On this rainy day, we took ourselves to the big screen to see Mad Max: Fury Road. Reviews are one of my favorite genres and I knew this film would spawn a hilarious whooping, howling, sniviling lot of them. One of my favorites points out that there is so little dialogue in Mad Max that it is like a silent film, albeit the loudest one ever. All agree it is way the hell beyond Thunder Dome. All have to compare it to the last Mad Max film made in 1985. It is certainly the only movie consisting of one long chase scene that has Eve Ensler (Vagina Monologues) as a consultant. The film nerds are gushing over the largely non-CGI action and the hooks back to silent film. One reviewer was so shocked that Furiosa, when asked what she was looking for answered simply "Redemption," "had the impulse to call out during that pause, 'No, you don’t say that out loud! That’s SUBTEXT!'". I posted about it on Facebook and interestingly, the only people who commented on it (all were enthusiatic) were the english major types. Yup, MMFR is a new animal.

Robie Collin in The Telegraph:

Imagine if Cirque du Soleil reenacted a Hieronymus Bosch painting and someone set the theatre on fire. This is more or less what Miller has come up with...Fury Road’s alpha male is, in fact, a woman: the rogue soldier Imperator Furiosa, played by Charlize Theron, who masterminds the escape while Max rides shotgun. Furiosa is one of the toughest, most resilient action heroes in years, with a metal prosthetic arm that hints at past trauma and a steely gaze that sees more on the way. Like Sigourney Weaver's Ripley in the Alien films, the character is informed by her sex but not defined by it, and Theron superbly embodies her stoicism, nerve and resolve.

They (Miller's instincts) connect Miller not so much to the panicky despots of the modern blockbuster, like Michael Bay, as to directors of Hollywood musicals, and to the early choreographers of the chase, in the wordless days when pictures lived by motion alone. In “Mad Max: Fury Road,” the Polecats—aggressors who arc from one vehicle to another, in mid-race, on the end of long stakes—are the descendants of Buster Keaton, who, in “Three Ages,” fell from a roof through three awnings and clutched at a drainpipe, which swung him out into the void and back through an open window.

I took this cellphone picture last evening from our dock. Instagram intensified it a bit. I wonder what Burnham would be like if the Holy Ghost descended upon it from a cloud. It wouldn't hurt it any, that's for sure. Maybe the population would suddenly run out into their yards and clean up the trash, then come in, tidy up the trailer, and start beating their hunting rifles into plowshares. Maybe.

I just put together my June mix early because there is a lot of good new stuff out there. Several oldies cranking out a new album: James Taylor, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Mavis Staples. I listened to the Madisen Ward & the Mama Bear cut and formed a mental picture of a forty something white hipster singing with a younger guy. Very wrong. It's a 26 year old black man and his 63 year old mother. There's a cello; it's about Mississippi; had to have it. My favorite new thing on the mix is the Bhi Bhiman song: "The color pink is a chink in the armor of god...".

It's not officially summer yet, but the dock is in, summer people are around, we've been out in the canoe. This week temps will get to the mid eighties every day. This is what I think of as default temperature because it lets you wear default clothing (sleeveless shirt and shorts). All other temps are a deviation from that perfection.

Before anything else is even thinking about blooming, a big cloud of this stuff is lighting up some dooryard. I don't know its real name.

Margarita and a movie night brought us to Ex Machina last night. Increasingly I like the parts of films or series where people talk to each other about the morality of what they are doing. Like Matt and his priest in Dare Devil. Ex Machina is a handsome film about Artificial Intelligence and the hubris of genius and a digital age Adam and Eve story. Suddenly everyone loves my man Turing.

Here are a couple of quotes from a book I'm reading:

• -- Messaging is about thinking, not just language. To get language right, you have to understand the thought it conjures up
• -- Why does moral complexity matter? Because it determines elections.
• -- Moral value systems are primary. They define the way that great abstract ideals are interpreted.
• -- Some commentators point out that conservatives vote against their economic interests. What they miss is that those conservatives are voting their moral interests, and they will continue to do so. Therefore liberals need to understand the difference between policy and morality and that morality beats policy. Moral discourse is thus absolutely necessary.
• -- Extreme conservative discourse is taken as neutral in the absence of a progressive alternative.
• -- Citizens are part of their government and have a role in shaping it. Consumers are not part of the businesses they purchase services from and have no say.
• -- there is one expression to avoid above all others in the workplace, it is human resources. Once human beings are framed as resources, it follows that their cost should be minimized.

We are currently watching, among other things, a series called The 4400. Although it's not terribly well done, I can't resist shows about time travel. That may be because I've lived a long time and to entertain a memory of a time 50 or 60 years ago seems like time travel to a world weirdly familiar but radically different.

This picture of trout lilies (dog-toothed violets) on the Connor Mill Trail was taken yesterday. In 2010 I took similar pictures on April 14. Winter lasted a long time this year and many things are late getting started. Whitewater canoe races had to be pushed back two weeks because the streams were still iced up. We returned from New Orleans to glorious summer-like weather. Now I'm itching to get the dock in.
Two recent things have reminded me of how easily we can live in the pop culture matrix or the matrix of conventional thinking without questioning what is the complete reality of a situation. Here are two things that have made me rethink my first impressions. I was a fan of the TV series The Wire; I thought it was gritty and real. It showed a lot of corruption and brutality. This article in The Nation points out that the work of grass roots community organizations does not make for marketable TV series or for sensational TV news coverage either. But it is these groups that bring about needed change. There is a lot more happening than people throwing rocks.

I've been looking at the changing meaning of the term "working class," and yuppies vs hipsters, and how bourgeousie got to be "bougie." I've always considered myself to be working class because I have only my labor, and no inherited capital, to make a living, but working class is coming to mean people who don't have a college education, who are not "knowledge workers." Education is then seen as capital, the new means of production. It's confusing and evolving. When the folks vandalized the market, they scrawled "Yuppie=bad" but I think they meant hipsters. Yuppies have career ambitions; hipsters are counter-cultural. To the working-class neighborhood the difference between yuppies and hipsters is only a matter of style. Either one will displace them.