Hurray for Chris Hayes. Finally, someone in the mainstream media is addressing issues like white-on-white violence and the prevalent drug culture that pervades white youths.
[youtube http://youtu.be/R_oa_VEnNlA]Author Archives: Jean-Paul
Book Review: Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
Jean-Paul’s Rating: 2/5 stars
Another award winning novel that I didn’t much care for. I had a very hard time getting into “Zoo City” so take what I have to say here with a grain of salt.
“Zoo City” takes place in semi-modern day Johannesburg, South Africa. The title refers to a slum section of the city where those who have been “animalled” live. Being animalled is like having your own familiar. The way an individual is animalled is a bit vague, but it has something to do with committing a serious crime. Commit a serious crime and soon thereafter an animal will appear at your side and you are forever tied to it. Separation from the animal causes immense pain and the death of the animal causes the human to be drawn in by the Undertow which kills you. Animals can range from lions to butterflies and all have extended life spans and human. The animals also unlock some sort of magical power in the humans. This power varies from person to person. Being animalled is like wearing a scarlet letter and the affected individuals are usually scorned by society. It is an interesting concept with lots of avenues of possible exploration, but they are mostly avoided in this book.
The main character is Zinzi December who is animalled with a sloth. She is an ex-druggie that owes lots of money to all the wrong people. She is slowly paying that money back by using her magical power offinding lost things for people for money and running spam e-mail scams (of the Nigerian Royalty needing seed money to release a vast fortune variety) for the person to whom she owes the money. She became animalled by doing something that led to the death of her brother. What that something was is not entirely clear but it had something to do with drugs. I find this incredibly frustrating. Why even go into how Zizi got animalled if you’re not going to give the whole story? It would be better if they simply left you to wonder how Zinzi got animalled. There is a lot of stuff to choose from.
The plot centers around Zinzi being hired by a reclusive music mogul to find the female half of a set of twins who comprises his biggest current hit band. She disappeared days before the band’s new album is supposed to drop. The money is good so she goes against her usual rule of not using her power to find lost people. What follows is a series of really hard to follow events leading up to the discovery of the lost girl. This discovery is entirely anticlimactic and everything that follows afterwards makes no sense. It is not entirely clear why Zinzi took the job when she certainly could have broken her rules and made a lot of money for finding missing people long before this. It is especially not clear why Zinzi would continue on the case when it becomes abundantly clear that there’s a lot of bad mojo surrounding the twins and the music mogul. And it makes no sense whatsoever why Zinzi would continue to pursue the case after the twin is found.
Outside of the main plot, though, there are some really cool, if depressing, views into South African life. The peeks into the 419 fraud e-mail scams is legitimately interesting. Zoo City itself is supposed to be a fairly real life look into one of Johannesburg’s suburban ghettos. There are also glimpses into African issues like child soldiering, rebel warlords, and war refugee families. These are all side stories but I found them much more compelling than the actual main plot.
I finished reading “Zoo City” with so many unanswered questions. Maybe my inability to get into the book made me miss some key points in the plot and that’s why I have so many questions. It is a possibility. But I am a fairly astute reader and, while I can pass a point or two on something I just didn’t pick up on, this book just had too many of them for me to recommend to anyone.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention one other thing that I though was pretty cool about the book. Race was almost completely invisible while being set in a country known for it’s racial issues. At no point was I conscious of the race of any of the main characters. It wasn’t until probably three quarters of the way through that I realized it. It’s quite an accomplishment in my book.
Movie Review: 2 Guns
Jean-Paul’s rating: 4/5 stars
Q: What do you get when you cross Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg?
A: An incredibly fun action movie with some hilarious interactions between the two stars.
A word of warning, this movie is not to be taken seriously. Any attempts to take this movie seriously will be used against you in a court of law. That said, wow is this movie fun. Stig (Mark Wahlberg) and Bobby (Denzel Washington) play two drug dealers/problem solvers who are working for a Mexican drug kingpin, Papi Greco (played by the always awesome Edward James Olmos). Only, Bobby is actually a DEA agent trying to take down Papi. Oh, and Stig is actually a Navy Seal who is trying to, well, that’s not entirely clear. I mean, they have an explanation but it doesn’t really make much sense and has to do with robbing a bank that contains Papi’s drug money stash.
So they’re off to rob a bank. Things don’t go quite as expected. This leads to a series of events that can only be described as improbable. S’ok, though, this is an action movie. The action sequences are pretty standard, but entertaining. Where the movie shines, though, is all the interactions between Bobby and Stig. It’s like Abbott and Costello with those two. Bobby’s the straight man and Stig’s the goof. The only real problem with the movie is that there are a sequence of events when Bobby and Stig are separated and then it just becomes a standard action movie. Get them back together and the fun starts once again.
A funny story. Prior to the movie, my brother and I were discussing Mark Wahlberg and he had commented on how he could never take Mark Wahlberg seriously as an actor. He has a bit of a prejudice against crossover stars who start as musicians and move over into acting (except for Ice Cube who he thinks is awesome). I was defending Mark Wahlberg as a pretty competent actor who can do some serious work. Then this movie comes along and validates everything my brother thought about Mark. This is not to take anything away from Walhberg. He plays off Denzel Washington incredibly well in this movie. He can not by any stretch of the imagination be called a serious actor, though.
After watching this movie, I want to see a “2 Guns” comedy series featuring Wahlberg and Washington. They were that much fun together. What “2 Guns” provides is an outlandish plot strewn together with some decent action scenes and packaged with some teriffic buddy antics. It’s not art, but it is high quality entertainment.
Respectability Politics
I had never heard of the term “respectability politics” before this video, but it is grossly prevalent in our society whenever race is involved. The context here is that Don Lemon, a CNN anchor, was taking about the Trayvon Martin shooting when he started talking about black people needing to pull their pants up. That’s respectability politics. Bringing up superficial issues of respectability when the issues at hand have nothing to do with it. Trayvon wearing a hoodie was another example of respectability politics at play.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmdlMlRdt7Y&feature=youtube_gdata_player]A Great Talk About Race In America
Ta-Nehisi Coates talks about Trayvon, President Obama, and the history of racism in America. It’s a must watch.
Electoral College Machinations
So, it turns out that there has been this quiet state level push to effectively abolish the electoral college. How they are doing it is an ingenious bit of political science. States are passing bills that would guarantee that all of the electoral votes for the state will go to whomever receives the most popular votes from the entire country. The kicker is that this will only happen once enough states representing half of the electoral votes pass a similar bill. Rhode Island just signed on and that puts them half way to their goal. Or, states representing one quarter of the total electoral votes have now signed on. Once they reach their goal, bam, the President of the United States will forever be elected by the popular vote instead of the electoral college even though the electoral college will still exist. Constitution followed, check. Popular vote enabled, check. Ingenious.
Of course, as the article states, the likelihood of getting enough states to sign on is pretty low since only Democratic states have been able to pass it and any individual state could always just change the law back to what it once was. Which is a shame. The only decent reason to keep the electoral college is to maintain minority representation and minority states already get massive over-representation from the Senate. I don’t think they need the same at the Executive level. Regardless, it’s still pretty cool political science jujitsu even if it will ultimately fail.
The Shape Of The Universe Explained
I’ve posted other things about the shape of the universe, but nothing that is quite as clear as this video. The gist of the video is that we are three dimensional beings in a higher dimensional universe and you can have a universe that looks flat and finite but still travel in one direction only to end up back where you started. This is similar to walking around a sphere only supesized! I am in awe of people that can take such a difficult concept to wrap your mind around and make it easy to understand and clever at the same time. This is part one of a promised three and covers the idea of a flat universe, which you may recall is one of three recognized models for the shape of the universe. The others being spherical and hyperbolic. Those will be covered in the next videos to come. Watch:
[youtube http://youtu.be/_k3_B9Eq7eM]
Not Much To See
Work on the house has been slow. Things are getting done but they’re not very visible. The sewer and water hookup are waiting on the city, but the underground plumbing for the house is done.
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
This is too good/bad not to share. There are many Metallica cover bands out there. There are also Metallica songs with symphony orchestras. But have you ever seen an a cappella version of a Metallica song? Well, look no further! I present you with a mostly a cappella version of “Battery. It is equal parts cringe worthy and awesome:
[youtube http://youtu.be/BEwNrjvNiYs]Oh, Fox News, You’re So Easy To Make Fun Of
Other cable news networks can be cringingly awful at covering the news, i.e. CNN and it’s Boston bomber coverage. Fox News, takes awful to a whole new level, though. Recently, we had the laughably bad interview between author Reza Aslan and the Fox News religion correspondent:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YY92TV4_Wc0&feature=youtube_gdata_player]Salon was kind enough to wade through the muck and pick out ten of the worst Fox News interviews of all times. Trigger warning for Bill O’Reilly. My favorite is the Jon Stewart takedown of Bill. It’s classic.
There are lots of ways to consume news. Cable news networks are like the last bites of a burrito where all of the grease and goo have sunk to the bottom and that you should just throw away even if there is some nutritional value to it. Fox News, however, is the grease and goo that leaks out of the burrito all over your hand while you’re eating.