Back in the ’80s, long before Darfur became a word linked with genocide in the Western media, the Islamic north waged a bloody campaign against the Christian farmers and tribesmen in the south, targeting young males. Known as the Lost Boys, some 27,000 youths fled more than 1000 miles to a UN refugee camp in Kenya. Along the way, many fell victim to hunger, lions, and enemy attacks. Eventually some 3600 made their way to the US. Narrated by Nicole Kidman, this documentary from Christopher Dillon Quinn and Tommy Walker follows a clutch of Lost Boys relocated to Pittsburgh and Syracuse. Their journey is telling of their culture, as well as our own. After the initial helping hand, many struggle to pay back their debt. And there’s the duress of isolation and not knowing whether family members are alive. John Dau, the film’s main subject, is an affable soul, full of wisdom and hope. After so much devastation, his grace and perseverance is an uplifting example for all.
The rules (and rides) of bicycle season
27 MarThe rules (and rides) of bicycle season
Spring is in the air, and that means bikes on the road. Sure, many ride year-round, but the spring thaw and Bike Month (May) gets the full two-wheeled populace out in force, and every year there’s more on the road. Between the years 2002 and 2008 the biking population in Cambridge doubled, and implicitly that means greater demand for bikes facilities and amenities.
To that end, the city has enacted some of its own spring cleaning-measures: tagging and removing derelict bikes from packing facilities (a bike locked to a bike parking facility for more than 72 hours can be deemed derelict; after being tagged, if it is still not claimed and moved, it will be cut and removed) and parking meters (it is okay to lock up to public signs that are not marked as bike restricted – including handicap zones – but not meters, as stipulated in the city’s parking ordinances ). Historically the ordinance has not been enforced regularly, but this past week bikes with winter-rusted chains in Harvard Square were noted and tagged. In the end, less cluttered racks will mean more space and ease of parking for those on the move.
Five new Hubway stations, such as the one in the Radcliffe Quad, are being set up to increase the total to 27 around the city. The beauty of the system is its one-way ride from station to station system, made all the more appealing by the seamless interconnecting stations across the river in Boston and Brookline.
And finally, on May 18 the Cambridge Bicycle Committee will conduct one of its two annual rides. The spring theme is food, with historical food spots as points of interest along the ride. The event is family friendly, free and open to the public and conducted with a police escort. Snacks and food are served along the way.
For information or to sign up, visit the committee’s website.
posed in Cambridge Day
Cannonball Launches Weapons Scare
24 Mar
It’s been awhile since we had to worry about the multi-colored national danger spectrum, but last week, the northwestern quadrant of Harvard Square was put on high alert. It turned out, though, that the deployment of bomb-squad vehicles, flanked by police cruisers and fire engines, that rolled in and cordoned off a section of Garden Street adjacent to the Harvard Quadrangle had nothing to do with a dirty bomb or even terrorist activity, but rather (appropriate for a school so immersed in ancient history) a Civil War–era cannonball.For me, the ordeal was something of a minor inconvenience, as I happen to live in the building where the relic rested. My downstairs neighbors — an amiable middle-aged married couple — set the commotion in motion: they had kept the cannonball in their apartment for 20 years as an accent piece. They declined to go on record, as they wished to remain off the grid and un-googleable. Ironically, however, it was Google that ignited the situation.
The husband had found the metallic ball “lying around” the turn-of-the-century constructed building when they moved in, and adopted it. Recently, though, a few clicks on the Internet caused the wife to become concerned that the ball might be explosive, so she contacted a Civil War authority, who told her to contact the police, who in turn, because it was military ordnance, called in the Department of Defense Disposal Unit from the naval base in Newport, Rhode Island.
Another neighbor, who also wished to remain anonymous, described the incident as surreal. “I felt like I had just stepped into an episode of the Twilight Zone when I walked outside my apartment to find the bomb squad, DOD, and Navy in the middle of what seemed like a special-ops mission to diffuse an antique cannonball that had been used as a doorstop for 20 years.”
Clearly, such a show of strength for an item so benign for so long would hardly have been deemed necessary if the exact same sequence had unfolded before 9/11. But the shroud of secrecy still remaining over the offending materiel hardly seems necessary. I contacted the Cambridge Police to find out where the cannonball had been taken and what conclusions had been drawn from its examination, but at press time, still had not heard back from them.
Spring Breakers
22 Mar‘Spring Breakers’: Harmony Korine’s Day-Glo road trip to hell
“Spring break forever” and “pretend it’s just like a video game” are just a few of the naive, saccharine-sweet platitudes that roll off the lips of a quartet of sexually budding coeds in Harmony Korine’s cautionary tale of innocence adulterated and gone grotesquely awry, “Spring Breakers.” By the end of the film, those flighty mantras expand and take on a prophetically deep meaning that their utterers and the audience could not have predicted or prepared for. It’s one of the many charms Korine imbues into the Day-Glo road trip to hell.
Much has been made of the film’s casting, which dips into the well of Disney and transforms girly icons Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens into wanton purveyors of hedonism. This is Justin Bieber’s ex and the wholesome lead of “High School Musical” running around in bikinis, snorting coke and kissing other girls. But what else would one expect from the scripter of the l’enfant terrible eye-opener “Kids” and his subsequent turns as director of such psalms of sociopathy as “Gummo,” “Julien Donkey-Boy” and “Trash Humpers”? Continue reading
The Devil’s Rejects
20 MarTHE DEVIL’S REJECTS
Rob Zombie, Haverhill native and former White Zombie frontman, again roils in ’70s slasher gore with this sequel to House of 1000 Corpses. Serial killers Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), Baby Firefly (Rob’s wife, Sheri Moon Zombie), and Otis Driftwood (Bill Moseley) — all variations of names in Marx Brothers films — are dislodged from their dilapidated abattoir by Sheriff Wydell (William Forsythe), whose brother was offed in Corpses. What ensues is a cop-killer grudge match with some binding, torturing, and killing of innocents along the way. Rejects is an upgrade from Corpses. For one, it’s coherent, and despite the clichés and the profanity, there are some hilariously wicked moments. The biggest snag in the gritty homage is that Zombie’s heroes are cold-blooded killers. Oliver Stone tried the same trick with Natural Born Killers and almost succeeded, but even The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Last House on the Left hung on the promise of victim survival and justice.
Sucker Punch
20 MarReview: Sucker Punch
By TOM MEEK | March 31, 2011
The words “loud, sexy, and inane” pretty much sum up the latest from Zack Snyder. The director of 300 and Watchmen has plenty of visual panache, but when it comes to storytelling, he’s a bombastic hack. Sucker Punch is the dark ballad of Babydoll (Emily Browning), a sulking waif committed to a mental institution by her nefarious stepfather after her sister is found dead. A lobotomy awaits, and to gain her freedom, or some semblance of justice, Babydoll drops into alternative planes of reality that involve a sweatshop bordello, where her dance skills rival those of Salome, and a fantasy landscape where she and several other scantily clad inmates battle Nazis, orcs, and dragons. The visuals, backed by a hip soundtrack, offer a ripe spectacle, but the trivial framework and insipid dialogue rupture the spell so often that no dance, no matter how titillating, can punch it up.
The Wait
20 MarPublished in the Open Window Review in December of 2012.
The Wait
Ten years ago my sister bled out on foreign soil. Her soul is now part of the land she tried to protect. The cause of her demise? The military of a nation our country holds as a close ally. To add to that insult, a judge in that country has just excused the army from any wrong doing.
For one long decade, my family has suffered and prayed for closure. My parents spent their life savings on attorneys and trips to the Middle East trying to exact justice for Anna, to prove that she did not die in vain or in the stupid accidental manner that the Israeli government professes. It was all they did every day for ten years and now it has ended in the most vapid and insensitive way that only widens the hole and makes it bleed more.
Anna was ever the idealist, quick to take up a cause and fight wherever she saw injustice. She was born with a short leg and a lazy eye. The weak and the poor were her kin and her mission. As a Girl Scout she worked in a soup kitchen and visited the elderly after school. During college she set up a literacy fund to help educate inner city kids and get them scholarships to college. She did this all with a smile and a humble heart. She never wanted any recognition or thanks. My father said she had no limits, and no matter what she did, the world would be better for it. Continue reading
The Season that Almost Wasn’t
20 MarPublished in Slippery Rock's Literary Journal, SLAB in 2007.
The Season that Almost Wasn’t
For thirteen years I’ve been a Red Sox season ticket holder, though last season, which began with a tantrum, almost was the season that wasn’t.
It was the third Sunday in March, and like every third Sunday in March, we were to gather at Jim’s apartment in the South End to divvy up the tickets. A decade ago, when the South End was still gritty and Jim lived in a cluttered split-level, this process had been easy. There were six of us, and four seats (Section 41, Row 17, Seats 20-23; perched atop the upper lip of the concourse entrance, they were the best cheap buckets in all of Fenway, a short hop to the beer stand and nothing before you but a railing and more legroom than anywhere else in the park, except perhaps the luxury skyboxes), but over the years, things became complicated. Jim upgraded to a penthouse loft. His girlfriend’s father moved to New Hampshire, bequeathing us (Jim, the pool) two pricey box seats, and, as Jim’s entrepreneurial ventures started to take off, it was not unlikely to find one or two new guys at Jim’s on that third Sunday in March. They essentially amounted to generic, J. Crew goons with over-starched collars, who got in because they fed Jim’s bottom line. I was never consulted about such additions, and hated paying double for two cramped slots under the batter’s net (and the rules of our draft deemed you had to pick them) when I could be out in the spacious wilds of the bleachers. By 2004 we had six seats, seventeen shares, a complicated draft process, and rules, on top of rules, on top of rules. In short, the one-hour booze fest had blown up into a three hour, consult my wife on the cell phone, pissing contest. Continue reading
Scrambling
20 MarIncluded in anthologies from Grub Street and Thieves Jargon.
Scrambling
Always wear a condom, even with your girlfriend. Go easy when hazing the freshmen, you never know who’ll be covering your blindside for the home opener. Never talk back to the coach. Take the cocky shit from the black guys that make you look good when they streak down the field. Never be boastful to reporters. Floss. Always be polite to recruiters; treat each like they’re the first. Never smash the mailbox of any of the businessmen who pay for the Friday night lights—and never, ever, fuck one of their daughters, like Charles Ray did; he ended up with a busted knee cap and lost his scholarship to College Station. Try to stay in state. Don’t go double A. Feed Ma’ each morning. Wash her sheets if necessary. Make sure Mrs. Vasquez gets her dinner while you’re at practice. Call Tilson at the end of the month and remind him to send the money he likes to forget about. Stretch. Hit the weight room before lunch, but don’t lose any flexibility in your throwing arm. Slide for first downs. Only dive if the game’s on the line. Don’t get into fights—drunken has-beens, jealous wannabes and jilted Continue reading
Crash
20 Mar
Road killPaul Haggis gives America the Crash test |
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CrashWritten and directed by Paul Haggis. With Matt Dillon, Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Terrence Howard, Thandie Newton, Brendan Fraser, Ludacris, Larenz Tate, and Michael Pena. A Lions Gate Films release (107 minutes). At the Boston Common, the Fenway, the Fresh Pond, and the Circle/Chestnut Hill and in the suburbs. |
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In Sidney Lumet’s unheralded 1990 police drama Q&A, Nick Nolte delivers a blistering portrait of hate as a racist cop who struts through a New York City precinct with Machiavellian bravado, roasting minorities with racial epithets. No one dares touch him, not the higher-ups or his peers. The film may be about dirty cops and corruption, but underneath it all, Lumet lets us know that tribalism is alive and well in the urban jungles of contemporary society.
In Crash, Matt Dillon plays a similar character roaming an equally stark landscape, yet writer/director Paul Haggis, who sailed to the top of Hollywood’s It list after penning Million Dollar Baby, isn’t concerned with departmental politics. Instead, he slices into the racism and the elitism that are rife in America today.
For What it's Worth 