Bohemian Crip Watches Movies: Illusion(2004)

 Wanted to like this one better than I did(even though it might get a note in here for featuring post-stroke Kirk Douglas as sort of Hollywood Ebenezer Scrooge, mixed with the father from Cat's in the Cradle)
These are all concepts that sort of pull on my heartstrings generally, but somehow the films of the son's life without the father, and centered on high-school crush Isabelle as if she might be the last woman on Earth or something failed to convince. One of the few small movies I watched in a while to actually make me pay attention to location and budget limitations.  Mostly, because, in most films fighting about family stuff around a kitchen table, Nancy Meyers aside, doesn't really require an expensive kitchen table, and that's the kind of independent film I watch, mostly.  Since this one was supposed to have movement through time and space in it, I did sort of wish it looked like it in some way I'm still trying to quantify.

 Could a father's advice make that much difference in a young man's love life? I wouldn't know...my dad kind of just hit me with "Men and women can't really be friends," and considered his job done.  Well, until, he had a friend at work, I guess.
I don't think it came together exactly, but people on IMDB seemed to enjoy it much more than I did.

ETA: I edited this...somehow, one of one my sentences got posted without its predicate.I can be sloppy about copy-and-paste but I usually do better than that...just didn't catch my error. D'oh.

One Last Holiday Wish

"Passionate Kisses" lyrics 

Progressives get Our Due, Part 2...

Musical Interlude With Ray Charles 

Because you know we'd get the blame if the Warnock thing hadn't happened, so I will attempt not to let my own fashion-victim Senator steal my joy because she can't stand being out of the spotlight for more than ten minutes at a time.  One day she will drown looking at herself in a puddle, and I will expend my last bit of Sinema-related effort trying not to laugh really hard when it happens.

Just goes to show, adding broken women to a broken body like the Senate does not fix anything in its own right. 

Role models can be nice, but choose carefully, and you probably don't want to copy any one person too closely, even if you do pick one you like for more than a few years at a time.

But it is still really cool that we got someone progressive and devoted to voting rights elected(fully, this time) in a Southern state, and that needs to be said at least once more.

 

One of The Best Documentaries...

 that I've seen so far, especially about crime stuff.

The Witness looks behind what we thought we knew about  Kitty Genovese, her murder and the narrative about city-dwelling apathy that your Bohemian Crip took from journalism school.

There is a disability connection as well, since reaction to the murder led Kitty's young brother Bill to sacrifice his legs in Vietnam.(Watching Bill fight his way through gravel and such, while not the focus on the story, created a uniquely intimate viewing experience because I know how that feels.)

Georgia On My Mind...

 

I promise a more serious addition to my thoughts about Georgia will be forthcoming, but I’m feeling the lighter fare today so…although this is about Georgia.

Ten Episodes That Could Reboot Designing Women(in my head)

10. The ladies think Bernice Clifton is being Catfished by her latest  Latinx stud, but she’s not. Hector just thinks arterial flow problems are caliente. Nev and Kamie guest-star, cause Charlene continues to befriend everyone.

9.  Payne’s eldest, Hayden Junior, tells her family she is trans and wants to be called Harriet. This occasions a gender crisis for both Julia and Suzanne, even more because they aren’t used to being freaked out by the same things.

8.Anthony is courted by a black-owned, Conscious-type contractor to work at their firm.  Will his new sense of identity or loyalty to their friendship win out? Two parts.

7.  Mary Jo borrows Claudia’s phone and finds sexts and naughty pictures on it, which makes all the women think about crazy stuff they did to get someone’s attention.

6.  Charlene looks for Julia’s support(and impassioned back-up) when her “yearning for knowledge” makes her both a Big Name Fan and a  target of flame wars on a twitter clone.

5.  Suzanne finds out her country-club crush was at January 6. The women look for ways to compete with swatches.com.

4. Quinton makes a friend that’s non-binary. Olivia ends up living with Charlene and Bill again after the virus threatens her hospitality job.

3. A chance remark from Julia launches a Sugarbakers’ podcast.

 2. Monette’s webcam (sugarbabe.com) accidentally sends people to Sugarbakers’ site. Bernice’s love message to Herschel Walker may have actually reached the football star/werewolf fancier.

1. The Sugarbakers’ team is caught between wheelchair access and history on a major renovation job.

Giving Progressives our Due, Part 1...

 Since the media would rather pretend Biden is the Gandalf of the Senate.(If this is true, he wants the Manchinema bullshit.  I think I'd rather believe he's hopeless than that...)

For right now, though, if you volunteered, door-knocked, or phonebanked...this is for you.

Queen, We Are The Champions

Acts of Self-Love I Don't Have To Be A Sex Columnist To Write About...

 Have believed in the new material I've written enough to court rejection(and spend money entering contests) instead of fearing it.  Trying to consider my art more like my whipping duties, although it still does feel less personal when someone tells PDA no, rather than your Bohemian Crip. Especially if she labored for months, but being precious? Leaves me unpublished, and you know,  have done that.

Frustrating reality in background, though, is that better attitude and blessed by the muses or not, more than the slight success I have, very occasionally enjoyed, may well create a problem for me at some point.

Have probably overworked this comparison slightly, but the people that administer benefits need people with disabilities to beThe Washington Generals of real life, suiting up cheerfully to get spanked on the court over and over again. So, honestly, from a bureaucratic standpoint, it would be the best of all possible worlds if feeling like a writer and being  let down gently were the destination, rather than the journey, but can't quite be that Zen or model cripple enough to accept that.

In other news, the good part of being away from The Message Board that started it all was having enough to write in the year-end round-up for once.

Billionaires Suck!

 

I've been online a long time...I've seen community fracture before. What sucks about this one is, it wasn't the community.

Just some obscenely rich megalomaniac didn't get his ass kissed enough, or got bored, or had some stupid Cunning Plan that nobody in their right mind gave a flying shit about...whatever. it shouldn't have to be our problem, and now it is.

I hate stuff like that...it makes me sad and angry to see stuff destroyed, especially to no purpose, especially so some goldfinger wannabe can move onto wrecking some other shiny object.

And I don't bring up my disability at times like that so you can picture me posting like the little match girl, but that's what I get when I do, even though I found out I am damn good at amplifying voices with social media and I deserve more credit than, again, At Least She Has Something.

(But if you feel like that, he must truly be a Scrooge-level hard-hearted bastard to take it away from us.

#PeoplesSocialMedia now

Partial Redemption...

 - For my state: Woo! Governor Katie!

And for me in my quest to "mow the internet" as Simon requested.
Fetterman campaign staff said that maybe  journos would have to stop shouting at people in the hall, because he couldn't respond fast enough. Which, of course, even a rookie like me knows that the scrum is its own point, right? "Look how hard I am  trying Against Institutional Indifference(TM) to get the answer to my thousandth stupid hoodie question for y'all."

So some reporter named Jonathan said "okay, so I guess we'll use cue-cards like in Love Actually?"(very passive-aggressive, Jonathan...are you sure we are not related? And anyway, why the hell not, as the questions are so clearly not the point, anyway.)
I so enjoyed telling him that was one scenario where he could get as big as he wanted. Unlike much of life.

Didn't exactly, like, need a cigarette, but it was worth a smile.

Even if I did back off Mark Finchem and the "GOAT SCREW"

ETA: The reporter's name was Andrew.

Election-Related Attention-Seeking Behavior....

 (more about the disturbing Twitter thing later; this has a timestamp)

 

“My stroke knocked me down, but I am going to get back up.”

 As a board member of a disability-rights action team I  feel  pressure  to make my public statement as a disability-rights issue team impressive,  making  up for our being called inspirations  for doing ordinary things, but we’ll keep it simple.  If accommodations for disability seem strange, consider that we, disabled and not, have been using zoom for years to compensate for lack of proximity. It’s challenging, but we don’t quit because it's ‘painful to watch.”

 PDA cares about labor, and healthcare, and women’s reproductive rights, and  endorsed John Fetterman because he does too….the quips are  a bonus, like the hoodies.  Since none of that has changed, maybe it’s okay that we  echo the Philadelphia Inquirer’s hope that a Senator Fetterman might act as a role model, not only for both abled and disabled Pennsylvanians, but in fact a nation looking to get back up after the mass-disabling event of a still-ongoing pandemic. Whether he recovers fully or not, it’s a unique opportunity to see our strengths reflected in the larger political culture, and one we shouldn’t miss due to outdated biases and prejudice.

  Maybe it’s time to acknowledge our strength as disabled Americans, one of them being that we already know, as John Lennon wrote “Life is what happens while you’re busy  making other plans.” A more flexible outlook would be a benefit to a legislative body that, too often seems dedicated to solving the crises of the last century.
Erika J.

Board Member
Progressive Democrats of America Disability Issues Action Team