Movies of the Week

I have not spoken of movie releases for a couple of weeks now.  Everything seemed to be an intergalactic shoot-em-up, a battle for survival in a dystopic world future or a small piece that ran only in New York and Chicago.

I return to the subject now because two big shows are opening nationwide.  If you go to see a new film this weekend, chances are it will most be one of these.

First is the widely touted Get On Up, a biopic of the life and career of James Brown, aka the Godfather of Soul.  It has been promoted broadly; Mick Jagger is a producer and supervised the music.

The star is Chadwick Boseman, known for his work in The Help and the Jackie Robinson movie, 42.  He's said to be fantastic in the James Brown role.

The movie shows Robinson as he was, warts and all, wrote critic Lou Lumenick of the New York Post, who called it "one funktastic musical biopic." Other reviews are similarly upbeat.

This film surely will draw an enthusiastic African-American audience, but, after the flop earlier this summer of Jersey Boys, about musicians who, like Brown, were most famous in the early 1960s, I wonder how broad the interest will be.

Get On Up apparently traces the origins of funk and the earliest signs of rap music to Brown, which may draw fans of more recent trends.  And, again, it has the enthusiastic support of Mick Jagger, who acknowledges Brown's influence on his early career.  But Jagger is approximately 100 years old now, and James Brown's original fans are getting pretty long in the tooth themselves.

We'll see.



The other new movie is a more offbeat take on a summer blockbuster, Guardians of the Galaxy. It is based on a comic book series with some of Marvel's lesser characters.

The human star is Quill, played by Chris Pratt, the sort of pudgy guy from the Parks and Recreation television show.  Critics like the Quill character.

The scene stealers, though, are computer-generated characters. Two often-mentioned ones are Groot, a noble and apparently indestructible tree voiced in a sort of inside-joke way by "actor" Vin Diesel and a gun-toting raccoon whose lines are spoken by Bradley Cooper.

The movie seems to take itself much less seriously than typical sci-fi epics pitting good against evil; it also pulls improbable (okay, even more improbable) rabbits out of hats at challenging plot moments.

To his admitted surprise, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone loved it.  "This group of losers is having so much fun shaking their sillies out that you will too," he said.

Many other critics thought Guardians of the Galaxy was rollicking good fun, but their views are not unanimous.  Kyle Smith of the New York Post said it "goes by as slowly as a tax audit" and likened it to such unloved science fiction titles as Howard the Duck and Green Lantern.

Again, we'll see.

Snake in the Lake, Part 2

Have you seen this snake?

Just over a week ago, I reported that a big, scary anaconda snake had taken up residence in Lake Hopatcong in New Jersey.  Now I don't know what to think.

Locals had some fun with the story initially.  Snake tee shirts were printed up and sold, and cupcakes were marketed with gummy snakes in the frosting.  That sort of thing.

But business owners who cater to summer tourists weren't laughing.  They worried, with some justice,  that swimmers and boaters might stay away if they believed a deadly Amazonian snake was lurking in the lake.

Now police and New Jersey's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) say they've had it with this snake business.  They say there is no evidence of an anaconda -- no photographs, no molted skin, nothing.  They want everyone to calm down and get over themselves.  No snake, nowhere.

So we have two sides here, the yes-snake people and the no-snake people.

Here are their arguments as best I can tell. 

No Snake. Environmental officials set up Havahart traps, designed to capture but not kill the snake, in various spots around the lake.  The traps were baited with chicken.  No snakes went for the bait.  (No mention of the possibility that the snake doesn't like chicken.)

Yes Snake. A reputable, lifelong Hopatcong resident with a 28-foot boat claims that he and 11 passengers saw the snake two weekends ago.  He describes what he thought was a duck swimming in the lake followed by several ducklings.  Then the "duck" got near his boat, and it became clear that it was a snake with a head the size of a duck's body.
     "The next thing you know it looked like a big fish jumping out of the water, about two feet into the air and twisting to the right.  His head then slapped the water and at the same time his body came out of the water, just like a sea serpent," the man told the local newspaper.

No Snake.  Skeptics are asking why no one on the boat bothered to snap a picture with a cell phone.

Yes Snake.  "We were in such shock seeing this we were standing there like idiots and nobody took a picture," said the boat owner's wife, who corroborated his story. "It humped its back and dove down into the water," she told a reporter.

No Snake.  A DEP spokesman said the "so-called snake expert" (the second person to see the snake and the one who identified it as an anaconda) doesn't know what he is talking about.  He said people from his department, state parks workers, local police, state police marine units and animal control officials have not been able to find an anaconda,  but are continuing to watch the lake just in case.

Yes Snake.  The snake expert, who works for an animal shelter, and the local man who first reported seeing a large snake several times near his home are sticking to their stories.  The snake guy remans certain that it was an anaconda. "I know what I saw," he was quoted as saying this week.
       Now he has stopped his volunteer search for the snake because he is being harassed and, in one case, threatened. He said "People are hunting me down at work.  Business owners are screaming at me saying they're losing business.  Snake owners are screaming at me because they're afraid the state's going to try to pass more legislation." He's had enough of the whole business.

No Snake. The DEP spokesman says that, yes, there may be a snake but it isn't necessarily a non-native exotic anaconda.  He points out that common water snakes can grow as long as six to nine feet.

A nine-foot-long water snake, I think?   Eew.

Japan's Suicide Forest

Mount Fuji

Japanese culture differs from America's in several ways.  One is that there seems to be more acceptance of the idea of suicide.  This may trace to Japanese legends of warriors who committed seppuku and whose acts were regarded as heroic and morally honorable.

In any event, the rate of suicide in Japan is almost twice that in the United States; it rose during the difficult economic times in the 1990s and seems to have declined a bit in recent years.

In America, the most famous suicide attraction is the Golden Gate Bridge.  At least 1,600 desperately unhappy people have climbed over its low pedestrian railings and pitched themselves into the San Francisco Bay since the bridge opened in 1937.  A plan approved recently will set metal mesh under the bridge walkways to catch people on the way down and, it is hoped, to deter their self-desctructive efforts. (I posted about this on March 16 and June 29 of this year.)

Japan has its own suicide attraction, a very different one.  It is the Aokigahara Forest.

The forest is 14 square miles of trees at the base of Mount Fuji.  Fuji eruptions of the past showered the area with fertile soil where trees have sprouted in thick stands.  It is a deeply silent place with few trails.  It is easy to get lost in Aokigahara, inadvertently or on purpose.

Inside Aokigahara

Japanese lore has it that families in times past took very old relatives into the forest and left them there to die, and that angry spirits of the dead haunt Aokigahara.  Now about 100 people each year walk into the forest to die, most often by hanging or overdosing on drugs.

I recently found a video on Youtube that follows a man whose job for many years has been to find or, ideally, prevent suicides in Aokigahara.  The video is posted below, and I hope my readers will not be put off from watching it by the picture on its front, which does not reflect most of its content.

The man is thoughtful and careful and concerned about the people who wander into Aokigahara with self-destruction in mind.  The comment of his that moved me most was this:

"You think you die alone, but that's not true."

Comic-Con

If you do not follow your newspaper's comics page, anime, science fiction, graphic books, Game of Thrones, Marvel heroes, DC comics or summer blockbuster movies, you may not have heard of Comic-Con.

And if you were in downtown San Diego last weekend, you would have felt yourself very much in the minority.

A friend of mine, Rick Detorie (see my June 12 post about his syndicated comic strip, One Big Happy) attends Comic-Con each year.  He made the video below last week.  It gives a good introduction to the event.



Looks fun, doesn't it?

Comic-Con is a convention of pop culture promotions and meetings.  There are Comic-Cons all over North America, Europe and even in India and the United Arab Emirates.

The original -- and by far the biggest of these -- is held each summer in San Diego.  This year's Comic-Con attracted more than 130,000 enthusiastic participants.

The video above shows the scene in the exhibition hall.  Serious discussions convened in upstairs meeting rooms with panels of prominent graphic book authors and comic artists, including those responsible for How to Be Happy, BONE, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series and many, many Batman titles.

The biggest room at the San Diego Convention Center, Hall H with 6,500 seats, is turned over one day to film companies for promotions of future releases.  An estimated 8,000 to 10,000 people queued up, starting the night before, to see the presentations this year. Obviously, some were unable to get inside.

In one event, Warner Brothers wowed the crowd with stars and previews of much-anticipated movies:  Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Jupiter Ascending and Mad Max: Fury Road.  In another, The Rock (aka Dwayne Johnson) stormed down the aisle in his Hercules costume. Marvel Pictures used its time to announce plans for a SEQUEL to Guardians of the Galaxy -- the first movie only hits theaters this Friday -- and a new feature based on its Ant-Man comic book series.

One bit of fun was the annual Zombie Walk.  Zombies have been a trending theme in recent years, and many Comic-Con attendees got into appropriate costumes and makeup and flooded downtown San Diego one evening, as seen below:

People do like to participate in art.

There was an unfortunate incident during this event.  A family of deaf people was driving in the area, and the children apparently were distressed by the zombie swarm.  As the father tried to move out of the area, he sideswiped a woman, and his car was followed and banged on by angry zombie characters, which no doubt horrified the kids even more.  The woman who was hit is in the hospital.

I'm not sure how this could have been prevented.   Should the San Diego Police Department have put up "Zombie Crossing" signs to warn people?

This issue will need consideration before Comic-Con 2015.

Putin: What Russians Think

To the right is the cover of a March issue of Der Spiegel, a popular German magazine.  It depicts Russian president Vladimir Putin as a giant towering over smaller and presumably less effectual leaders of Europe and the United States.

Translated, the cover says this:

"The Arsonist:  Who Will Stop Putin?

I know one answer to that question: Nobody in Russia will stop Putin.

The country's information flow is so controlled from Moscow that actual facts play only a very limited role in shaping public beliefs in Russia.


A Russian polling organization called the Levada Group regularly takes the pulse of attitudes there.  Levada, formed by scientists who split off from the state polling organization in 2003, is broadly respected for its methods and independence.  Here are some findings from March and April of this year.

Russian Attitudes in March

-- 63 percent said their country had regained the status of a superpower.

-- 72 percent approved of Vladimir Putin's performance as president of Russia

-- 65 percent agreed with the Kremlin's stated goal of getting involved in Crimea to protect the rights of Russian-speaking people there.

-- 56 percent viewed the United States negatively, the highest percentage ever.  (Only 7 percent held that view in 1990; the previous high had been 50 percent in 2000.)


Russian Attitudes in April

-- 79 percent of Russians agreed that "Russia is returning (to) its traditional role of a superpower and asserts its interest in the post-Soviet space."  (This was a 16-point jump in the space of a month.)

-- 80 percent approved of Putin's performance (up eight points in a month.)

-- 78 percent believed that Russia faced grave threats from its enemies.

-- 77 percent agreed that "Russia needs 'a strong hand,' in other words an authoritarian leader, to guide the country 'in certain situations, such as now.'"

-- 61 percent disapproved of the United States (up five points in one month); 53 percent disapproved of the European Union.

-- 68 percent were convinced that Western sanctions would boost economic growth in Russia.


There have been no more recent polling reports, but it is likely that Putin's approval rating has improved since April.  Its historic high, 88 percent, came after Russia's invasion of Georgia in 2008 -- an action that also was pitched as an effort to protect the rights of Russian speakers.  National belligerence works for Putin.

And so does his control of information.  A day after the Malaysian jet was shot down, the state-controlled Russian television news reported that Ukrainian national forces, abetted by the American CIA, were responsible.  Yeah, right

When a Russian-armed separatist posted on the internet that he had shot down what he thought was a Ukrainian military jet, the post was wiped out.  So was a Russian soldier's social media post four days ago that he had "been shelling Ukraine all night."

Putin's lowest approval rating, 61 percent, came during economic hard times last year, and Russian prosecutors took out soon afterward against the polling group, calling them "foreign agents" for receiving three percent of their funding from outside Russia.

I doubt that any American president ever has had an approval rating as high as Putin's lowest one.

But we don't have a national-run media.  Politicians here can't order the assassinations of hated journalists or even the firings of editors, as was done in 2011 when the once-respected paper Kommersant Vlast started investigating reports of electoral manipulation by authorities.

Interestingly, here is the Kommersant Vlast cover from July 21, four days after the Malaysian jet was shot down.

America and its press have their problems, but neither would stand for this kind of blatant hackery.  

Balloon Dog

Above is Jeff Koons' "Balloon Dog (Orange)," a 10-foot tall sculpture of polished stainless steel.  Last November, it fetched the highest price ever for a work by a living artist -- $58.4 million.  There are other Balloon Dogs -- in blue, magenta, red and yellow -- around the world.

Given last year's sale and this year's Koons exhibit at the Whitney in New York, it's Balloon Dog everywhere these days.

The artist has worked with the fast-fashion retailer H&M to develop a Balloon Dog product, the purse seen below, for about $50.

To promote the event, H&M decorated the outside of one of its New York stores with a Balloon Dog. Of course there was a fancy celebrity party for the opening, and, no, I wasn't invited.

In addition, Ali Baba, the Chinese Ebay (or is it the Chinese Amazon?) is offering knockoff balloon dogs in various sizes and colors with prices starting at $500.

Jeff Koons has been down this road before.  In 2011, he tried to stop a company from selling
copycat balloon dog bookends, but that led nowhere.  Now you can buy a set of the bookends, shown below, from the shop at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for about $50.

It is tempting to call Balloon Dog a great big piece of kitsch.  Many people have done so.  And I'm skeptical that  people will be studying Balloon Dog and its meaning 100 years from now.

But if it is so trite, why are people paying so much attention to it?

A man who works with stainless steel for commercial applications said this about Balloon Dog in his blog:

"Koons somehow transforms stainless steel into a soft, pliable metal.  His Balloon Dog in orange looks like you could pop it with a pin; you can feel the air pushing at the steel's inner surface, trying to get out.  It looks like you can squeeze it."

So there is some technical mastery there.

An art critic for The Guardian newspaper in Britain credited Balloon Dog, which was released in the 1990s, with kicking off a fascination that led to everything from blow-up toys to the Toy Story movie.  Here's what he wrote in 2011:

"The truth  is that, of all the artists at work today, Koons is one of the most influential -- and yet his influence is the least acknowledged.  He has avoided becoming cool.  Critics affect to despise him.  And yet there is scarcely a work or a high-tech toy that does not have a debt to Koons concealed within it."

Below is a Christie's video of Jeff Koons talking about Balloon Dog.  The video was made before the auction house sold Balloon Dog last year, and so it is clearly a bit of a sales job.

Magic in the Moonlight

Woody Allen's 2014 movie, Magic in the Moonlight, was released today.  It seems to hit on many of his favorite themes:

     --  Jazz age setting and music.  Check

     -- Psychic beliefs.  Check

     -- Nietzsche quotes.  Check

     -- Skeptical Woody Allen character.  Check

     -- Dewy-eyed love interest.  Check

Many critics think this movie is charming.  Many others find it cringe-inducing.

Manohla Dargis of the New York Times finds it thin and trite,  "less a movie than the dutiful recitation of themes and plot points conducted by a squad of costumed actors."

Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal takes the other position.  He concludes his review by calling the movie "a 97-minute seance that draws you in, spins you around, subverts your suppositions, levitates your spirits and leaves you giddy with delight."

Well.  What to make of all this?

Here's the setup:  A crusty professional skeptic, played by Colin Firth, is deployed to the south of France to unmask a psychic played by Emma Watson and, amid discussions of the meaning of life, finds himself beguiled by her.

Obviously, part of the discomfort derives from the fact that the skeptic, played by a man a couple months shy of 60, abandons his age-appropriate girlfriend for the psychic, played by a 25-year-old woman best known as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies.

This raises all the old arguments about Woody Allen's own domestic kerfuffles of some years back.  If asked about this, he probably would say again, "The heart wants what it wants."

Allen's movies roll out at a reliable pace, and this one sounds like a number of others from his oeuvre.  If you go to see it -- and I haven't decided yet whether I will -- you will know what to expect.

Note

The director's last film, Blue Jasmine, was entirely different.  It consisted almost totally of an excellent performance by Kate Blanchett as a desperate, self-absorbed snob's tailspin into poverty.  The movie skewered her shallowness but also made her foils -- a working-class sister and the sister's boyfriend -- into such crude cartoon characters that I wondered afterward if maybe Allen has lived too long on the Upper East Side.

My Failure as a Parent

I don't usually post personal information here, but after reading recent horror stories of babies abandoned in cars and 10-year-old children allowed to walk outdoors or play unsupervised on public playgrounds, I think my readers deserve to know that a personal confession is in order.

I am the parent of a pretty much grown-up young person.

When that person was a baby, I would hike for long periods in the Marin County headlands, carrying the child in a backpack.  The young person always was well-greased with sunblock and outfitted with a hat to prevent sunburn.  I also carried bottles of water, snacks and emergency supplies as I walked.

One time, at the end of a long hike as we neared the empty trailhead parking lot, I really had to go. It is possible that I had drunk an extra cup of coffee earlier that morning.  I deride myself daily for this irresponsible indulgence.

There was a porta-potty 15 feet away.  The temperature was mild.

I stowed the young person in the appropriate car seat, rolled up the windows, locked the car, ran to the potty, did my business and ran back.  Ninety seconds, max.

Even now -- especially now -- I castigate myself for this parental failure.  The horror!

Nothing bad happened, but I have the impression that, if I tried such a thing today, I would be arrested and hauled to the hoosegow.  Certainly I would lose custody of my child.

Fortunately the young person appears unscarred by my personal failure as a parent.  At least, so far; only time will reveal what damage I caused.

I shudder to think what could have happened.

History in Seattle

Seattle's Museum of History and Industry is on a roll.  

The museum holds millions of historical photographs from the city, the region and the Pacific Northwest all the way to Alaska.  

Strung from the ceiling is Bill Boeing's first commercial plane, a B-1 from 1919.  (Boeing was based in Seattle until it moved its headquarters to Chicago in 2001.)

Just last year, the museum opened the Bezos Center for Innovation, funded by a $10 million grant from the Amazon founder and his wife.

This week another exciting historical acquisition was announced:  The museum will become home to the first marijuana legally purchased in the state of Washington.

The 65-year-old donor, pictured above, was first in line after waiting all night before Cannabis City, a Seattle marijuana retailer, opened for business on July 8.  This donation will be augmented by other contributions of opening-day memorabilia from Cannabis City itself.

Washington state voters agreed in 2012 to legalize marijuana sales to purchasers over the age of 21.  The law has now gone into effect.  

Interestingly, the museum currently is featuring an exhibit on chocolate.  I'm wondering if this will set up a conflict when cannabis enthusiasts -- known to be fond of munchies -- visit the museum to see the historical marijuana collection and find themselves distracted by what else is on display. 

Snake in the Lake

Above is an aerial view of Lake Hopatcong in northern New Jersey.   It features 45 miles of shoreline, tourist hotels and rentals, multiple marinas and a nice small-town resort atmosphere.

This is high season around the lake.  Visitors have been coming to the area for at least 100 summers now. They swim, fish, kayak and sail, and also enjoy daily temperatures from the low 60s to the mid 80s, more pleasant than in most of the region.

Unfortunately, the typical halcyon atmosphere has been ruffled this year by reports that an anaconda snake has moved into the neighborhood.

It was sighted not long ago by a man whose house is near the lake.  He called the police after spotting a large green snake several times near his house.  Authorities pooh-poohed his concerns at first but then admitted they had found evidence that a big snake had spent some time in a sewer pipe near the man's property.

By then the snake had moved on, probably into the lake itself.  Anacondas are said to be clumsy on the ground but agile in water, able to move at speeds as fast as 25 miles an hour.  They typically swim only with eyes and mouth above water.  That and their dark green color make them difficult to spot.

In fact, anacondas have no business being in New Jersey.  They are South American natives, a boa species with big teeth but whose bite is not poisonous.  They grow to be the largest snakes in the world (by width if not absolute length) and kill their prey as other boas constrictors do, by circling and crushing the bones and life out of small to good-sized animals and then eating them.  Anacondas can grow to lengths of 30 feet or more.

Anaconda ownership is banned in New Jersey by a law most residents only recently knew existed. (Apparently the snake was unaware of this as well.)   Speculation is that the initial owner of the anaconda tired of it or grew frightened of it and dumped it in the Hopatcong neighborhood.  At this point, no one expects the owner to step forward and take responsibility.

It took a while for authorities to be convinced that the snake was actually an anaconda and not a more benign boa, but a local snake expert investigated, saw the snake twice and declared that, yes, it is undoubtedly an anaconda.

Now there are police, naturalists and television crews trolling Lake Hopatcong, looking for the anaconda.  This sounds like a real needle-in-a-haystack effort.

For tourists just seeking a pleasant boat ride or dip in cool water, knowledge of the snake no doubt is interrupting the quiet enjoyment of a summer retreat.

The local constabulary wants everyone to calm down.  They say the snake is not interested in eating people (although it would be best to keep an eye on small children.)  If people leave the snake alone, they say, the snake will not bother them.  (One anaconda report I read yesterday said anacondas are known to be "moody.") In addition, they say, reports of the snake's length are vastly overstated:  This is a smallish anaconda, only 12 to 15 feet long.

Ugh.

Note:  If you think the above is reminiscent of a movie, you're right.  Anaconda was released in 1997.  Its plot:  A documentary film crew in the Amazon is taken captive by an obsessed man (Jon Voight) on an Ahab-like quest to find and destroy the world's biggest, most frightening snake.  Most people hate-hate-hated it, but the late film critic Roger Ebert saw it as a highly entertaining revival of the B-movie action films of the 1950s and gave it 3.5 stars out of four.

On Selfies

Below is possibly the most famous selfie ever.  Taken, I think, by Ellen Degeneres at this year's Oscar awards ceremony, it features a number of instantly recognizable movie stars in a casual group picture captured on a cell phone.  

It was a reflection of the ceremony organizers' efforts to show they "get" the selfie phenomenon, which is largely an adolescent one.  Nothing wrong with it.

Selfies are everywhere now.  They seem to be captured expressly for immediate posting on social media sites.  This implies a fair amount of narcissism on the part of selfie photographers.

One formerly serious event that seems to be succumbing to selfies is college commencements.  School administrators demand beforehand that students shall not take selfies as they shake hands with the school president -- but to no avail.  Even when professional photographers take individual shots of each student's handshake moment, students pull out their cellphones to make selfies as well.  It drags out the ceremonies, which are long in the first place, but who cares?  Nobody wants to have to wait a couple weeks to get a photo out on Instagram.

Selfies also have invaded encounters with celebrities and particularly politicians.  Here is one, being taken last week during a Chris Christie visit to Iowa.

Some years before there were selfies or even cell phones, the public intellectual Susan Sontag published On Photography, a monograph of six essays meditating on the meanings of photography.  It's heavy reading, but raises interesting questions.

One of her key observations was that people use photographs to document things they are doing  -- here I am in front of the "Mona Lisa," say -- rather than experiencing the moment of looking at the painting.  Many selfies represent this kind of thing on steroids.

The picture below, run with screaming headlines last December in the New York Post, shows a tourist taking a selfie with a man attempting suicide off the Brooklyn Bridge in the background.

Susan Sontag;  "Photographs shock so far as they show something novel."

This is picture is shocking and novel -- a real "get" for the photographer -- and, frankly, in very poor taste.  (Fortunately, the police talked the desperate man out of killing himself.)

Sontag also wrote, "To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have: It turns people into objects that can be symbolically processed."

Another Sontag point:  "The proliferation of photographs is ultimately an affirmation of kitsch."

So true.  In October 2013, an Englishman who was distressed by a recent selfie phenomenon started a self-explanatory blog called selfiesatfunerals.tumblr.com.  Here are a couple of posts.

You don't need Susan Sontag to decode what's going on here.  It's immature young people attending solemn events and making them "all about me."

Immaturity of course is not limited to the young.  The names Anthony Weiner and Geraldo Rivera (who posted a photo of his face and buff torso, post-shower, in his bathroom mirror) come to mind.

The selfieatfuneral editor took down his blog at the end of last year after the broad publication of a news photograph that showed three heads of state yukking it up for a selfie at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela.  Apparently the editor had seen enough.  "Our work is done," he said.

It's too bad Sontag didn't live long enough to offer some thoughts on selfies.  I'm pretty sure she'd have interesting things to say.

Big Tobacco and Juries

The other day a Florida jury awarded $23.6 billion in punitive damages to the family of a man who died at the age of 36 of lung cancer.  He was said to be a heavy smoker, favoring Kool cigarettes, and the judgment was against R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., the manufacturer of the brand.

Florida has become a hot spot for such lawsuits since its Supreme Court threw out a $145 billion jury award in a class action suit filed on behalf of 700,000 smokers in the state.  The judges let stand the jury findings that cigarettes cause cancer, that nicotine is addictive and that cigarette manufacturers sold dangerous products.

This left open the option for thousands of individual cases that since have been filed and are working their ways through the state's court system by families and sympathetic lawyers.

The first jury award in such a case was $1 million.  The most recent one, the largest so far, is 2,360 percent greater.

The tobacco company has vowed to appeal. In fact almost all these awards will be appealed.

I harbor no affection for tobacco companies.  I would not work for one or buy stock in one. If I owned a store, I would not sell cigarettes.

What interests me are several issues in these cases and in juries' intents in their findings.

First, what percentage of the responsibility should the dead man have borne for his decision to smoke?
        The link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer was no secret.  Scientists established the connection in the 1950s.  In 1964, the U.S. Surgeon General warned against the dangers of smoking , and notices were printed on all cigarette packages that smoking "may be hazardous to your health."
        In 1969, the wording on cigarette packs was toughened to read "is dangerous to your health."
        Four years after that, at the age of 13 in 1973, the man began to smoke.  By that time, the dangers of smoking were well-known, even to adolescents and certainly to their parents.  He continued to smoke for many years, during a period when millions of Americans gave up the habit.
        In 1969, 42 percent of Americans were smokers.  By 2010, only 18 percent smoked. An estimated 8 million fewer peopled had died from smoking-related diseases because of smokers who stopped and other people who did not start smoking.
        Did the jury honestly believe that the man did not know that smoking was dangerous?  Did they think he was uniquely helpless against an addiction that millions of other people managed to break?

Second, what is the purpose of awarding $23.6 billion to one man's family?  No amount of money can bring back a dead person, of course.  But, had the man not smoked and worked a full career, is it likely he would have bequeathed that amount to his wife and children?
         Can a system of similar cases that gives similar victims awards ranging from $1million to $23.6 billion truly be described as fair?
         I am sure the jury believed it was meting out justice, but there is a strong whiff of vengeance in the amount of this award.        

Third, imagine if this man had not been a smoker but rather a person walking innocently down the street who was stabbed by a criminal who jumped out at him from the bushes. Could his family sue the criminal's family and get a decision awarding them $23.6 billon, or $23.6 million, or even $236,000?
         Of course not.  No lawyer would file such a case because there would be no chance of collecting a 33 percent contingency fee on whatever damages could be extracted from the killer and his family.

Florida and Smokers

The states themselves are complicit in the persistence of smoking in the United States.  In 1998 Florida joined the multi-state negotiation with tobacco companies, claiming the state needed money to cover the costs of treating poor people with tobacco-related diseases.

Florida received $13 billion in the settlement.  (Its lawyers were paid another $3.4 billion to represent the state.)

This money was paid out in annual increments of $360 million dollars and, instead of being devoted specifically to give medical treatment for smokers or to encourage people to quit smoking or never to start, the money went straight into the state general fund.

By 2006, the state was spending $1 million of its annual $360 million settlement money on anti-smoking efforts.  Meantime, the state was collecting taxes (now $1.40 a pack) for cigarettes sold in Florida.

A subsequent voter initiative, passed in 2006, required that a certain portion of the cigarette tax money -- $67 million in 2013 -- be spent on smoking prevention and cessation programs, and good for that.

But still.  The suffering of people like the man mentioned earlier has generated $13 billion, paid over 25 years, that is going to benefit the general population of the state of Florida and not people like him.

Maybe the man's family should have sued the state instead.




     

New Movies -- Also Rans

I posted yesterday on the week's new movies, but in fact there were a bunch of others that got very little attention.

This happens every week, for several reasons.  Some films are given slow rollouts in the hope that positive word of mouth will generate interest over time.  Some are pitched to particular audiences.  And some of them are so bad that no distributors are willing to spend time and money promoting them.

Just for the heck of it, here is one week's collection of movies you may never hear of again.



I Origins

Two scientists "uncover startling evidence that could fundamentally change society as we know it and cause them to question their once-certain beliefs in science and spirituality."

An ambitious premise, to say the least.  Fox Searchlight bought it at Sundance this year.

In Manhattan and Los Angeles.

Persecuted

A mystery with the theme of Christianity under attack.  This seems to be by, for and about Christians.  Reviews say it preaches to the choir.  (Nothing wrong with that -- it works for Michael Moore.)

Broadly available, most likely marketed to religious people through churches and their publications.

Aftermath

Survivors of a worldwide nuclear holocaust.

Is it just me, or is this getting to be a same-old same-old theme?

Maybe at some theaters somewhere, findable now on video on demand.

Among Ravens

Another dysfunctional family/friends reunion movie set near a beautiful lake in Idaho.

Much, much worse than that Osage County thing a few months back.

Watch it on VOD if you must.

A Five Star Life

An Italian film about a woman whose job is reviewing fancy hotels.  Against this backdrop, appealing perhaps to folks who don't get out much, the plot focuses on the crackup of her personal life.

Movies that make it to the U.S. from other countries are probably among the better ones;  I doubt that crappy American films are exported very often either.

Anyway, tough luck; it's not showing anywhere near you.

An American in Hollywood

A talented young African-American filmmaker moves from New York to Los Angeles, and the scales fall from his eyes as he confronts the Entertainment Empire.  Beautiful young people, rap music.

Targeted for an audience, more broadly available than most on this list.

Video Games: The Movie

A serious documentary on the history and rise of video games, executive produced by Zach Braff.  My guess here is that video gamers already know the story and that movie distributors think nobody else is all that interested.

Straight to Google Play.

This Week's Movies: One for the Boys -- Real Boys

Only a couple of broadly available movies are being released today.  The one that I'm betting will get the most attention is Disney's Planes: Fire & Rescue.

Most of my readers will not be personally interested in this, but those who are acquainted with children aged six to eight (and particularly boys) will want to pay attention.

This show is latest in the anthropomorphized vehicle series that started with Cars in 2006 and was followed by Cars 2 in 2011 and Planes last year.  Kids love them.

Peter Hartlaub of the San Francisco Chronicle says, "The sequel quickly removes spunky hero Dusty Crophopper from his established past as a racing plane, and into the visually pleasing world of aerial firefighting. ... Much is made of Dusty's celebrity from the previous film and the more humble/noble work of his new comrades. ...the movie serves as a fitting tribute to smokejumpers and other real-life forest workers."

His conclusion:  "It's not a poor movie.  But it's definitely a better movie for the kids."

This sounds fair to me.  If you want to make a child happy this weekend, you probably cannot go wrong with a movie date to see this one.

Sex Tape

The only other new movie that is likely to be at your cineplex this weekend is  Sex Tape, which features Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel as a married couple who make -- you guessed it -- a sex tape and then commit an Anthony Weiner error by sending it around on social media.

Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter takes things from there.

"The technological aspects of this setup have already been attacked as bogus by those who claim to know about such things.  Should one of these experts have shown up at the couple's door at this point, the film could have ended there and we would have seen all the juicy stuff.

"But no such luck.  Instead, a staggeringly awful second act ensues...." blah blah blah.  You get the picture.

Critics agree that Sex Tape is not a fine piece of cinema.  Go to see it if you like, but don't say you weren't warned.

Other Movies

Two other films are opening this week, both in limited distribution.

One, Mood Indigo, a 2013 French film described as a fantasy/comedy-drama is about a two young married people; the wife somehow develops the odd disease of a lily growing in her lungs, and her husband sets out to do what he can to fix the situation.  Features Audrey Tautou; reviews are mixed.

The other, Wish I Was Here, was written by and stars Zach Braff (Scrubs, Garden State.) The Braff character, "a struggling actor, father and husband, tries to find identity and purpose in his life." Reviews are not kind to this movie, but Mandy Patinkin, who plays the lead character's father, is said to be quite good.

Really, if you are going to a limited-distribution theater this weekend -- and I'm talking about New York and Los Angeles here -- you probably should go see Boyhood, which I discussed last Friday.  It sold out in both cities this week, and there is now talk that it will be a nominee for the Best Picture Oscar next year.

Girls' Names

My family recently welcomed a new member, a baby girl.  It got me to thinking about trends in baby names.  (I'm not talking about Katniss or Ava or Layla or Chloe; we know about the unusual names these days.)  I was curious about the most loved names of each period.

It turns out these have shifted over time.  At the bottom of this post, I have listed the top 10 girls' names, according to Social Security reports, for each decade from the 1900s to the 2000s, plus the 2013 favorites.

Here are some changes I noticed:

1.  "Mary" is so over.  It was by far the most popular name, probably forever, then fell to second place in the 1960s and has not been in favor since then.

2.  "Elizabeth," popular from 1900 through the 1910s, returned to the top10 in the 1980s and has stayed there.  "Betty," a diminutive of Elizabeth, also was popular in the 1920s and 1930s.

3. Many names trend for two or three decades and then become less popular.  "Patricia" from the 1930s through the 1960s, "Margaret" from the 1900s through the 1930s.  "Helen" from the 1900s through the 1920s.  (I think "Helen" is a pretty name.  I'm rooting for it to make a comeback.)

4. "Emily" has been cresting for almost 30 years, "Madison" and "Olivia" and "Isabella" for almost 20.

5.  "Jane" and "Ann" don't show up at all.  In the latter case, maybe "Ann" and "Anne" together would rate a mention.  Same with "Catherine" -- "Katharine," "Kathryn," "Cathy" and "Kathy."

Actually, names do not matter. Once you know someone, the name attaches to that person's unique identity, and you cannot think of the name without associating it with the man or woman you know.

Perhaps Juliet (whose name did not make the rankings below) said it best in the Shakespearean play when she said to Romeo,

"What's in a name?  that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;"

2013                  2000s                1990s             1980s           1970s          1960s        1950s

Sophia               Emily                Jessica            Jessica          Jennifer       Lisa           Mary
Emma                Madison            Ashley           Jennifer        Amy            Mary         Linda
Olivia                 Emma               Emily             Amanda       Melissa        Susan        Patricia
Isabella               Olivia               Sarah              Ashley         Michelle      Karen        Susan
Ava                    Hannah             Samantha       Sarah           Kimberley   Kimberley Deborah
Mia                     Abigail             Amanda         Stephanie     Lisa             Patricia      Barbara
Emily                  Isabella            Brittany          Melissa         Angela        Linda         Debra
Abigail                Samantha         Elizabeth       Nicole           Heather       Donna       Karen
Madison              Elizabeth          Taylor           Elizabeth       Stephanie    Michelle    Nancy
Elizabeth             Ashley              Megan           Heather        Nicole         Cynthia      Donna


1940s                 1930s                1920s             1910s             1900s

Mary                  Mary                 Mary              Mary               Mary
Linda                 Betty                 Dorothy          Helen              Helen
Barbara              Barbara             Helen              Dorothy          Margaret
Patricia               Shirley              Betty               Margaret         Anna
Carol                  Patricia              Margaret         Ruth               Ruth
Sandra                Dorothy            Ruth                Mildred          Elizabeth
Nancy                 Joan                  Virginia           Anna             Dorothy
Sharon                Margaret           Doris               Elizabeth        Mary
Judith                  Nancy               Mildred           Frances          Florence
Susan                  Helen                Frances           Virginia          Mildred

Enough Gambling Already

Yesterday I discussed how Las Vegas has been diversifying its entertainment attractions to encourage tourists to visit the city for more than gambling.

These actions no doubt were taken partly in reaction to other states' opening the way for casinos.  Las Vegas needed to adjust, and it seems to have done so successfully.

My state, New Jersey, could have taken a lesson from this, but it has not done so.  At least, not so far.  

Eager to revitalize the blighted beach town of Atlantic City, the state opened the place to casinos starting in the late 1970s.  

This worked well for a while.  By 2006, Atlantic City gaming revenues totaled $5.6 billion, and the city's 12 hotels and casinos employed almost 50,000 employees.  But, outside of gambling, the city had not much else going for it except boardwalk beach traffic on summer weekends.  Atlantic City still doesn't have much going for it.

Then the problems started.

The biggest of these was that other states, also eager for taxes generated by casinos, decided to legalize gambling.

There are now 20 casinos in the state of New York, 12 in Pennsylvania, three in Connecticut, three in Delaware and five in Maryland. 

As these new casinos opened, people started favoring places closer to home.  Between its peak year of 2006 and 2013, gambling revenues in Atlantic City dropped by almost half, to $2.8 billion.

(In fact, many of the newer casinos in other states, like those in Atlantic City, are not as profitable as they used to be.)

Long story short:  The gambling sector now is overbuilt.

New Jersey was slow to figure this out.  Even though gambling revenues started dropping in 2006,  Atlantic City pinned its hopes on a huge new casino and hotel, the Revel.  When Revel's construction funds dried up in 2010, the state stepped in with a tax incentive/profit sharing deal to get the half-built structure finished.  The $2.4 billion facility was completed two years later.

So far, things haven't worked out.  Revel is now in bankruptcy for the second time and may be sold at auction next month.  Estimated bids range from $200 million to $300 million, or one-tenth of the initial cost to build the thing.

The lesson here was that adding a big new casino in a declining gambling market did not increase gambling demand.

The slide continues.  One of the two Trump casinos in Atlantic City will close at the end of the summer. At least two other casino operators have said they want to sell.  In all, 8,000 jobs -- 25 percent of all casino employment -- are at risk.

Undaunted by falling gambling revenues, New Jersey's state legislature tried another tack.  It opened the casinos to online gambling.  The state treasurer estimated at the end of 2013 that the revenues would be $1.2 billion, generating $180 million in taxes for the state budget.  In the six months ending June 30, online gambling contributed only $34 million to the state budget, less than 20 percent of the estimate.

But hope springs eternal.

Now another proposal has come forth.  A developer wants to build a 95-story hotel/apartment/casino tower in Jersey City, just across the Hudson River from Manhattan.  Within days of the announcement, a state legislator introduced a bill to impose a 66 percent tax on gross casino revenues in Jersey City. (Atlantic City's rate is 8 percent.) The legislator said he was willing to compromise, though, maybe on a lower rate of, say, 50 percent.

Some people never learn.

Some states never learn.

Gambling in Los Vegas: A Brief History

Las Vegas dates to the early 1880s, when a European traveler discovered a grassland fed by two springs in the middle of a desert.  The area was settled by farmers and then miners, then became a stopoff point for trains running between Salt Lake City and Southern California, then a source of employment to build Hoover Dam nearby, then a training center for troops during World War II.

What Las Vegas became best known for was casinos after the state legislature allowed legal gambling starting in 1931.  By the 1960s, gambling and affiliated entertainments (stars, showgirls) were big business in the fast-growing city.

Below is a picture of the Las Vegas Strip, a famed road of casino/hotels in 1970:

Starting in the 1990s, the casinos got bigger and glitzier.  Here is the picture of the area that is featured today on the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority website.

As you can see, there are many hotels, a lot of glitz:  water features, an Eiffel Tower replica and many other over-the-top bright displays.  This photo shows only a bit of what is on offer.  To drive down the Strip is an experience in itself.

And, along the way, Las Vegas has transformed itself.  It still has the casinos, but over the last 25 years, much more has been added to the tourist amenity package.

A GoVegas website details various entertainments in and around the city -- Sky Jump Las Vegas, upscale shopping, helicopter and airplane rides over the Grand Canyon, museums for children, "CSI: the Experience," a shark reef, a Madame Tussaud's, the Richard Petty Driving Experience, big-name entertainment, hip nightclubs with admission restricted to suitably hip young people, fancy restaurants with celebrity chefs, golf courses, spas and big, gorgeous swimming pools.  There seem to be dozens if not hundreds of different amusements available to visitors in Las Vegas.

The last few films shot in the city treated gambling rather lightly and focused on the whole, bigger package.  These include The Hangover, Behind the Candelabra, Godzilla, The Hangover III and Last Vegas, a hangover-style movie featuring older men.  Except possibly for the Godzilla thing, all featured people going to Las Vegas because it was someplace to cut loose and have fun.

These days, many groups of young adults gather in Vegas with friends or for bachelor parties (see Hangover, above).  Families with children book vacations there.  No doubt many of the adult guests spend at least some time gambling, but these days they seem attracted at least as much by the total package.

Next:  If only other gambling locations had figured this out.

Lil Buck

The local papers started mentioning Lil Buck (born Charles Riley) last month when he performed with the New York City Ballet.  Until then, I hadn't heard of him.  So I started looking around.  He's been hiding in plain sight for a long time and definitely deserves some attention.

Lil Buck was raised in Memphis, where he learned a dance style called Memphis Jookin and then combined that with his classical dance training.  The result -- applied to everything from rap to classical music to whims of the moment -- is energetic, virtuosic and beyond description.  He has blended two forms of dance to make something new that connects with audiences of all kinds.

He and cellist Yo-Yo Ma work together a good bit and have developed a specialty in performing Camille Saint-Saens' "The Swan" together.  AYoutube video of this performance is posted below.

There are many other Lil Buck videos on Youtube.  I have been going back to find more for a while now.  Some that I liked were another performance of "The Swan" at the 2011 Vail International Dance Festival; "Lil Buck at TEDxTeen2014;" "Lil Buck -- En Noir," and a short documentary, "Lil Buck Goes to China" in which the dancer puts himself in context in a very different place and performs to great acclaim.  All worth a look.

Olympic Pool, Defined

There are certain terms that are thrown around loosely.  One of them that bugs me is "Olympic pool."  

Just about every time I move to a new city and go looking for a gym with a pool I am told, by people who should know better, that their facility has an "Olympic pool."

Last time I moved, I went to visit a gym that advertised an Olympic pool and found this:

Absolutely ridiculous.  This pool is not even 50 feet long.  It is a good pool for splashers and people to take water aerobics classes.  It might even be a nice place for children to learn how to swim.

But an Olympic pool it is not.

The next gym I visited also advertised an Olympic pool.  It looked like this:

True, this pool is longer.  It has lanes and stripes.  It is perfectly swimmable, but in Olympic terms it would be described as a short-course pool.  It is only 25 meters long.  Nobody serious would call it an Olympic pool, however.

Here is a schematic of an authentic Olympic pool.  It is 50 yards, or 164 feet, long. It has 10 lanes, each 2.5 meters wide.   (In elite competitions, swimmers use the eight inside lanes).

You can imagine Michael Phelps competing for and winning gold medals in such a pool.  The other two pools above, not so much.

Olympic pools are rare and quite busy because each one usually hosts several swim teams, the odd water polo squad, training for Ironman athletes and sometimes diving platforms at the far end.  It is the fortunate casual swimmer who has access to such a pool.  It is very rare to find one at a private gym.

Below is a photo of a particularly attractive Olympic pool in Melbourne, Australia.  Not only is it outdoors with long views of the city in the distance, but it also has a large canopy to limit sun exposure, a big plus for competitive swimmers who typically train for hours each day.

I have become accustomed to sales associates at gyms who casually and ignorantly throw out the term "Olympic pool" when discussing their facilities over the phone.

The easy way to figure out if these people know what they're talking about is to ask how long the gym's pool is.  Virtually none of them has the faintest idea.  That's the tell.  You just have to go down and see for yourself just how much smaller pool is.

The Plight of the Honeybee

Imagine a a group of wonderful young people from another country moved into your town and raised families of delightful children and grandchildren, all a credit to the community.  

Then imagine their children proved vulnerable to several diseases that killed off a good number of them. 

Imagine further that some of the family's distant cousins moved into your town and turned out to be criminals who damaged the family's reputation with their lawless behavior.  

You would still love that immigrant family, but you would worry about their future.

This is roughly the story of the American honeybee.

Honeybees 

American Bees

North America is rich in bee species.  There an estimated 4,000 (maybe fewer, maybe more -- this, like all facts about bees, is disputed) indigenous types here.

All bees are descended from wasps, which fed on other, usually smaller animals.  Bees were variant wasps who took to vegetarianism and, in smaller groups, acclimated to particular plants, from melons in warmer climates to much rarer plants near the North Pole.

Honeybees in America

The most valued among American bees is the honeybee, who pollinate a a broad variety of plants and have become essential to agriculture of all kinds.

Interestingly, it is not a native.  Honeybees were introduced to the East Coast by immigrants who transported hives across the Atlantic in the 1600s and (in pre-Panama Canal days) around Cape Horn to the West Coast in the 1850s.

Today the American honeybee is in existential crisis.  There are several threats, according to scientists, among them these:

     ---  Habitat loss as humans build homes in formerly natural areas and farmers divert their efforts to cultivating crops like wheat and soybeans, which don't rely on honeybee pollination,

     --- Pesticide use, including accelerants of existing pesticides that appear to have even more deleterious effects on honeybee colonies and

     ---  Parasites, particularly the varroa mite, which carries fungal diseases that kill off honeybees and which honeybees transmit to their fellows before they die.

Around the country,  honeybee cultivators raise large quantities of the bees in hives that are then trucked around the country to work their pollinating magic on cruciferous vegetables, citrus fruits, nuts, clover, tomatoes, root vegetables and so on.

(Some challenge the necessity of honeybees for these purposes, suggesting that winds and other environmental elements could do the job as well.  As I said, there are many sides in all honeybee discussions.)

What nobody disputes is that Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) has ravaged the population of honeybees in the United States and elsewhere.  In oft-cited cases, bees fly away from their hives, presumably die elsewhere and never return.

Other Insect Immigrants 

Unfortunately, other immigrant species threaten our bees.  The worst is the aforementioned varroa mite, an East Asian insect that began devastating European hives in the 1970s and arrived on our shores 10 years later.  While beekeepers are not happy about the effects of pesticides on their honeybees, they also are unhappy that no product or strategy has been developed to eradicate the varroa mite (which is yet another source of contentious discussion).

A second bothersome immigrant is the Africanized honeybee, which was developed -- on purpose! -- in Brazil in 1956.  Scientists cross-bred imported African bees with regular honeybees in hopes of developing a stronger hybrid honeybee.  These bees came to be known as "killer bees" because they were more likely to swarm in defense of their colonies.  When disturbed by noise or other irritants, they mass in large groups against intruders and issue multiple stings, sometimes fatally for human antagonists.

Since the late 1970s, Africanized honeybees have come to settle in southern states of the U.S.  Unfortunately these immigrant honeybees are not as industrious about pollination or honey production as the also-imported honeybees whom we now regard as natives.

The Real Problem

Humans are responsible for all of this.   Humans brought them to America, made pesticides that hurt their numbers, imported the plants that introduced the varroa mite and bred Africanized honeybees that aggressively invaded their habitats.

The problems facing honeybees are many in number, and and no solutions are in sight.  As in so many situations over the centuries, humans decide to improve on Mother Nature with unfortunate results.