The Republic of T.

Ed Note: This was so much fun, I decided to update the post with a few more casting choices and bump it back up to the top of the blog.

I admit it. I’m one of those people who reads the tabloids while I’m standing in line at the grocery store. (I figure I still have some time before Parker figures out what I’m reading.) I already knew that Oliver Stone is planning a Bush biopic. What I didn’t know was that Josh Brolin will portray Dubya. At least not until I noticed a tabloid headline blaring that Brolin’s stepmom, La Streisand, is furious that he’s doing the part, (and Brolin is allegedly furious that she’s furious) because she’s worried that Dubya might get a sympathetic portrayal. (Meanwhile the folks at Fox & Friends are worried that Streisand’s stepson in the lead role means it’ll be a “hit piece.”)

The tabloid piece got me thinking: who else would I cast in the picture? Brolin is the only cast member listed right now, so the rest of the cast is anybody’s guess. The folks at Radar have already taken a stab at guessing. And while they’ve made some interesting choices, including a few I would have also made, I think there’s still room to make some suggestions of my own. (And, Oliver, if you’re reading this, all I ask is a brief walk-on and/or casting credits.)

So, here goes.

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The holiday wouldn’t be complete without the obligatory “Jesus is the reason for the season” commentary, and this year Roland S. Martin provides it.

This whole push to remove Christ from the Christmas season has gotten so ridiculous that it’s pathetic.

Because of all the politically correct idiots, we are being encouraged to stop saying “Merry Christmas” for the more palatable “Happy Holidays.” What the heck are “Seasons Greetings”? Can someone tell me what season we are greeting folks about? A Christmas tree? Oh, no! It’s now a holiday tree. Any Christmas song that even remotely mentions Christ or has a religious undertone is being axed for being overtly religious. And I’m sorry, forget X-M-A-S. Malcolm X? Yes. X replacing Christ? No.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m very respectful of other religions. I don’t want anyone to be afraid of discussing the Jewish faith when we address Hanukkah. And we shouldn’t dismiss Muslims when the annual pilgrimage to Mecca is held during December. In fact, Americans are so ignorant of other faiths that we can all learn from one another.

But this seeming backlash against Christianity is bordering on the absurd, and we should continue to remember that Jesus is the reason for the season.

I don’t disagree with Martin on some points, but the overall tone of his column is basically the same old “Christian appropriation of everything” theme. Much as the “Christian nation” rhetoric serves to remind us that the country does not really belong to the rest of us, the “Christian holiday” rhetoric serves to chide us that if the rest of us non-believers celebrate the holiday we are by default celebrating Christianity, its tenets, and mythology.

But it’s not true. Jesus hasn’t been “removed from Christmas,” so much as he was grafted onto it in the first place. And he wasn’t the “reason for the season” until the season was appropriated by the Christian church. So, it’s appropriate that we’re reminded that “the season” predates Martin’s “reason.”

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Yeah, I should probably do a post-debate wrap up, but to be honest I’m still waking up and catching up on my blog/news reading this morning. And that effort is now being hampered by this timewaster from the new Simpsons movie site, which lets me create a “Springfieldian” version of myself.

Not a bad likeness, even if I do say so myself.

Technorati Tags: humor, movies, web

Guys, it looks like we’re back to “Beta,” to borrow a term from the “Web 2.0″ world. Or maybe it’s that Beta’s are back in. I’m not sure which. It was over a year-and-half ago that I bemoaned the reign of the alpha males.

And be certain there are rough edges when it comes to alpha males. Sometimes its those edges that attract and repel us simultaneously. I’ll be the first to admit that as much as I feared and envied some of the more aggressive, influential boys I went to school with, I still swooned over them in the locker room. (Until they drove me out of it, that is.)

Those rough edges are still attractive qualities to some Americans, and don’t think that Karl Rove doesn’t know that. Why else does Bush take every opportunity to get down to his ranch and clear brush, except to invoke the image of the cowboy and all it implies; the strength that lies behind stoic silence, the “resoluteness” to stand one’s ground, etc. And after 9/11 America wanted an alpha male in the White House. The problem is that those rough edges that seemingly soothe us also have a downside…

The problem is that after 9/11 America wanted a John Wayne, but now — in the clear light of day, with the dust from the towers settled — we discover we ended up with a Gomer Pyle instead. One who doesn’t have the wherewithal to see us out of the mess he swaggered us into. He can clear brush, but he can’t get us out of the weeds he led us into.

This weekend I opened up Newsweek, read their article “In Hollywood, Beta Males Best Alpha Dogs,” and began to think maybe I was out in front of a cultural trend back in October 2005.

Technorati Tags: culture, current events, feminism, gender, masculinity, movies, politics, war on terror

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In case it hasn’t been apparent lately, I’m running a little low on blog mojo these days. Or maybe I’m running a little low on sleep. Maybe both. Lately I find myself still up at 2:30am or even 3:00am, often catching up on blog reading or writing a post that’s been knocking around in my head for a while but that’s too long and/or too deeply linked to write between breaks at work or at home. (You’d be amazed at the number of posts that are published during daylight hours were actually written in the wee hours of the night/morning.) Thats fine, in a way. I’ve always been a night owl, staying up past everyone else’s bed time because that’s time that’s almost guaranteed to belong to me. I can indulge my own interests without worrying about stealing time from something else. At least until my body rebels and starts shutting down.

Of course, if you work and have kids, you know what I’m talking about. You clock out and go home, but you don’t really clock out until well after the kids have gone to bed and you’ve caught up with your spouse or partner (because, if you want to have a healthy relationship you kinda hafta talk to each other once in a while). So, round about 10:00 pm, in my case, is when I can really focus on some stuff I want to do.The problem is, I’m often physically and mentally exhausted. Plus the stuff that keeps my brain functioning in almost-normal mode wears off by then. So, there’s the problem of being able to focus when I finally have the time.

But I’m not getting enough sleep. (Guess where I’m stealing time from now) I end up getting 4 - 5 hours of sleep a night. Six would be optimal for me. But I can’t manage to get in everything I want to get in — read everything I want to read, write everything I want to write, etc. — and get enough sleep. So, I end up with a backlog. For example, I meant to blog about all of this when I saw an article a couple of weeks ago that there are a lot people who are sleepless in D.C.

In the Washington area, there are a lot of highly educated white-collar workers who have come from all over to get ahead.

Dr. David Gross, a pulmonologist who specializes in sleep issues, said there are three keys to good health: diet, exercise, and sleep.

“Americans are very aware of the fact that exercise is important and diet is important. They don’t do it necessarily, but they know they should do it,” Gross said. “Sleep is something special because they don’t even realize that sleep is important. And they don’t do it.”

According to Gross, lack of sleep is a problem. He said it’s a contributor to diabetes, high blood pressure, weight gain, and to depression.

Gross said not getting enough sleep can dull your performance, make you a lot less efficient and it can make you irritable.

To get enough sleep Gross said people have to change their priorities.

Dull performance? Yeah, probably. Irritable? Definitely. Change my priorities? There’s a lot more than that to change if I’m going to get more sleep.

Technorati Tags: family, health, life, movies, sleep, television

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He has been since 1979; about 28 years. But even just a casual observation of American culture and society suggests that he still ain’t buried. Never has that been more evident then now, as we approach the day (tomorrow) when he was born,100 years ago in Winterset, Iowa. And his momma named him Marion.

I probably shouldn’t have brought that up. but then I probably shouldn’t bring up any of the stuff I’m about to, because I’m sure “now is not the time.” But Marion (John?) isn’t going to have a centennial next week. And it’s not about him anyway. It’s about us.

Technorati Tags: bush, celebrities, culture, current events, gay rights, gender, iraq, movies, politics, war on terror

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One of the unexpected pleasure of parenthood,lately, is that I get to sing again. At some point, we went from Parker asking me to stop singing around the house (admittedly, in the middle of one of his favorite shows) to Parker actually asking me to sing to him at bedtime and in the car, because he likes it. I admit, I couldn’t help grinning when I heard him say “Daddy’s a good singer.” Made my day, it did.

It started when Parker adopted Cars as his favorite movie. One night after I realized the movie soundtrack contained several songs I knew, rather than sing the theme from Thomas the Train again I asked Parker if I could sing a song from the movie for him. He happily said yes, and I launched into “Route 66″ for him. Since then, I’ve added “Life is a Highway” and “Life Would be a Dream (Sh-boom)” to the set list, though I have to print out the lyrics to get through the first one.

But what’s been the most fun is reaching back into my singer’s brain to find songs that I’d enjoy singing and Parker would enjoy hearing. I came up with “It’s not Easy Being Green” and “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (the first song I ever sang on stage). The first one’s been requested again, but not the second one, yet.

I’ve been enjoying it so much that I think I might hook up with a voice teacher, just to see what kind of pipes I have left and what I can do with them. But even if I never sing for an audience again, I’ve got at least one ardent fan. Anyway, I thought it would be fun to put together a playlist of Parker’s “lullabyes.” (The last one is a version of “Rainbow” is probably my favorite.)

Technorati Tags: movies, music, parenting

It’s been quite a week for blogging here. At the start of the week, I didn’t expect to be writing about any of the stuff I actually did. Somewhere in the midst of all that writing, I managed to do some reading too, and Here’s some of the best stuff I read.

Bruce at Crablaw has post about how fascism starts, which covers an event I read about and had intended to blog about, but didn’t get a chance to.

When fascism takes over a society, fascism does not send every citizen/subject a certified letter noting the suspension of freedom of speech and of assembly and an option to opt out of the class of victimized slaves, as if it were a class action suit for an over charge on your cell phone bill.

And people tell me I am crazy and paranoid for being concerned about the rise of theocratic politics and an intrusive state.

Technorati Tags: blogs, current events, gender, hip-hop, music, homophobia, race, va tech, video, violence

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What out for the exploding heads of wingnuts. I saw this on The Blue State when I started my reading this morning, only to have it confirmed later. Al Gore has been nominated for the Nobel Prize.

Former Vice President Al Gore was nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his wide-reaching efforts to draw the world’s attention to the dangers of global warming, a Norwegian lawmaker said Thursday.

“A prerequisite for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is making a difference, and Al Gore has made a difference,” Conservative Member of Parliament Boerge Brende, a former minister of environment and then of trade, told The Associated Press.

Brende said he joined political opponent Heidi Soerensen of the Socialist Left Party to nominate Gore as well as Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier before the nomination deadline expired Thursday.

Oh, boy. This ought to be good. To give you an idea of how good, I posted earlier about one objection to Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth being shown in Washington state schools.

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I just resurfaced from work long enough to see that the Oscar nominations are out and Dreamgirls nabbed eight nominations, but was skipped over for Best Picture. There was a time when I would have seen all or most of the nominated movies and performances, but these days it's a matter of spending babysitting capital along with springing for movie tickets. So, I can't reliably predict anything, but my guess is that Dreamgirls will get at least three: Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Song. Best Actress, I think will come down between Meryl Streep and Hellen Mirren, but I say that having only seen Streep's performance.

Well, as mentioned in my previous post, I finally saw Dreamgirls. The hubby and I went to a morning matinee yesterday before heading off on a day-long date together. We saw it at the Uptown (photo via thinkrad!cal), which has one of the largest (if not the largest) screens in D.C., and I had a bit of a weird moment as we were walking towards the theater. Having not read blogs or any other news over the holiday, I hadn’t heard the news about James Brown. So, I was taken aback when I saw his picture on the front page of USA Today, and figured the news must be bad (”Super Bad,” to borrow one of his titles). Sure enough, when I stopped to read the caption, I found out Brown had passed away.

That gave me pause on my way into the theater to see a movie that, in some ways, paid homage to Brown as much as it did to an entire era of African American music and its influence on American popular music and culture (the Wikipedia page for the movie lays out the details better than I can). That wasn’t the reason I was going to see the movie. It gave me something else to think about, but I was merely wondering whether it would be a good movie.

Well, it was.

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It's official. We're going to see Dreamgirls on the 26th. The hubby just called to say he'd purchased the tickets online. And to top it off, we're seeing it at the Uptown, which has one of the largest screens in D.C. The only question is, do we sit in the balcony for a bird's eye view, or 5th row center so that the screen fills up the entire field of vision? 

I didn’t expect to be writing about Dreamgirls again so soon after my earlier post, despite the fact that I went out and got the deluxe edition of the soundtrack. And while the soundtrack is quite good (this isn’t a review, but I may write one later) it brought to mind something I surprised I didn’t think of when I posted earlier. Again, clearly the producers of this movie know they have at least one audience they can count onto see it even if no one else does: Gays. After all, it’s got Broadway cred, fabulous costumes, a flotilla of divas, a basis in the life story of a prototypical diva, and a show-stopping anthem that has kept drag queens in business for a quarter century. I mean, the deluxe soundtrack includes a dance mix of Jennifer Hudson’s “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going.” Okay?

But as Keith points out, Dreamgirls isn’t only the biggest gay film event since Evita. It’s also an important black film event, perhaps the most important since The Color Purple. (When was the last time you saw so many black actors in a movie this big? And a dramatic film?) And listening to the soundtrack (as I have, at least half a dozen times since yesterday), particularly to Hudson’s and Knowles’ gospel-influenced vocals as well as the call and response employed in so many of the other songs, as it was in the Motown music on which the show and movie are based, makes it tricky to promote a movie like Dreamgirls.

Not just because it has two different, though overlapping audiences, but because there’s some members of one audience are likely to bear some antipathy towards members of the other audience. And in the course of promoting the movie to those audiences, some young singer/actresses who honed their vocal chops in black churches will find themselves walking a fine line and sometimes stumbling over it.

Case in point, two different interviews given by two of the principal actresses in the film; Jennifer Hudson and Beyonce Knowles.

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