Gina Harris's Blog, page 158

Band Review: Blinking Underdogs

The holidays are over, but I am once again reviewing a band that is not current, because it kind of fits with the Star Wars theme of the week. I read a reference about Oscar Isaac's former band, Blinking Underdogs, and then I liked what I heard, so I'm going for it.
Blinking Underdogs is a ska-punk band formed by students at the University of Miami School of Music. They released their first full-length album independently in 2001. There is also a note from 2001 on their archive page that Oscar has gone off to Julliard so they are taking a break, and Alan (Mills, trombone) has gone also, and it isn't really the same band without horns (it wouldn't be) so they are going to be a different band.
Before I get into the music, I want to say some things about that note. It sounds so familiar, remembering my college days and how every time you ran into some people their band name had changed because of member shifts. These things happen, but also the existence of an archive seems brilliant to me. There are so many bands that I wish I could go back and listen to again, where I am lucky if I happened to pick up the cassette tape back then, that finding that this music has been captured saved is a good thing.
I enjoyed the music overall. My favorite tracks were "Away", "Blue Alishia", and "Trailer Park". "Blue Alishia" may actually be the better song, but I am drawn to the class consciousness and loyalty of "Trailer Park".
Some of the tracks seem to lose strength by being too experimental. I love the intro on "Salvation", and it has some other elements that are really good but feel mismatched in their almost cacophonous blend. Still, these are music students, so some experimentation would be almost mandatory, and with the track that seems to be called "artist", while it sounds very different from the other songs it goes to interesting places. (Some tracks show a strong jazz influence.)
There are more links available that you would expect for a band that has not been together since 2001, though some of them seem hastily thrown up by Star Wars fans. The most useful sites were the archive and AllMusic.
Those are listed below, but I have also done some searches to try and find out the whereabouts of other band members. I got the idea after seeing an interview where Isaac said that the bass player, Nick (Speck, also the one who write the note on the archive) plays for Orgy now. Checking them out, that is a pretty good band, and I may want to do a full review of them later. (With some names you need to be careful on your search parameters.) Anyway, this is what I could find. I hope I got the right people.
Oscar Isaac (vocals, guitar)Okay, we kind of know what he is doing now, but there is a fan page with a section on music and you could start there, or maybe watch Inside Llewyn Davis:
http://oscar-isaac.com/multimedia/music/
Nick Speck (bass)Apparently Orgy isn't his only other band. I will probably get back to him.
http://www.runrunrunmusic.com/band/nic-speck
Bill Sommer (drums)Apparently also an author now.
http://www.amazon.com/Bill-Sommer/e/B019JCVIV4
Alan Mills (trombone)All I could find was that he was also in a band called The Know How, but that came before Blinking Underdogs.
Keith Cooper (sax)There is a nice bio here with his endorsement of a reed.
http://www.bariwoodwind.com/site/keithcooper.html
Matt LaPlant (guitar)It looks like he might be doing sound mixing now. Some similar names made finding information on him more difficult.
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/matt-laplant-mn0000918921
And here are the Blinking Underdog links:
https://archive.org/details/iuma-blinking_underdogs
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blinking-Underdogs/286931361424804
https://www.tumblr.com/tagged/blinking-underdogs
http://www.allmusic.com/artist/blinking-underdogs-mn0001930572/biography

Rey does stuff

"Man is defined as a human being and a woman as a female - whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male." - Simone de Beauvoir
The other big complaint I have seen about The Force Awakens - though I have seen more people refuting the complaint - is that Rey is a Mary Sue.
You can make good arguments for why she is not, but then other people were arguing that the term should be done away with completely. Having thought about the term at length previously, I couldn't agree with that, but people are definitely applying the term in ways that are not appropriate. I think I may have a great deal to say about Mary Sues and Strong Female Characters at a later date, but for now, let's stick to this movie.
The complaint is that Rey is too good at too many things, making her unrealistic, and then if you really hate that plus hate Finn being black then the real problem is that this is a fan-servicing Social Justice Warrior favoring movie, and how dare they pander like that?
Given that this type of complaint looks suspiciously racist and sexist anyway, it's tempting to simply ignore it, but this stuff in between, that people miss when they are looking for reasons to be offended, is exactly what interests me, so I shall blog on, and there are going to be some real spoilers here.
We see Rey being good at three things: mechanics, piloting, and the Force. In some of those cases, "good" can be relative. Also, we see that she is strong, smart, and scrappy - not terribly surprising for someone who has been surviving as a scavenger.
The scavenging of mechanical parts makes her skill with mechanical repair more plausible. I'm sure you can scavenge without knowing a lot about parts, but knowing more will help, and there is something else that we see when she is discussing the Falcon with Han Solo later: Rey loves this stuff.
She could have grown up merely trying to understand which parts would be most valuable, and probably many of her fellow scavengers are more like that, but she likes this stuff, so she has learned more. I've worked with computer geeks, and I have seen that light that goes on when there is a new problem that requires unraveling. That doesn't happen for me when the issue is a computer problem (for other things, yes). The majority of her waking hours are spent crawling around on old vehicles; with the interest and inclination she has in them, it's no shock that she gets to be good with them.
And they don't have to go together. Poe is presumably a better pilot than Rey, because he is a better pilot than anyone, but he probably is not a mechanic. I believe one of the reasons X-wing pilots have droids with them is for diagnostics and repairs. That's okay. There are probably also good mechanics that don't care much for vehicle operation.
Personally, I am good at more than one thing. Some of them are things that I do because I have to - they are associated with a job or some type of responsibility. Some things I am good at because I love them and I pursue them even when I don't need to. However, my sisters and I share an ability that is almost mystical, in that we are quite good with claw machines. Other people don't understand it, they send us articles on how they are rigged, but we just keep on accumulating prizes and then giving them to toy drives. That "force" is strong in our family.
Before I get into Rey's quick adaptation to the Force, I'm going to take a detour. Among the many storylines that I have thought of occurring in the Star Wars universe, there was a planet where those who followed the Force were not Jedi. They mainly used it for agriculture and understanding the balance between man and nature. Some of that came from Qui-Gon not disintegrating at death, when Obi-Wan and Yoda did. Like maybe they learned if from the farmers, who took "dust-to-dust" a little more literally. (Okay, I didn't like those movies, but I thought about them.)
My point with that is that if the force is always there, the Jedi can be one discipline for understanding and harnessing it, but not necessarily the only one. If the Force exists independent of the Jedi, and some people can be inclined toward it before training, then it should be possible to gain at least some traction with it without formal training.
So, in the process of being interrogated by Kylo Ren, Rey learns how to resist and pulls something from him. It is only a beginning, but it is a good beginning and plausible. Have you never been going toe to toe with someone and things come out you didn't mean to? Didn't that even happen with Harry Potter and Snape?
Practicing it, she is able to get a storm trooper to obey her. It doesn't work on the first try, but she doesn't give up. Also, storm troopers are conditioned for obedience, which probably doesn't hurt.
If Rey had defeated Ren on her own, that might be hard to swallow, but there are a few key points there. Ren was injured, and I hope there was some emotional toll going on there. And frankly, I'm glad we got to see the injury because the way he dealt with it by hitting the injury, like it was a nuisance instead of a serious medical problem, was super creepy and really gave insight into him. (And he is not villain that Darth Vader was. He doesn't have nearly the level of control, and while his training is not complete yet, you have to wonder what his personality will allow.)
In addition, Rey and Finn tag-teamed him, and they were both seriously injured. Rey was unconscious while Finn was fighting him. Actually, another good thing about the fight is that the side flares on Ren's light saber seemed foolish to me before, like you would be more likely to injure yourself than your opponent, but okay, I saw their purpose during the combat. Sorry about your shoulders, Finn.
Finally, it was not a definitive defeat. They kept the fight up long enough to have a chance to get away, which was greatly helped by the planet starting to fall apart.
Those are fascinating things for me: how we learn, how we become the people we are, what gives the edge in a fight. You have to ignore all of those mitigating factors if you want to declare that Rey is unbelievable, but doing so also ignores that at least in the past it has been common to have heroes who were good at everything and it wasn't questioned. Those types of characters can be boring, and we don't see them as much now, but did people find it implausible that James Bond was good at shooting and gambling and mixing drinks and strategy, not to mention good with the ladies? Oh well, I guess he had really good training.
I think it is reasonable for Rey to accomplish what she does based on the resources she has available. Even if that does not make her extraordinarily gifted, some human beings are, and some of these human beings are women.
If that sounds too terrible to be accepted, I do have one other quote from Simone de Beauvoir:
"No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility."
Really makes you think.
Related posts:
http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/09/things-that-were-not-automatic.html

The moral philosophy of Star Wars

There may be some spoilers here, but nothing major.
I've really only heard one person mention this issue, and that was in the Feminist Frequency review by Anita Sarkeesian:
http://feministfrequency.com/
She had a point. On her larger point that a lot of these things fall apart if you think about them, I am going to disagree on that, because as I think about them I can find ways that they work, whether that requires a fair amount of fan effort or not. However, clearly not all lives are valued equally.
When I first saw the original movies I thought the Storm Troopers were robots. Actually, I think I thought that Darth Vader was a robot too. Their only visible humanity was when the two troopers were talking about the new models of some kind of ship (or something, it's been a while), but it went right over my head then. (Remember, I was five.)
Even under that viewpoint, I'm sure I would have been upset about the death of C-3PO or R2-D2, and there were plenty of non Storm Troopers on the Death Star as well, all of whom would have died (not too mention that poor Dianoga), so yes, we are accepting the deaths of the bad guys with no thoughts of moral complexity and I went along with that.
Later we find out they are clones, but there is no reason that having identical genetic material would prevent the development of unique personalities. My younger sisters are identical twins. Their DNA is identical, and they were raised pretty much the same too, but they are still their own people. So, if the source of future troopers later becomes seized children and conditioning, I suspect there was a lot of conditioning with the clones as well.
I don't see a conflict that someone who balks at mowing down unarmed villagers willingly shoots people who are coming to kill him. What the movie doesn't get into is that there probably would be guilt later, especially for Finn who has not previously only been moved by the death of one storm trooper, but who also spent so much time with them as a unit. There would be an emotional toll, no matter how much sense it made to shoot in the moment.
The other thing that is interesting to me is that some of the early interactions give us a way of viewing the basic conflict beyond good versus evil.
The Empire/First Order were big on conformity, no matter how it was accomplished. Signs of deviation get you sent to reconditioning. The very uniforms are designed to hide the wearer's humanity, because humanity is a foolish and treacherous thing.
In contrast, our first contact with Rey shows her coming to BB-8's aid, and her complaint against the attempted captor is that he doesn't have regard for anyone. It is easy to believe she will refuse to sell BB-8 later, and that she will see Finn for a person when he comes along.
In addition, Poe Dameron also sees Finn's humanity. He won't call him by a serial number, but gives him a name. (This reminded me of Geordie and Hugh from a different franchise.)
One interesting thing about that is that while the Rebellion/Resistance is primarily humanoid, I don't recall any other life forms on the other side. Yes, Vader was willing to hire various others as bounty hunters, but only humanoid Boba Fett got to ride along with him.
You can view the struggle as one of individuality versus conformity. The state wanted to crush the individuals, and then when they were no longer the state they still tended in that direction. The Rebellion has room for individuals; when they become the state, do they lose that? Historically it happens a lot.One of the most interesting ideas I have seen about the movie comes from Gail Simone, who suggested that psychologically Kylo Ren is a school shooter. Seeing his blowups, that makes sense. It makes him a different sort of villain from Darth Vader and perhaps one that makes more sense for our time period.
That sort of personality could easily fall on either side of a dispute, but one thing about being open to individual differences is that it makes it a lot easier for you to feel peace. If you don't trust that others can vary and that it can be all right, that tends to inspire fear. It can even inspire hatred.
Fear is the path to the dark side.

I saw Star Wars!

Sure, if she's so excited, why is she posting so late? Just swamped right now, is all.
Nonetheless, I do have some thoughts, and now is a good time to post them. I don't intend to post any real spoilers, but I guess it depends on your definition of spoilers. Like, if knowing that two characters have a scene together is going to ruin it for you, maybe you should avoid reading this week.
The first thing to say is I really liked it. I wasn't initially sure I wanted to see it. I loved Star Wars - and was influenced by it - more than I can even explain. I ended up thinking of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi together with it, like they were all one thing, but the big hit was Star Wars (which I have never thought of as A New Hope).
I remember being really keyed up to see it and I'm not even sure why. I was five, so everything I watched on television was on PBS, with no commercials, but even before the movie I was so excited I could hardly stand it.
Anyway, I loved them, and as I got older I become aware of their imperfections without diminishing the love, but episodes 1 and 2 really killed that. I still haven't seen 3. I know people say it's good. I might care someday.  
With that, and with Hollywood overdoing it on remakes and sequels and reboots, I wasn't even sure that I wanted to see this one, but the word of mouth was good, and I went for it, and if it didn't erase 1-3, it at least numbed them.
There are a few specific things I remembered going wrong with The Phantom Menace. One was the scene with the fish, where they were not realistically sized or shaped. I get that CGI allows you to be unrealistic, but that doesn't mean it's always a good idea. That leads to the next thing; the most exciting sequence in the movie had no CGI, but quick camera cuts, a fake-out, and yes, some really fake looking dolls. I know those were not the most common complaints, but they seemed to illustrate most how the love of technology had taken away the heart of the previous series.
One thing I appreciate about The Force Awakensis that it has a love and respect for the original trilogy but maintains a healthy sense of balance. The Pirates of the Caribbean sequel went overboard with references to the original, to where it took me out of the picture. Here I could see similarities to the original, but it didn't kill the current story.
That allowed me to remember things and enjoy them. My affection for Han Solo never dimmed, but I forgot how awesome Chewbacca was. It was fun to see him again.
Also - without naming any instances where previous movies fell short - this movie had some pretty good actors.
My favorite interaction was the early one between Poe and Finn. Where Finn is just starting to come alive to how life can be and what he can do, Poe is so good at enjoying everything that there couldn't be anyone better to come alive with.
I have read some very high praises of Oscar Isaac from other movies, but this is the first chance I have had to see him, and okay, I get it.
So I'm going to have fun with it this week. There have been a few complaints or concerns about the movie that I have thoughts on, and that theme might even make it into the band reviews.
And every single post might be late.

Band Review: Christie Front Drive

One of my big goals for this year is to finish listening to all the bands in Nothing Feels Good. It's not really that it necessarily takes that long, but I do too many other things and forget about it. It feels like I have been in Chapter 4 forever.
Chapter 4 has some good stuff. This is where we get into Jimmy Eat World, whom I liked then, and The Get Up Kids, whom I saw perform a great show just a few months ago. Besides them, the band making the strongest impression on me is Christie Front Drive.
They already seem to have left a pretty big impression on others; I still see mentions of them in odd places, though part of the point of that time period is that these bands had a strong emotional impact that wasn't going to fade away. That led me to listen to them early.
My first thought was that I liked them, and so I didn't mark them off because I wanted to listen more. Then when I went back I didn't like them as much, but I wondered if I was wrong. That's why I decided to review them.
The issue appears to be that I like their later stuff a lot more than their earlier stuff. This may seem like splitting hairs when the lifespan of the band was really only about three or four years. Nonetheless, I still like Stereo best. From Anthology, I prefer the songs that were not on the First LP.
(The discography can be a little confusing because they did a lot of splits, but these are the titles used by Spotify.)
The sound is a little fuzzy, and reminds me of jangle in a way, though those two qualities don't get combined a lot. The singing is incomprehensible to me, and plaintive to the point of whining. That description does not sound likable, but there's something about it. This may make Christie Front Drive the quintessential emo band.
They have had a couple of reunions in the past decade. I don't know if they have plans for more, but I would take them up on it.
https://www.facebook.com/christiefrontdrive/
http://www.magicbulletrecords.com/site/bands/active/christie-front-drive/

Band Review: Guy Lombardo And His Royal Canadians

One of the books I wrote this year, Family Ghosts, has a dance that ends with "Auld Lang Syne". It's not New Year's Eve - instead occurring on the day after Thanksgiving, but it felt like the right ending, and it got me looking into the song more.
It turns out that it was a very common close to dances, especially in Scotland, home of the author of the original poem, Robert Burns. It is about remembering the past, not specifically the change from one year to another, but we associate the song with that largely because of an Italian-Canadian bandleader.
Guy Lombardo formed a band with his brothers and other local musicians in 1924. I don't know that they could have expected to become as big as they did, but for almost fifty years, first on radio and then on television, this was whom people listened to on New Year's Eve, and he always ended on "Auld Lang Syne".
I was born five years before Guy Lombardo died in 1977. (The group tried to continue but for another two years, but it was really his band.) For my generation, New Year's Eve belongs to Dick Clark, and I guess that is changing over to Ryan Seacrest now, but that broadcast always included "Auld Lang Syne" as the first song of the new year.
It was interesting looking and finding how that tradition went back. You roll back into London, Ontario, and further back into Scotland, but the history is strong. and I thought I should spend some time listening to their stuff.
There is a lot of holiday music, but he wasn't just an end of the year guy. There are a of classic old songs and standards, and it was good listening. I had heard many of the songs before, but there was one, "Blue Skirt Waltz" that was completely new to me and that I really liked.
So, that's not so much of a review really. It's more of an appreciation, and also a reminder to sometimes look back. That's also what the song is about, so it all works out.

2015 in review

This is my last regular post of 2015.
(There is a band review tomorrow, and you will never guess whom. Well, maybe if you check my Spotify.)
There are a lot of series of posts that I could start, but this feels like a time for endings and looking back. Plus, I have a lot of things I need to do today, so this is just a recap of some of the things that happened this year.
I wrote and published three books. They join the other two from the year before.
http://www.amazon.com/Gina-Harris/e/B00OC0N218/
They're not big sellers, but they are good. They have sold well enough that I should get a form 1099 this year, which is a step up from last year.
I went to Pennsylvania and Minnesota, and saw stuff. I was grateful for that. Even with the travel, I kept up my daily blogging. My camera also died on the trip, which is sad, but I am hoping to get one for my birthday.
I submitted more scripts to Amazon Studios. They were all rejected, but they are letting me know instead of letting the submission periods expire. I think that's progress. They could just be getting more organized. You know how I had that month of writing daily 6-page screenplays, and that month of reading a screenplay daily? The next month will be about reading through a project on Studios daily. I feel like my weakest skill is marketing myself, so I am going to spend some time observing how other people do it.
I didn't do as much reading, because the writing left less time, and because the emotional exhaustion has been pretty draining. Still, some of the books I did read have been really good, and there was recently a breakthrough with some of the family conflict that I think has improved things.
I am still poor. I think that will be the case until February. Honestly, if it doesn't go past February that will be pretty good.
I am getting more flack for having an opinion on the internet. It's still not a lot, but I've noticed. The primary lesson from this is learning when to let go. I guess it goes with setting boundaries. I will engage with you to this point, and then I will stop because my time is limited and I have to make good choices with it. This is important, because I am going to be sending out some strong opinions in 2016.
I can't swear that I've learned to value myself right yet, but I got a devastating glimpse of what not valuing myself does, and I am building up from that.
We picked up an additional cat when she showed up in our back yard, starving and scared. This  brings the total to three cats and one dog. It's not that long ago that it was the opposite, but we do still get both kinds of love.
I feel like curating the songs of the day has been more meaningful this year, and that my music knowledge is growing. I think playing the bass is going to become something really important to me.
Looking at the new year, I don't know what will happen. I can tell you that short term goals include writing and submitting two more screenplays. The next one will be a comedy, and I am excited about it. I have been wanting to pitch the Emo comic somewhere, and I am going to try Dark Horse because the have the easiest process for a writer without an artist. I don't think they will want this specific property, but I believe going through the process will still be good.
There should be two more books in the singles wards series (that needs a name), probably both out in 2016. There will be at least three more books in the Family Blood series, and I am not sure about the timeline. I had really meant to wait an entire year between completing Family Reunion and starting the next one, but I don't know if I will be able to stay away that long. I guess it depends on how busy the other projects keep me.
I will totally watch more movies from my Halloween list in October. At least one.
I hope to spend more time with friends. That's been the part that gets neglected the most, because I am trying to do so many other things that feel important, but spending time with your people is important.
My overall trajectory is trying to know myself better, trying to understand the world around me better, and trying to do good with that. That will not end.
And remember, once I get the new camera that will include daily selfies.

History repeating

I guess if I am talking about how different things read relate to each other, I should mention that my family has been reading the Old Testament together. Seeing how ancient rulers would carry off a conquered people, and send other people to take their place, shows me that destroying national identity, morale, and ties to home has been around for a while.
Chester Nez mentions two great Navajo tragedies in Code Talker. The first was The Long Walk, a 350-mile forced march from Fort Defiance to Fort Sumner. Going to Fort Defiance in the first place was preceded by the slaughter of livestock, crop destruction, and uprooting of trees. Along the way hundreds died, not just because the journey was hard but because if there were any issues (like childbirth) the soldiers shot them.
There's still a lot I don't know, but I have yet to find a tribal history without a similar incident. Sometimes you hear about the "Trail of Tears", but it was more than one trail.
It may also be worth mentioning here that from both A Century of Dishonor and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, what you see over and over again is that tribes built schools and grew crops and raised herds, and then would lose it all in forced relocation. Sometimes they would have rebuilt two or three times and be sent on again. You could argue that it was simply due to their land being wanted, and not a conscious attempt to destroy the people, but there were enough conscious attempts at destruction, and enough assumption that the Indians were going to die out, that it makes you wonder.
Nonetheless, the people kept going. 8000 survived The Long Walk and started over. A treaty a few years later granted each family two sheep, one male and one female. They did well enough that seventy years later that there were concerns about the area being overgrazed. That led to the second tragedy, the Navajo Livestock Reduction.
The government came and dug trenches. Any family with more than 100 sheep or goats was subject to reduction. They herded they amount they deemed necessary into the trenches, then sprayed those extra animals with flammable material and set them on fire.
My first reaction is to be sick because I love animals, and that was the first reaction of the owners. They loved the animals, and the animals knew them. Nez remembers hearing the stifled sobs of his grandparents at night after that. Some families received some money at far below market value, but many received nothing. Some meat was preserved, but only a small amount.
I still feel the pain for the animals, and their owners, but I see another side, because again there is that destruction of efforts and labor, the attempts to destroy the people.
Other reading come in again, because I thought there was something familiar about it, and realized it had come from The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan.
The government did kill cattle owned by white farmers in the Dust Bowl, but this was different. The animals were being choked to death and blinded by dust, there wasn't good grazing for them, and the government paid the farmers between $1 and $16 per head and salvaging what meat they could for hungry people, which was not much. Mainly, the farmers had a choice.
There is another section in Code Talker where Chester talks about his first hunting trip, and things that they did to show respect to the deer, and that its death was not wasted.
These were healthy sheep and goats belonging to people who believed in living in balance and it was the Depression. Even if you accept that the reduction was necessary, it should have been possible to give those animals humane deaths where their meat and wool and skin became a great benefit to people suffering from hunger and cold, but that would have involved treating the Navajo with respect. It could have involved caring about animals; just that could be enough to make things go better. Even an aversion to waste might have helped. None of those factors mattered.
Now I want to quote Chester Nez:
"The effect on the Navajo sense of community was devastating. In the time before the massacre, friends and neighbors helped one another. When someone fell sick, neighbors pitched in to care for their animals. Medicine men and women were summoned to cure both people and animals. Neighbors and family assisted by gathering together at night and praying for the sick to recover.
The livestock reduction challenged this sense of community by pitting Navajo against Navajo. Those who kept livestock resented the Navajo exterminators who worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Neighbors put up fences to enclose their pastures, saving them for the sheep they had left. The year-round migration from one community grazing area to another that had always been the norm as I grew up became impossible. As a result, ties between neighbors weakened.
The toll in self-respect was also huge. Families, unable to protect their own livestock, felt powerless. And nothing could have done more to erode the local work ethic. What was the point of working hard to build up wealth, a sizable herd, when the government just stepped in and destroyed it?
The massacre killed more than livestock. It changed the dynamic between neighbors. It changed the meaning of hard work; it changed everything."
(Code Talker, pp. 79-80)
Currently I am reading about tribes that were forcibly removed from land for the building of a dam, even though it was completely illegal according to their treaties. That happened in 1951
I don't know that I have a lot to add to that, but I think maybe for anyone who is upset about tribal "handouts", maybe if we could go without uprooting and destroying for long enough that there is no one alive who personally remembers it, maybe then it could be a good time to reexamine the issue.

Convergence

I'm not done with my 2015 Native American Heritage Month reading yet, but I'm getting closer, and there are some things I noticed about the last book, in terms of how previous reading and watching builds together.
The book I just finished was Code Talker by Chester Nez, with Judith Schiess Avila, and it was excellent. It was also enriched by other things.
For example, for the 2014 month (which ended up being all videos), I watched "Code of Honor" on the Comanche Code Talkers. Nez was a Navajo Code Talker. I had not previously realized that there were multiple programs, but it turns out that Choctaw, Cherokee, Lakota, Meskwaki, and even Basque (not a Native American language) were used at different times and places.
One thing I saw in the video was that it said they completed their basic training in less time than usual because of their time in boarding schools, where many of the practices were kind of military in nature.
In the book, they didn't finish early, but they did really well with their basic training. Nez attributed that to their home life herding ship, which involved a lot of running, climbing, throwing, and camping. One being true doesn't make the other untrue.
I recently read a book on PTSD, The Evil Hours. Therefore, when Nez was released from service and spent a few months in the veteran's hospital before release, and no one calls it PTSD (not until the Vietnam era), but he is having trouble sleeping and is haunted, it was not surprising. It also makes sense that the way it manifested sounded more similar to the Civil War era cases than the Vietnam era cases, because this was not someone who would have watched a lot of television previously. He was more haunted by apparitions of the dead than by flashbacks. And, despite my frustrations with Dave Grossman and On Killing, that it was a community ritual that helped him recover made perfect sense.
There were two other incidents covered in the book that were specific to the Navajo, and some things a little different about that where they will get their own post.

Music Review: Christmas with The Killers

I had stumbled across The Killers' "Please Don't Shoot Me Santa" a few years ago, and I would periodically play it because it was kind of fun. I only learned this year that they do a Christmas song every year, releasing it around December 1st for World AIDS Day and donating the proceeds to the Product Red campaign that strives to eliminate AIDS.
This good cause has developed into a great tradition, now going on ten years. They have brought in other people - some musicians and some not. Each song stands on its own musically, without any sense of repetition. They may go back to certain themes, but they do each one differently. I appreciate that a lot, especially in light of some of the more recent reviews.
Also, while some songs are serious, in general it looks like there is a lot of fun. I can't even say that it looks like they are having fun, because their facial expressions are usually pretty serious, but there are these glimpses that suggest to me that they are having fun, as well as it being a reasonably logical conclusion that of course this would be fun; it looks like a blast!
Here is a quick rundown of each song:
2006 - "A Great Big Sled"
The very first, and probably the most traditional. The song touches on childhood nostalgia, and the video is fairly straightforward with the studio process and some celebrating. However, I am pretty sure that is Ryan Pardey in the Santa suit, and he does at one point carve a turkey. I can't help but wonder if that image of him wielding the knife led to the next year's offering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-nse84xIpE
2007 - "Don't Shoot Me Santa"
Santa is dirty and scary here, and getting ready to execute lead singer Brandon Flowers who has been a bad boy. Even though Brandon says that he's been killing just for fun, I can't want him dead, so it is a relief when is crew comes and rescues him.
(Also, if you're reading the Family books, you know that's how bands work when I'm writing.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cglLJJ0Czo8
2008 - "Joseph, Better You Than Me"
This has mainly footage from old movies, but the subject matter is really touching and often neglected. Probably their most serious offering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW8oEWfuEIg
2009 "Happy Birthday Guadalupe"
There is a bit of Western theme here, but even more imagery from the Dia de los Muertos. That seems like the wrong holiday, but you know Dickens wrote a ghost story every Christmas, even if only one is famous, and it's a time of year when the dead seem close. I say it works. Luke Perry heads into a church, so they may be near Los Angeles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C24KIIh_OzM
2010 "Boots"
A homeless man missing his family is worn down in Los Angeles, but a microphone brings some hope and a chance to sing out his heart. You don't know if he is singing well or badly, and maybe it doesn't matter. It brings enough funds to encourage him to celebrate with his family. Starting with a clip from It's a Wonderful Life, it correlates well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UymN_kjYeFk
2011 "The Cowboys' Christmas Ball
Shot in an almost lurid color palette that harkens back to the 50s/60s, this not only references cowboy movies but also space invasion movies, and it's a lot of fun even before you get to a robot dancing the robot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9d9qd9o_lU
2012 "I Feel It in My Bones"
A sequel to "Don't Shoot Me Santa", this picks up with Santa angry about the band's rescue of Brandon, and stalking all of them, which causes them to sleep badly. In this Santa reminds me of the Lone Biker of the Apocalypse from Raising Arizona, but ingeniously Christmas-themed. The director was Roboshobo, who also did "Na Na Na" for My Chemical Romance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECHv5KV4ZuM
2013 "Christmas in L.A."
Lonely and discouraged Owen Wilson has a really depressing Christmas that includes getting snubbed by Harry Dean Stanton. It's even worse than for the guy in "Boots", though they do both wander into churches. Some is live-action, but there is some gorgeous animation as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=938GYJjxBeU
2014 "Joel the Lump of Coal"
I love this so much. It is adorable and sweet and correct about carbon and the environment. Also, while it is not murderous Santa, Santa is kind of jerk which is kind of a staple of Christmas specials. The aspect of a Santa giving coal to naughty kids isn't played up that much, but we do have a Santa canceling Christmas because he has a cold, and rejecting Rudolph, so it's something to think about. And often the bad ones are sad inside, but there is beauty there too.
This one is really perfectly done, including the sweaters and the tear that rolls down Ronnie's cheek and turns into a beautiful snowflake.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WQl0K_qSsE
2015 "Dirt Sledding"
The third installment of Ryan Pardey's murderous Santa has him left burnt out and depressed by his quest. Passing out alone, he is woken and cheered by a Halloween pumpkin, Thanksgiving turkey, Easter bunny, and a tooth fairy, only it is really the band in disguise, and when the disguises come off there is grace and reconciliation for all, plus a new red car!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmGNp1gO1eg
"Dirt Sledding" almost feels like a culmination. Not only does it round out the Deadly Santa trilogy, but it also connects back to the first song. They have gone from missing their youth sledding in snow to finding a solution for their environment, sledding in dirt.
I guess this means they could quit, but I hope this goes on. There's a lot of fun here, and the music is of high quality with lots of variety. I was pretty fond of The Killers anyway, but I have to love that.