The Little Tramp goes to the circus

My Sunday watching wasn’t a movie, it was the broadcast of the Kennedy Center Honors. I like to watch the program every year, though sometime I miss it, because there’s usually a classical music star (though not this year) and I learn something new about the others. This year the honors went to: Bonnie Raitt. I hadn’t known about her disinterest in being a star. She wanted to present her music, not be told what to sing and how to sing it. I also hadn’t known about her activism and how much she supported other musicians. Arturo Sandoval, Cuban jazz trumpeter who came to America. He created the Sandoval Institute to teach jazz students. Sandoval also ventured into the classical world and composed a trumpet concerto. I’m pretty sure I have a recording of it, though I can’t find it right now. Apollo Theater. The first non-human honoree. It opened in 1934. One of its big draws was amateur night, which is how Ella Fitzgerald got her start. Aretha Franklin and James Brown also got their start at the Apollo. It is now a haven for black culture. It is also a community gathering place, conversation place, and political center. At the White House part of the celebration Biden said Black culture is American culture. Francis Ford Coppola. Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Lawrence Fishbourne, and Martin Scorsese told stories about working for the director. His granddaughter, a budding director, was there too. Grateful Dead. Of course, the tribute discussed Deadhead culture. Audience participation was encouraged and the band and audience felt like a big family. A couple of the members, Phil Lesh and Jerry Garcia, have passed. The rest were there, as was Garcia’s wife (or maybe daughter). Starting today and through the end of the year the Detroit Film Theater is presenting a series of silent era films with live musical accompaniment. Cost is only museum entrance (which is free to me because my taxes support the Detroit Institute of Arts and the DFT). Today I saw a Charlie Chaplin movie. Tomorrow is a series of animated shorts (which I’ll skip). Sunday is Robin Hood from 1922 starring Douglas Fairbanks. And on New Year’s Eve they’ll show the German movie The Last Laugh. Today’s Chaplin movie was The Circus from 1928. Chaplin, as the Little Tramp, gets caught up in a traveling circus. He upstages the clowns, but when asked to audition he isn’t funny. Unintentionally he upstages the magician. He falls in love with the owner’s daughter. She falls in love with the new guy who is hired for the tightrope act, so the tramp tries to do it too – with a man pulling on a safety harness. It all goes delightfully awry. Chaplin was quite the physical comedian. I enjoyed it very much, as did the kids sitting around me. The music was by David Drazin, who appears to be making a decent career providing live music for silent films. The DFT went with the live pianist even though the movie’s opening credits list a score by Chaplin. My Christmas Day was quiet. I visited Sister and Niece for the afternoon. We shared a meal and we talked. And that was enough. I wrote last time about Sen. Chris Murphy’s description about how democracy could end in America. My friend and debate partner was in full debate mode as he wrote that he disagreed with nearly everything in that previous post. I’ll summarize: Liz Cheney isn’t going to jail. The nasty guy is a bully and no one likes bullies. ABC didn’t fight the nasty guy’s libel suit because they really did inaccurately describe the crime against E Jean Carroll. Pushing liberal fantasies in the time of Republican control isn’t going to work. He says Ocasio-Cortez is too extreme for a leadership role. And:

These views do not imply that I in any way support Trump -- I will not forget the lies and intimidation and I will not forgive.

A couple cartoons from Tom the Dancing Bug by Ruben Bolling posted on Daily Kos. The first one was inspired by the murder of a medical insurance CEO that produced a lot of cheering for the gunman. This cartoon begins:

In a brazen action in broad daylight, a 12-year-old girl was killed in New York City by health insurance denial of prior authorization for her cancer treatment. This shocking event has put the NYPD on a frenzied search for the person responsible.

It ends:

The killer CEO has distressingly become something of a folk hero to shareholders of NerrexHealthCo, eliciting message of support on social media and votes for a compensation bonus. Male executive: Run, CEO, Run! Female executive, Deny, Delay, Deflect!

The second cartoon is It’s a Wonderful Life, 2024. Instead of the angel reviewing the life of George Bailey to show what his town would have been like if he hadn’t lived, this version reviews what Pottersville would have been like if banker Henry Potter hadn’t lived – no global warming because he didn’t fight environmental regulations, middle class people able to afford a home, no for-profit health care.