tammytoes

Ray and I went to a record collector’s expo today. Passed up near mint (but very overpriced) lps from The Damned and The Germs, but splurged $7 on a Magazine lp from 1978. When the seller passed me a bag for the purchase, he noted, “I always try to bring things like this to events precisely because it’s perfect for a person like you.” He made me smile. He told us that there was a man from Louisiana shopping for inexpensive cds at the expo – he said the man told him that he needed some music, because everything he had back home was trashed. I felt very lucky to be walking away with a vinyl gem to my dry, complete home.

The 50 cent bins held even more fortunes: a Stones album missing from our collection, a very hot Neil Diamond oldie, a great Dolly Parton collection, an old Alice Cooper. We splurged $3.50 for the Less Than Zero soundtrack. Laugh away, but it’s got Slayer, Danzig and the Bangles – what more could you ask for?

While browsing through a collection that was heavy on Jethro Tull, I commented to Ray and I just didn’t understand the whole flute rock thing. I think the seller missed my sarcasm, because she told us about her Jethro Tull concert experiences, commenting that live shows “back in the old days” were “brazen, wild, CRAZY.” She had a leather bracelet that held a lighter on her wrist.

On our way out, we spent one of our last two dollars on an English Beat record and talked with its seller about how we’ll never give up our old cassette tapes. He had a great collection of them for sale at the show, but we were done buying. He winked and handed me a Pogues tape, anyway.

On the way home, we drove Dam Road across the top of Cherry Creek Reservoir, watching the sailboats and smelling the cool air.

Sometimes after a long time between posts when my previous post was about something really important, I don’t quite feel like I can post about anything not-so-important. But that’s life, isn’t it? Full of big things and little. Consumed by the philosophical and also the dumb. So my life has been busy with less important things than fighting the evil powers-that-be, but I always try to keep some of that, too.

The Sugar Kill Gang defeated the Red Ridin’ Hoods in the second bout of the season. We remain undefeated, and I went to the afterparty this time instead of the emergency room. Hooray!

I’m going to the Big Apple to see my friend Lanie B. next month. Hooray!

My mentoring program has started off successfully this year. Hooray!

I watched the highly enjoyable documentary about female wrestlers called ‘Lipstick and Dynamite’ only to find out that my roller derby name was used by a midget wrestler in the fifties. Hooray!

I also watched the very informative documentary Punk: Attitude last week and discovered, much to my horror, that the lead singer of the New York Dolls became Buster Poindexter in the eighties. Hot Hot Hot!

I tried writing a legit movie review of The Exorcism of Emily Rose for a friend. For, like, a newspaper audience. I don’t know how it turned out, but I figured I should post it here because I post all my other reviews. So here you go.

Enjoy and good night.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose

Man, once you let your daughter off the farm to go to college, there’s just no telling what kind of trouble she’ll get into… First she’ll start dancing, and then she’ll start seeing demons. Before you know it, she’ll be eating insects, speaking in tongues, and bending her body around all creepy-like.

Well, at least that’s what happened to Emily Rose. But were those awful things a result of psychotic epileptic seizures or demonic possession?

That’s the question at the center of The Exorcism of Emily Rose. It’s a thoughtful, but ultimately unsuccessful supernatural drama loosely based on an actual trial of a priest that took place in Germany. Tom Wilkinson stars as Father Moore, a priest who has been charged with murder after the title character Emily Rose dies in his care. Laura Linney stars as the agnostic defense attorney with a troubled conscience who is hired by a Catholic archdiocese to defend him. The film uses Father Moore’s trial to pit his religious convictions against the scientific hypotheses of Emily Rose’s doctors. It’s provocative stuff, and the trial jury is eventually faced with heavy questions about science, belief and fact. Father Moore could have been responsible for Emily’s death by neglecting medical treatment for a rather dubious illness called psychotic epilepsy disorder. On the other hand, Emily’s doctors could be to blame for prescribing an epilepsy medication that made her immune to exorcism, thereby allowing a demon to torture her body to death.

Linney and Wilkinson deliver solid performances in the film, and Jennifer Carpenter gives the horror performance of the year as the tortured teen Emily Rose. Unfortunately, Campbell Scott looks and acts just like the Teddy Roosevelt robot from the Hall of Presidents attraction at Disneyland (minus the spectacles) in his role as the devout State prosecutor, and his performance sucks the life out of every courtroom scene. There’s no dramatic tension between Scott and Linney, so courtroom exchanges that should crackle just fizz.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose does offer some chilling moments early on. Director Scott Derrickson blurs the line between medical condition and supernatural possession effectively. The result is that Emily’s demonic visions/hallucinations and her body contortions are very eerie, and so are the disturbances that Linney’s characters experiences as she mounts her defense of Father Moore. Less effective is the actual exorcism scene, which plays out clichés and rituals from every film made about exorcisms to mediocre effect.

In the end, the film never delivers on the promise of emotional, dramatic showdown between science and religion made in its very engaging opening scenes. Derrickson and his writing partner Paul Harris Boardman are admirable for taking great care not to exploit the issues they raise in the film. However, by telling the story of Emily Rose’s possession in flashback, they lose the emotional heart of the film. What’s left is a courtroom debate of ideas, which makes for interesting dinner table conversation – but not a satisfying movie-going experience.

Take away the big-screen power of its stars, and The Exorcism of Emily Rose would play out as a very good TV movie. Add Marcia Cross from Desperate Housewives, lower the budget for special effects, and change the title to “Touched by a Demon: The Emily Rose Story,” and the networks would have a surefire winner on their hands.

I’ve spent days wondering if anything I could say on this blog about Hurricane Katrina and our government’s handling of it could amount to anything incoherent, useful, or insightful. I’ve spent most of this week adding my words to a community blog full of friends who are expressing similar levels of outrage, frustration, and sadness – somehow, knowing that others share such a disbelief that a tragedy on this level could be perpetrated so smugly with the full awareness of the American people, is somewhat comforting. Very little is right now.

I can remember being a little kid, just gaining my political consciousness and learning about American history in elementary school. At the time, I thought: I can’t wait until I grow up and racism has ended. I can’t wait until I grow up – I’m sure that nobody will be starving or homeless then.

Now, I know that none of this has come true. It has always boggled my mind, actually, that we have made such little progress. But what has transpired in the past six days has been a televised reassurance that racism and poverty are alive and doing very well in America – even as those most affected by racism and poverty have died right before our eyes.

And they were just a couple of states away.

Two things that occurred to me on Wednesday morning, as I saw footage of corpses floating through New Orleans, starving people breaking into abandoned grocery stores, and dehydrated residents of Biloxi wandering through rubble like zombies: one, that the US Congress got out of bed on a Sunday night and convened an emergency session to pass legislature putting a feeding tube down Terry Schiavo’s throat and several days after hundreds of thousands of Americans are left destitute and dying, they had taken NO congressional action whatsoever; and, two, that Harry Connick, Jr. was wandering around the Superdome doing interviews with major media outlets about the distressing conditions there while FEMA officials were telling those same media outlets what a bang-up job they were doing, which was unbelievably surreal and fucked up in ways I can’t even articulate.

And those were just minor revelations. How about this one? That we’ve poured billions of dollars into the Department of Homeland Security to protect us from unforeseen, potentially catastrophic, terrorist attacks from abroad. And yet, somehow, we can’t even seem to coordinate local and federal actions in the face of a national disaster that WE KNEW WAS COMING. Do you feel safe? I sure don’t. Money well spent? Fuck no.

Civil defense is civil defense. Either we have a leadership that can respond in crisis or we don’t.

We don’t.

Were all of our helicopters out somewhere, getting their oil changed? What on earth could account for the complete lack of air support for New Orleans? Am I just crazy, or does anyone else think that airlifting water and supplies to the Convention Center would have been a lifesaving no-brainer? Does anybody really imagine that the president CAN’T get on the phone and make those airlifts happen?

By the way, where is Dick Cheney these days?

Of course, we KNOW where the National Guard is. In Iraq. I learned yesterday that we’re pulling troops from Iraq and diverting them to Louisiana. And wasn’t President Bush giving an interview a few days ago telling us that we had the necessarily military resources for both Iraq and hurricane relief efforts?

I really, truly believe now that America hates poor people.

Over 50% of children in New Orleans live(d) in poverty.

And now they’ve either died or have been relocated, homeless, to other states where the welfare and education systems are strained to their limits.

Ashamed. I am just ashamed.

What has been comforting to me is the general outpouring of compassion from most ordinary citizens. What has also been comforting to me is that many conservative pundits are no longer towing the Bush Administration line. What has been comforting to me is that race and poverty are being discussed by the most mainstream of media. But that’s not much.

If this seems hopelessly cynical, I guess it is. I feel powerless, beyond donating, beyond witnessing, beyond doing everything I can to give the asshats responsible for this their walking papers in the next elections. I can do that. I can definitely do that.

We must help, friends. We must work even harder to eliminate the systemic inequities that lead to this situation. We must vote with our dollars, volunteer our time, and demand equality – in education, in access to resources, and in treatment by our government. And most of all, we must never turn away.

Do we really want our children to grow up and STILL have to cope with racism and poverty?