(At Least One) Step in the Right Direction!

Yesterday morning, I was taking my exercise walk around the Village.  On 119th St, coming east from Griffing, there was a large project going on to remove Australian Pines.  In the afternoon, I was driving south on 10th Avenue from 119th St, and in the first couple of blocks, some other large Australian Pines were in large cut pieces.  Somebody's decided to go to town on Australian Pines!

The last time we had significant tree-trimming project was before 2016, when Heidi Siegel was the Manager.  I'm going to take the liberty to assume that 1) removal of these Australian Pines was Al Childress' idea, and 2) that the Commission didn't try to stand in his way.  (Which, frankly, it couldn't.)

This is great news.  In at least the past 10 years, Australian Pines have been falling down.  And they're not native to our part of the world.  They were planted by Arthur Griffing, because they soak up a lot of water, which was an advantage to him, because it created more sellable land.  Griffing was very interested in sellable land.  Lots are mostly small here, and there are essentially no sidewalks (except around the recreation building and fields).  He wanted to milk the Village for land to sell.

And Australian Pines not only don't provide much shade, but what they do "provide" is sap, which drips onto the ground, and kills anything that would otherwise grow there.

I haven't asked around, but I'm practically salivating in temptation to imagine that Al, or someone, also wants us to have medians that don't look shockingly embarrassing.  Boy, would that be a huge further step in the right direction. What if the medians looked nice, and also had enough development that people couldn't drive over them to avoid having to go all the way to the end of a short block to take a U-turn?  And if people couldn't park on them?  I've been fussing about this for almost 20 years, and it's sort of disorienting to think someone actually cares, about the medians and about the Village.  Frankly, I had sort of given up.

And what's next?  Do we re-institute police patrolling on 6th Avenue, and even bring back the "Don't Even Think About Speeding" signs?

You see what I mean about disorienting.  It's like living in a self-respecting municipality.  This will take some getting used to.  First, we refused to do glaring things to uplift ourselves, and in the past 9+ years, we've elected one tragic Commission after another.  Are we turning ourselves around, and into something we've never had the vision to be?  If we are, I might have to consider offering to donate another sculpture.

How Can I Phrase This Question? Oh, Yeah. Where (the Fuck!) Were You?

I attend Indian (South Asian) music and dance presentations almost always under the same circumstance: the Association of Performing Arts of India (APAI) puts on a show somewhere in Broward.  Sometimes, it's at a restaurant, and dinner is included, and sometimes, it's at an auditorium.  The shows are always classical Indian music, which has nothing to do with classical European or American music.  In fact, I'm going to one of those shows on Sunday, March 16, in the late afternoon.  I love Indian music, and my favorite food is Indian food.  But that's not where I was tonight.

Tonight, I was at my favorite cultural venue in the world: South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center.  (I won't call it the Moss Center any more than I'll call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.  If he wasn't so out to lunch, he would have had a pow-wow, and asked what other bordering countries thought about the Gulf of the Americas.  But he is so out to lunch.  So no.  It's the Gulf of Mexico.  And SMDCAC.)

And tonight's performers were Sunny Jain and the Wild, Wild East.  It's hard to know how to describe this show.  Sunny Jain plays drums.  He mostly plays a western kit, but he plays one Indian drum, too.  And he mixes in some Indian history and his family's history between songs.  He's got an electric guitar player.  This is not a rock and roll sound, like Thermal and a Quarter, which is a wonderful Indian group.  This guitar player somehow gets a strange sound that's tinged with a sitar echo out of his guitar.  It was gorgeous.  The bass player played a five string bass, and he didn't look impressive, but his technique was almost hypnotic.  He wasn't quite as pyrotechnic as Mohini Dey (you can watch her on youtube), but close.  I don't think the woodwind player was South Asian at all.  Tonight, she played alto saxophone and flute.  Eric Fliss, the magician of SMDCAC, told me he'd seen her play soprano saxophone once, too.  She was a very prominent part of this ensemble.  But the paralyzer was the singer.  He didn't speak, so I don't know if he had an accent.  But he was a hell of an Indian singer.  It was a combination of the vocal gymnastics and the hand movements.  Very Indian.  And he was captivating.  He danced, he jumped down from the stage and sang, he somehow jumped back onto the stage, and he was generally untethered to anything.

The style of the music was a combination of some classical echos, something close to rock and roll, and some Bollywood.  And like Bollywood, Sunny Jain sometimes wanted the audience to get out of our seats, sometimes to dance, and once, he asked as many of us as wanted to to come up on the stage, which at least a score of the audience did.

This was very energetic.  It was exhilarating.  It was captivating.

I sat next to a couple who had sat next to me a week or two ago at some other SMDCAC show.  I met up with another couple who are friends of mine (but they don't live up here in BP).  Eric Fliss and his wife, Roberta, were there.  So, being impressed in concert (excuse the pun) was how we spent the intermission.  I also found out from my friends how a GableStage play ended.  It was last week, and it was so painful that I left at intermission.  Apparently, it remained ill-tempered and painful to the end, without resolution.  I'm glad I left.

Anyway, SMDCAC is the place to be.  It's the very best place to be.  The long drive is 100% worth it.  Performers commonly bring things to sell.  I couldn't possibly find any way to use yet another tee shirt, but I did get two souvenir CDs.  If you have a player, and you want to know what this show sounded like, you can borrow them.  But you have to promise on your life I'll get them back in the same condition they were in when you borrowed them.

"The Arts Are Not a Luxury. They Are a Necessity."

Not everyone looks at it that way, but all patrons of the arts do.

I bought a $40 ticket to a Dance NOW! Miami event, and there was an opportunity to add a donation.  So I rounded up to $100.  I don't go to as many of their productions as I used to, because scheduling doesn't always permit it, and they don't have a fixed and reliable season.  So I deal with it this way.  Two days ago, I went to a spectacular event presented by Martha/Mary Concerts, and I donated $100 to them, too.  The ticket was only $25, and they couldn't figure out (and I didn't remember) if I had already paid in advance.  So I paid either $100 or $125.  It was worth it either way.

Today, I got an e-mail from Dance NOW! Miami, essentially thanking me for my donation.  The e-mail was as follows: "Thank you for your donation of $60.00 on February 4, 2025.

As we celebrate our 25th Anniversary Season, Dance NOW! Miami remains committed to inspiring, entertaining, and educating our community through the transformative power of dance. For a quarter of a century, we have thrived, and, despite the current funding challenges, with your support, we are planning a season to remember!

The arts are not a luxury; they are a necessity. They create jobs, drive tourism, foster community engagement, and enrich our lives in immeasurable ways. With your support, we can continue to bring exceptional performances to our stages and provide invaluable opportunities for artists, students and audiences alike. THANK YOU FOR BELIEVING, AS WE DO, IN THE TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF THE ARTS!"

We've probably had this conversation before, but the arts are under siege in Florida. Ronnie DeSantis cut off all grants to all arts, reportedly because he thinks they have something to do with sex (he did not publicly clarify what he thinks something like classical music, for example, has to do with sex).  Why Ronnie, who is married and has children, is terrified of sex is a mystery.  But he appears to be.  The state legislature is now accepting public comments as to whether or not they should try to overpower Ronnie.  Yes, of course I sent them a comment.

In addition, the County said it was going to withdraw support for the arts.  They got such overwhelming blowback that they canceled their plan.

ALL arts organizations meet a maximum of 30% of their budgeted expenses by selling tickets.  The rest is various grants (federal/NEA, state, county, and local municipality, as well as private granting sources like the Knight Foundation, in our area) and donations from people like you and me.  It simply doesn't happen without that.

If you think the arts are a luxury, maybe you don't care.  And if you do think that, you've clearly never been in my house.  As I've been getting older, I've been giving some things away, and I'm willing to sell some that cost too much to walk away from.  My first offerings were to my offspring.  My son declined (at first), saying he doesn't like art.  I have no concept of what this means.  Categorically not liking art is to me like categorically not liking food, or sex (sorry, Ronnie.  Some of us, you know...).  But my son and his girlfriend visited me a month or two ago, and she picked out some things she wanted.  So I gave them to her (and told her that if things didn't work out between her and my son, the things I gave her were hers).  There was just one thing she wanted that I wasn't yet ready to part with.  When the time comes...  It was then my son spotted something he wanted, so he took it.  I had already given my daughter the things she wanted.  One of my friends owns an art gallery, and he himself is an artist.  I had some things for him to try to sell for me, so he came to the house.  He also said he wanted to buy back something I bought from him years ago.  I'm willing, but he hasn't done it yet.  It's not expensive.  I think he might have wanted it for himself.  But he took the things he thought he could sell.  Another of my friends expressed an interest in buying something that cost me too much just to give away.  I said I was willing, but I haven't heard back.  It's an outdoor sculpture, and if you think art isn't a necessity, you should try coming home to that piece every day.  There are few people on earth whom I'd let have that piece, and this friend is one of them.

Or go to concerts, and dance shows, and plays.  See how often you think about them.  Just a "luxury?"  Something you could do without?  You might want to reconsider, if that's what you think.

Happy Birthday to Me!

Karen Peterson Dance company (she always uses some disabled dancers, in wheelchairs, etc: cleverly choreographed and inspired shows) is performing at Sandrell Rivers Theater at 2:00 Saturday afternoon, March 8.  It's close enough, at NW 61st St and 7th Ave, ticket prices are always low, parking is free, and the staff are as friendly as possible.  If you want to go, you can get tickets through the website, at sandrellriverstheater.com, or just buy them when you get there.  They're $20 each. Possibly with a $2 per ticket "convenience"/"facility"/junk fee.  If you want to know if a Karen Peterson show is worth $20, it's worth twice that.  And more if you don't have to pay for parking, and the staff treat you either like beloved friends or royalty.

That night, I'm going to South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center (now known as the Moss Center: mosscenter.org) to see the Spanish Harlem Orchestra at 8:00.  It's $55 (yes, plus $2) for those, but hey, it's my fucking birthday, so what do I care?  And I'll spend the evening with people who have become like good friends.  And I get the same interpersonal deal there that I get at Sandrell Rivers: there's my friend, Eric Fliss, who is the premier impresario in the world, and a super, super nice guy, his wife, Roberta, who calls him an impresario, because I do, and to razz him, Dora, if she's not stuck back in the ticketing room somewhere, Rico, Karin, Tom, various other employees whose names I don't know, but we know each other, and any patrons I know or who are familiar to me because we see each other there a lot.  I hope I see my older friends, Don and Magda, my new friends, Enrique and Lindsey, and it's been an age since I've seen Andi.  I hope she's OK.  It would be great to see her there.  I don't think I'll be at Sandrell Rivers before March 8, but I'll be at SMDCAC twice before then.

Feel free to let me know if you want to join me for either or both.  The Olive Garden is a few blocks away, inexpensive, predictable, reliable, and I always get the same thing.  Sometimes, I see Eric and Roberta there.

The Greatest Movie Ever Made

If you're going to tell me I'm very much the wrong person to form an opinion about this, because I am not a movie-goer, and I just endlessly rewatch the movies I like and own, I already know that.  I know people who can't get enough of movies.  They go to the movies A LOT.  And they like the whole movie theater ("cinema") feel of it.  I have one friend who goes to the movies EVERY Monday.  And when I have said I suppose she must see every movie that comes out, she tells me she's not even close.  Apparently, way more than 52 movies a year come out.  I know people who talk for weeks or months in advance about the Oscars, and they watch every movie that's nominated for an Academy Award.  Let me be very clear: I am not in any way one of those people.

On the radio a couple of weeks ago, I heard discussants talking about Stanley Kubrick's "Dr Stangelove."  I saw it very many years ago, and I mentioned this conversation to my friend who sees a movie every Monday.  So she did me a favor, and she brought over Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," so we could watch it together.  It was decades after "2001" came out that I decided to watch it, and I forced myself through it, so I could say I watched it.  It was one of the very worst movies I have ever seen: idiotic story, terrible acting, poor directing, caricaturish special effects.  The music was good, but that had nothing to do with the film-makers.  Once had been way more than enough, so I refused to watch it again.  The next time I saw my friend, she had acquired from ebay a copy of "Dr Strangelove," which we watched, and which she gave to me, since she doesn't have a DVD player.  It was a somewhat good movie, enhanced by the fact that Peter Sellers played three very distinct parts, with different accents, and was to play a fourth, but he couldn't pull it all off.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand, which is the title of this post.  The easy answer, which would have spared me from writing this post, is "how should I know?"  But if I had wanted it to be that easy, I wouldn't be doing this.

A year or more ago, I wrote a post which I called "The G.O.A. T."  It was about the best professional basketball player ever, and I said there was sort of no such thing, because basketball is a team sport.  That's less true of movies, because there's a fixed finished product, and a collection of people work hard together to make it whatever they want it to be.  A basketball player can be good with any team, or s/he can be better with one group of teammates, and coaches, and trainers, than with another.  In the old movie days, they used to list a few people (cast, writer, director, and maybe a couple of others).  Today, credits go on for minutes.  The viewer doesn't even know what some of these people (the "grip," etc) do.  But somehow, they're part of the end product.

And there's the question of who decides, and how, what movies, directors, writers, composers, costumers, etc, are best.  Do you want to ask the "experts?"  In 1979, the "Best Actress in a Leading Role" Academy Award went to Sally Field, who was Norma Rae in "Norma Rae."  If you want to know who didn't get that award that year, it was Bette Midler in "The Rose."  As it happens, I've seen both movies.  You show me any actress who was ever better, in anything, than was Bette Midler in "The Rose," and I'll be very curious.  It wasn't even close.  But that's not how "The Academy" voters saw it.  

I said I have a collection of movies (mostly DVDs, and a bunch of videocassettes, too).  I've acquired more over the years, but I don't keep the ones that don't interest me as much.  I should also say I have "requisites" in movies I like.  (I put requisites in quotes, because I don't always honor them.  For example, I don't like violence, horror, too much swearing, and gratuitous sex in movies.  But as it turns out, I love some movies that violate some of those restrictions.  Many years ago, I watched "Snatch" every day for a week, because I love it, even though it's loaded with violence and bad attitude.)

So, what's the best movie ever made?  Even if the question was narrowed to "in my opinion," it would be hard to answer.  Some are commonly talked about, like "Citizen Kane," which didn't do much for me.  There are great classics -- well, more modern classics -- like "Chinatown" and "The Sting."  Fabulous.  But I had gotten myself somewhat comfortable thinking of "Big Fish" as the best movie ever made.  Sure, the animation or engineering of the huge catfish was not as perfect as it could have been, but overall, the movie was so spectacular that I have been comfortable to let it take the top spot.  Amazing story-telling, acting, directing, and whatever else goes into all those credits.  Sort of until... I just rewatched "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri."  I'm captivated by any role Frances McDormand acts (and this one wasn't even Coen Brothers), Woody Harrelson was spectacular, Sam Rockwell was totally obnoxious, in a very engaging way, the directing was as good as it could have been, and every other part of that movie was...I don't know...perfect.  Even with the violence, bad attitude, and swearing.  And Peter Dinklage had a part that was very unusual for him.

I love my old Sherlock Holmes movies (Basil Rathbone, mostly from the '40s), and my new ones (Benedict Cumberbatch, from the '00s), but they all have imperfections.  Except for Basil Rathbone.  He was never imperfect.

If you suggest that "Micmacs" should be up there, I won't argue, assuming you're willing to read subtitles.  The same goes for "Tous Les Matins Du Monde."  "Mrs Henderson Presents?"  Or "Philomena," or anything else with Judi Dench and/or Bob Hoskins and/or probably even Steve Coogan?  All up there.  And "Chinatown," as annoying as I often find Jack Nicholson to be, and "The Sting."  I don't mean for an instant to slight "The Birdcage," "The Big Lebowski," "Butcher Boy," "Farinelli," or probably anything touched by Terry Gilliam.  There are really lots of great movies.

But I'm sticking with "Big Fish" and "Three Billboards..."  If you think there's something better, you can let me know what it is.

Seriously, What Are You Doing With Your Life?

Tonight at SMDCAC, it was the Andrew Collins Trio.  The trio was Andrew Collins, Adam someone-or-other, and James MacKay.  They're from Canada.

As is weirdly true of Canadians, they have a penchant for southern US bluegrass and country music.  They even sing some of it with what approximates southern US accents.  (The Canadian members of "The Band" also had a penchant for southern US bluegrass and country music.  In case you didn't know, Garth Hudson, the last surviving member of "The Band," died last week.)

Andrew, Adam, and James sort of rotated instruments.  Andrew mostly played mandolin, although he also played mandola (a mandolin with a slightly different tuning, and an undetectable, to me, different sizing, which he likened to a viola) and "mandolin cello," which is an eight stringed instrument that looks otherwise like a guitar, and has four pairs of strings, like a mandolin does.  Adam played regular guitar and both the mandolin and the mandola, I think.  I couldn't always keep track of which mandolin-looking instrument he had.  James played upright bass, but also mandolin cello.  Andrew and James sang sometimes, and Adam sang with them on one song.

Andrew and James have been in the same band together for about 13 years.  Adam is newer in this band.

The music was totally captivating.  Andrew wrote some or most of it, although one piece started out with Bach, and another started with Debussy's "Clair de Lune."

And Andrew is also a great talker.  He introduced pieces, told a few jokes, and added some depth to the presentation.

It wouldn't have meant anything to you, but the young woman at my table, sitting with her boyfriend, recognized me from Sandrell Rivers Theater.  I had gone to a couple of "The Moth" events there, and told some stories (if you know what "The Moth" is about).  And another couple I know from SMDCAC and Sandrell Rivers was also there.  So I gave the younger couple my card, in case they want to go to some events with me, or come over for dinner, and I'll see the older couple again soon enough anyway.

Andrew was eager to sell CDs, or some book he had, or a tee shirt he had, so I got two CDs as souvenirs, and because the music was terrific.

Annie Hoffman, who introduced the Andrew Collins Trio, said something about an event tomorrow night, and I didn't have it on my calendar.  But I checked when I got home, and it's Miami City Ballet, which is not of interest.  I only go to Dimensions Dance Theater of Miami and Dance Now! Miami for ballet-based dance.

You really let this stuff get by you, huh?