2 March

Review: “The Lego Movie.” A Wonderful Surprise

by Jon Katz
"The Lego Movie"
“The Lego Movie”

I went to see “The Lego Movie” for the second time today, I felt I missed a bunch of things the first time around, and I was right. This is one of the best movies I have seen in years, if not the best, and it took me completely by surprise. I don’t usually go to see what I thought was a toy sponsored kid’s movie, but I started reading the most wonderful reviews of this movie and hearing the best buzz about it.

We went to see it a couple of weeks ago. First of all it is a gorgeous movie, the animation is just spectacular, it is especially captivating in 3-D which I am coming to appreciate. The movie is one of the most political animations I can remember seeing. It stars an ordinary LEGO minifigure named Emmett, mistakenly thought to be the extraordinary Master Builder, who is recruited to join a desperate mission to save the world from an evil LEGO tyrant named Lord Business who is intent on gluing the world out of existence.

It is a lot of fun to see this shockingly beautiful animation, truly become a spectacular art form once again, and sort through the voices behind the movie’s Lego figures, from Shaquille O’Neal to Liam Neeson to Will Farrell to James Franco. The movie moves at a breathtaking pace, but it takes awhile before it reveals itself to be a timely, funny, sometimes biting look at how the corporate culture in America is choking creativity to death, turning artists into outcasts and promoting a bland and risk-free kind of conformity that is stifling individuality and ideas.

The movie has a score of riffs that poke fun at everything from Batman to Apple’s Siri. But the big target, ironically for a corporate movie, is corporatism itself. For kids, the movie is just a riotous, delightful and fast-moving blast. For adults, it is much more than that, you will find yourself laughing and shaking your head at it’s piercing representation of modern-day America, it’s many sly references to pop culture,  all delivered without a trace of preachiness or heavy-handedness. If you weren’t paying attention, you might miss the message altogether.

Lord Business has taken over the world, turning it’s citizens into cheerful but mindless sheep, following their daily sets of rules, reporting anyone with a shred of individuality to the authorities, so they can be melted down and re-cast.

It is really a film about a band of pop culture creatives – Superman, Batman, The Green Hornet, many others – who are trying to exist in a world that has become suffocatingly, even murderously, corporate. It is a film about greed, conformity and rules, just the sort of movie Hollywood seems afraid to make beyond a cartoon. Emmett busts this world wide open with the help of his many colorful and very funny new friends. A lot of parents have told me the movie also teaches them important lessons  about parenting, I could surely see that, it is another message delivered skillfully and gracefully – but powerfully and clearly.

The animation is just spectacular, whose worlds appearing, disappearing, whizzing through space, time and water brick-by-Lego-brick. Emmett is an appealing hero, unassuming and humble until he begins to believe in himself. A good message for any age.

It is surely a great coup for the Lego Corporation, which will sell a lot of building sets this year, the movie is a blockbuster, the number one movie in America now, blowing away all of it’s comparatively anemic competition. I almost missed this terrific movie, dismissed it as another Hollywood marketing ploy. It is, in fact a brilliant marketing ploy but one that deserves every penny it makes. The movie is a wonderful surprise, just about every single thing in it is awesome. I recommend it highly, I bet it ends up being one of the best movies of the year, if not the best. It is also great to see this kind of inventiveness, daring and wit so richly rewarded.

2 March

“Held Up By The Wind”

by Jon Katz
Held Up By The Wind
Held Up By The Wind

I stopped the car to take a photo of this wonderful old barn, it has seen a lot of winters, has a lot of stories to tell, the farmer came out to whistle at my camera. He says photographers come by once in awhile to take a photo of the barn, it is 150 years old or more.

“I don’t know what keeps her standing,” the farmer said, shaking his head. “I think she’s held up by the wind.”

2 March

Every Farmhouse Tells A Story

by Jon Katz
Every Farmhouse Has A Story
Every Farmhouse Has A Story

Every farmhouse, every old barn has a story to tell. The world has moved beyond this evocative buildings, these evocative places, they are so emotional to me. I have driven by this iconic farmhouse for years trying to capture the feeling of it, the simplicity, the sense of history and hard work, but I came closer today than before. The farmhouse has tremendous character, it speaks of time and place, it whispers its secrets to me, maybe to you.

2 March

Grain To Kim

by Jon Katz
Grain To Kim
Grain To Kim

Our ewe Kim was exhausted, birthing is draining and dangerous for sheep sometimes, we got her into a stall in the barn and gave her some grain. It’s been a few years since I lost a lamb, and I am sorry this was Maria’s first lambing experience. It is surely part of it, but I have to get my read re-focused a bit. Time to get ready in a serious way. Docking stuff, iodine, antibiotics, lambing milk, vitamin booster, syringes.

2 March

People Rights: The Carriage Horses March On Amazon Warehouses!

by Jon Katz
Marching On Amazon
Marching On Amazon

“Heartless Amazon! LEAVE TOWN!

Greedy Amazon! LEAVE TOWN!

Heartless Managers! LEAVE TOWN!

People Abusers! LEAVE TOWN!”

– Chant by the people rights activist carriage horses of  “Lots Of Gas: Getting Political For People,” in New York.

The New York Carriage Horses snarled commuter traffic yesterday by leading a march across the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey to protest human working conditions in an Amazon Warehouse the size of a dozen football fields.

“Humans do not belong in Amazon warehouses,” said King and Chester, co-chairs of the human rights group “Lots Of Gas: Getting Political For People.”  The group said it was demanding that human workers be granted the same working conditions and rights that have been given to the carriage horses of New York City.

The mayor, who was invited to join the march of chanting equine  human rights activists, refused, he said he would be marching in the Vegan-People-Of-Various-Hues parade, which was heading towards Penn Station to demand that the bomb sniffing Labrador Retrievers of Amtrak be banned and retired to loving adoption homes in the country, where they could eat disgusting things in the wild and eliminate there freely and continuously.

City Council President Marguerite Alvarez-Rubinstein-Brzinski-Florello said she would not meet with any representatives of the carriage horse protest, as she said some were believed to be animals belonging to Irish people, some of whom have long owned working horses and many of whom are believed to openly march in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

“Arb!,” as she is known by people who can’t remember her names, said she doesn’t know any Amazon workers or working people like that, but she quickly added that she does have a “rescue parakeet” named  “Angel,” which she brought back from the Caribbean after a vacation, and named in honor of a pigeon stomped by a carriage horse during an altercation over oats in front of the Plaza Hotel. The horse was charged with avian abuse, but was rushed by his owners to a Pennsylvania farm where he remains in hiding.

“I had a rescue cat once too,” said Arb, “so I know a lot about animals, “but I don’t know anything about Amazon workers, I thought my packages came from this nice space in San Francisco.”

“It’s okay,” said King, leading a caravan of more than 200 carriage horses clip-clopping across the busy bridge as shocked commuters looked on. “We are willing to go it alone, one day we will gather the money to buy us a mayor too, that will be a great day for people. Then we will get something done for people, end these brutal and abusive practices.”

King told reporters that Amazon working conditions are intolerable. He said warehouses are no place for people. They have a short live span there, they have no room to lie down.

Workers there, he said,  are forced to work as long as eleven hours, to walk miles on concrete, fired as they get tired or older, collapse in unbearable heat,  freeze in the cold, ruin their legs walking on concrete for hours, and are treated as robots. Man are expected to walk as many as ll miles a day and find a product for shipment every 33 seconds. He cited investigative reports by the BBC, Business Insider, and Salon Magazine, all reporting numerous incidents of abuse, mistreatment, overwork, exhaustion and intimidation of workers in Amazon’s warehouses. Amazon workers are hired part-time, given no benefits, forced to work with satellite tracking systems attached to their bodies, given only 30 minutes for lunch even thought they have to walk huge distances to their break rooms. Most say they rarely get time to rest or even eat.

King said he did a lengthy Google Search (try it yourself) and found more than 20,000 stories reporting accusations of abuse of New York Carriage Horses (one arrest for neglect and no convictions) and only a dozen on the treatment of Amazon workers all across the country and in the Northeast, including nearby Allentown, Pa. and New Jersey.

Workers have collapsed of heat stroke, said the local newspaper, been locked in the freezing cold for hours during searches for thieves. The people are underfed, work in unsafe conditions, discarded when they get old. One worker in his fifties worked ten hours a day, walked thirteen to fifteen miles daily, was told he had to pick 1,200 items in a ten-hour shift, or 1 item every 30 seconds, he had to get down on his knees 250 to 300 times a day, when his knees got sore he was written up for not working fast enough and fired with no severance or benefits. When he was dismissed,  only three of the one hundred temps hired with him were still employed. His GPS tracker had monitored his choice of restrooms, he was reprimanded for not using the closet one.

Since only one person in 150 years has been accused of abusing the carriage horses, the horses were puzzled as to why people were trying to ban them while Amazon workers were dropping like flies just a few miles away and half of animal rights happy New York was happily getting their Prime books and videos and kitchen gadgets delivered overnight.  King and Chester thought they ought to march to an Amazon warehouse to call attention to the horrible conditions under which so many human beings work, they assumed the mayor, the New York media and the City Council President must not know of these conditions, since they had never once been mentioned in political campaigns or inaugural speeches. Amazon has millions of customers in New York City and would pay close to attention to concerns about their work practices there – if there had ever been any.

The horses have had enough, say King and Chester, it is time for the warehouses to change or go. They are circulating a petition demanding that the human workers in Amazon (and elsewhere) get to work under the same conditions as the carriage horses in New York:

– Five weeks vacation away from New York City. (Most Amazon warehouse workers are temporary workers and get none, the few full time workers get one or two weeks after a certain time.)

– Temperature restrictions: Carriage horses are prohibited from working when the temperature is below 18 degrees Fahrenheit or above 90 degrees. There are no temperature restrictions for Amazon workers.

– Carriage horses cannot work more than nine hours a day. This includes a 15 minute rest period for every two hours worked. Amazon warehouse workers get two 15 minute rest periods every 10-12 hours, 30 minutes to eat.

– Carriage horses must be blanketed during winter months. Amazon workers are on their own.

– Adverse weather:  Horses are prohibited from working in “adverse weather”, which can mean wind, heavy snow or rain, or anything a police officer says is adverse. Amazon employees get no time off for snow, storms or hurricanes.

– Carriage horses are prohibited from working if they are lame or ill. Amazon warehouse workers report illness from overwork, muscle strain, heat and cold, are given no sick time off and are not prohibited from working while sick.

In addition, the horses are required by law to be fed regularly, watered continuously, have their hooves trimmed and checked,  and are given free health care and regular examinations by police veterinarians. Their stalls are cleaned every three hours, they eat an average of two fresh bales of hay a day.

King and Chester say they and the other people rights activists will protest the working conditions at the Amazon warehouses until the workers there are provided the same protections and given the same benefits as the carriage horses of New York City. They said their website, “Lots Of Gas: Getting Political For People!” would soon begin posting photos of Amazon workers who drop of exhaustion, are fired because they are older, are freezing in poorly-heated warehouses, whose feet are blistered and sore from walking on many miles of concrete floors. “People don’t belong in those warehouses,” said King, “they work in freezing or overheated spaces, they are suffering inhumanely, we need to get them out of there and into the loving hands of people on rescue farms, where they will not have to work again.”

The horses say they will go to the Amazon warehouse in New Jersey every Sunday to yell insults and sing chants to the supervisors as they leave work. They began chanting on the bridge, their chants could be heard all across the huge span and even on the barges and boats on the water.

Chants To the Amazon workers:

 “For the workers, it’s no fun!

 They are dropping, one by one!

Workers baking in the sun,

They are dropping one by one!”

Then, as the group made it’s way to the Jersey side of the bridge, a second chant:

 “1-2-3-4

Open up the warehouse doors!

5-6-7-8,

Smash the trackers and liberate!

9-10-11-12

Amazon bosses, go to Hell!”

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