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Spider-Man movies generally pit the reluctant superhero against two powerful foes: (1) a monster bent on mass destruction and (2) teenage angst. The monster is always vanquished in the end, while the angst survives to be dealt with all over again the next time around.
That’s fortunate, because Peter Parker’s struggles with his youthful insecurity are usually more entertaining than his alter ego’s struggles with the monster du jour.
This is truer than ever in Spider-Man: Far From Home, mostly because the comic-book hero resides in the ever-expanding Marvel Universe. Marvel’s battles tend to be so big and frantic—and so computerized—that they lose the ability to thrill us.
Thank heavens that Peter (engagingly played by Tom Holland) is as humble and angsty as ever. When Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) orders him to help fight a new class of baddies called the Elementals, Peter declines because he’s more interested in finding the right moment to declare his love for longtime crush MJ (Zendaya). And when he learns that the now-deceased Iron Man has bequeathed him a powerful technological weapon, he insists that he’s unworthy.
Had Friday’s 7.1 earthquake and other ongoing seismic shocks hit less than 200 miles northwest of Ridgecrest/China Lake, ten million people in Los Angeles would now be under an apocalyptic cloud, their lives and those of the state and nation in radioactive ruin.
The likely human death toll would be in the millions. The likely property loss would be in the trillions. The forever damage to our species’ food supply, ecological support systems, and longterm economy would be very far beyond any meaningful calculation. The threat to the ability of the human race to survive on this planet would be extremely significant.
The two cracked, embrittled, under-maintained, unregulated, uninsured, and un-inspected atomic reactors at Diablo Canyon, near San Luis Obispo, would be a seething radioactive ruin.
On June 5, 16 heads of Jewish organizations joined 25 Democratic senators in a private meeting, which, according to the Times of Israel, is an annual event. All of the Jewish organizations but one were openly declared advocates for Israel and are supportive of its policies. Key groups present included the Council of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, the Anti-Defamation League, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. A number of the groups have lobbied Congress and the White House in support of the use of force against Iran, a position that is basically identical to the demands being made by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Half a century ago artistic director Ron Sossi founded the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble, and since 1969 the company’s epic artistic odyssey has made this theatrical venue one of Los Angeles’ best, a repository of culture where this reviewer has enjoyed many a production. To commemorate and celebrate the auspicious 50th anniversary, it’s presenting the “Circa ’69” season, with revivals “of significant and adventurous plays that premiered around the time of the Odyssey’s 1969 inception,” according to a press release.
The first of the 10 such plays is Joe Orton’s Loot, which opened in the U.K. in 1965. Bart DeLorenzo, who directs the current production at the Odyssey, claims the British playwright’s work hasn’t aged. But I beg to differ - the punch of Loot has been diluted by time. Orton’s two act spoof of Agatha Christie-like mysteries featuring detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple on the page and stage may have jolted auds 54 years ago, but for today’s theatergoers (many of whom did not return to their seats after intermission) Loot is passé. What was a “black comedy” when it debuted is now merely gray.
The annual Hollywood Fringe Festival took place in from June 13-30. According to the Fringe’s 200 page program: “The Hollywood Fringe Festival is an annual, open-access, community-derived event celebrating freedom of expression and collaboration in the performing arts community… Participation in the Hollywood Fringe is completely open and uncensored. This free-for-all approach underlines the festival’s mission to be a platform for artists without the barrier of a curative body. By opening the gates to anyone with a vision, the festival is able to exhibit the most diverse and cutting-edge points-of-view the world has to offer.”
Staged in around 30 theaters in the Hollywood area, the HFF is Los Angeles’ counterpart to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. In 2017, 2,000 performances and 375 shows were mounted during HFF. Theater artists travel from near and far in order to participate in this unfiltered fest. For example, the Polish-Australian troupe Drama Theatre Fantazja flew all the way from Sydney to present The Trial of Dali, an 80-minute play about the infamous surrealist painter, at The Complex Hollywood’s Ruby Theatre.
Yes, we have a serious problem at the border — indeed, at every border we create and defend with force of arms and bureaucratic indifference.
“‘If you want water, just drink from a toilet.’ That’s what border patrol told one thirsty woman we met on today’s #DemsAtTheBorder trip. These are the same CBP personnel who threatened to throw burritos at members of Congress. Changes must be made.”
So tweeted U.S. Rep. Judy Chu in the wake of a visit by congressmen and women to Texas border facilities last week, stirring even further incredulity and disgust about the nature of these American concentration camps for immigrants.
The problem we have is ourselves.
Ending bigotry has gone mainstream among the enlightened people of the developed world.
Did you spot the acceptable bigotry in that sentence?
We’re against racism, sexism, and more kinds of bigotry than I could ever list.
But the 96 percent of humanity that’s not within the United States is hardly worthy of concern.
Millions of lives in Yemen lack the value of one Washington Post reporter dismembered with a bone saw. A third of the United States would gladly murder a million innocent North Koreans, the pollsters tell us. Not a million handicapped Americans, not a million atheist Americans, not a million gay Americans. We’re above all that. A million North Koreans. Or a half million Iraqi children, judging by the respect still afforded to Madeleine Albright to this day.
Yay! It’s the Fourth of July! Time to blow some fingers off with firecrackers and laugh at the poor dumb bastards up north who think they got a better deal than the Great American Colonists without having to kill anybody in a War of Independence. Don’t the Canadians know that Freedom Isn’t Free?
Being FREE, we all know, is not a question of having healthcare or a decent chance of avoiding being shot with a gun. It’s not a matter of civil rights or economic security. It’s got nothing to do with speaking or organizing or determining the outlines of your life. People who’ve fled slavery and wars to live in Canada haven’t obtained Freedom, only pneumonia and — I suppose — a halfway decent NBA team, and a longer lifespan, and greater security, and better education, and other such worthless muck. The free-est country on earth, on the other hand, has the most people in prison; if that confuses you, you haven’t understood Freedom. Being FREE has a simple definition. Being FREE means being something that somebody killed a lot of people for. And, therefore, Canada ain’t FREE — though it’s working on it.
