Dispatches from Vilnius

Trumpers appear determined to keep the protests and riots in American cities across the country front and center.  Now we see vigilantes going into the heart of the protests, hoping to stir up unrest, as was the case in Kenosha, Wisconsin , and Portland, Oregon .   The first is pretty clear cut, a teenager crossed state lines and paraded around the streets with an assault rifle until a protester tried to stop him.  The kid opened fire, killing two persons and wounding another, claiming he did so in self-defense.  For whatever reason, Kenosha police let the Illinois teen go so that Wisconsin is now seeking extradition to prosecute him.  He's become a hero, trumpeted by Tucker Carlson and other leading conservative pundits as someone who was trying to "maintain order."   Now we see groups descending on cities in the name of maintaining order, emboldened by the rhetoric coming out of the White House and conservative media.  However, the situati...

Hard to believe it has been 42 years since Michael Myers first escaped from Smith's Grove Sanitarium and terrorized Haddonfield, leaving 4 dead bodies and a tormented Laurie Strode in his wake.  The body count has increased significantly since then as have the interpretations of his demonic character, but what made the original movie so frightening was the simplicity of John Carpenter's tale.  This was a kid who could have grown up in any white community anywhere in America, yet for some strange reason took a butcher knife in his hands and stabbed his sister nine times, the official count.  Dr. Loomis chalked it up to "the devil's eyes." John Carpenter says he deeply regretted making a sibling connection between Michael and Laurie, largely because he couldn't think of what else to do when NBC pushed him to add 12 minutes to make up for the censored cuts for television purposes.  There was quite a bit of nudity in the original.  All subsequent movies picked up...

You had to wonder how long the Conways could keep up this charade.  While one defends the President no matter how daft his tweets or other public statements, the other demeans him at every turn.  The two had become the James Carville and Mary Matalin of the Trump era.  You have to think they even modeled their relationship upon the infamous feuding couple of the 90s.   Now the game is over.  Kellyanne has officially handed in her resignation and George has given up his work at the Lincoln Project, which has been running scorching ads 24/7 against Trump.  They both claim they are trying to salvage what's left of their home life after their oldest daughter, Claudia,  publicly disowned them  on twitter and tiktok.  One can hardly blame her.  It's bad enough to watch your mother prostitute herself to Trump , but you have a father who loves nothing more than to disparage Trump at every turn, knowing full well how this reflects on her mo...

The idea of Benedict Cumberbatch as Doctor Strange was appealing so I asked my daughter if she had downloaded this Marvel legend.  He dates back to a 1963 issue of Strange Tales , where he didn't even get top billing.  The idea was drawn from Steve Ditko's imagination, not Stan Lee, and eventually the dark doctor would gather a following.  Strange that director Scott Derrickson didn't work in a cameo of Ditko in the 2016 movie, as he was still alive.  Anyway, as far as Marvel movies go this one was worth watching, especially with the added bonus of Tilda Swinton as the "Ancient One," who reveals the hidden dimension of sorcery to Dr. Strange. It is less a kid's movie than it is for adults who grew up on these comic books.  As I said before, I was never much of a Marvel fan beyond the Fantastic Four, which sadly were made into very bad movies, but I do remember Doctor Strange, not least of all for all the drug culture references.   This article implie...

Watching the Simpsons episode in which Homer gets a hair transplant , makes me wonder if all of Donald's meanness and vindictiveness is in his hair piece? Like so much of our current political landscape, the Simpsons appeared to have predicted it so long ago.  This particular episode came from a 1998 Treehouse of  Horror Trilogy. Trump's hair has been the subject of much ridicule even before he took office, but at 74 it appears to have taken on a life of its own.   The unnaturally orange mane has either been grown into a massive comb-over or is a toupee grafted from an orangutan.  It appears to be the former judging from his wind-blown moments.  At times, you think it is going to fly right off him, yet the thin strands hang on for dear life . The oddest part is how he went from dark hair to orange hair, as one can see in this illustrated history of Trump's hair .  It's only around 2000 that he let the orange show, or that's the way it came out when he ...

If Trump's tweets are any indication, Michelle Obama's keynote address at the Virtual Democratic Convention (VDC) really hit the mark.  Michelle spared no punches , going after the SCROTUS in a way suburban moms could easily identify with.  She singled out the lack of empathy in this nation, coming from the top.  While not saying so directly, she blamed Trump for the growing disdain and cruelty we see reflected in Americans across the country.  A wave of Trumpism that has led children to question the moral guidance of parents, and be attracted to the open avarice reflected in Trump's policies.  Of course, the conservative media jumped all over her comments as well.  How dare she attack our president, they cried, as if they were all as quiet as church mice when her husband was president. You could see that Michelle had been saving up this speech for a long time.  It was delivered not with malice but with great concern.  The type of concern all mot...

If the nearly $50 million the Biden camp raised in two days is any indication, Democrats are very happy with the announcement of Kamala Harris as his running mate.  The mainstream press has generally been favorable, although there were some questionable editorials like this one in Newsweek that led to an apology from the periodical, but not a retraction of the ill-formed opinion of John Eastman. Yes, conservatives are trying to play the birther card again by claiming Ms. Harris is not a natural born citizen of the United States because she has two foreign-born parents who had temporary residence at the time of her birth in California.  Eastman feebly argued that the Constitution doesn't grant birthright citizenship.  Yet, if we look at our early presidents, they were all naturalized citizens, because the United States was not officially formed until after 1776.  They had previously all been British citizens born in various colonies.  It wasn't until Martin Van ...

I thought Peter Bradshaw was very generous with his review of Avengers: Infinity War , which offers more than just "touches" of  The Lord of Rings .  It literally steals the whole story, only now we have six precious stones as opposed to five gold rings.  Fortunately, the movie doesn't take itself too seriously so we can forgive this blatant plagiarism to some degree, but the turning point where Thanos imagines himself as the universe's savior by culling the population by 50 per cent is a bit rich.  After all, we are talking about infinity here. With the phenomenal success of the Marvel franchise, we now have a slough of actors wanting to play a role in these movies.  One expects Chris Pratt, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth and maybe even Robert Downey, Jr. but not Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Bettany and Josh Brolin.  The supporting cast is even more dense with A-List actors like Don Cheadle, Gwyneth Paltrow and Bradley Cooper lending his voice to a space racc...

Neil Young hasn't exactly been the prophet of change, whether it was plugging a high-priced FLAC music player  or retrofitting Lincoln Continentals with electric drivetrains and battery packs, his so-called LincVolt .  Conceptually, the Pono player was nice but you can install a FLAC player and download FLAC music files for free on your computer, so there really wasn't much hope this nifty little player would take off.  It will become a collector's item of course, much like the Japanese mini-vinyl players from a few years back that Crosley has repackaged as miniature turntables.  As for the LincVolt, anyone can buy an electric conversion kit for virtually any model car, which is basically what Neil did.   But, Neil keeps on digging into his archives and offering up lost albums like Homegrown , released this summer to much fanfare.  I should probably be more excited about it, given I have a pretty large Neil Young collection.  However, a few yea...

I feel lucky in Lithuania in that the coronavirus never hit more than 90 new cases per day, and this for a country that tested heavily throughout the pandemic.  In large part this was due to the vigilance of the government that maintained a lockdown for more than two months, finally easing up restrictions in mid-May when new cases had leveled off to no more than a dozen per day.  The summer has gone relatively smoothly with some worries about citizens returning from vacations but even today new cases average less than 20 per day.  Still, the government felt the need to reimpose mask restrictions as the new school year approaches.  They plan to reopen public schools on September 1. This is a far cry from the US where new cases continue to top 50,000 per day, and deaths remain high in states that have done little to combat the virus.  Just recently, more than 250,000 motorcyclists descended on Sturgis, South Dakota , few if any of them wearing masks or any form of...

Nice to take a break and enjoy a little paddleboarding with the family.  At one time the Nemūnas was a major route through the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.  It takes a lot of odd turns from its source in modern-day Belarus, flowing north through much of Lithuania before turning west at Kaunas toward the Baltic Sea.  This threw off my bearings a bit as we glided along the gently flowing waterway from Druskininkai toward Liškiava, a monastery that dates back to the late 17th century.  I expected the river to flow the other way. It was the first time any one of us had tried to go down a river on a paddle board.  Mercifully, it was a short stint of about 8 km, as we struggled to find our footing, but eventually we all made it to the standing position.  It gives you a wonderful vantage point, able to scan the grassy shoreline and look down deep into the water.  We pretty much had the river to ourselves except for a few fishermen on the side of the banks. ...

At the time, few could suspect that this would be Coltrane's last great concert tour, but when he came back he was diagnosed with liver cancer and passed on shortly thereafter.  It shocked the jazz world as he was on the verge of something new yet again.  Truly one of the great innovators of his time, he had ventured a little too far out for some with his forays into free jazz.  However, the concerts in Japan saw a softer side of him again, with wonderful extensions of My Favorite Things and a new composition Peace on Earth . Netflix has been showing jazz documentaries.  They tend to view these musicians in a bubble, not taking into account the influence other musicians had on them.  In  Chasing Trane , there is virtually no mention of Eric Dolphy and only a passing reference to Pharoah Sanders.  Albert Ayler, the pioneer of Free Jazz, had a profound impact on Coltrane, yet is completely ignored.  Sanders is still alive, making it a real mystery ...