This guy’s tale helps puncture a few holes into the Abraham Lincoln Was An American Jesus Who Was Perfect In Every Way story that kids get fed in grade school. Milligan was a lawyer from Indiana (who had actually taken the bar exam with future Secretary of War Edwin Stanton), who held fervent anti-Union views that were pretty commonplace where he was living in northeastern Indiana. The problem was Milligan and some compadres took their views to another level by plotting in 1864 to steal weapons and free Confederate prisoners of war.
Now Lincoln, who by this time in the war had become quite adept at locking up rabble-rousers and outspoken critics under questionable Constitutional authority, took things a little too far with Milligan and his crew. The men were tried in a military tribunal and sentenced to death, which was a big Constitutional no-no for regular citizens so they appealed for their right to habeus corpus. Since Indiana wasn’t under attack, Milligan wasn’t involved with the military, and the civilian courts were up and running at the time, the Court swatted Lincoln back a little bit and released Milligan. He later sued the General who tried him in the tribunal for libel and false imprisonment, asking for $500,000 in damages. He got $5. Ouch.
But get this: the Supreme Court Justice who wrote the majority opinion of his case – David Davis – was a Lincoln appointee and close friend. He even chaired Abe’s 1860 campaign. Very ouch.
Bonus trivia: One of Lambdin’s lawyers in his first trial was future U.S. president James Garfield, and the lawyer who represented the General in the libel case was future U.S. president Benjamin Harrison.
Opinions abound about this guy, but I think the nickname Lincoln gave him describes him best: the Wily Agitator. An Ohio-born lawyer and Congressman with Southern ancestry, Vallandigham took it upon himself to lead a crusade against the anti-slavery Republican Party before and during the war and assumed leadership of the Copperheads, a coalition of pro-Confederate Northern Democrats who wanted to settle with the CSA and generally make Lincoln’s life miserable.
It’s one thing to lead the opposition; it’s quite another to be a dick about it. Vallandigham vocally hoped for Northern defeat and threw all kinds of hyperbolic vitriol at Lincoln and the North. He eventually pissed one too many people off and got himself arrested and jailed for sedition. But Lincoln of all people commuted his sentence to banishment to behind Confederate lines. Yet instead of staying below the Mason-Dixon, Vallandigham took to Canada, where he declared himself a candidate for Ohio governor. He might have won if not for Union victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in mid-1863. He kept up his opprobrium against Lincoln, but ol’ Abe decided not to arrest him again and instead let him shoot himself in the foot. It worked because the 1864 Democratic platform, which Vall helped write, failed spectacular in the election when Lincoln was decidedly reelected.
The strangest part of his story, though, was its end. Vallandigham ACTUALLY SHOT HIMSELF in 1871 during a trial while trying to prove his client’s innocence. The client walked free, but Clement did not. Karma’s a bitch.
Up next in CWWN, the law-breaking LAMBDIN P MILLIGAN.
Probably my favorite name thus far. A true journalist during a time when mainstream journalism consisted of BRASH, HYSTERICAL HEADLINES!!! and Limbaughesque vituperation, Cadwallader began his newspaper career in Milwaukee before joining the Chicago Times and later the New York Herald as a war correspondent embedded with General Ulysses S. Grant. (He wrote about this time in Three Years With Grant, an acclaimed postwar memoir.) He followed Grant for three years through critical campaigns in Mississippi and Tennessee, during the advance on Richmond, and was present at Appomattox for the peace treaty signing.
He’s also the source of the hotly debated claim that Grant was drunk during the Vicksburg campaign in 1863. Embellishment or fact? Who knows. What we do know is Grant sent Cadwallader a letter in September 1864 commending him for his reporting. Clearly “Unconditional Surrender” Grant wasn’t too upset with him.
After the war, Cadwallader served as a public official in Wisconsin before retiring to California to write his memoir. I haven’t read it yet, but the scant information about him that’s available tells us his journalism was exemplary simply because he wasn’t a fire-breathing partisan like many of his colleagues. A low bar, it seems, but he passed it.
Up next in CCWN, the churlish CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM.
Leonidas Polk was many things: a West Point graduate, founder of The University of The South (Sewanee), the second cousin of President James Polk, and an Episcopalian bishop. He was also a terrible field general. He was a typical example of a Civil War “political general”, a man who had little or no combat experience but was given (or demanded) a political appointment from someone in power, who in Polk’s case was the Confederate’s big dog himself, Jefferson Davis.
Polk didn’t demand the job; he just offered his services to Old Jeff, who dispatched him to the Tennessee Valley. He hopped around Tennessee and Mississippi, all the while butting heads with General Braxton Bragg, who called Polk “an old woman… utterly worthless” but knew he couldn’t shake him because Jeff Davis loved him. Didn’t matter for too long, though, because Polk was killed in June 1864 when General William Tecumseh Sherman (of The March to the Sea fame) spotted him hanging with other officers and shelled them.
It’s important to note that while Polk, despite graduating from West Point eighth in his class, was not a good battle tactician, he was loved by his troops. His nickname was “The Fighting Bishop” for obvious reasons, and to one Confederate private his loss was second only to Stonewall Jackson. I’m sure there are many other examples of clergymen becoming soldiers, but Polk was one of the more controversial ones.
Awhile back I read James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom, the sixth volume in Oxford University Press’s ongoing series of American history. (The full series list is worth checking out if you’re ever in the mood for thousands of pages of U.S. history—and who isn’t?) I learned a lot of things from McPherson’s tome, but most salient was that the men who fought the Civil War had really, really cool names.
I noted my favorites from the book, found a few more, and decided to write a little about each of the men they’re attached to in a miniseries called Cool Civil War Names. Many are soldiers, others journalists or public figures. Together, they tell the story of the era that gave this nation its most fiery trial—and its most fantastical facial hair.
Hope is not a future-minded reverie or escapist dream, but rather a call to action to order the disordered, right the wrongs, and fix what we can in the here-and-now, even if it’s always just scratching the surface.
–Brett McCracken, in a wonderful post on hope and cynicism. There’s certainly plenty in our world to be cynical about, but still more about which to be hopeful. We’ve just got to dig deeply.
Is this the real life? / Is this just fantasy? / Caught in a landslide / No escape from reality / Open your eyes / Look up to the skies / And see. —“Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen
A few summers ago I was in Guatemala with my sister, staying with an older married couple near the Pacific coast. Over lunch one day they asked me what traits I desired in a future spouse. They asked about height, hair color, personality, etc. and I told them what I liked. That’s all great, said Alvira, the wife and homemaker, “But remember, don’t look for the ideal girl; look for the real girl.”
This dichotomy of ideal versus real stuck with me. We all have things in our lives we wish were real but are actually illusions. Think about your favorite movies, books, or TV shows. Don’t you wish you could live in those worlds? You can, for a time, but eventually the story ends and the illusion fades away.
But what if we tried to hold on to these ideals, these stories we tell ourselves, because they’re beautiful or inspiring, even though they’re ultimately temporal? This is a question both Gil from Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris (2011) and Richard from Richard Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles (2009) struggle with in their encounters with the ephemeral.
Neither Richard nor Gil are satisfied. Gil (Owen Wilson) is a self-described “hack” Hollywood screenwriter who vacations in Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her parents. A neurotic and a romantic, he’s stuck between his obligations to the lifestyle Inez wishes to keep up and his newly kindled desire to finish his long-dormant passion project – a novel about a man who works in a nostalgia shop specializing in memorabilia from 1920s Paris.
Here, as they say, comes the turn. In a twist of fate, Gil arrives at a bar, circa 1928, filled with rowdy patrons resplendent in classic Twenties dress. He bumps into a Zelda Fitzgerald and her husband Scott. Cole Porter croons from the piano. He later meets a broody writer named Ernest Hemingway, who after learning Gil is a writer, offers to give his manuscript to Gertrude Stein. For some reason, he’s come face to face with all of his literary idols.
Meanwhile, in late-1930s New York, Richard (Zac Efron), a bored high-school student, meets by chance the famous theater wunderkind Orson Welles. Welles needs a ukulele player for his oft-delayed production of Julius Caesar at the Mercury Theater and finds Richard suitable for the show, which is supposed to open in days.
Like Gil, Richard soon finds himself in another world, performing beside the larger-than-life and mercurial Orson Welles, who runs rehearsals pell-mell yet commands great respect from his colleagues in spite of his massive ego. Richard grows close to Sonja (Claire Danes), Welles’ hard-to-get secretary, and soon considers her his lover. For Richard this is the ideal life: performing on stage far away from his boring family and school.
Gil, too, grows close to a woman in his otherworld. Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a beautiful fashion designer, shares his romanticism and validates Gil’s desires more than Inez ever did. He falls hard for Adriana just as he falls further away from Inez.
But sooner or later, the illusion evaporates. Sonja, ambitious above all else, sleeps with Welles the night before the opening. Too jealous for his own good, Richard castigates the thin-skinned Welles, who in turn fires Richard. They make nice before the show and perform it splendidly, but Richard later learns Orson “just wanted his opening,” so Richard’s out for good.
Gil has a different kind of clash. Adriana doesn’t share his love of the 1920s because it’s her present. “It’s dull,” she says. She much prefers La Belle Époque, Paris’ Victorian era of the 1890s. This triggers Gil’s light-bulb moment: everyone thinks the past era was better than his or her present. Another character in Midnight in Paris calls it “Golden Age thinking.”
So whether out of naiveté or misplaced optimism, they finally awake from their dreams. Yet even in their dreams, both men had brushes with reality. For Richard, it was Greta, a girl he meet-cutes in a music store. For Gil, it was Gabrielle, a flea market vendor selling Cole Porter LPs. They talk briefly each time about music and art, but the thing about these women compared to the ones in their fantasies is that they’re real. Gabrielle isn’t the stunner of Gil’s dreams like Adriana was; she’s flesh and blood. She may not inspire great works of art with her beauty, but she loves walking in the rain just like Gil does. Greta doesn’t work in a grandiose theater production like Sonja; she’s a struggling writer who connects with Richard away from the spotlight.
Gil and Richard never had a chance at their dream women because they didn’t actually exist. They may have been real for a time, but only for a time. That’s the problem with illusions; they don’t last forever. A connection with real life – with Gabrielle and with Greta – made them realize that.
The ideal is temporary, but fools you into thinking you can have it all and keep it that way. The real, conversely, is tangible, yet can fool you into thinking life is dull because it isn’t always enchanting. We find fulfillment in the ideal because it lets us escape from an undesirable present. But Gil realizes eventually that “the present is a little unsatisfying because life is a little unsatisfying.” No illusion will ever change that.
This isn’t a depressing thought. In fact, it can set you free. To paraphrase the wise old thief from The Italian Job, you can either let the illusion enhance your life or define it. Don’t let it be the latter.
So we need not shatter our illusions completely. At their best, illusions are simply stories that can inspire, inform, and reveal beauty to us in many ways. When we let these stories enhance our lives rather than define them, real, amazing things can happen.
At the end of Welles, Richard, a little blue after losing his dream job, the illusion shattered, meets Greta at the museum again. Her short story is being published, and Richard is finally clear-eyed about his life.
“It’s an exciting time,” Greta says, “because it feels like…”
I’ve been reading Colonel Roosevelt, volume III of the Edmund Morris’ TR trilogy, and one line came back to me after seeing Ezra Klein’s pie chart illustrating, in the midst of a debate to strip Planned Parenthood of funding as a prerequisite for not shutting the government down, what the organization actually does.
Morris’ line from the book comes after describing Roosevelt’s impatience for the “interfaith squabble” going on at the time in Egypt between Muslims and Coptic Christians. In Roosevelt’s view,
Their inability to tolerate each other proved the necessity of condominium with the British, who at least had advanced far enough into the modern age to know there were more important things than dogma.
Emphasis mine. The looming government shutdown puts at risk the very important resources that Planned Parenthood provides for many poor, pregnant, cancer- and STD-stricken people, with little money and less hope. It’s not about abortion. If the church isn’t willing to help these people like they should be helped, then the church has failed.
There are more important things than dogma. Unfortunately, that’s all it’s been about.
Looks like Mad Men is getting the LOST treatment, and I couldn’t be happier about it. The deal between Mad Men showrunner Matthew Weiner and AMC will end the series after the sixth season premieres. Like the deal that gave LOST a definitive end-date a few years ago, this new deal for Mad Men will be very beneficial, I think, to the show and the fans.
Though, Mad Men isn’t floundering in its storytelling at this point as LOST was at the end of season three. It’s only getting better.
I spent part of the weekend in Iowa with my dad. We made a pilgrimage of sorts to Antique Archaeology in LeClaire, the home base of the antique-scavengers featured in the show American Pickers. Didn’t end up selling anything, but it was cool to see their place, which, as my dad reports, is much smaller than it looks on television.
We also got to tour the Mississippi River Distilling Company, a local spirits distillery. They explained the distilling process for vodka, gin, whiskey, etc., and how their “grain to glass” process is one of only a handful in the U.S. Every step of the process is handled using locally-made products, from the corn and wheat to the wooden barrels and glass bottles. They took pride in their unique flavor, which was the result of putting the drink through the distilling process only once rather than multiple times, as is the case with most other vodka manufacturers. They’ve only been in business for three months, but it looks like they’re doing well.
LeClaire is also the childhood home of Buffalo Bill Cody, so we toured the museum in town, which ended up being less about Buffalo Bill and more about the town itself. With its strategic placement on the Mississippi, LeClaire saw a lot of riverboat steamers pass through back in the day. They have one on display in the museum – the Lone Star – which is the last remaining, fully-intact example of the wooden-hulled riverboat design typical of that era.
Finally, we drove the half-hour down the river to Davenport to see the Titanic artifact exhibit at the Putnam Museum. The exhibit integrated the artifacts with the story of the ship’s creation and first and final voyage. Most eye-opening was the wall of survivors and perished. They divided the passengers list by class – 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and crew – and the percentage of 1st class passengers saved compared to that of 3rd class and crew was stunning. At least 60-70% of first-class passengers were saved, while the reverse was true of the lower classes. Class status, generally speaking, really did determine whether they would live or die.
I’ve never actually stayed in Iowa, but I thoroughly enjoyed the stereotypical yet still very real Midwestern small-town charm. I also have a recharged desire to go to more museums and historical sites. Can’t get enough of those.
Can’t say that I’m a big fan of the results of this new poll from The Telegraph, in which voters named Forrest Gump the greatest movie character of all time, with James Bond, Scarlett O’Hara, Hannibal Lecter, and Indiana Jones filling out the top five.
While I know some lists are entirely unserious affairs, the fact that Bond, O’Hara, Hannibal the Cannibal, and the Raider of the Lost Ark were beat out by, let’s be honest, an anodyne dolt who is not in the least bit as interesting as any of the other runners-up is confusing and a little disheartening.
Great movie characters aren’t colorless, Rorschach-like stand-ins who just let their circumstances and events of the day passively happen to them – however memorable or pivotal the events – as is the case with Forrest Gump. Great movie characters have color, and they make their own life happen. They go out a risk life and limb to find the Ark of the Covenant, to sail a house with balloons to South America, to fight crime while web-slinging through the streets of New York.
Great characters do something. Forrest does stuff, sure. But, man, is he boring while he does it.
Let’s be clear: I love Forrest Gump. I don’t have to love the character to love everything else about that film. And I guess it says something about the enduring appeal of the film that Gump can show up on a poll like this almost two decades later. But do I think he’ll be on the same poll over 70 years after the film’s release, like Scarlett O’Hara from Gone With The Wind is?
Something I’ve always liked about Mike Huckabee is his candor and generally pragmatic sense, which were on display in a recent interview with GQ:
Compare yourself to Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney. Do you think you’re more center right? I think my political philosophies are solid, traditional conservative. It’s not that I’m a moderate, even though I’ve been called that. In the course of governing a state like Arkansas… I learned that you don’t get your way all the time. There may be some things that are very important to you. You have to figure out how you can get those things done and, at the same time, let the folks from the other side get some things that they want without compromising your core values. One of the things that concerns me—particularly about the atmosphere in Washington—is that I fear we are becoming an ungovernable country. You can campaign with bumper sticker absolutism. You can’t govern that way.
The 2012 Republican field remains to crystallize, but if Miss Wasilla deigns the presidency to be beneath her I’d like to see Huckabee in the fold – if only to have some legitimate cheerfulness in the Republican mix.
Greg Sargent of The Washington Postpoints to a telling section of Mitt Romney’s entirely predictable critique of Obama’s handling of the situation in Libya:
“I believe that it flows from his fundamental disbelief in American exceptionalism. In the President’s world, all nations have ‘common interests,’ the lines between good and evil are blurred, America’s history merits apology. And without a compass to guide him in our increasingly turbulent world, he’s tentative, indecisive, timid and nuanced.” [emphasis mine]
The first three adjectives Romney uses in the last clause to describe the President are typical of right-wing critics. But the last one is new, though, again, entirely unsurprising. That the 2012 Republican frontrunner sees nuance in a president’s approach to foreign policy as a weakness reveals that the black-and-white, good-vs.-evil dichotomy perfected by George W. Bush is still alive and well in Republican dogma.
Of course, the other GOP frontrunner out there has been a walking example of this no-nuance policy every time she speaks.
Good podcasts give you more than opinions or entertainment; they give perspective. I like to listen to my favorites on iTunes while making dinner, or when I want to unwind after a long day.
I’m consistently impressed with Q: The Podcast, a Canadian take on current events and pop culture. The host, Jian Ghomeshi, is the best in the business and isn’t afraid to challenge his guests’ arguments. I go to NPR’s Fresh Air and The Sound of Young America [now called Bullseye] for in-depth interviews with artists and icons, though hosts Terry Gross and Jesse Thorn tends to fawn too much.
For great thematic storytelling, This American Life and Radiolab are the perfect combo. I also love Studio 360 for its “American Icons” series, which spotlight different American figures and works of art like the Lincoln Memorial and Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue. To feel smarter, the TEDTalks video podcast is a good start, though with its scientific and technological focus I tend to skip videos that don’t interest me.
Finally, to keep things interesting, I’ll take in The Bugle, a comedic (and often dirty) take on current events by British comedians John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman wherein the two gentlemen exchange one-liners about everything from the city of Cleveland, Ohio, to erstwhile Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
All of this adds up to an eclectic but immensely gratifying mix of entertainment and enlightenment. And they’re all free.
So it looks like the United States has found itself part of another conflict. I can’t say I’m in favor of opening up a third war for the United States, however limited our involvement, but the humanitarian aspect is hard to ignore.
But right off the bat, I look at the words and actions of President Obama and how they contrast with those of Candidate Obama and Nobel Peace Prize-winning Obama. Andrew Sullivan pointed out a quote from his Nobel Prize speech:
I believe that force can be justified on humanitarian grounds, as it was in the Balkans, or in other places that have been scarred by war. Inaction tears at our conscience and can lead to more costly intervention later. That is why all responsible nations must embrace the role that militaries with a clear mandate can play to keep the peace.
So we can’t say we weren’t warned this may happen. But where’s the authorization for this engagement? Didn’t Obama ride into the White House on his criticism of President Bush’s lack of accountability for wartime executive power? And now we’re part of an invasion of another country – however crazy and nefarious its leader – without any Congressional vote? At least the Bush administration gave the public the courtesy of selling the cause for war in Iraq – again, however wrong the argument.
And I can’t get passed the inconsistent policy of the United States to support some dictatorial regimes while attempting to overthrow others. Civilians in Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen face equal hardships the Libyan people do, yet instead of getting the boot these governments get our support.
Living in a warm climate during the Christmas season is good and bad. On one hand, you can walk around in shorts and a t-shirt while your northern friends brave harsh winds and icy roads just to get to their mailbox. But on the other hand, it’s just not Christmas without the cold.
As a lifelong Midwesterner, I love the traditions of Christmas. My family has many of the well-known Hallmark moments of the holidays. My house and halls were always decked with green and ruby red Christmas lights and decorations. I always cut down the balsam fir evergreen with my family at a local tree farm and dragged it through the snow to the car, strapping it to the hood and bringing it home to bedazzle with ornaments new and old. We always – always – watch It’s a Wonderful Life on Christmas Eve with the fireplace roaring and the popcorn popping. And, yes, I even love the Midwestern cold that suffuses all of these things.
But like the winter cold, these things happen every year, no matter what. When we vacationed in Florida over Christmas one year, we knew we wouldn’t have the cold or the tree, but we still brought our copy of It’s a Wonderful Life to keep tradition alive. And that’s what Christmas is often about: keeping tradition alive in spite of the circumstances.
In The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer uses the Exodus story to illustrate the idea of holiness and tradition, which are two concepts at the very center of Christmas. Tozer explains how the Israelites, having lived for four hundred years in Egypt surrounded by all kinds of idolatry, had forgotten the very idea of God’s holiness. To correct this, Tozer writes, “God began at the bottom. He localized Himself in the cloud and fire and later when the tabernacle had been built He dwelt between holy and unholy. There were holy days, holy vessels, holy garments. By these means Israel learned that God is holy.”
‘God is holy.’ That is the simple thought that permeates the Advent season. And so when I decorate my evergreen tree and listen to ancient hymns in church and watch a movie with my family and walk through the falling snow, I know that it is not these things in and of themselves that remind me of the reason for the season; it’s the warmth of God’s holiness.
“Let us believe,” Tozer concludes, “that God is in all our simple deeds and learn to find Him there.” Our traditions, like the Israelites’ cloud and fire, are best when they reveal God at His simplest and at His holiest.
What’s the difference between Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange? A recent Saturday Night Live skit with Bill Hader as Assange answered that question: “I give you private information on corporations for free and I’m a villain,” he says. “Mark Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he’s Man of the Year.”
It seems backwards, right? In a perfect world, the release of free information about corporate malfeasance would be celebrated and the selling of private information for profit would be illegal, or at least frowned upon. But we don’t live in a perfect world. Instead, Assange gets arrested and Zuckerberg makes billions and is named Time magazine’s Person of the Year.
The U.S. government insists on secrecy. Every politician seems to campaign on bring transparency to Washington and making the government more for, by, and of the people. Yet it never seems to work. So when someone like Assange comes along and pulls back the curtain on important areas of public interest like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the government goes code red.
Facebook is the opposite. No one is forced to reveal personal information; we do it willingly. And the company takes that information and uses it to sell advertising and make billions of dollars in profit. Zuckerberg believes in total openness—on Facebook and in the world as a whole—yet somehow I think he’d had a problem if Wikileaks revealed how Facebook was using people and their information to make a huge profit.
I’m not wholly anti-Facebook. I think it’s a great way to communicate and stay in touch with friends and family. And the way things are going it looks like the site will be the Internet one day. But there’s something very unsettling about how disclosure through Facebook is encouraged yet through Wikileaks it’s demonized. And as long as institutions like Time continue to honor this dangerous dichotomy, things won’t change.
How great was the epic Western opening sequence? (It was actually a recreation of the original film’s opener.) I couldn’t stop smiling throughout this movie. It does a remarkable job of marrying old characters with new challenges. But the reason this is the best of the year is its ending. Andy decides to give away his toys (and, in essence, his adolescence) as he enters adulthood, leading to the most emotional and bittersweet goodbyes I can remember in film. So long, Woody, Buzz and Co. Here’s hoping the Academy wises up and awards Best Picture to the best film of 2010.
Black Swan
I sat in the theater, watching the credits roll, wondering what in the name of Natalie Portman just happened. What was the most stressful movie-going experience for me was also the most fascinating. Credit goes to director Darren Aronofsky, for creating the film’s unique vision and suffocating atmosphere, and to Portman, who finally shows how far she can go to achieve greatness as the conflicted ballerina. Who says ballet isn’t interesting?
The Social Network
The director David Fincher jokingly calls his film “the Citizen Kane of John Hughes movies.” On technical merits, it’s no Citizen Kane. But The Social Network understands its generation much better than any of Hughes’ movies did. You can’t get hung up on the facts because when viewed as an allegory of our time—the Age of Facebook—it’s brilliant and oddly epic. Here’s to seeing more of Jesse Eisenberg (and less of Justin Timberlake).
The Fighter
Mark Wahlberg beefs up, Amy Adams dresses down, and Christian Bale whacks out. And all three make this taut, unvarnished true story worth watching. Like many good sports films, The Fighter isn’t so much about the sport as it is about the competitor. Though Bale sticks out as the crack-addict brother, it’s Wahlberg who shines as the boxer with something to prove.
True Grit
The Coen Brothers’ first foray into the Western is in many ways the Brothers’ least typical. The trailer doesn’t let on how funny the film is. A lot of the humor derives from the characters’ antiquated diction and sharp tongue of 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld. But watch out for what is arguably the only time the Brothers Coen let sentiment sneak into their story’s end.
Inception
More amazing, I think, than Christopher Nolan’s mind-blow of a movie’s special effects and concept was how such a big summer feature was kept under wraps for so long. I really didn’t know what to expect until I saw it in theaters, and when I did I was hugely impressed by the mind-web Nolan spun. Not perfect by any means, Inception gives me hope for more smart, well-made summer films. (A fool’s hope?)
The Kids Are All Right
Gets the award for most pleasant surprise. Once you move beyond the novelty of the lesbian-mothers dynamic, The Kids Are All Right reveals itself as a compelling and endearingly odd family drama. Plus, you can’t go wrong with Annette Bening and Julianne Moore.
I’m sitting in the El Dorado airport in Bogota, waiting to board my flight. I’ve been here for 100 days, and I must say it will be bittersweet leaving Colombia. I met some great people here and got to live in another country and culture for a prolonged period, which has always been a personal goal.
I will miss the food. I bought freshly made bread at a nearby bakery what seemed like every day. The croissants were especially tasty. It’s something about the altitude that makes baked goods especially succulent. I’ll also miss empanadas, ajiaco (a soup), and lots of other foods.
I will miss the family I stayed with, the Encisos. Jorge works as the pastor at Iglesia Comunidad Viva, which is a great community of believers I came to really enjoy and respect. It was great living and working with them every day. The two girls, Maia and Matilde, were also a ball when they weren’t screaming their guts out. I’ll definitely miss the hugs they gave me randomly throughout the day. If you can, please support Jorge & Ginny in their ministry. There is information about how to do so on their blog.
I actually won’t miss the climate. Crazy, right? But as a native midwesterner, I need me some cold and snow once in a while. If 60s and 70s every day with a little rain is your thing, than Bogota is the place to be.
And so ends another chapter in my life. I don’t know what my future holds yet, but I’m glad I got to live for a little while with the good people in Colombia. Gracias a todos y que estén muy bien.
So in the time of my last posting, two milestones were passed: the one-month-left-in-Colombia date, and the 55th anniversary of lightning striking the Hill Valley Courthouse clock tower on November 12, 1955 at 10:04pm. I’m here, I’m a nerd – get used to it.
In other news, on Friday Jorge brought out the ping-ping table into the street in front of the house so we could play with a few of the neighborhood hooligans who have caused Jorge and the family some consternation in the past. It turns out these kids were all right and just needed something constructive to do rather than drink beer and be disruptive. We played ping pong for at least four hours, during which I won (I kid you not) about 25 straight games. Granted, the kids weren’t the best ping pongers, but still. Afterward we watched Into the Wild and they stayed until about 11. It was great progress for starting a relationship with these kids.
Tonight, I just got back from an outing with Jorge and some of his friends. Two of them, a married couple, are starting a restaurant and they toured us around the place which is still under construction. It sits on top of a valley, so the view is incredible. Very spacious and chic. I hope I can eat there someday.
After the tour, we went to dinner at Andres Carne De Res, which is apparently a very famous – if not the famous – restaurant in Colombia. This means it was very expensive, but the food was incredible. Seriously, it was probably the best steak I’ve ever had. The restauranteur-friends were telling me that the owner of the place is filthily rich and a huge jerk. (He was actually eating a few tables away from us.) There are currently three of his restaurants in the world – two in Colombia and one in New York – and the Bogota establishment alone made him $20 million in personal wealth last year. In spite of this, the man takes 3% of the 10 percent tip the waitstaff gets from each bill.
To make up for this douche-move, I stole a cloth napkin. Apparently they check bags at the door for theft, so I just stuffed it down my pants. With my beer glass I got from the Bogota Beer Company, that makes two souvenirs I didn’t have to pay for. Hat trick, anyone?