The American Election 2012 with wobbly ghosts and candle wax...

If you thought the U.S. election was too close to call 4 years ago (and it was no where near the landslide to the Democrats that prevailing history would want one to believe) then have a gander at tonight (though only die-hards in Britain will stamina the early morning hours their time). This website is only politic in the sense that it is to do with people. No art, no films, NOTHING cultural can exist without a context. What makes those artforms deathly boring is agenda of any race, colour or creed. And politics, unfortunately, is mostly that. One CNN commentator quipped tonight from The Simpsons “we have to let these damn people vote”. Democracy is indeed the least political system of all evils. New York is hardly a swing state- yet Mayor Bloomberg bravely described his own polling experience and others this morning as “third world” after Hurricane Sandy totally rearranged the polling stations. Can Sandy be blamed for the electronics a bit skew-whiff or the lack of photocopied affidavit voting forms for those polling outside their zone due to storm damage? One could argue that Bloomberg's statement was politically agendered. Just as his decision to abandon the NY Marathon (Staten Island is predominantly Republican). But it would be foolish to say the least to draw that conclusion of either experience.

Manhattan may be sporting a brave face after Hurricane Sandy (again perhaps a gross generalisation). But the hard hit NY boroughs –many still without much help or indeed power- are speaking their mind. Whether the general American electoral vote of 270 to win Presidency tonight are doing the same or indeed are mindful of all the intricacies and ramifications of that vote is kinda beside the point. That is the system one has! And if the vote is tied 269/269 then the system is even more problematic. The Senate has a deciding vote but it is only one vote per State no matter how different are the political margins of each State. No wonder many people like ‘The Simpsons’ are sceptical of democracy!

One small haven of Virginia that has correctly predicted/voted the outcome since 1952 is neck and neck at 49% as of writing this post. Point taken? Whilst it is remarkable that the MTA has almost all subway lines up and running two very important lines are still flooded (one still with 3,700 foot of water)- the L to Williamsburg/Bushwick and beyond and the G to Bedford-Stuyvesant an up and coming (and one of the still affordable) suburbs. So home to many ‘middle-class’ and artists ‘on their feet’ who can least afford to be without a subway line.   

And nobody is happy with the American banks. In many cases you are better off bankrupt than with a salary or cash. Such are the hoops one has to jump through in order to get board approval for a co-op, buy a short sale or foreclosure, or even get bank approval for anything whatsoever. Remember the days of New Labour in Britain when one could ‘flannel’ an income 4 times what one earned or more? The buy to let bank fiasco?! America wasn’t that different. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. And those banks who sold inflated mortgage products have the gall to stand on their high horses pretending that they are holier than thou for their decisions protecting the interests of American democracy! Many loyal citizens are reaching for something else rather than the intense to burn there!

I feel a film review coming on. Many to choose…ummm…45 or so from the 50^th New York Film Festival for a start. Martin McDonagh’s Seven Psychopaths (2012 London Film Festival) opened in NYC a few weeks ago, UK -Momentum Pictures-  Dec 5). It’s not perfect but it does deserve ‘a film by Martin McDonagh’ credit unlike many self-confessed auteurs. How do you make sense of the reality? Is there any sort of ‘reality’ that will reach a multiplex? Writer/director McDonagh goes a long way in discussing those questions with loads of really inventive scenes and acting turns along the way. But he doesn’t quite get inside the minds of his characters as he did with In Bruges. But you may disagree. And one could also argue that those minds, like many Americans, are fairly impenetrable nay schizoid given what normal people have to contend with on a daily basis. They don’t have a press briefing every day from Mayor Bloomberg assuring them that everything will be fine. They have normal TV! They’d all be better off doing the daily round and having a laugh in the evening with The Big Bang Theory. After all, as the doco filmmaker Patricio Guzmán noted in Nostalgia for the Light we are at the end of the day all but atoms.

Hurricane Sandy-Saturday

These Hurricane Sandy posts began with an analogy to NYC being a war zone. Over the past week that image has only blasted brighter. The bigger picture is most indeed that.  Do the math on how many pregnant mothers must be without normal facilities- heat, power, elevators, food etc. How many very young kids, elderly people etc etc etc. That’s a lot of folk. And that’s JUST in lower Manhattan. Did Mayor Bloomberg do the right thing cancelling Sunday’s classic NY Marathon? I think so. Should he have made that decision earlier and avoided runners struggling to reach NYC by plane from all over the world? It's easier to judge in hindsight. And I loathe writing in first person but I’m only writing these posts because it’s the I in me that feels such a mixture of anger, respect, hope, frustration. Staten Island and many non-Manhattan sites are still a war zone. So going ahead with the Marathon (starting on Staten Island) whilst a few miles away people couldn’t even grieve because NO facilities were back on line! It would be tantamount to giving those residents the finger and saying we’re Manhattan and you’re just a cheap-skate ‘bridge and tunnel’ crowd who we love milking for money to see our great isle of Manhattan.

I could so easily have been staying in the blackout zone of Manhattan. Selfish, seeming nice folk booted me out (another story) less than a week ago and reasonably priced accommodation I found above 39th Street. I kinda wished I was down there in the thick of it and yet so relieved, obviously, that I wasn’t. I happened on a pop-up photo gallery midtown East side last night and met a young businesswoman quietly sporting a visible facial bruise from bumping into a wall walking up and down 23 stories to her apartment. Do the math. And it was so surreal that a young, Irish photographer was plugging away at selling artistic (non-flooded) photos of New York one day before his pop-up expired.

I wanted to go on drinking, even find sex, at one of the plethora of bars on the East Side that night but it just made me burst into tears. Were they tears of anger, helplessness, frustration that I didn’t have the guts to go into some of those establishments and shout how can you lead a normal ffffing life while the temperature is dropping into real cold for many people in this city barely 10 blocks away in addition to them having  no normal life. Let alone Staten Island, Rockaway…

The next time you read a war correspondent such as Robert Fisk or Maggie O'Kane just marvel and wonder at how level headed and seemingly detached they are (not that anyone could level detachment at Fisk but you get the point;). I remember an award winning Guardian photographer at a Q&A of his work noting passionately how annoyed he was that he was expected to be something of a humanitarian in African trouble spots plus a photographer. Not having had that experience I completely agreed with his frustration. After being in NYC for Hurricane Sandy his point is blisteringly clear.

It’s not just remarkable but extraordinary how most of the subway system will be up and running by Monday, less than a week after Sandy hit. Tunnels not just flooded but with water up to a few feet from the top of the street stairs. Not everything functioned as the Mayor hoped. But then how could it? You’d be furious too standing hours in line early cold morning waiting for water and they’d cocked up the delivery time. And in a month’s time Sandy will be a distant memory for much of Manhattan that was unaffected. Or will it? Certainly not for me. I’ll never drink another glass of free private view wine, the art, without having Hurricane Sandy rustling somewhere in that picture. Is that too emotive? What else could one be!

the BIG SCREEN...

And now for something completely different – an animated bio-pic of Monty Python-ette Graham Chapman screened at MoMA last night. The good news was that MoMA was packed (as always) with visitors on Wednesday (having closed as of Sunday night pre-hurricane). The not so good news that A Liar's Autobiography: The Untrue Story of Monty Python's Graham Chapman really didn’t hit the funny bone except for hard core Pythonites. And alas the Monday screening of Sally Cruikshank’s animations had to be cancelled. Those with enough enthusiasm and time to attend Friday’s screening weren’t disappointed. Introduced by Jim Hoberman (formerly of the Village Voice) his “fun on Mars” description riffing on one of Sally’s titles was no misnomer. Nor was his “she is some kind of genius” and his most anticipated screening of the To Save and Project: The 10th MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation. Parents: Sally’s animations will shut up those kids over the next few no school days. She is a self-confessed “dinosaur”. Judging from the compilation (that included her titles for the Hollywood film Ruthless People) she is a Diplodocus with teeth for boredom;) She re-called that co-incidentally she tuned into a radio station whilst driving and Mick Jagger was asked what he thought of the Ruthless People titles. Not very complimentary. Sally said she hates your new song too Mick. Whatever it is:) Check out MoMA. Whatever the criticisms and short-comings it’s far more than just a few indecipherable famous abstract paintings and the like. There’s even a James Bond movie retrospective. And they thought MoMA was crazy collecting this stuff/sh**;) Just goes to show how…are some people.

A review of Flight (opening tomorrow in NYC next Feb 1 in London) was kinda promised on this site when it world premiered at the 50^th New York Film Festival. And Hurricane Sandy REALLY harnessed by focus, anger and praise of and at this film. Up to a point it’s a revelatory film (and performance by Denzel Washington) of an alcoholic. Whatever job he may command. In his case he pilots a regular stress-free short domestic flight (whilst hungover/intoxicated/sleepless) through stormy Florida weather and into blue carefree skies to Atlanta. A technical failure almost kills everyone and would have if not for Denzel’s experience as a pilot. But there were deaths and they demand legal satisfaction. The trouble with criticism is that one tends to re-write someone else’s script (John Gatins in this case). And I still can’t square the circle of the film’s ending (trying to avoid a spoiler alert).  But like it or not Gatins (in a kinda parallel Michael Moore way) begs a lot of very pertinent questions. Is the truth always a welcome friend and neighbour? Gatins suggests yes. But ironically his overall film suggests not. One thought of the nurses carrying babies down 9 flights of stairs (6 to a baby) in the darkness to evacuate newborns- some even a few hours old from Langone Hospital. What if one nurse had been like that pilot and slipped ever so slightly and a baby would lose a limb? What if that nurse hadn’t been there. What if several nurses hadn’t been there? What if a fireman or police officer inadvertently themselves drowned after rescuing a baby. A family. Would they be any less of a hero because they’d been drinking that night and risked their life. Flight will anger many folk especially after Hurricane Sandy. And one really can’t give the production team credit for that. But Denzel Washington breaks your ffing heart because he’s the only motherffer who really ever cares about anything. And it’s questionable whether such a survivor (in such a nuanced performance by Washington) would give the response he gave at the final enquiry. Humans do their best. We are all fallible. And some of us find ways to cope that are very extraordinary and definitely not the social or legal norm. It’s like medication- it is so often a fine line between just the right amount and just too much. What would you have done? It’s so easy in retrospect to judge. So as in my oft quoted Les Murray poem perhaps the world will always need legends “else they will die of strangeness”.

Hurricane Sandy-Thursday

Mayor Bloomberg quipped in one of his initial Hurricane Sandy press briefs that next time a New Yorker bad mouthes the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) remember they gave you free rides during the hurricane. Well today (Thurs) any subway line that could possibly be running is while buses (choking with passengers) renewed an almost full service yesterday. A quite remarkable achievement in transit logistics 3 days after a hurricane. And with the best will in the world one could muster, it’d be hard to imagine London getting back on its feet that quickly.

Instead of subway tunnels surging into rivers we had streets concreted with cars- a gridlock symphony of honking horns worthy of a Havergal Brian monster symphony. Even with a chill in the air the sun shone this morning in relative quiet. Many in lower Manhattan and other boroughs are still without power (after the storm roughly 750,000 were blacked out) and documentary filmmaker Michael Moore gave food for thought on Piers Morgan’s CNN show last night asking why should public utilities such as gas and electricity be given a monopoly in NYC (Con Edison). Either the system is competition capitalism or socialist control.

Regardless of where one stands in that debate it is essential to question a city as large and complex as New York. Piers Morgan pursued his inquiries into the hospital generators failing (yesterday another hospital Bellevue was forced to evacuate patients). And Morgan (and his programme) was one of the few commentators who were brave enough to raise those prickly questions. The restoration of services in the city has been truly impressive for the most part (and that’s thanks to City Hall and the belief of New Yorkers). It’s unlikely New York will ever see a storm like Sandy. But as both Bloomberg and Michael Moore acknowledged, global warming is now a fact of life (though the Republicans continue denying that on Capitol Hill). Yet given New York’s size and its geographic handicap of islands surrounded by water the city will always need to troubleshoot likely breaches of its defenses. In fact the sea wall protecting the E14th street power station was built to withstand 12.5foot waves (did a spokesman on TV claim more maybe I misheard) – far in excess of last year’s Hurricane Irene or any predicted eventuality. How much is enough when so much of the bottom line in New York is corporate money? The only answer is to keep that debate alive and virulent. New Yorkers have a tendency to complain a lot often about inconsequential things. Harness that energy, though, and combine it with the hard core of productive New York skepticism and the city may well keep its head above water for decades to come. New Jersey and its sealine friends will just have to play poker with Mother Nature. Who says the female isn't the most deadliest and devious of the species;)?