In the Meantime, Maybe We Should Just Talk About Movies.

I developed symptoms, and took my first coronavirus test, this past Friday, on December 24.  It was a home rapid test which I got from the drug store, and it was positive.  Hence, canceled trip to family.  But I was looking for some angle, so I tried two "professional" tests at the public testing center in North Miami.  That was Sunday, December 26.  The rapid test came back positive a couple of hours later, and the PCR, which is a better quality test, came back positive the next day (yesterday).  I've been reading that tests may convert to negative in as few as 5-7 days in vaccinated people, one of whom I am.  So, my plan is to go back to the NoMi center on Thursday or Friday this week, which will be about one week after I developed symptoms.  I'm hoping by then, I might be negative.  If I am, I can get the fuck out of here, and try to rearrange some kind of time with my family.

But since the crash of last Friday, it's been whatever work I could do from home, and movies.  Ones I've seen plenty of times.  Which ones they've been on which days is becoming a blur.  "A Mighty Wind" was recent, but I don't remember if it was yesterday or maybe the day before.  (I love all Chris Guest movies.)  And then, of course, there were the two movies I streamed on Netflix and Prime, which one of my friends installed on my Roku.  (When I say one of my friends installed them, I mean she set me up with her sign-in credentials.  I don't have to know her user name or password.  It's all already activated.  I don't watch Prime movies unless she's here, because you usually have to pay for Prime movies, and I don't ask my friends to pay for my entertainment.  But "Being the Ricardos" was free, even on Prime, so I watched it.)

I've had continuing conversations with other friends and BP neighbors about the two movies I streamed and didn't like ("Being the Ricardos" and "Don't Look Up"), and they certainly had perspectives that didn't come across that way to me.  Hey, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

But I must admit that I was surprised that anyone wouldn't have loved "Big Fish," and that Mac Kennedy was as disappointed as he was.  (But then again, he, and BrambleWitch, loved "In America," which I just found depressing, and an essentially bad, if well-deserved, commentary on America and life here.)

Mac seemed to conclude that "Big Fish" had it right as a story, but he didn't like so much of the imagination, and maybe some of the mystery, controlled by a film-maker, instead of imagined by the reader.  He didn't say he read "the book," but he thought it would have been better left in book form than converted to Tim Burton's preferred fantastical imagery in a movie.  That's just how Mac felt about it.

Anyway, until I can get a negative coronavirus test, so I can qualify to fly on an airplane, I'm sort of stuck.  I've finished all the work that was available to me (except hooking up my new VCR, which I'm too annoyed to do right now), and I had no appointments scheduled this week (because I wasn't supposed to be here), so I'm looking for more movie recommendations.  Absent that, it's back to my regular stash.  Which isn't bad.  (That's why I've kept them.)  I could just use some less familiar stimulation.

You got anything?

PS: I already said I love Chris Guest movies.  I also love Kevin Smith movies, and I even like the stupid ones, like "Clerks" and "Clerks 2."  The off-the-charts best one is "Dogma."  I never tire (well, I might have to start amending "never tire") of watching Sherlock Holmes movies -- the old Basil Rathbone ones, and the new Benedict Cumberbatch ones.  And I have at least 100 or more other movies, all of which are great, and a significant number of which are on videocassette, which means I can't watch them until I set up my new VCR, which is a huge pain, because of the need to spend an hour or more snaking wires.  Speaking of Sherlock Holmes, I do understand there was a somewhat recent TV series in which either Holmes or Watson was played by a woman, and it had a modern setting.  But since I don't have regular TV, I've never seen it.  I don't even know the name of the series, or for how many seasons it lasted.  If it's available for free on Hulu or Vudu (which are on my Roku), I could watch that.  I watched one of the Robert Downey Jr Sherlock Holmes movies, and I didn't like it.  Too modernistic, and too violent.

Come To Think About It, What Do I Care?

I was supposed to leave here early this morning, to go see my family in Massachusetts.  I was supposed to be there all week.  My Massachusetts family are my daughter, my son-in-law, and my grandchildren.  I'm very hungry for those people.

But I had to cancel my trip, because I got what I thought was a cold on Friday, and it turned out I tested positive for the coronavirus.  Some self-absorbed and rebellious idiot who was most likely not vaccinated was prancing around unmasked, blowing coronaviruses out of his or her mouth.  And because of that antic, I couldn't see my family up north (I've been eagerly awaiting this for months), and I can't interact with anyone else, either.  Because I have what feels to me like a minor cold, but which is accompanied by a positive coronavirus test.

And that's how it's said to be right now, with the omicron variant.  Vaccinated people, like me, who get infected, wind up with something that feels like a normal cold.

Not so, though, for the unvaccinated people.  They can get sick, or very sick.  They can wind up in the hospital, in the ICU, intubated, or they can die.  

And I wouldn't want that.  I wouldn't want to be the cause of someone else's misery.  Or injury.  And certainly not their death.  At least in theory, I wouldn't.

But if I'm being entirely honest with myself, and looking at this clearly, it appears this kind of concern is a one-way street.  Somebody else didn't care what happened to me, or what consequences this created for my life.  They cared only about their twisted selves, and their bizarre and as yet unexplained theory that somehow, public health measures were an unfair imposition on them.  And tragically, the governor in this state enables this kind of distorted thinking.  (I'm still curious to know what they think about the legal requirement that they got vaccinated in order to go to school, and that they get their children vaccinated, at least for the same reason, and that the government requires them and their children to wear seatbelts in the car, and that the government requires them to have automobile liability insurance, and that the government requires them to obey speed limits, and STOP signs and red lights, even if in their judgment, it doesn't look like any other cars are coming, so there's really no reason to stop.)

I still don't want to be around my family now, and I don't want to be around anyone else (people I know and care about, or any normal and decent people) until I convert to a negative test.  But as for the other people, who prance blithely around, unprotected and unprotecting, smugly infecting others, what do I care what happens to them?  They might get infected, and sick, and possibly die?  Because they chose not to get vaccinated?   Apparently, according to their theory, that's not my problem.

And if matters could be made any worse, since I wasn't packing for today, and I had a "cold," I watched two movies yesterday: "Being the Ricardos" and "Don't Look Up."  I didn't like either of them.

Do You Feel Like Going Anywhere For New Year's Eve?

Here's what Orchestra Miami has cooked up:

"– On December 31, 2021, Orchestra Miami presents the ultimate New Year’s Eve Celebration- an unforgettable, family-friendly, beachfront concert of Beethoven’s iconic Symphony N. 9 (Ode to Joy), performed by Miami’s premiere professional orchestra, Orchestra Miami, led by Miami native and Artistic Director Elaine Rinaldi with an allstar line-up of soloists. Cuban-American poet Richard Blanco has crafted a bilingual translation of Schiller’s poem, which will be sung by a 60-voice community choir accompanied by the orchestra."

They go on with this description:

"Culminating with a New Year’s Eve fireworks display, this concert will be the top family-friendly New Year’s Eve event in Miami, with anticipated attendance of 10,000 in-person guests, plus many thousands of online viewers. The event takes place on the beach, east of Collins Avenue between 21st and 22nd streets (Collins Park) in Miami Beach. The festivities start at 7 PM with performances by members of the orchestra, and a special screening of the documentary 'Following the Ninth' about Beethoven’s 9th Symphony and what it represents to cultures around the world. Orchestra Miami takes the stage at 10 PM and the performance ends with a spectacular fireworks display sponsored by the City of Miami Beach."

So, you get that we're talking about trendy SoBe, on the actual beach.  If you need any more details, there's this:

"Four world-class artists join Orchestra Miami as the soloists in the choral finale of Beethoven’s 9 th Symphony. The soloists are Miami native and internationally acclaimed soprano Elaine Alvarez, one of the world’s great Verdi mezzo-sopranos Marianne Cornetti, Miami native and internationally acclaimed tenor Russell Thomas and Metropolitan opera bass-baritone Kevin Short."

What's supposed to happen between 7:00 and 10:00?

Orchestra Miami’s performance begins with The Star-Spangled Banner, and also includes the “Champagne Trio” from Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus, and the “Champagne Galop” by Danish composer Hans Christian Lumbye, followed by Beethoven’s iconic Symphony N. 9 in D Elaine Rinaldi, Founder and Artistic Director PO Box 7598 ~ Miami, FL 33255-7598 info@orchestramiami.org ~ (305) 274-2103 www.OrchestraMiami.org Minor, Op. 125."

You're inclined to worry?  You should be.  You and 10K people at a concert?  Elaine...?

“'Now that the majority of people in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties have been vaccinated, we felt that New Year’s Eve was the perfect occasion for a big celebration' says Orchestra Miami Artistic Director Elaine Rinaldi. 'I was sorry that we couldn’t celebrate Beethoven’s 250th birthday as originally planned in 2020, but moving the celebration to 2021 in our 15th anniversary season gave us an additional reason to celebrate! I am most proud of the fact that with this performance, Orchestra Miami will have performed all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies outdoors in our public spaces for free!'” 

It's hard to argue with that woman.  And in case the last two words didn't make it clear, they're doing this show for free.  Well, you don't pay.  CMB and some other funders spotted you even the idea of a ticket price.  Although...

You have to find your own parking (23rd St is closest), and bring your own folding chair, and bring your own food and drinks, and not in glass bottles, unless...

"For patrons who wish to have reserved seating, VIP packages are available for purchase. There are two levels available: for $300 per person, patrons will receive a reserved complimentary parking space, reserved premium seating at the concert, bar access throughout the event (alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages), and self-serve buffet and light bites during the concert, sponsored by Tripping Animals Brewery, Total Wine and More and Wy Not Eat Miami."

It seems like a helluva way to spend NYE.  How much were you going to spend anyway?  For more info, and to snag the VIP accommodations to which you are entitled, you can go to www.orchestramiami.org, or call them at 305-274-2103.

I can't join you, because I'll be up north with my family, but if I were here, I'd mask myself up, and go to this.  And it would be worth the $300.  Or $600, if I got lucky.

So, Mac, You Wanted to Talk About Movies.

This is not an answerable question, but it's not hard to wonder from time to time, when you're appreciating a movie, what's the best movie ever made.

Obviously, the answer, if there were one, would depend on the tastes of the viewer.

And there are thousands of movies from which to choose.

There are old classics, and new classics.  (I hope we have agreed that no remake comes close to making the list.)  There are great movies that might not be classics yet.

There are genres, within which some movies are better than others.  And there's no way to compare the "best" movie in one genre with the "best" movie in another genre.

I have a lot of movies.  I have more than do some people, and fewer than do other people.  I've acquired more movies than I have now, because I get rid of the ones I don't want to be bothered to keep.  I particularly like the ones I do keep, and I watch them repeatedly, although some more often than others.

Tonight I watched a movie I've seen several times, but not often.  And I would ask you to consider that it is well in the running for the best movie ever made.  Have you ever seen "Big Fish?"

"Big Fish" is unique in that it's structured like a fantasy in the way all Tim Burton movies are structured.  And like all or most Tim Burton movies, it includes Helena Bonham Carter.  The biggest star is Albert Finney, and the other big stars are Jessica Lange, Ewan McGregor, and Billy Crudup.  There are smaller roles given to people who would otherwise be bigger stars, like Danny Devito and Steve Buscemi.  And Robert Guillaume, who might already have had a stroke by the time this movie was made, is a featured actor.

Another interesting feature of "Big Fish" is that Albert Finney and Helena Bonham Carter, who are both English, and Ewan McGregor, who is Scottish, all have American southern accents.

As I said, what's the best movie ever made is not an answerable question.  But I'm curious if you know this one, what you think of it, and what movie most appeals to you.

You're Not Going to the Movies Tonight, Are You?

On Wednesday, I saw a "free screening" of the Steven Spielberg remake of 1961's "West Side Story."  Before we go on, let me make two assumptions: 1) you've seen the 1961 "West Side Story," and 2) you've seen remakes of at least some movies.

Tonight is the official opening (the one that's not free) of the remade "West Side Story."  You might know about this.  You might be anticipating this opening.  You might be planning to go, either tonight or some other time.  So, let's talk.

No one in the world will dispute that "West Side Story" is a classic.  It was Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim at perhaps their best.  It was a great movie.  Is it dated?  Sure it is.  It's now 60 years old, and it was not dated at the time.  My guess is that almost all of the performers -- certainly the main characters -- are now dead.  Except for Rita Moreno, who has an important acting role in the remake, and was one of the Executive Producers.  It turns out that setting aside anything else, Rita Moreno has a bit of an axe to grind about the '61 movie: she is in reality Puerto Rican, she played the second leading female part (behind Natalie Wood, who played a Puerto Rican woman and was not Puerto Rican), and Rita Moreno was required to use make-up to darken her skin a bit, to make her more conspicuously Hispanic.  She still views this as racist.

So, let's talk about the remade "West Side Story."  I haven't seen the original since maybe around the time it came out, but as I recall the details, the remake is the same story as the original.  The music is the same, although replayed by current musicians.  And somehow not as prominent.  (If you're asking me if I think someone toned down Leonard Bernstein, yes, that's what I think someone did.  If you're thinking "but this is a musical, and the music was a central point, and no one should tone down the music," I won't disagree with you.)  I didn't detect any changes in the lyrics, but I read somewhere that there were some minor adjustments.  What I noted was the word "fuck" a few times in the remake.  I don't remember that from the original.  I don't mean "hey, Officer Krupke, krup you."  That was preserved.  It was somewhere else.

In my opinion, the remake was what I call overproduced.  There was too much stuff in it.  There were too many people in it.  The dance at the gym was horribly crowded.  Tempos were adjusted, to make them more dramatic.  And those are the least of the problems.

Parts of this movie were in Spanish.  With no subtitles.  I've read Spielberg's explanation of this bizarre decision, and he claims it was his effort to be respectful to Hispanic people.  I don't object to Hispanic people speaking Spanish, or French people speaking French, or Russian people speaking Russian.  But if you're making that into a movie, which you're going to show in the United States, and which some people who don't speak those languages have to pay to see, then it seems to me you have to let them know what's being said.  Spielberg had to decide whom he was willing to disrespect.

I wish I could ask Rita Moreno what was going through her mind.  No, no darkening make-up for her this time.  She played the part of an old Puerto Rican woman whose gringo husband had died, and who now owned by herself the hardware store where Tony worked.  I don't know if the woman who played Rita Moreno's old part -- Anita -- wore darkening make-up, but if she didn't, she didn't need any.  She was the darkest of all of them, except the very few African-Americans.  And the dialogue continued to refer to mainland Americans as "white."  Rita Moreno's whole complaint about racism came crashing violently down.  If she, as an "Executive Producer," had no more influence than that over Spielberg and whomever else, she should have quit.  I was 11 in 1961, and I don't remember having been offended.  I was offended this time.  If the point of Moreno's complaint was to reduce stereotyping, and racist portrayals, I agree with her.  This remake failed badly to do that, even setting aside that that was the whole point of "Romeo and Juliet" and "West Side Story."

The singing was mostly good, or good enough.  The dancing was mixed.  So was the choreography: some was great, and some barely passable.  The acting was variable, with some of it -- Riff and some of the others -- having been excellent, and others of it having been weak.  The guy who played Tony is very good-looking, and he's a nice singer.  But he's a bit of a stiff as an actor.

The costumes were good, and sometimes excellent.  The dresses and frilly skirts on the women were very colorful, with nicely textured fabrics (great effect in the dance moves and some of the other actions), and they looked every bit as sexy as you would have expected them to.

The setting was still '50s NYC, including old cars and contemporary styles.

The bottom line is this: I have no worldly idea what led Spielberg to want to do this remake, and I wish he hadn't.  He added nothing at all, and some of his decisions made things worse.  It is extremely rare that a movie remake is not worse than the original.  'Nuf said?

Now, if you want to watch something very interesting, watch a movie called "Across the Universe."  It's a novel story, and the music is Beatles music.  There are considerable, and very interesting, adjustments made to how the music is performed.  I forgot at the moment if my copy is on videocasette or DVD, but I'll be happy to loan it to you.  Do yourself a favor regarding the "West Side Story" remake, though.

Eww! Is This the New Scam?

Twice, a couple of days apart, I've gotten e-mails supposedly from USPS.  That's what they say.  And they're notated as "no reply."

The e-mails have a long code for what "USPS" claims it tried to deliver to my house, and it says it was unsuccessful in making the delivery.  They gave various possible reasons for the failure of the delivery, but none of them applied to me.  And the first day I got this e-mail, I had in fact already received my USPS mail that day.  So clearly, they were able to deliver mail to my house.

What these e-mails were proposing was that they would try again to deliver to me, but I would have to pay $1.99 for the second attempt.  (On those occasions when USPS needs something like a signature in order to deliver something, and I'm not home, they leave a sticker on my door telling me either that they'll try again the next day, or that I have to go to the post office to sign for and pick up whatever it is.  They have never charged money for a second attempt at delivery.)

So I wanted to see what this process was like.  If you click on whatever button it is, to say you want them to make the second attempt, and it's worth $1.99 to you to have them do it, you're taken to a screen where you enter your payment information, including your credit card number.  Yeah, right.  End of project.

The question, then, is whether this is just some latest scam (if I gave them my credit card information, would they bill me $1.99, or would they bill me hundreds or thousands of dollars?), or if it is, in fact, the result of new levels of dysfunction imposed on USPS.  And if you want to know the cause of those new levels of dysfunction, I can offer you two words: Louis DeJoy.

My more confident guess is it's the former.  But there's a limit to how much I would bet it's not the latter.

"Anonymous," and Louis Diraimondo,

Please note that this blog is called "Biscayne Park -- a Village Voice."  I started the blog in 2011, and most of the voice is mine.  But not absolutely all of it is mine.  There are other authors of posts, and there are many commenters.

You are both very wrong to think this blog is about me.  Or about Chuck and Roxy Ross.  It is not.  It's about Biscayne Park.  Topics of posts are about the Park, or they are intended to appeal to the interests of people who live here.  I gather the BP parts of this are way over your heads.  Understood, but still, please butt out.

The two of you are breathtakingly childish, and unable to pay attention to the matters at hand.  Please try to understand that this is your problem, and that no one else cares about your limitations and fixations.

I have let you both know that you are not welcome to participate here, because your participation is meaningless and childlike.  And I have told you both that when you comment, I delete your comments without looking at them.

If your lives are so empty that you have time and interest to shit on this blog, then I'm sorry for you, and I hope you both find something more productive to occupy yourselves.  (I also hope you take to wearing diapers.)  But this is not my problem.  It is not the problem of people who read this blog, and are interested in discussing the topics raised.  It's just your problem.

Best of luck.

Fred

PS: "Anonymous," if for any reason you think of yourself as an adult (I know, it's hard to imagine why you would), then tell us who you are.  If you (correctly) think of yourself as a child, this is not the right place for you.  We have a recreation center, with a park, and children's toys, and you should go amuse yourself there.

We Should Probably Pave "Paradise," and Not to Put Up a Parking Lot.

It turns out we have a few problems that we can correct with one solution.

This morning, I watched a car drive over a median, so that instead of driving a half block to an opportunity to make a U-turn, the driver could just much more directly enter the lane that goes in the desired direction.  The people who live in a house more or less across the street from me do this all the time.  And lots of people use the medians for temporary parking.

Also, the medians look terrible.  There's a disorganized collection of mismatched trees, and no understory.  What's beneath the trees is irregular patches of various kinds of grass, weeds, and raw dirt.  No self-respecting municipality would ever tolerate foliage like this.

And our streets are very narrow.  When there's a mail truck, or a lawn service truck, or a (Sc)Amazon truck, they stop in the street, and drivers behind them have to drive on the medians to get by.

So maybe the answer is just to pave the medians.  We'll officially make them into what they get used for, and stop pretending they're what the name is supposed to suggest.  They look awful anyway, so it's really no loss if we replace the irregular patches of various kinds of grass, weeds, and raw dirt with macadam.  If we want to, we can keep the trees, so we can continue to pretend we're a "Tree City USA," and that we care about taller foliage.  No real municipality would have a tree arrangement like this, but we're not a real municipality.  We've even had some recent Commissioners who have called that spade the spade that it is, and lobbied for us to unincorporate, on the theory that Miami Shores, for example, would absorb us.  As if Miami Shores would want this, and us.  Why would Miami Shores want a place, and people, who are as un-self-respecting as we are?

 

Something to Be Proud Of.

I was a Commissioner for three years, from the end of 2013 to the end of 2016.

Being a Commissioner is often ponderous work, and it frequently involves some very mundane and not particularly interesting things.  Most of it is usually simply a matter of keeping things going.  The individual issues, which include things like variances, can be interesting, and problematic, but they don't happen often.

I moved here in the middle of 2005, and the Village election at the end of that year included a decision to turn running of the Village over to a professional manager.  So that was a different kind of project for the Commissions, and we generally did well with it, including when there was a reason to have to get a new manager.  The only times we botched it were after 2016, when the Commissions were, and still are, dysfunctional, and could not agree to choose a competent manager.  Their majorities really never wanted anything, and they never made an attempt at adaptive functioning.

Also, the first new Commission I experienced completed a project which had already been begun, which was to erect a Public Works building on 109th St.  So that was an unusual accomplishment.  Some time before 2013, a Commission and manager erected an entry sign at the bottom of the Village, on 6th Avenue.

But the Commission of which I was a part did some very unusual things.  And it could not have done those things without the participation, guidance, and leadership of our then manager, Heidi Siegel.  It should be noted, by the way, that Heidi Siegel was like most of our managers in never before having been a full municipal manager.  So some of what she did was on-the-job learning.

While I was on the Commission, we did a dramatic renovation of the log cabin.  We built an administration building.  We outsourced sanitation.  Roxy Ross continued her annual "Martin Luther King Jr Day of Service" events.  Dan Keys supervised his most dramatic and conspicuous landscaping project, around the lower 6th Avenue entry sign.  We got several other new Village entry signs at the top of Griffing Boulevard, 10th Avenue, and some other spots.

Not every Village resident agreed with each of these initiatives, and the five member Commission was not always unanimous about them.  But this was a noteworthy and unusual collection of improvements made by the Commission of which I was a part, and I'm very proud to have participated.  Frankly, I haven't heard stories of any Commission that accomplished as much as we did.

My motto was always "For the Best We Can Be."  We certainly didn't get all the way there, but we made some noteworthy improvements for the Village.  I hope that even some non-Commission Village residents, as well as some Commissioners who may have resisted these improvements, are proud of the ways the Village has been made better.  I hope they feel that way about our prominent southern entrance sign, our other entrance signs, the log cabin, and the administration building.  We were trying to perfect the functioning of WastePro, when a new Commission came in and ignored the problems and any attempts to solve them.  I don't consider that the fault of the Commission of which I was a part.  We did the best we could.