Apology Unnecessary

 I doubt I have to explain what this post is about, but just in case:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/27/entertainment/will-smith-chris-rock/index.html

Anyway, today on Morning Joe, they were actually criticizing Will Smith for only apologizing to the Academy and not to Chris Rock. I think they have that backward--Chris Rock should have made a public apology to Jada Pinkett Smith for making her medical condition the subject of an ad-libbed joke (and don't try to claim he didn't know why she shaves her head--she's discussed it openly on line and on TV--plus he has a history of taking shots at her:

After Pinkett Smith boycotted the 2016 Oscars ceremony for its lack of diversity, that year’s host, Rock, suggested in his opening monologue that the actress wasn’t even invited to the show in the first place. “Jada went mad,” he began. “Jada says she’s not coming. Protesting.” Then he quipped, “Jada boycotting the Oscars is like me boycotting Rihanna’s panties. I wasn’t invited!”

Rock went on to poke fun at Smith, who many had pegged as a lock to be nominated that year for his work in Concussion. “Jada’s mad her man Will was not nominated for Concussion. I get it,” Rock said. “It’s also not fair that Will was paid $20 million for Wild Wild West.” [https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/will-smith-chris-rock-jada-pinkett-smith-history-timeline-1328492/]

What do you think?

 

Who's Got the Power?

Last night (or actually in the wee hours of this morning, apparently), we had a power failure, the first one in quite a while around here. It happened in the midst of a thunderstorm and our only evidence of it, originally, was the flashing of our bedroom clocks. (We actually pulled the plug on one of them as we could not see the controls to reset it in the dark.)

Though we can't be sure, we think the power went off somewhere between midnight and 1 AM and came back on about an hour later. This morning we reset all the electric clocks and re-established the wi-fi connection to our streaming devices.

A "first-world" problem, I know, but still....

Permanent Daylight Saving Time--A Good Idea?

The Senate passed a bill yesterday that would make Daylight Saving Time permanent--in other words, we would always set our clocks one hour ahead of "sun time," and not reset them twice a year in March and November. This has been touted as a good idea, reducing confusion, decreasing energy use, etc.

But I think there are some practical concerns not taken into consideration. First of all, there's the issue of early morning darkness in the winter months. On January 1, sunrise in Bangor ME (about as far east as you can get in the US) is at 7:13 standard time. That would make it 8:13 if we switched to permanent daylight saving time. That would mean lot of traffic, including school buses and kids walking to school, in the twilight of just before and just after dawn.

And it would be even worse on the western side of the Eastern Time Zone (or any time zone, as I will explain). You see, our time zones are each approximately 15 degrees of longitude, about the distance the sun "travels" in an hour. But the time for each zone is determined by a place in about the middle of that zone, so the eastern side is really about 30 minutes earlier than that and the western side about 30 minutes later. On January 1, sunrise in Indianapolis (almost as far west as you can get in the Eastern Time Zone) is at 8:06 EST, nearly an hour later than in Bangor--and thus would be at 9:06 EDT, if we went to year-round daylight saving. Businesses would be opening their doors while it was still dark out, so commuters would be traveling in pitch darkness.

Energy savings? People would be getting up before the sun heats their homes, meaning more fuel to heat their homes not less. They would be up and about before the light begins streaming through their windows, meaning more electricity being used.

Sure there would be more light in the late afternoon, but evening rush hour would still be mostly in the dark and we'd still be eating dinner under electric lights.

Is the convenience of not changing your clock twice a year worth all that? (Especially when most of us have devices that do it automatically, anyway.)

Historia del Lado Oeste

[Spoilers ahead]

I am a big fan of Broadway and film musicals, so it should not surprise anyone that I recently (finally) saw Steven Spielberg’s re-imagining of West Side Story. On the whole, I think it works and I enjoyed it…but I do have a few quibbles.

I appreciate his and screenwriter Tony Kushner’s reasons for putting greater emphasis on the social background of the story, with more details about the lives of the characters, especially the Hispanic ones—but I think they may have overdone it. By spending so much screen time on those elements of the tale, they were forced to make what, to me, has always been the driving force of the story—the whirlwind romance of Tony and Maria—seem like a subplot. It’s as if you turned Romeo and Juliet into a political tale of rivalry in Verona, instead of a tragic romance.

Additionally, I’m not sure that giving Tony a “reason” to have turned away from the Jets—his year in prison and regret over nearly killing a member of a rival gang—strengthens his character; in fact, it may weaken it. In the original script, Tony leaves the gang because he has outgrown it. Unlike Riff, he has matured into a young adult—a person who has come to accept the responsibility of taking his place in a larger society than a group of guys just fighting to hold onto “turf.” He seems to be the only member of the Jets who actually has a job, no longer relying on his family to support him. In that, especially in this new vision of the story, Tony is more like Bernardo and Chino, who support their families, rather than simply hanging at Doc’s and playing at being tough guys.

On another level, while I like the idea of putting some of the dialogue in Spanish, I have to wonder why they didn’t do the same with any of the lyrics to the songs. Imagine if at least one verse of “I Feel Pretty” had been sung by Maria in Spanish…or, better yet, if part of Maria’s and Anita’s musical argument “A Boy Like That” was in Spanish. Isn’t it likely that, at such an emotional moment, they would have naturally fallen into their native tongue?

I also question giving “Cool” to Tony. Yes, they use it instead of his argument (in the original) to make the rumble into a “fair fight,” but It feels out of character to me.

On the other hand, the singing and dancing (especially the dancing) is stirring. The female leads, Rachel Zegler and Ariana DeBose are magnificent (and how fitting to have Valentina (Rita Moreno) sing “Somewhere” as a reflection on her own cross-cultural relationship as well as that of the two young lovers).

PS: An interesting note--when I went to Google Translate to put "West Side Story" into Spanish, it originally only gave me back the English. To get the title of this post, I had to input "story of the west side" instead.