Day: November 26, 2017

Note: This is a review of the much acclaimed new movie “Lady Bird” from Director Greta Gurwich. It is a comedy/drama (much more the latter than the former) and while I do not give the plot away, I do discuss some elements of the story line. Also,despite the fact that it earned an average metascore of 94 on IMDB, one of the highest of the year,  I had some serious issues with it. If either of those things bother  you, skip this. – jk

There is this deeply embedded idea in our popular culture – especially in Hollywood and the media – that  families are sacred.

No matter what happens, you must love your family and forgive them their trespass, because they are family, no matter, the only place where they must take you in, the place where all is forgiven, because even the worst cruelty often comes from love. And can be rationalized. They are family.

No friends or partners can ever supplant them or replace them, your life ultimately centers around them.

That this is blatantly false for so many people doesn’t seem to matter.

“Lady  Bird” is one of the most acclaimed and eagerly awaited movies of the season. Maria and i went to see it tonight. One reviewer who gave it a rating of 100 called it a “lovingly observed, pitch perfect coming-of-age comedy, Gerwig’s warm, astute account of the end of adolescence is a stunning solo debut.”

I was expecting a lot.

I was disappointed.

Almost all of the comedy was in the trailers or previews, I found the movie to have some wonderful writing and Saoirse Ronan was wonderful playing Christina “Lady Bird” McPherson, a tormented, lonely, strong-willed  teenager perpetually at war with her very anxious Helicopter Mom, Laurie Metcalf (Marion McPherson.)

I didn’t hear anyone in the theater laugh once, (I did once), nor was anyone smiling as they filed out.

On one level – exploring the pain of adolescent women – the movie succeeded brilliantly.

In most other ways, it failed for me. I was surprised.

Marion was almost unforgivably cruel and abusive to her daughter, for me, this way transcended argument and entered the realm of extreme cruelty, even abuse.

She told Lady Bird that she was fat, too stupid to get into a good college, ungrateful, lazy and ugly, she said she failed to be the best version of herself, and accused her (grossly unfairly) of being overweight,  ungrateful and hurtful to her father, a sweet, feckless and weak man suffering from depression.

She invaded her privacy and ridiculed her independence.

She told her repeatedly she would amount to nothing and shouldn’t even bother with any advanced schooling, which she said they could not afford. She was so selfishly possessive of Christina – who decided to call herself “Lady Bird” in a desperate big for independence – that father and daughter hid the fact that she was applying to college at all.

When the so-called lovingMom found out, she refused to even speak to Christina, even though her daughter begged her forgiveness (for daring to want to go to college and live her life).

In interviews, reviews, previews and trailers, we are told that beneath all of this shocking cruelty, this was just a Mom who loved her daughter so much she didn’t know how to help her.

And this is supposed to be another warm story about Mother-Daughter love. I didn’t see that movie tonight.

I won’t go into the details of the story line, but I knew how it must end from the very beginning – all must be forgiven, cruelty and abuse are just manifestations of love, they all get a free pass, and not only that, Christina spends much of her time groveling for affection and forgiveness. There are one or two scenes of connection. But so what?

This is family, it must end well.

If I saw this behavior in any child’s home, I would sound the alarm or demand that somebody – everybody – get counseling. We are learning every day that cruelty and harassment are not things to wink at, rationalize or excuse. They ought not be trivialized as cute and endearing.

We are told – rightly – that young women need role models who are strong, independent, and who can demand respect and dignity. Even Disney has figured that out. The message here is that parents can be wantonly crude and destructive, it doesn’t matter.

I know of many women who were broken by being treated this way at an early age in the name of love and concern. Even the movie showed some of the emotional scars on Christina.

I am at odds with almost all of the critics on this point – go and see the movie for  yourself, for sure, but I think truth took a beating here in the name of sappy Hollywood endings, which do not allow for family to sometimes be an unhealthy and destructive force that is best avoided.

I was rooting for Christina to flee, to run away, not to decide that this was just another way of being loved. And beg for forgiveness.

I should say I had cruel and abusive parents, and I got away from them and stayed away. They did not love me or deserve love, and while I certainly do forgive them – we all do our best – they don’t get a free pass either, any more than the powerful men who abuse trust and misuse power.

You don’t have to be sexually assaulted to be abused.

I have a daughter, and I cannot imagine saying those things to her, and neither did her mother, my ex-wife. If I ever saw my daughter’s mother say those things – she never would –  I would not abide it. What does being a parent mean? No one called Marion on her behavior or suggested it was hurtful, not loving.

It is not an excuse to be repeatedly cruel to a child in the name of love. And these attacks on Christina were not episodic outbursts – we all have those – they were systematic and wounding.

Nor can I ever imagine Emma saying any of those things to my granddaughter Robin. Those attacks could have damaged Emma terribly, and shattered her confidence and self-respect.

That’s not all OK. It isn’t cute or funny, and it isn’t love either. You don’t have to be a smarmy power-mad man to abuse a young woman at the most sensitive time of her life. Kids can be hurt badly that way.

The movie does do a good job of conveying adolescent female angst, but i felt that almost everyone in the film was a stereotype.

The sometimes vicious mother was just expressing love in her own way, the father stood by silently while his daughter was mistreated and even reviled.

There was the shallow and spiteful best friend who was not really a friend (has anyone ever seen a nice rich suburban kid in the movies?), and the overweight and loving true best friend, who, despite rejection, is really the best friend, boy friends who are never what they seem to be, and evil rich kids on the good side of the tracks.

Christina was the only one in the movie I loved or really cared about. She was great.

I understand that this might just be my issue, not yours,  since I am so out of sync with almost every critic writing about this movie. Please consider that I might just be wrong, we all have to make up our own minds.

The wonder of being human is that we can all see things in our own and individual way.

I took the first Iphone X video this morning, it’s a beautiful day, I went out with Red, Fate and Gus to move the sheep. The sky was beautiful, the video camera on the IPhone was exceptional, I thought. I loved the color, clarity and depth.

This means more videos for me from the farm. Red was remarkable, as usual, Fate ran and ran, and Gus tried to get aboard the train somehow – anyhow.

Come and see, this phone is going to widen my creative horizons. I want to take a lot more videos than I have been, and this quality will inspire and encourage me. Come and see.

Gus is often trying to do what Red does, Gus admires Red immensely, even though Red rarely deigns to pay attention to him. Gus is a student of Red, and I think he wants to herd sheep. This morning, he stood along side Red giving the sheep the sye. I think he felt quite important.

I was a dreadful student in my life, I rarely studied for everything and drove my teachers wild.

This month, I studied for hours before buying and receiving the Iphone X, I read a score of reviews, watched dozens of websites and YouTube reviews and read every word of the Apple literature. This week, I’m taking a half-hour phone tutorial from Apple Support on how to understand and use the phone.

Of all the reviews I read – I have never done that much studying in my life – I think the CNET review was the most useful in telling me what was new and important about the Iphone X and what wasn’t. The geek reviews were mostly useless, ranting about other phones, swipes, notches and two-handed commands. It takes five minutes to learn what you really need to know.

The focus on price and buttons seems narcisstic to me, big news if you are a techno-geek, but most of the reviews had little vision or connection to the needs of ordinary people. Like mainstream media, it is obsessed with controversy and fault-finding.

All weekend, I’ve had this curious feeling that this phone was radically different than any other I’ve used. It seemed to have a consciousness to me, it’s own identity. It gave itself commands independent of me, every time I have used it, it is different, more complete, easier to use. It seemed to heal itself. I saw it grow before my eyes.

It also seemed to work better as it got to know me. It’s a strange thought, but I think it’s true.

Some people feel like magic has left the world, driven a way by ideologues, animal rights people, religious fanatics, corporatists and greed.  I believe in magic. Magic is very personal. You either feel it or you don’t. This phone has magic, and I can feel it.

Hardly any of the reviews mentioned what was, to me, truly the most significant thing about this new phone (I’m sorry, please forgive me, but the $1,000 price tag seems quite reasonable to me given the complexity and creativity and utility of the device. We are quite spoiled.)

It’s fine not to choose the phone or want one, but it is not a crime against humanity to get one and pay for it. I’ve spent a lot of money buying things that don’t work, this one works. One woman asked me if I had considered the poor pay the Iphone laborers earn or the damage to the environment.

I consider that almost every day, but I also know that this is true of whatever we buy, in this country or any other. I don’t know how to live in a world with those choices, or where to put my social conscience. I need to live in the world we have, not just the world we want.

Last night, I realized what it was I was feeling and experiencing about this phone, and browsing the Web for information about new technology, it hit me: the phone is the most vivid example and preview I have yet seen about Artificial Intelligence, the science of teaching machines to think.

Apple has said repeatedly that the Iphone X it’s it’s first major showcase and platform for introducing AI to the commercial world of smart phone users. Samsung has been doing it too, complained some critics, but so what? Good for them. AI is a huge part of this phone experience. That isn’t about utility but vision.

Artificial Intelligence is generally defined as the theory and development of computer systems that are able to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making and translation between languages. All of these tasks are on the phone in varying degrees, and they all seem to work.

AI is a computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines that work and reaction like humans, from speech recognition to problem solving and learning. There are AI programs for knowledge, reasoning, perception,  and planning (on the dark side, think “Hal.”

It didn’t really occur to me until I began exploring the X that my new Iphone does many of these things.

Every time I use the Face ID, the computer recognizes me more quickly, and this ID can be used to access almost all of the apps on the phone, from banking to Paypal to my credit card. It is fast and relatively secure. Almost any phone will make a call, this machine goes far beyond that.

For me, the exciting thing about AI is not the security of the phone, but the  very personal introduction to this groundbreaking technology of the future, or perhaps the present. The animated Emojis are not just a joke, but a whole new way to communicate. You don’t have to be a kid to have fun texting.

I’ve been sending them to everyone I know. I sent some dirty message Emoji’s  (I was a unicorn) to Maria, who nearly collapsed laughing. Here’s Ai And Emoji’s

I hope she puts them up on her blog.

I’m being careful not to overstate, but at times I have the feeling the phone has a kind consciousness.

It was learning as much about me as I was learning about it, poor thing. I wonder how it will deal with my moods and impatience. It has already told me to slow down once or twice.

The X makes decisions on it’s own, it repairs and corrects itself, talks to me constantly about options and my decisions, corrects me and warns me, and seems to grow more efficient and confident by the hour.

Friday, when I first used it, it was a smartphone. Today, it feels like my smartphone, it literally has me in it. I am just getting into the photography and tomorrow I’ll try a video.

The phone is also getting to know and anticipate me. Siri has grown up quite a bit, she even has a new and businesslike voice. Thanks to AI, you can talk to her at any time by just by speaking her name, and she is efficient and responsive. She almost functions are a personal secretary for me.

I sense the phone isn’t just reacting to me, i see it evolving and connecting and problem solving. I don’t really care about swipes and hypes or pixels,  I feel quite engaged with the phone.

All of the warnings about the difficulties seem quite over-hyped to me. It just isn’t hard. And Apple is right there on the phone if you need them.

I am nottechno-whiz, I have no problems using the phone after the initial shock and mild trauma of something so different. You do, in fact, have to think about it, and it does, in fact, think about me.

That is pretty wild. I’m excited about the phone, I feel I’m learning something new and also just beginning to grasp how powerful new technologies are changing the world. It is so important to think and be challenged in our world. I refuse Old Fartism, the clucking about phones and messages. The world changes all the time, and you can get on the boat or stand on the shore grumping about the old days.

I have a new and very effective tool for managing my life, my money, my information and for communicating with the people I love and care about. Make no mistake, this is an interactive tool. I will ask a lot of it, and it will ask something of me.

For me, $1,000 for that kind of magic is a steal.

A new and fun person has come into our life and is helping us maintain the old farmhouse. Old farmhouses are loving and wonderful things, but they need maintenance and love to stay in shape. Craig Watson is a licensed electrician, he is helping us in a number of way. He’s putting up a new spotlight so friends and visitors can see where they are going when they park in the dark.

We are planning to get a bit more social and cook more for our friends at home. Craig is installing a new light of of the house. He is also helping us install a new track light in the ceiling of the dining room, only only remaining dark and gloomy room. We do a lot of paperwork and other things at the table, the light will help, and also be useful when we have people over.

Beyond that, Craig is going to set up our new (used) portable generator, which we got from a friend’s father for $400 – a steal. Some people don’t believe in climate change, but we do, and the storms coming through her more often now are smaller and less destructive than the ones down South and elsewhere, but many of them are strong enough to knock out the power. It’s happened seven times this year, many more than is usual.

Our generator is small but will help us stay online, use the refrigerator, keep the water going to us and the animals, and turn on the water heater. We can’t do all of these at once, but we can switch from one to the other. And keep the blogs going too.

He’s also going to install a baseboard heating panel for Maria’s office upstairs, she’s been freezing up there while she does her shipping and record keeping, and I didn’t know it, she never mentioned it, I just found out about it, and told Craig not to listen to her if she said she didn’t need it, it was only cold four or five months out of the year.

That’s just what she did say, but fortunately, I got to him first. He’s installing it next week. All of this for less than $400.  He’s a find.

Craig is an unusual man, no big man in a truck. He is funny, creative and he makes all of this work fun. He’s a unusual man, open and quite honest. He doesn’t do work he doesn’t like, and is direct.

I hope to get to know him better, we connected with one another. He is a complete Luddite, no cell phone or computer, never been online. We had our first debate yesterday, about my Iphone X. He almost fainted when i showed him the animated emojis.

It’s neat to have Craig in our life, and in keeping with tradition, I share the people in our town who come into our lives. He’ll be back next Saturday to install the dining room light. The generator will probably have to wait until Spring, it’s going in the woodshed and that is full of wood.