Been a student. Been a clerk. Been a salesperson. Been a manager. Been a teacher. Been an expatriate. Am a husband, father, and chronicle.
For those who don’t understand these words, I’ll translate: driving a motor vehicle (car, truck, van, or other) with a manual-shift or stick-shift transmission.
In an automatic transmission vehicle, you have steering, gas, and brakes. The car itself decides automatically which gear to be in based on several conditions. This is the form of driving to which most are accustomed.
The rest of us can actually drive.
Ee-ahn’-aw-oh(ng)-oo(ng) for robot to vehicle. And quickly.
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It is difficult to get all of these in a single film.
However:
Art direction that makes you love design.
Cinematography at such scale and intimacy that you love light, shadow, depth of field, and the rule of thirds
Writing that makes you love language, references, and lived experiences
Casting that extols the virtues of interpersonal chemistry
Editing that forces you to feel pace, tone, and contemplation as the story demands
A plot that twists, turns, and delivers a gut punch when you least expect it
A twist-in-the-end that, on reflection (or re-watch), makes total sense.
Compelling, developing characters responding to irresistible forces that wash through their being
Murphy’s Laws in full force: failure is an option, main characters can die
e:
Good examples:
Synecodoche, New York
Michael Clayton
Sicario
Requiem For a Dream
No Country for Old Men
I’ve used this so many times. Now I need to employ Wilhoit’s composition as well.
Perhaps both, together.
You make an excellent point.
Perhaps, instead of “celebrating”, the opposite of “[vicious] harassment and [ignorant] hatefulness” is virtuous identification and commitment to learning. Thoughts?
A foreword: there is no picture. The future has guidelines, tendencies, but no actual shape. There’s nothing you’re supposed to do. Life isn’t planned out all at once. Those days are dead. In fact, they nay never have existed. You will become a new person, and have a new career or focus or stage of life, about once every 11 years. That’s normal. That’s life’s uncertainty.
The piece of advice is the one I’ve given on many platforms for years: if you’re —
North American and
from any “settler-colonial” culture and
you’re able,
then leave North America for at least one year. Live elsewhere, see how others live, and break out of the bubble built by the preschool to prison pipeline, the corporate cradle to coffin collective consciousness. This advice isn’t exclusively for Gringos and Canucks, but it’s based on the particular starting square I had and most of the people I’ve encountered. Also, I don’t mean to exclude my Indigenous, Mexican, Mexica, and other Latino brothers and sisters, but my understanding is that you’ve already got reality pushing the movement narrative.
If you’re a a first-generation North American (like me), also build connections within your community. There is much work to be done to diversify these places and so many other new, and first-gens could use some support. Detachment from one another is what harms us most. The communities I’ve had outside of El Norte continue to feed me. Admittedly, the job I have and the hours I keep prevent community-building. I need to get back to it.
Finally, get smart about money. Find teachers, take meetings at banks, go to teachings at libraries. Study the jargon in your credit card agreements. Make investments in yourself and your future. I failed pretty spectacularly at this one.
As far how to choose WHAT to do with all your time, well, the only thing I’d advise is to be a crafty, insightful, decisive disruptor. Nothing else that I’ve seen works. Be the best there is at a small thing you do. Identify a critical mass for your work and work hard to get to the place where 15% of the people you talk to will say ‘yes’ to you. Gain your repeat customers, followers, students, and acolytes. You can do what want. The trick is to have people support you or believe in your doing it.
Just a digest of what Ive seen here so far:
don’t get bogged down planning too far ahead. Set yourself some achievable goals for the near future.
This is good advice.
there is a good chance that your future could look very different than what you imagine it might be.
This is not advice, but true and warrants remembering because you can bend the future.
find a good strategy for managing upkeep on whatever needs it.
Many people forget that anything and everything you obtain and want to keep working will require maintenance. Machines, subject knowledge, relationships, tools, whatever — all need upkeep. Know your shit so you can keep your shit together.
Focus on improving a single thing you can do in the short term.
I’d add to this. Short term goals should not be ends in themselves unless they are for entertainment. If you’re focusing on a short term goal, connect it to a long term goal.
get[ ] a union job if you don’t have employment figured out yet.
Unions can protect you. But, if you’re looking for satisfaction, the job has to be what you want it to be. Or, take pleasure in the union connections. If neither of these feeds you, a union can’t save you from yourself.
Anyway, you asked and I’m stuck in a waiting room.
Tr. Do what excites you.
Unless it’s heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, or other highly addictive drugs. Also, no gambling unless you’re a mathematical genius. No extreme sports unless you’re extremely fit and a physicist. No crimes or exploitation. No killing, forcibly confining, gaslighting, or coercing people. That’d be awkward. Also, no parenting unless you already have the means to spend $1M on someone other than yourself — while keeping yourself fed, clothed, housed, employed, and pretending to be happy.
So, yeah, whatever excites you and makes you fit, smart, caring, and socially ept.
Bye, Del-cy-sha.
Ok, I don’t wish her harm or any ill will. I just know that, in this meat grinder of international diplomacy, theres a cost if she tries to push back on Lord Farquaad’s wishes. He’s already promised he would harm her — like every other woman he’s ever encountered.
Beneath the politics, almost certainly, Delcy Rodriguez and María Corina Machado both want what will benefit Venezuelans. Or, perhaps, they only want to serve their own supporters. Regardless, neither of these women will gain from participating in the Game of Thrones that Washington has engaged.
Also, Angela Means’s quest to vindicate Felisha has merit. Much is assumed about her. Few, if any, care for her. These are the stories we promote. This is the world we promote.
Note to the CEOs:
Which EXACT side of history are you on? What are you willing to do to help… heal this country?
CEOs, all of you, can change everything. You can (somewhat) free yourselves of culpability by abandoning this violent system. End exploitation, support communities, prioritize people. This system cannibalizes us all. Do what it takes to not get eaten.
Set a new standard.
What your people, your state, and your nation need is a new course forward. Not riches. Not power. Not influence. Not dominion. Not any of the colonial values. No more. Abandon those hopes. Build back better.
Care. Not just “Minnesota nice.” Human security for all.
Build. Sustainable, science-based solutions.
Action. Recognize, understand, apply, and create a future that depends on promoting people, not capital.
The next iteration of the American experiment awaits.
Thanks for that. And true, Durden was not the best to offer. I meant it to be jarring. I meant it to reach out to the disaffected youth and the millennials and the middle of the road white boys. It is anachronistic. And, you might note, it’s no longer about Douglass in that last sentence. It’s us. We, now, are, and should be, pissed off.
The thing is, black anger has always been regarded a threat. My anger has always been a threat. So, I picked one of my heroes as a picture. One of the first of ‘the other’ to take command of his own photographic image. But the current state of affairs — which has never changed — caused me to co-opt the words that, in some readings (like the one you shared), spurred on the Tea Partiers, the “basket of deplorables”, and the Red Hats. An inversion, or, if you like, a suplex for those words.
It was not the smartest, or most apt move. But, it’s what I chose. And published. And am responsible for.
Thanks for your insight.
Added it to my list of upcoming reads.
That’s an incredible quote. I still need to read more Douglass. Thank you!
Also, nice turn toward the positive there at the end.
Oh, it’s much, much, much less than that.
0.0000416%, 1/24 millionth of the sky.
Here, a .gif on Reddit
It confirmed the cosmic insignificance of Earth, the profound vastness of space and time, and — at the same time — the rarity, beauty, and fragility of life. Human perception, memory, and understanding is tiny. But, it reaches toward infinity.
this portrait of Frederick Douglass—an escaped slave who had become a lauded speaker, writer, and abolitionist agitator—is a striking exception. Northeastern Ohio was a center of abolitionism prior to the Civil War, and Douglass knew that this picture, one of an astonishing number that he commissioned or posed for, would be seen by ardent supporters of his campaign to end slavery. Douglass was an intelligent manager of his public image and likely guided Miller in projecting his intensity and sheer force of character. As a result, this portrait demonstrates that Douglass truly appeared “majestic in his wrath,” as the nineteenth-century feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton observed.
This one will make it sound like I’m a fan — I’m not — but I was a kid when Owen Hart entered the WWF and an adult when he died in the ring.
Wrestling had already lost its shine and appeal to me, early in the 90s. The characters, storylines, and action bled fake. And, as I grew up, I came to understand it was no different than any other staged play, entertainment, or storytelling. What really bothered me wasn’t the fake drama, or the dumbing down of storytelling. It was serial betrayal, shameless advantage-taking, and the smooth-brained jingoism of it all. It became the refuge of every shameless American impulse.
Then Owen Hart died on camera. There was a brief reality check. Then, on with the show. The change, though was an acceptance that real death was no reason to stop, slow, or change directions on the machine. If anything, the show, the drama, the merch, and the culture became the basis for an entire political bloc.
Lest we forget: Linda McMahon is now Secretary of Education. Hard to think of a person worse than Betsy DeVos, but here we are.
Just posted this on Bluesky because I just watched it too.
The standing ovation, rare for Davos (and for whatever it’s worth), recognizes two things:
Canada’s proximity to the hegemon mentioned.
Carney’s stature in the world of finance.
That’s it. The content, the message tilted toward an activist approach, in my opinion. It is consistent with the calculations and moves made so far. But, it is not revolutionary or beyond the scope of the established political moment.
There is merit in developing the “networks” he mentioned. There is truth in the act of “taking the signs down”. None of it is new. -2 burned the US sign on the White House lawn exactly nine years ago.
Courting China is basic math at this point. Canada’s resources — fossil fuels, rare earth metals, water, the Arctic Ocean — go a long way in that conversation. Too bad it’ll cost Canada’s reputation for environmentalism, attempts at reconciliation, and other human rights championeering. It is a Brave New World, though much like the old world, now with AI.
As long as we are playing a zero-sum game — enforced by military-industrial actors, a capitalist-loving system, and fractious bets on future value — winners, offensively, seek power by force; and losers organize defense against attacks. The rhetoric is the opposite: winners play victim; losers stage victories. What a circus!
Im glad you’ve said this. Before I saw The Death of Yugoslavia, I honestly believed that modern warfare was clean, clinical, and restricted to willing combatants. That the Geneva Conventions, various constitutional statements, and human honour and decency were a part of modern wars. At least since Vietnam.
No. I was disabused of that notion by this documentary. Yes, I agree, the BBC shouldn’t have the last word on a war in Eastern Europe. The BBC probably shouldn’t have the last word on anything. However, they did happen to have the first word — to me — on the importance of understanding how modern wars get started, how they progress, and chillingly, why they don’t end. It’s a sad, slow, solemn march into oblivion.
I’m not going to argue the utility of the comment.
I said, didn’t I?, it was a throwaway line — vaguely connected for a 7-minute, TikTok-friendly scene with a cameo by a pretty solid character actor. Anything to keep 10% of readers interested for one more paragraph — this attention economy is the pits.
You seem like a film/media purist. What consumable, catchy, full-length film helps you to make sense of Mr. Toad’s wild ride into authoritarianism?
Skateboarding. Wingsuit flying. BASE jumping.
All seem like SO much fun. But, Im entering middle age with two kids. Broken bones are not fun. Nor are risks not covered by my insurance, apparently. That’s what my partner tells me anyway. She gets final say on fun.
Or, the insurance company does. Whichever. They’re on the same side: against injury. And fun.