The Weekend of Foolish Attention

Bit and bytes of the week

If anyone can be an exorcist, what’s the point again? Just because you wear a cape doesn’t mean you can fly and just because you’re a serious Catholic or a root doctor doesn’t make you Max von Sydow. Yes, David Gordon Green’s Exorcist: Believer is a turd on wheels. It’s like Green vaguely remembered watching the 1973 masterpiece fifteen years ago and thought he could mush down the devil part and make demon possession resemble an addiction to over-the-counter pain pills easily solvable by an intervention by well meaning people.

Sure, raising a child takes a village but casting Satan out of her body requires a grizzled, beaten up old Catholic priest, a catechism, some Holy water, and, of course, the power of Christ that compels you. Anything less is just a recipe for crap.

The Hatfields and McCoys are not a sporting event. If anything the Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent war that is unfolding that strikes me is the tendency to view the issues in the Middle East as a game of oppressor vs oppressed. If you are pro-Israel, you’re routing for that country to fight back and defend the line; if you’re pro-Palestine, you see it all as the victims of marginalization striking a blow for long overdue justice.

The fact is that these two factions simply hate each others’ guts. For thousands of years. Sure, there were and are reasons for that deep-seated hatred but intentionally rooting for one team or the other has the effect of fueling rather than diffusing that hatred.

By the way, the inability to simply and definitively condemn without equivocation the following …

Hamas broadcast what they did—what they are doing—in real time.

They took horrific videos to document and share it all. Videos of naked women; of a captured six-year-old-boy; of beheaded soldiers.

This young woman—her name is Mor—learned that her grandmother had been slaughtered because a terrorist took her grandmother’s cell phone, filmed her murder, and then uploaded the video to the grandmother’s own Facebook page, ensuring her family would see it.

Terrorists came to a music festival on paragliders carrying machine guns to start their slaughter. They raped women there next to the dead bodies of their friends.

Now they are threatening to execute the hostages they have captured on live television.

… then your ideology has blinded you from basic human empathy and common sense.

Too old to discover new music? Nope. In my pursuit of a clean slate Chicago playlist, I’ve unearthed a new favorite band—Dead Sara—an L.A. based hard rock group. Apparently they had a hit with Weatherman which I happened upon in the search. I’m now all in. The perfect blend of serious rocking out with great hooks and hot chick vocals. Win/win/win.

When someone asks how you are, don’t be a dick. Last week, I went to the mall (yes, there’s a viable mall still in existence here). I went into a store to just browse. Nothing in particular to buy. The greeter at the front said “Welcome. How are you today?” I stopped, responded that I was doing great and how was he doing? He was a bit shocked. “Wow. You didn’t ignore me. You’d be surprised how many people just walk by as if I wasn’t even here. Thank you.”

Weight, weight … don’t tell me. It’s no secret to anyone who has spoken to me for more than thirty minutes in a chunk that in my early forties I dropped eighty pounds after realizing I had become a giant sack of suet with eye holes. In the following seventeen years, the pounds started creeping back. Once the horrifying Eli Roth-style divorce unfolded a year and some change ago, I loaded up on the calories (much via cheese and whiskey).

In the past two months I’ve dropped twelve of the thirty pounds that must go. No crazy diabetes drugs, no nutty diet. Exercise more, eat less. That’s it. Despite Weight Watchers apologizing for suggesting losing weight is about willpower and work. Yeah, I saw Aronofsky’s The Whale. I’m not charming or funny enough to be the fat guy so steps (literally steps) must be taken.

A brilliant, understated swan song. William Friedkin passed in August but before he did, he adapted The Caine Mutiny Court Martial for modern times. It should be no surprise with my enthusiasm for healthy debate that I love few entertainments more than courtroom dramas and this update (from the 1954 Humphrey Bogart vehicle) is practically perfect. His camera starts very dry and encompassing but as Queeg slowly becomes unhinged it focuses in odd angles and close-ups and moves the drama along in a fantastic manner. Great flick and Keifer Sutherland is really coming into his own as an elder statesman of cinema.

Leaning in to ‘who gives a shit?’ LinkedIn is the social media version of finding jobs. It’s getting more like regular social media (re: a buncha self serving shit) but it’s better than Indeed or Zip Recruiter. One the areas of job searching is that ever present online pose as either younger than you are or more professional than you might be. For the most part, most folks on the site have profile photos that resemble nothing less than those Sears school pictures. It’s all just a pageant of fake and unrealistic possibilities. Mine?

My mom’s dog, Buddy Ricardo, and I are bonded…

Quick plug. I’m heading to Chicago this week to sell books. Both Casino at the End of the World and I Didn’t Marry a Prostitute… and, if you’ve read either and have fifteen minutes, why not go onto Amazon.com and leave either (or both) a review? I don’t do much social media and I despise marketing so it might move that needle a notch to get someone to purchase one (or both).

If you’re in Chicago, try and swing by the Haymarket Pub & Brewery on Randolph, Tuesday night around 6pm. It’ll be good to see your faces and work that book magic.