuts in the nut bowl because nobody actually likes them.  And besides, I don’t remember Republicans in Congress accepting defeat under Obama gracefully.  They kicked and spit and shut down the government in a hissy fit.  What do they have against the government trying to make healthcare affordable, anyway?  Still, I get those big, hard, oddly-shaped nuts in my Facebook feed constantly this time of year.

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My sister posted the meme you see above on my Facebook wall.  She says it is actually quite easy to become a complete master of doing what the meme suggests, by which she means me more so than her.  I like walnuts.  They are hard to crack, but not impossible like Brazil nuts.  And once you have split them into two haves, two separate turtle shells, you still have to pick the walnut meat out of a hard, spiky labyrinth of dastardly convoluted walls of interior shell.  But you end up with something delicious if you put in the time picking things apart.  I fondly remember singing goofy Christmas carols with my two sisters and half-dozen cousins at Grandma and Grandpa Aldrich’s farm this time of year.  Elaborate versions of “I’m dreaming of a pink-and-purple-polka-dotted Christmas…” and “Jingle bells, Batman smells…”  My sister is often critical of me and doubts my sanity, as a good sister should, but in the long run, we have some sweet memories to share, good times and incredibly goofy nonsense to look back upon.

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But, of course, everybody’s favorite nut is the peanut.  Those are the first to disappear from the nut bowl.  Holiday gatherings are mainly about eating, but the most important second-place thing is everybody’s self-generated house apes… the next generation of little Beyers and Aldrich’s and Fimblegrubbers and Pumblechooks (yes, I know I am not actually related to Fimblegrubbers or Pumblechooks, but I like funny names, and I have to live with the funny-named people who attend our family gatherings).  We all enjoy watching them play games of “infuriate your sister” or “chase Grampy’s dog till it bites you” because they are funny, adorable and cute.  Sometimes they even play with mutant toy Elmo-looking things like the one in the picture, though I didn’t draw this from a family member, and I added the mutant features to avoid questions of copyright infringement.

Anyway, holidays are notoriously full of nuts, both literal and figurative.  And we really have to learn to appreciate them all.

 

 

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December 13, 2016 · 3:56 pm

Stardusters… Canto 25

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Canto Twenty-Five – Inside the Bio-dome

As Davalon, Tanith, and both of the Morrells scurried into the airlock of the Bio-dome, Brekka, Menolly, and George Jetson, already naked, were merely standing around watching them.  There was a lizard girl covered in green and yellow scales, more human-looking than any Telleron, completely naked too, and only about the size of an eight-year-old human.

“Why aren’t you running?” cried Alden Morrell.

“Take off your clothes,” said the lizard girl, “and then you don’t have to worry either.”

“What?  Why?”

Alden had gone all red in the face, a look that Davalon had come to know as embarrassment.

“The guardian machine-man reads anything artificial as signs of a scabby.”  The lizard girl seemed no more embarrassed by her nudity than were the tadpoles.  “It looks for manufactured goods like clothing or weapons to determine a target.  Naked you become part of the flora and fauna that it guards.”

Davalon and Tanith quickly stripped down and the Morrells were forced to follow suit.  When the machine-man came into the chamber, all clothing, skortch rays, monitors, computers, and tracking devices that the tadpole expedition had brought with them lay in a pile in a corner by the door.  The artificial man wandered over to the pile, examined it, picked up a few items, and then put them down again.  Davalon wondered at Alden, all red in the face, hands clamped over his genital area.  Gracie, it seemed, was far more comfortable being nude and did not display the same behaviors.

“When can we get dressed again?” asked Alden immediately after the machine-man left.

“Never,” said the lizard girl.  “I have a number of still-functioning machine-men guarding this place and all the bio-forms in it.   You are only safe as long as you remain completely natural and bear no artificial clothing or gear.”

“We have to be naked as long as we’re here?”  Poor Alden seemed distressed.

“It’s all right, Alden,” said Gracie with a huge grin.  “You haven’t looked this good naked in a number of years.  You need to let go and learn to love your new body.  I certainly think you are handsome!”

Alden grimaced uncomfortably.  Davalon agreed with Gracie.  His foster father’s child-like form was not at all unpleasant to look at.  In fact, he was beautiful to a Telleron tadpole who loved him for all the sacrifices he had made to be here with his foster son of another world.  He had given up life in Iowa.  He had given up his home and all his possessions.  He had given up his former identity as Alden Morrell, Iowa farmer.  And he had even given up his adult body to return to the body he had inhabited as a child so he could be the same age as his wife in her new simuloid body.

“You are Sizzahl?” Davalon asked the little naked lizard girl.

“Yes.  I brought you here.  Hopefully your cart is full of plants, seeds, and spores that I can use to save this world.  I might need samples of your flesh and blood as well.”

“You brought us here to eat us?” squealed Brekka.

“Of course not, stupid frog-girl.  I just mean I might have use for your froggy DNA.”

Davalon noticed how human-like she was.  Sizzahl had no hair.  She had a bony ridge on the centerline of the top of her head, and she was covered in soft-looking hexagonal scales, but otherwise she looked very human.  Her body proportions were the same as an Earther primate.  Her eyes had vertically-slitted pupils, but her face was human-shaped.  Even her pre-pubescent breasts and genitals looked more human than Telleron-like.

“Why would you need our DNA?” asked Tanith.

“Haven’t you noticed?  The biosphere of this planet is dying.  The stupid politicians, warriors, and industrialists killed it by over-using and abusing all of its natural resources.  And besides, boneheads like Senator Tedhkruhz poisoned what was left to bring his enemies down without realizing he would kill himself too.”

“How will you do that kind of restorative science without artificial devices?” asked George Jetson.

“There is plenty of tech built into this place that we can use without ever having to carry any of it with us and reveal ourselves to the machine-men.”

“How does that protect us from the scabbies?” Davalon asked.

“The scabbies are like the creatures in your Earther zombie movies.  They carry whatever they were wearing or carrying in life.  They don’t have enough brains left to get naked and put down their weapons.  The few that wander in here naked are fairly easy for me to kill by myself.  I assume that will be even easier now that you are all here to help me.”

“Who said we were willing to help you?” asked George Jetson.

“Will you not help me?” asked Sizzahl.  Her eyes, though snake-like, seemed almost to beg.  All tadpole eyes turned toward Davalon.

“I don’t see any reason not to,” Davalon said.

*****

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December 12, 2016 · 3:55 pm

I Can’t Get Me No… Satisfaction

I am old.  And it is true that I am not as old as the Rolling Stones.  After all, they are living proof that prehistoric fossils can actually still sing.  But I am nearing the end.  My health is rapidly deteriorating.  And while medical technology has advanced worldwide, and is probably the only reason I have lived for 60 years, the cost of that technology to Americans is beyond what I can afford.  I am living now in a house that I saw in my dreams back in college.  In that dream from when I was twenty, I saw myself sitting in an easy chair that is now in this house.   The sky outside was pale orange.  And an angel came to me and said, “This is it.  This is the end.  You must come with me.”

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So I am expecting the angel any day now.

But there is so much in this life, in this world, left unfinished.  I have novels left to write, and novels I have written that still are not published.

Page Publishing has my Magical Miss Morgan book and I have to argue now with editors to keep them from totally mangling it.  They even want to change Miss to Ms. in the title!  Don’t they know that kids never say Ms. to a female teacher?    Will the angel have to wait while I labor through the process of correcting those danged ding-batty word-misers?

And the Arizona football Cardinals have not won a championship in the NFL since 1947, nine years before I was born.  I wanted to see them win once before I leave with that angel.  But the team that was practically unbeatable last year lost their seventh game this year to the Dolphins yesterday, and are probably defunct for this year.  It would take a miracle now for them to get funct again and make the playoffs.  Maybe I have to put the angel off for another football season.

And the world has ended in 2016.  The Great Orange Face has won the battle for leader of the free world.  He will institute policies that will make him richer, but will kill me, and eventually destroy life on Earth.  And remember, the Cubs won a World Series again, 108 years after the goat curse was set upon them.  The four horsemen of the Apocalypse are dusting off their saddles right now, and the pale guy is sharpening his scythe.  How can I leave behind such a world for my children?  The angel is getting impatient and tapping his foot quite a lot.

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                                                                                                               “You know, it is quite possible I will look like this the next time you see me, Mickey.”

So, I am really not satisfied quite yet with the way things are going.  The Rolling Stones have some sort of secret going for them.  They are never satisfied according to the song.  So maybe that is what is keeping them still singing after most of them have already died and simply refuse to lay down, get buried, and keep quiet.  Maybe I need to learn to sing.

 

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December 11, 2016 · 5:08 pm

Frustration Posting

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Yes, this is actually an art-post from a previous December.  Once again today as I was finishing up an essay that I hadn’t backed up, the computer suddenly highlighted the entire thing and deleted it, pictures and all, in spite of the fact that I did nothing that I know of to make it do that.  And the WordPress editor, naturally, saved the deletion-changes before I could even blink.  It was gone, with no way to retrieve it, ever.  The save function in my brain gave out long ago.  So, let me post this instead.  I am still posting every single day this month.  And I did actually write my 500-word minimum for the day.

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December 10, 2016 · 4:25 pm

Really Bad Jokes

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If you have the bad habit of reading this particular blog more than once, then you are probably aware that I used to be a public school teacher.  Even worse, I used to be a middle school English teacher.  Aagh!  Seventh graders!  It explains a lot about how life has warped my intelligence, personality, and world view.  It also explains somewhat where I found such a fountain-like source for some of the worst jokes you ever heard.

Now, as to the question of why I have chosen in my retirement early-onset senility to become a humor-blogger… well, that is simply not something I can answer in one post… or even a thousand.  But kids are the source of my goofball clown-brain joking around.

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Kid-humor, you see, is stunted and warped in weird ways by the time period you are talking about.  The eighties, nineties, two thousands, and the tens are all very different.  And those are the various sets of students that I attempted to learn moose bowling from by teaching them English.

Still, there are certain universal constants.

Potty humor really kills.  If you want to make a thirteen-year-old crack up with laughter, roll around on the floor, and maybe wet his or her pants, then you only need to work the “poop” word, or the “nickname for Richard” word, or the “Biblical word for donkey” word into the conversation.  Of course the actual words, even though we all know what they actually are, are magical words.  If you actually say them to kids in school as their teacher, those words can actually make you magically and permanently disappear from the front of the classroom.  All kids are big fans of George Carlin and his seven words, even though most of them have never heard of him.

And violent humor is popular with kids from all decades.  The most common punch line in the boys’ bathroom is, “… and then he kicked him in the Biblical word for donkey!” followed closely in second place by, “… and then she kicked him in the Biblical word for donkey!”  I am told (for I don’t actually go in such scary places myself) that in the girls’ bathroom the most popular punch line is, “…so I kicked him right in the soccer balls, and he deserved it!”   Why girls are apparently obsessed with soccer, I don’t know… or particularly care.sweet-thing

So my education in humor began with bad-word jokes, slapstick humor, put-downs, and rude noises coming from unfortunate places.  Humor in the classroom is actually a metaphorical mine field laced with tiger traps, dead-falls that end with an anvil hitting you on the head, or being challenged to a life-or-death game of moose bowling.  (Don’t know what moose bowling is?  Moose bowling is a very difficult game that, in order to knock down all the pins and win, you have to learn to roll a moose down the alley.)  Sounds like I spend too much time watching cartoons and playing video games, doesn’t it?  Well, there’s more.  And it gets worse from here.  But I will spare you that until the next time I am foolish enough to try making excuses for my really bad jokes.

 

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December 9, 2016 · 3:12 pm

Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? (a review by the Uncritical Critic)

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I love musicals.  What can I say?  I am a surrealist as an artist, and so I am dedicated to combining the disjointed and bizarre to make something that makes you laugh, or makes you cry, or makes you go, “Huh?  I wonder why?”  So when, in the middle of a sometimes serious but mostly comic story of escaped convicts on the lam in the Great Depression Era South, people suddenly burst into song… I love it!

And this movie is filled with creative stuff and biting social satire about religion, politics, crime and punishment, love and sex, desire and disappointment, and, most of all, the need to escape from it all if only for a moment to share a good, old-fashioned song.

The main character is Ulysses Everett McGill (played by George Clooney), so naturally the sirens overpower him and turn one of his crew into a frog.  This is because this story is based on the Odyssey by Homer.  Only the Trojan War is replaced by a chain gang singing spirituals as they break rocks, the cyclops is a Bible salesman and Ku Klux Klan member with a patch over one eye, and when Ulysses returns to Ithica, he defeats his wife’s suitors with a song.  How can you not love a story as creative as that?

The whole movie is shot in color-corrected sepia tones to give it an old-photograph, old-timey feel.  John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson are masterful in the role of McGill’s two idiot hayseed friends.

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Again, I remind you, as a completely uncritical critic, I have no intention of trying to tell you what is wrong with this movie.  I loved it.  I will watch it again.  I am writing this review only because I feel moved to tell you how much I loved it and why.  So if you don’t approve of that, well, don’t shoot me.   Put me on a chain gang and give me a chance to sing.

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