Screw the GOP and Obama

Once again Tom Toles proves smarter than elected officials.

Have these people no shame whatsoever? In the midst of an acrimonious Congressional debate over whether the George W. Bush tax giveaway to the rich should be continued comes the news that arrogant Republicans have killed a proposal to give Social Security recipients $250 checks to make up for part of the cost of living adjustment (COLA) they didn’t get this year. (And they won’t get one next year either.) The Republicans say that the $14 billion price tax is “too expensive.”

Let’s see if we have this straight—the poor bastards making over $200,000 a year can’t afford a tax increase, but SSI recipients don’t need a COLA? Are you freakin’ kidding me? Have Republicans, at last, no shame whatsoever? And now we have President Obama—aka/ Kid Spineless—saying we “must” pass the GOP bill that extends tax cuts or they’ll not allow middle-class cuts to continue or extend unemployment benefits. What kind of a patsy is Obama, and does he think we’re all that stupid? Here’s our message—let all the tax cuts die and let the benefits run out. And then let the GOP explain why the economy is still in recession.

As for Mr. Obama, its’ time to give up on that sinking ship. He has proven to be the rank amateur his critics charged in 2008. We, like many, were duped. But as The Who sang, “We won’t be fooled again.” If he won’t fight the class war, let him take his sorry act back to Chicago and let’s get someone with more cojones—Hillary Clinton anyone?—to take charge. We’re fed up with all the talk about the need to move to the center. A message needs to be sent to Democrats—if you won’t protect the American masses, we’re not voting for you. And, to paraphrase a Marxist (Groucho), anyone who thinks the Republicans care about anyone except fat cats and robber barons has the brain of a six-year-old child and we bet he was glad to get rid of it.

We’d welcome a tax increase on everyone and some distribution of real pain to the pampered middle class. (Never have so many privileged people whined so much about so little.) If the middle class experienced some real grief—the sort felt by stretched seniors and the jobless working class—maybe they’d turn off Fox News, get off their soft duffs, and get on board the social justice train. The first station is tax equity. Here’s one from the New Testament you won’t hear from the Cadillac evangelicals: “To whomever much is given, of him will much be required…”

Fair Game Exposes Bush Lies Despite Weak Direction

Fair Game (2010)
Directed by Doug Liman
108 mins. PG-13
* * *

Need a reminder that things could always be worse? Check out Fair Game, the film that tells the real-life story of former CIA spy/analyst Valerie Plame and her husband, ex-diplomat Joe Wilson. It’s not a great film, but it is a hammer-to-the-face wakeup call that even if you think Barack Obama is a disappointment, he’s not actively evil like his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Is evil too harsh a word? I don’t think so. Plame, you may recall, was a CIA operative whose identity was outted by the Bush administration in 2003 as a way to exact revenge against her husband. What did Joe Wilson do that was so awful? When he found that a study he authored was doctored and being cited as justification for going to war against Iraq, Wilson wrote to the New York Times to tell the truth. In the lead up to the war, the Bush team told Americans that Saddam Hussein had purchased enriched uranium cake from Niger, which it intended to pack into aluminum tubes and make into nuclear bombs. Problem one: the CIA’s own intelligence said that the tubes could not be used for that purpose. Problem two: the CIA could not confirm that Saddam even had aluminum tubes. Problem three was a doozie: the CIA had sent Wilson to Niger with the express purpose of verifying the purchase of “yellow cake” uranium; he reported back that there was absolutely no truth to the rumor. Understand the magnitude of this. It means that the entire of Gulf War II is a lie. It means that every single U.S. soldier who has died in Iraq has sacrificed his or her life for a deliberate falsehood, as have tens of thousands of Iraqis. Does that qualify as evil?

If not, how about the fact that Dick Cheney forced the CIA to agree with the administration’s concocted reading of non-evidence? How about Karl Rove and Scooter Libby convincing President Bush to strike back at Wilson by exposing his wife’s identity? How about the decision to go forth with that plan even though it meant signing the death warrant of all of Plame’s on-the-ground Iraqi intelligence sources and scientists who had cooperated with her? And how about an organized campaign by the Bush team to smear Plame and Wilson, harass their family, and libel their character? How about creating a climate of fear so palpable that anyone who spoke out—remember the Dixie Chicks fiasco?—found their patriotism impugned? How about creating an environment so poisonous that the actor who plays Bush in this film isn’t even credited on imdb? (Too bad; he got the smirk, swagger, and arrogance down perfectly.)

Fair Game takes its name from Plame’s own memoir and is meant to be taken literally—as in anyone was fair game for the Bush team’s lies—and ironically—as in no sense of fair play whatsoever. It is a well-acted film with Naomi Watts as Plame and Sean Penn as Wilson, two veterans capable of taking Jez and John-Henry Butterworth’s limp script and Doug Liman’s uninspired direction further than they ought to go. Watts is especially good at balancing the character of Plame as a woman who must simultaneously cordon off from her friends her real identity, play spy hardball in dangerous places, be a mother to two small children, and try to express the very emotions she had been taught to suppress in her relations with her husband. Penn gives his usual intense performance and, though I could have done without the clichéd schoolroom speech near the end, he does a decent job of expressing moral outrage and of showing what gave Wilson the sheer chutzpah to speak out at a time in which it cost a lot to do so.

It is a testament to Watts and Penn that this film works as well as it does. It’s a chilling story that’s nearly made pallid by weak direction. Put simply, Liman—best known for directing The Bourne Identity--doesn’t seem to be up to the challenge of presenting nonfiction material this potent. I kept wondering how much better this film would have been if directed by someone such as Sidney Lumet. Go see the film for the civics lesson, not the filmmaking. People have wondered why only Scooter Libby went to jail and why Bush wasn’t impeached. After seeing this film your position will shift and you’ll find yourself asking why he, Cheney, and Rove weren’t lined up against a wall and shot. Fair Game? I think not. How about War Criminals?--LV

Baseball free Agency: A Guide for GMs Who Want to Stay Employed

Which GM will be the next to get burned by baseball's Hot Stove wheeling and dealing?

Somebody told me they’re still playing NFL football. As if I care. Not! December means major league baseball’s Hot Stove League is stoking up. This is the time of the year in which--as they say of second marriages--hope triumphs over experience and guys who have had mediocre careers become instant gadzillionaires. As a public service I offer a guide to save general managers from themselves. Here’s my insider’s take on the free agency market.

Let’s start with the early dumb signing. That would be the Marlins’ decision to sign Javier Vasquez to a one-year $7 million deal. The world “gutless” pretty much sums up Vasquez. He may have “good stuff”--as we’re always told--but the $7 million arm comes with a fifty-cent makeup. He’s had one decent year (Atlanta 2009) and simply can’t pitch under pressure. I’d say $7 million is inflated by a factor of at least half.

Vasquez falls into the category of players who should have been great but never were. They’re like Chicken Little and after a while, a smart GM would just walk away. Here are a group of never-will-bes to which a general manager would have be crazy to offer anything more than a minor league deal: Vicente Padilla, Kyle Farnsworth, Kevin Millwood. Jeff Suppan, Jeff Weaver. Seriously--these are the kind of guys who get GMs fired. They light up radar guns and look great in tryouts. In actual games they turn .240 guys into Ted Williams. The hitter equivalents to these flameouts are Matt Stairs and Carlos Pena. Why would anyone want a strikeout king with an iron glove like Stairs? Pena hits lots of homeruns. The problem is he hits almost nothing else. Do you give several million to a player who can’t hit .200? Not me.

Closely related to the above are the guys who were good at one time, but who have been so ravaged by injuries that it simply makes no sense to offer serious money: Brandon Webb, Erik Bedard, Freddy Garcia, Scott Prior, Ben Sheets. These were rising stars once, but they’re supernova now. Sign only at bargain basement prices.

And let’s hear it for the over-the-hill gang. These guys would be worth Filene’s Basement prices, but if they start talking salad days salaries, hide the checkbook: Johnny Damon, Lance Berkman, Edgar Renteria, Orlando Hudson.

A subset is the don’t-touch-this guys who are either poison or steroid frauds, with Jason Giambi and Jose Guillen topping the list. And then there’s Manny Ramirez, who has a category of his own titled “More Trouble than He’s Worth.” In the flat-out “Stick-a-Fork-in-Him-Done” category is Jason Varitek.

Also to be avoided are the walk-year wonders. Heading this list is Carl Pavano. I don’t want to hear about his “turn around year” in Minnesota. Let Pavano pitch three straight decent years and I’ll remove him from the Turkey list. Until then, any GM who fills his carcass full of green stuffing is as stupid as Brian Cashman four years ago. Pavano’s 97-89 lifetime. How does that translate into anything other than short change? While I’m on the topic, why on earth would anyone offer Adrian Beltre a multiyear contract? A little history. The dude hit .334 in Los Angeles in his walk year in 2004 and then averaged around .255 in five mediocre years in Seattle. In 2010, another walk year, he hit .321 in Boston. Detect a pattern here?

Are there any bargains out there? Austin Kearns is a good buy for a team in need of a solid backup outfielder, and I’d be tempted to pay Magglio Ordonez an incentive-laden one-year deal rather than overpaying for Jayson Werth, especially if I’m an AL GM. Those NL guys have a habit of flaming out in the AL. Besides, I think Werth will end up back in Philly.

So let’s get to the Big Names in free agency. Add me to the list of those leery of Carl Crawford. The Angels are Jonesing for him and I’d say “good luck” and save my money. I would have wanted Crawford three years ago, but his game is simply built too much on speed and he’s already lost a step. He’s a solid player, but not worth what will be demanded. Love Scott Downs, but do you surrender a first-round draft choice and a supplemental for a situational lefty? Not me. I’m also fond of closer Rafael Soriano, but he’s a Scott Boras client and will command way more than his actual value.

This leaves Mariano Rivera and all any sane person can say to the Yankees is, “Pay the man.” At age 41 he’s still among the best in MLB. Who can you sign with an ERA of 1.80? Nobody. On the other hand, as big a fan as I have been of
Derek Jeter, three years at $45 million strikes me as very charitable. It may be time for the Yankees to remind Jeter’s agent that they let Damon walk last year. Jeter would not get half of this on the open market, so hardball is the game to play. Face-saving gesture: add a passel of incentives to Jeter’s contract. Hey, if he returns to form and hits .330 again, it would be worth another $5 million, yes?

This leaves the big prize, Cliff Lee. I like Lee, but I don’t like him for more than three years and I think it will take five or six to sign him. This leaves the Yankees as the clear favorites to sign him. If they do, they need to think of it as three years of production and two (or more) years of charity. He should get three years at $60 million; he’ll probably get five at $120 million. Lee has said he doesn’t like pitching in the Texas heat and who can blame him? Arlington in August is more suitable for a reptile ranch than Rangers baseball. But if he takes inflated dough to go to the Bronx he’d better help deliver championship 28, or he’ll be the new Carl(a) Pavano and the Texas sun will seem like Baffin Island compared to the scorching he’ll get in the New York media.

James McMurtry Live in Europe

James McMurtry
Live in Europe
Lightening Red Records
* * * *

The word has been out for some time now: James McMurtry is a musical tour de force. Think the storytelling ability of his father (author Larry McMurtry), the sardonic wit of John Prine, Townes Van Zandt’s wry commentary of life on the downside, and Steve Earle’s grit. Live in Europe is proof that McMurtry’s also a helluva live performer. On stage with his longtime band—now no longer officially called The Heartless Bastards—McMurtry served the Europeans a zesty slice of Americana. The CD opens with the swamp rock “Bayou Tortue,” a visit to a place where “maybe we’ll get lucky, maybe get shot.” Looking for easy answers? Keep looking, because McMurtry prefers tales of people searching for and not finding them. But he sure can spin interesting tales about the journey to nowhere. “Just Us Kids” starts with a group of dropouts fed up with this “small town bullshit” and takes us on a trip with stops in California, Mexico, divorce court, the skids, and old age. Call it the tour of Baby Boomer casualties. This album is chockfull of folks that don’t quite fit in—a troubled Gulf-War-vet-turned-wrangler (“Ruby and Carlos”), a wanderlust-stricken woman who can gamble and quote Proust (“Restless”), and various folks who do what they know they ought not to do (“You’d a Thought”). McMurtry works each song hard, slinging his electric guitar through that interstice in which folk, rock, and country music collide and shatter.

McMurtry is currently touring solo across the United States and I can think of little better than catching a performance and taking the Europe album home with you as a memento.

Check out some good audio clips on his Website: http://www.jamesmcmurtry.com/

Old Blind Dogs New Release Solid But Not Their Finest

Old Blind Dogs

Wherever Ye May Be

Compass 7-4542-2

* * *

Why the funeral sepia-colored album cover? Why are Aaron Jones and Fraser Stone dressed like gravediggers and Ali Hutton like a greasy undertaker? And why does Jonny Hardie look like an apparition from the past? If you recognize those names as the lineup of the Scottish band Old Blind Dogs, you’ll know that OBD seldom does what you’d expect and Wherever Ye May Be, their latest album, is no exception. As we learn in the liner notes, they have assumed the role of pschopomps--which is also the name of one of the tracks. If you don’t know that word, don’t be embarrassed--I had to look it up myself. Psychopomps are mythical beings who escort souls between this world and the next--guides such as Charon, Anubis, Epona, Azrael, and Virgil.

Old Blind Dogs have long been known for raucous sets, fiddle-, percussion- and pipe-driven compositions that melt the borders between rock and Celtic music. The set “Pyschopomp” aims to obliterate the ultimate border. That’s not the theme of the entire album, but it does seem to have impacted OBD as the music is more controlled and moody than usual. “St. Kilda,” for example, opens with a funerary drone and Hardie’s delicate and wistful fiddle. This traditional song was originally inspired by unrequited love, but OBD’s opening instrumental is somber enough to accompany a hearse. (They do finish it off with lively pipe, conga, and harmony vocals.) I don’t mean to imply that this is a depressing album--far from it. They are plenty of high-spirited selections such as “Scotland Yet,” the jazzy “Room with a View,” and “Copper Kettle,” which is about the brewing of whiskey, for heaven’s sake. Still, the overall mood is quieter and reflective than usual. It also spotlights Aaron Jones’s lead vocals more than Stone’s percussion, Hutton’s pipes, or Hardie’s fiddling. There’s nothing wrong with that, except that hand drums create OBD’s signature rhythms, the album could use more pipe-fired spark, and Hardie is, simply, one of Scotland’s best at the bow and is conspicuous by his relative absence. Even the big sets sound more subdued than usual.

The quality of musicianship is uniformly high throughout and I’ve no hesitation in recommending the album, especially if you’re unfamiliar with OBD. However, I also suspect that long time fans will agree with me that this is merely a so-so effort in the sweep of the band’s output. But then again, OBD has set a pretty high bar over the years, hence middle-of-the-road for them would be top-of-the-heap for lesser bands.--LV

Here's a YouTube link of OBD when they get things fired up.

I Can't Imagine John Lennon in Nowhere boy

Nowhere Boy (2010)
Directed by Sam Taylor-Wood
98 mins. Rated R (language, mild sexuality)
* *

Nowhere Boy was rushed into early U.S. release to coincide with what would have been John Lennon’s 70th birthday. Alas, there is very little reason for you to make haste to see it; this film is—at best—a video rental for an evening in which you’re in the mood for something more schmaltzy than provocative.

If you want revelations about the making of The Beatles, look elsewhere. Nowhere Boy is a tepid relationship triangle whose only twist is that the trio in question consists of adolescent John (Aaron Johnson); his aunt and guardian, Mimi (Kristen Scott Thomas); and his biological mother, Julia (Anne-Marie Duff). When John’s beloved uncle George dies, John is convulsed by rebellion and teenaged angst that leads him to seek out his birth mother. It’s not exactly like she’s hard to find--she’s Mimi’s sister and also resides in Liverpool. She’s also a loose party girl who plants the rock and roll seed in John’s soul. Soon we see John mastering his pawnshop guitar—and if you believe the soundtrack music can possibly come from that instrument you’ve obviously never held a guitar. John gathers a small group of other Liverpool quasi-rebels who share his love for American rock and African-American rhythm and blues. That circle, of course, includes George Harrison (Sam Bell) and Paul McCartney (Thomas Sangster), the latter of whom is younger than John but knows way more about music and technique. Unless you were raised on another planet, you know the rest—Liverpool clubs to The Quarrymen to Germany to… The Beatles.

But, again, the film isn’t about the band. Matt Greenhalgh’s screenplay is based (very loosely) on Julia’s memoir. It is really a battle for young John’s affections between buttoned-up Mimi and good-times Julia, and there’s quite a bit of implied sexual frisson between the latter two. But don’t expect anything risqué to be played out in Sam Taylor-Wood’s color-within-the-lines direction. The film meanders toward abrupt revelations that seem tacked on, and to forgiveness scenes that could have been written for the Lifetime channel. Let’s start with the fact that most of it is made up. John Lennon knew who his mother was and had extensive contact with her from the time he was eleven-years-old. Now let’s move onto the film’s pop psychology. It turns out that most of this is also fanciful; Lennon’s own memoirs are not exactly on par with Greenhalgh’s script. Add a flat tone to the production and direction, and this film veers dangerously close to turkey terrain. Were it not for Kristen Scott Thomas’s steely performance, it would be hard to care about any of what we see on the screen. She’s easily the best thing in the film and strikes all the right chords as an ice queen in search of her defrost button. Also superb is the doe-eyed Sangster as Paul. Sangster looks and acts the part of a fifteen-year-old--reticent, fearful, and seeking to fit in, but capable of occasional flairs of one-upmanship and resilience. (I only rate this film with two stars out of five in honor of the aforementioned performances.)

Aaron Johnson is actually just twenty, but he looks older and isn’t very convincing as John. When he takes one of his various tantrums, it comes off as a histrionic older person overacting rather than a bout of teenage rage. By contrast, Duff appears too young to be Julia. When she and Johnson appear together, one almost expects them to be a couple as they look the part. But the worst miscasting is reserved for Liverpool, which has been scrubbed and sanitized. One gets no sense whatsoever of the city as a played-out blue-collar grime pit. Those who know the story of The Beatles know that part of their story is covered in the filth of the city’s docks and the meanness of its streets. When Taylor-Wood touches on the city’s toughness—and it is onl y a touch—it feels and looks like an American Graffiti outtake. I half expected to see the leather-clad Liverpool punks burst into a song-and-dance routine.

The film lacks grit, verisimilitude, and coherence. Imagine this as the story of John Lennon? No, I can’t. Nor can I imagine he’d have had anything to do with this production if he was still among us. --LV

Winter's Bone a Bleak Masterpiece

Winter’s Bone (2010)

Directed by Debra Granik

100 mins. Rated R (language and violence)

Winter’s Bone isn’t knocking anyone dead at the box office for several reasons: it’s an independent film, it has no star power, it lacks a major distributor, and its story line is bleak and depressing. But make no bones about it--it’s the best American film of 2010.

Winter’s Bone guts the American Dream like an illegally jacked deer. Its protagonist is Ree Dolly, Jennifer Lawrence in a performance that makes all the other Oscars hopefuls look like poseurs. Ree is a girl with deep troubles, not the least of which is that she’s seventeen and doesn’t have the luxury of being an adolescent. She lives in a ramshackle Ozarks cabin with a catatonic mother and two young siblings for whom she’s the de facto caregiver. Her daddy is AWOL and (apparently) a bail jumper who used the cabin to secure freedom before his court appearance. Ree needs to find him and make sure he keeps that date, or she, her brother, her sister, and her crazy mother will lose the cabin. Her journey through the Ozarks backwoods in search of her father makes Dante’s Inferno seem like a stroll through a tulip farm.

Director Debra Granik, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Anne Rosellini, shows us an America most people would rather pretend doesn’t exist. Think lawless Appalachia, mountain poverty, and blood feuds are relics of the past? Replace the moonshine stills of yesterday with meth labs, and the 19^th century Ozarks become a 21^st century nightmare where the code of the hills prevails, and where folks would rather mete out mountain justice than ask the local sheriff so much as the time of day. It’s just the way things are and people like Ree don’t get to have prolonged childhoods; their futures are dictated by circumstance, not dreams.

Jennifer Lawrence is stunning, a woman-child who must swallow pride, stare horror in the face, and grow up faster than anyone should. She strikes a perfect balance between steely resolve, resignation, sorrow, and fear. Almost as good is John Hawkes as her uncle Teardrop, the brother of Ree’s missing father. He has a tender side, but he’s as incendiary as dry straw in a blowtorch factory. One of the film’s open questions is whose side he’s on.

Open questions are among the many things that make this film special. Looking for easy-to-digest answers? Don’t. Looking for nostrums? None here. Want a tidy resolution? Sorry, life isn’t like that--especially for those who are dealt cards from the losing middle of a stacked deck. This is not an easy film to watch, but view it you should. It will leave you shattered, outraged, and perhaps horrified. But I will guarantee you will not forget it. Call this one a dark masterpiece. Find out why this adaptation of Daniel Woodrell’s novel won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance.