Occupying the legislature

I wrote a letter to the President of the United States last week.  He hasn’t responded yet for some reason...  Baha.  But what inspired me to do this?  I watched Obama present the American Jobs Act to the Senate. 

Obama called out all of the sh** that Occupy Wall Street is protesting 9 days before the protest even began.  He listed various ways of stimulating small business and entrepreneurship.  He wanted banks to help people refinance their homes. He called for fostering the production and exportation of American goods.  He suggested hiring privately owned construction companies to mend our roads and bridges. He asserted the necessity of an overhaul of our tax code to pay for it. He also called this “simple math” and asserted that these are REAL choices we can make and REAL things we can be doing.

But through all of this Occupy Wall Street wildfire, people got distracted from debating, refining, and implementing this legislation meant to help out the 99%.  Congress and the media have also COMPLETELY ignored this speech and this bill.   It’s really quite mind-boggling. 

It’s not a perfect piece of legislation.  It needs refining and it needs to be discussed by the people and our representatives.  To me, the bottom line is that the bill is based on being funded by a tax code reform that would eliminate loopholes for oil companies and the like, and make it so the wealthiest pay their fair share, something which for some reason makes our Congress REALLY uncomfortable…  And that is presumably why the media (owned by corporate giants) and Congress (also owned by corporate giants) are not discussing it and trying to let it fade away into nothingness. 

Obama’s getting frustrated with pushing this, guys.  He is a weary man.  So I wrote to Barack Obama to essentially tell him, “Dear Mr. President, I understand that you are working within a corrupt system.  I have noticed your American Jobs Act and I appreciate your efforts.  Let's talk about it and get Congress talking about it. Love and kisses, Danielle.”

After all, the only thing that’s been said about the bill by the Senate is that their economic discussions are focused on China right now, since obviously China is the real source of all of our problems in the U.S. (Ummm…really?) The House of Representatives has already vowed not only to vote a flat out NO on the bill, but also that they won’t even let it get to the floor to be discussed. 

So I have to conclude two things from all this.  #1: That our representatives aren't even going to talk about the issues that Occupy Wall Street is screaming about.  They are going to ignore this protest with the hope that the collective rage will fizzle out.  #2: They are going to ignore this bill that attempts to address many of the issues fueling the protest until it becomes a vague memory of a dream. 

But here's what I want to know:  IF 99% OF US WANT TO CHANGE OUR SYSTEM SO BADLY, WHY AREN’T WE TALKING ABOUT THE AMERICAN JOBS ACT???  This bill appeals to me because it is an implementable set of actions--it's a place from which to start a real discussion about the kind of changes we want in our society, and it works WITHIN the governmental system set up by our founding fathers.  I have watched OWS from afar with burning empathy in my heart but with wariness about the message and about the people who are unwittingly discrediting the cause.  I have wondered why so little of the protest is directed at our governing bodies as well as corporate fat cats.  I love the passion behind OWS, I'm inspired by impulse to fight our system, but seriously, it’s time to get down to brass tacks and make a freakin plan.  Lamenting the past and the present is only worthwhile if you also work towards changing the future. 

A foggy day in Portland town

Foggy morning.  November 15th 2011.

Allowed myself to sleep in this morning, my mind busy with strange and fitful dreams.  I have brain cancer so I throw a 1950s pool party by a lake.  Barbra Streisand sings her Swan Song in an elaborately fluffy pink gown.  I talk in my sleep for the first time in years.

Standing in the kitchen, I get my first text message of the day, from a friend, the essence of which is “Work is pissing me the f*** off right now.”  I respond with sympathy.

Stopped at a red light, glowing like an eye in the fog. I see a scrawny boy on a skateboard (attempting to cross the street) get tangled in some leaves and land in a heap on the asphalt.  He painfully dusts himself off and, shamed, retrieves his skateboard to recover and wait until the next Walk sign comes on.  As I drive past him, I see that he is not a young man, but closer to 40, with sickly pale skin, wire-rimmed glasses, and a platinum blonde mustache.  He is not having a good day. 

As I near my freeway onramp, a homeless man has an enthusiastic and friendly conversation with an invisible person, leaning against a street sign with his mostly-empty black trash bag slung jauntily over his shoulder.  It is clear that this invisible human being is providing engaging and original conversation to his/her hobo friend. Homeless Man is having a great day.

Meanwhile, representatives from Occupy Portland are on NPR, or OPB I guess, talking about their recent eviction from the parks downtown.  It was peaceful, and now the movement is getting more organized as they decide their next move.  They express the need for the movement to stay in campgrounds in order to stay visible.   When the moderator gently reminds that maybe it would be easier to talk policy if they weren’t worried about providing people with food and medical care, a representative seems to blame the lack of food/medical care in the camps on the city government.  (Did I misunderstand? Did she really say that the city should be providing those things? I must have misunderstood.  I hope to God I did.) When asked if they might gain wider support if the movement stayed on-topic (Flaws in our economic system creating built-in Injustice) representatives completely agree.  Good.  When asked if they would perhaps get more of the middle-class to join if they weren’t living in squalor and interrupting public services, they advocate the need for sacrifice.  “If you were a farmer in India while Ghandi and his people were making their historic march to the ocean, would you have been upset that you couldn’t cross your road to get to your farm when you knew that this movement would change your whole life?”

I smile grimly as my journey to work ends, these events entering my perception as symptoms of an impending chaos that may soon grip our little world. 

The overwhelming mood in the office today:  Jovial, Congenial, Energetic, Positive.

James Franco's own private Idaho

Back in September I was sitting in my lil' cube on an afternoon much like today and I got a message from my lovely friend Hannah, saying, "Hey! You wanna go see a cool movie and hear Gus Van Sant and James Franco talk about it?"  Of course, I said, "Hell yes."

Apparently, when James Franco and Gus Van Sant worked together on Milk a few years back, they got to talking about River Phoenix / My Own Private Idaho, since that is Franco's favorite film of all time, and it inspired him to go into acting.  Eventually, Van Sant ended up showing Franco some footage that they'd cut from the movie, and Franco had the cajones to ask if he could use that footage plus the actual movie to come up with his own cut of the film, with Van Sant's more developed directing style in mind.  Cool idea, right?

Fast forward to the September 24, 2011, and Hannah and I are posted up for the evening to watch Van Sant's original 1991 film  in preparation for the exciting movie event to take place the next day. 

The movie was fabulous.  Keanu is actually really great and River Phoenix is BOMB. Also, Hannah and I kept commenting on the Shakespearean flavor of the dialogue until we realized that the movie draws heavily from Henry IV, and even borrows some dialogue from the Bard.  Not only did I nerd out over that fact in particular, but I loved the story, the style, the acting, the whole shebang.  Great stuff.

So what the hell did Franco do with it?  Well, he made My Own Private River -- and it ended up as a lovely free-form tribute to River Phoenix, to the original movie, and to one of his favorite directors.  If we hadn't watched the real movie the night before it would've been totally unintelligible, but since we were familiar, we were able to appreciate it as a genre-defying-film-art-tribute thing that was quite nice.  After seeing it, it totally made sense that they showed it in a couple of art galleries before it was seen at the Hollywood Theater in P-town.  It was moving art. 

But!  The part of the day that I found the most interesting was Memories of Idaho, a little pet project of Franco's that he made in LA with an earlier version of the original script of My Own Private Idaho, and which he screened for funsies following the main event. (Are you starting to get how obsessed this dude is with this movie?)  He wanted to make it with "non-actors" -- he was in search of a couple "chicano" boys to play the leads and make the flick real and kinda gritty.  Alas, such is the curse of being super-famous that he does not have access to such people... He ended up with two polished LA rich kids --very sweet but totally clueless.  Even the dog was played by a ridiculous purebred St. Charles Spaniel with a bejeweled retractable leash.  I kept thinking, "These kids cannot begin to imagine being homeless, and why don't they just sell that $500 dog?"  It was sort of a surreal hour of my life, I have to say, sitting through this movie star's pet project and realizing that, when you are at that level you can't flow between strata so easily, and you're kind of isolated from different worlds because of your success.  While Franco was very PC and polite and positive in talking about the project beforehand, I definitely sensed that he knew he had fallen victim to himself a bit with the project, and he also admitted that he was showing it simply because he had a captive audience.  Ah well.  It was a nice try.  And you're still super fly, Mr. Franco.  Keep doing cool projects and getting random degrees in stuff and kickin' ass.