Sweet & Sour
RIP Melvin Van Peebles, 89, who was in the vanguard of blaxploitation cinema. Born in Chicago, he earned a degree in English literature from Ohio Wesleyan University. After graduating, he spent three years as a flight navigator. He also put in time as a postal worker and as a cable car grip in ‘Frisco. There are 43 titles under his name at IMDb in the category of Actor, 18 as Writer, 17 as Director and five as Editor. He won a Daytime Emmy for Outstanding Writing for the CBS Schoolbreak Special episode The Day They Came to Arrest the Books (1984). He had success on Broadway as well, receiving Tony nominations for Best Book (Musical) and Best Score, as both Composer and Lyricist for Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death; and Best Book (Musical) for Don’t Play Us Cheap. As if that weren’t enough, Wiki lists 13 books to his credit, including several novels, and also six plays and seven albums. Truly a renaissance man. Awesome, sir. Notice the term “Guerilla” on the book cover below. Recall that TV tennis analyst Doug Adler lost his job for using the word to describe Serena Williams’ strategy, showing how much society had changed between 1971 and 2017.
Sad headline from nypost.com: “US saw record increase in murders in 2020.” According to the accompanying article by Kenneth Garger, there were 5000 more homicides across the country than a year earlier, a total of roughly 21,500, an increase of 29% from 2019. Even more disheartening, the previous record increase was 12.7% in 1968. Is the following a ray of hope?: “Despite the astronomical rise in murders compared to 2019, the number of killings is still far below the rates experienced in the US in the early 1990s.”
Again with the debt ceiling nonsense. When has it ever restrained pols from spending as they please?
Headline from thefederalist.com: “Black Lives Matter Is Threatening An ‘Uprising’ Against ‘Racist’ Vaccine Mandates.” Where is the mainstream media on this?
I was expecting rain so it was a good day for the floating book shop even though the return was meager and the wind was stiff. My thanks to Lou, who returned for two more DVDs, The Usual Suspects (1995) and 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003); and to the woman who bought an art pictorial in Russian; and to the one who purchased I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou; and to Wolf, who swapped three books in Russian for The People of the Mist by Kathleen O’Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear and the DVD of Silverado (1985); and to the library volunteer ladies who delivered an impressive cache of books. The inventory is as good as it gets, but for some reason popular fiction isn’t moving right now. Maybe the fact that the library has reopened has something to do with it. Or maybe folks are again Covid skittish.
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