Hell Yeah!

I went to bed early last night, after watching the first bit of Fassbinder's Lola, which we'd recorded from a TCM premier airing at 2 am Monday morning. It looks as good as I expected, but my eyes were tired and amidst the edgy evening of continuous speculation about the various outcomes in the various states, based in some cases on 3.7% of the returns, it was hard to really engage with subtitles enough. My head hurt. I've lately been blown away by Fassbinder, the young German director genius who died mixing cocaine and sleeping pills while writing his next film script, his 43rd or so in a mere 15 years. After viewing Merchant of Four Seasons last week I ordered up several more from Netflix, and then TCM musta read my mind or something, and ran Lola, one I hadn't ordered.

Everyone ought to watch Merchant of Four Seasons. At least if you grew up in a family, and are adult enough to look beneath the placid surface at the sharks that swim below. That's what Merchant is about: being in a family chock full of Republicans. In Hans' clan there's one Democrat, the beautiful Hanna Schygulla, born the same year as I was it turns out. She's Hans' younger sister, a writer who sees the sharks that are consuming Hans, one piece at a time.



(This is Hanna in Fassbinder's Lili Marleen, ten years after Merchant.)

We're living in times that might benefit from Bertolt Brecht, or an American equivalent. We're living in times that might benefit from a more educated electorate, a body of voters who can at least glimpse the sharks swimming just below the surface. Over at Vdare, a racist website I wouldn't recommend with a ten foot pole in hand, noted commentator and former Nixon consultant and Presidential candidate Pat Buchannan now plies his racist agenda. He recommends that impeachment proceedings begin against President Obama in the Spring of '13. Hey, it worked (sorta) for Newt and the GOP back in the '90s, and now that genii is out of the box, just another political tool when it was once reserved for only the most serious offenses. I won't be surprised if it happens again. It's so easy to encourage and enflame the old lizard brain, the fearful region that sees only us and them as the great dichotomy that explains the chaos, the blooming buzzing confusion that is in fact where we always are. Joy or fear. It's easy to start fearing joy. Then you're on the slide, my dear friends, and you end up being an election official in Florida, setting things up to run out of ballots in black districts at 11 am on election day. How convenient. I mean, that Guantanamo brig is so close to Florida. I know a guy with a boat, Mr. President, Sir.

Last night we just missed an asteroid. I think I'll leave my Obama yard poster up for a few more days. Hell Yeah!