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By Marc Eliot Stein, World BEYOND War
Nathan Ramos’ As We Babble On is a mildly entertaining dramedy about five characters who aren’t anywhere near as edgy as they and their playwright fancy them and their one-acter to be. The lead character is - as his name Benji (a popular movie moniker for mutts) suggests - wishy-washy, one of those often ineffectual individuals who frequently shoot themselves in the foot. Compensating for his inadequacies, Benji (Will Choi) inks superheroes for a comic book company. But this doesn’t make up for his being self-sabotaging when it comes to work or re-encountering a former boyfriend, Vish (Sachin Bhatt, who is quite touching as a hunk who’s not as sure of himself as good looks might seem to guarantee one to be in our superficial society). Having a weak protagonist does not bode well for a play.
David Swanson
In Seymour Hersh’s new account of his career, Reporter: A Memoir, he recalls that Martin Luther King Jr. told him upon the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that he planned to register 900,000 Negroes to vote. King would go on to oppose war and organize poor people across racial lines before being killed.
Did you know that according to the 2010 Census, 1.2 million people in the U.S. are Pacific Islander heritage? With 286,145 Polynesians, Micronesians and Melanesians residing in California - which of course is located on the Pacific Coast - the Golden State is second only to the Aloha State in terms of Pacific Islander residents. As of 2010 Hawaii had 355,816 people of Pacific Island heritage, including about 200,000 Hawaiians, who are defined as individuals tracing at least part of their ancestry to the original Polynesian inhabitants of Hawaii prior to the 18th century arrival of the English explorer Captain Cook. (Simply living in Hawaii does not make one a Hawaiian the way residing in, say, New York, makes one a New Yorker.)
You won’t want to miss Wizard World on June 8-10 at the Columbus Convention Center. Wizard World, Inc. (www.wizardworld.com) produces comic, gaming and pop culture conventions across North America that celebrate the best in pop culture: movies, television, gaming, live entertainment, tech, comics, sci-fi, graphic novels, toys, original art, collectibles, contests and more. A first-class lineup of topical programming and entertainment takes place at each event, with celebrity Q&A's, comics-themed sessions, costume contests, movie screenings, evening parties and more. Wizard World Comic Con Columbus is also the place for cosplay, with fans young and old showing off their best costumes throughout the event. Fans dressed as every imaginable character – and some never before dreamed – will roam the convention floor and participate in the famed Wizard World Costume Contest on Saturday evening.
Here’s a rundown of what’s happening there:
As Trump continues to attack the Mueller investigation's criminal findings into his coterie of grifters, we're seeing the outline for what is the ultimate authoritarian presidency. Issuing a legal memo to Mueller, then leaking it and falsely claiming that leak came from Mueller's office allows Trump to get his ideas out ahead of a subpoena while also claiming the Mueller investigation is a rogue operation.
According to his lawyers, Trump not only can order any investigation to end or be initiated at his whim, he is incapable of being charged with a crime, can pardon himself anyway. And if that wasn't' enough, his personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, says he can actually shoot the FBI Director dead if he so desires. That it's legal, technically, but that he'd be impeached the next day.
Every spring, as the calendar ticks off the two month span between April 4th (the assassination anniversary date of anti-war, anti-racist, anti-poverty activist Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr) and June 5th (the assassination anniversary date of anti-war and pro-racial equality presidential candidate Senator Robert F. Kennedy), many progressive, anti-war, anti-racism, non-violent activists around the world such as myself have spent a lot of time thinking about how different America and the world might have been if the political, military and economic powers that were behind the Vietnam War and in charge of those two assassinations had decided instead to allow the will of the people – rather than the use of cowardly firearms – to decide America’s future.
<<<1968, the Year When Everything Happened>>>
1968 is sometimes referred to as the “year when everything happened”.
It’s nice to look down on the poor foolish residents of Tangier Island, a little speck of land sinking into the Chesapeake Bay. Some 87% of the residents who voted in 2016, voted for Trump. The Mayor of Tangier says that being mayor is only his second job; his first is killing some of what remain of the crabs in the Bay. Residents imagine that the U.S. government will save their island from going under by building a wall. They imagine that Trump will make that happen. Yet Trump famously told the mayor on the phone that there was nothing to worry about, that the island is not actually in any danger. Residents of Tangier say that they know what’s coming, but that they leave it up to “the Lord.”
Like the balcony of a poorly-made condo, box office records don’t seem to stay up for long. Just so far this summer, Avengers: Infinity War has taken the top spot for the biggest opening weekend, dethroning Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which overthrew the only 6-month-old record of Jurassic World, which itself beat out… the original Marvel’s The Avengers.
Meanwhile, according to Variety, Solo: A Star Wars Story “earned a disappointing $103 million in North America” during its opening weekend, leaving plenty of fans online joking that they’d love someone to give them a “disappointing” $103 million. Maybe action movies about white men just can’t pull in big enough audiences – and maybe being “cool” doesn’t necessarily make a character interesting.