On Tuesday, I did a review of my limited experiences at the Montclair Film Festival.  One thing that I noticed, especially in Michael Moore’s discussion, was that film makers tend to consider TV negatively.  “Small wonder!” you might say.  But books certainly are transformed to TV as much or more than they are to the big screen.  If literature is an art form, are things derived from it also art forms?  Most people associated with the film industry would say films are an art form.  So, is TV an art form?

Michael Moore focused on the active-passive difference, claiming that TV is much more passive than cinema.  The latter has an audience that moves to some building, maybe miles away, buys their tickets, and sits down to enjoy a film (that’s a bit myopic, of course, in these days of Netflix).  TV takes away everything except maybe enjoying the film, but many of us watch anything to just be watching something.  I don’t buy the argument.  Both are passive and demand less mental interaction with their viewers than a good book demands of its reader.

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The Montclair Film Festival (Montclair, NJ) is in its second year.  For 2013 (from April 29 to May 5, to be precise), it expanded, with more venues, films, speakers, and discussion sections (over 80 films and events).  We attended last year.  Because I’m an incurable people watcher (even though I’m introverted and don’t enjoy being in large crowds), I observed that there is a large overlap between films and book lovers.  Thought-provoking films make people think while they enjoy the film and lead to discussions afterward—these are the films shown at the Montclair Film Festival.  A thought-provoking book does the same thing.

“Thought-provoking” is a sloppy term.  I can easily enter a vicious circle—a thought-provoking book is one that makes you think beyond its plot and characters to more substantive issues.  Even a vampire romance can make you think of issues you might not consider outside of your reading.  My sci-fi thrillers will make you think too—they’re entertaining extrapolations into the future.  What I observed at last year’s crowd at the Festival was that thought-provoking films and books have a common audience—people were talking about films and books.

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Most days I’m thankful I’m not a lawyer.  I’m not addressing those legal duties that involve helping people with their wills, estates, tax issues, births, deaths, etc.  A lawyer can make a good living doing this, it’s a feel-good way to occupy your time (especially if you throw a few pro bono jobs in toward helping out people who can’t afford lawyers), and a service that most people need to survive in modern U.S. society at different times in their lives.  I’m not addressing the legal duties of corporate lawyers either, those who protect corporations from people who would sue them, or personal damage lawyers, those who raise grievances of a person or groups of persons.  I’m also ignoring the fact that we’re a litigious society and support many more lawyers than most other nations because of that—a practice that is not only insane but generates a humongous drag on the national economy.

No, most days I’m just glad I’m not a constitutional lawyer…or a higher court justice, which, many times, amounts to the same thing.  My problem (that’s what many people call it, but not me) is that I can’t see all the nuances and hidden meanings these people come up with.  I generally hack away at problems just using good old common sense—arguments in constitutional law seem to lack that key ingredient and the lawyers either ignore it or don’t have any of it themselves.  Again, the latter includes high court judges…especially the ones on the Supreme Court.  They have exalted positions in our society, as if they were sitting on the right-hand (or left-hand, as the case might be) of God, but they are mere mortals that often lack the specific knowledge and common sense for making intelligent decisions.  Moreover, as lawyers they were trained to argue any side of an issue—no real identification with it at all.

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Sen. Mitch McConnell is unpopular in Kentucky right now.  No, he didn’t bore his constituents with almost thirteen hours of bloviating browbeating like the junior senator from that horsey state.  Mitch doesn’t have the bladder or colon for that.  But his track record is not great.  After promising in 2010 that Obama wouldn’t have a second term, he led the GOP to defeat in 2012, marching like a lemming right behind Romney over that electoral cliff, and, with other GOP leaders, wielding the paintbrush that painted the GOP into a tight ideological corner where they’ll be hard-pressed to escape.  Now, he’s teamed with Boehner to bring the government to its knees, this deadly duo obviously thinking that small government means no government.

The Kentucky electorate is strange.  They support main Southern attractions like the Kentucky Derby in Lexington and the Creation Museum in Petersboro, the former where handsome thoroughbreds are shot if they pull up lame and the latter where Bible lovers can revisit their dinosaur-riding ancestors.  Not quite Disneyworld attractions, but close enough for coal-mining country.  If the mining magnates let them, some Kentuckians could afford to participate in those wonderful, awe-inspiring attractions and feel right at home with their brethren from next-door West Virginia.  Good, hard-working people they are, and they expect their senators to be the same.

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X “provides more quality entertainment than any other resorts on the planet.”  “It appears to be the case….”  “Remenber: their’s almost not any time left to buy…!”  Plus misspellings, double negatives, and wrong word usage—are these and other examples taken from TV ads or those banners scrolling at the bottom of the TV screen indicating a deterioration of standard English?

If we add jive, street slang, and idiomatic mixtures (so-called Spanglish, for example), some language purists might be apoplectic.  As a writer of sci-fi thrillers, I tend to be more forgiving.  English, especially American English (if there is such a thing), is more vibrantly and dynamically alive than any other language.  And it seems to become more vibrant and dynamic as the years pass.

But I’m not here to rant about the purity of English—let the Brits worry about that (can an Eton graduate speak Cockney?).  I’m just wondering about the resurgence across our northern U.S. border of French language purists in Quebec.  Years ago—I confess that I can’t remember how many—a truce was declared.  What happened?  Did we, those blustering, bloviating, pop culture neighbors from the South, do something to trigger this?  Is this just an expression of ethnic hatred long suppressed between Canadian anglophiles and francophiles?

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As a post mortem to the 2012 election (RIP, I say), I offer my personal list of winners and losers.  Feel free to suggest additions in your comments—a great opportunity to vent.

The big winner?  The 99%.  Yeah, I know some of you voted for Romney (otherwise the popular vote would be 99% Obama, 1% Romney), but you will still benefit.  Count your blessings.  The oligarchy lost—sort of.  They’ll have to be more clever about how they exploit the middle class now, but they’ll probably manage just fine.  The House is still in their pockets, for example, Mr. Boehner leading the charge.

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Today is Election Day.  Everyone who can, please vote.  It’s your right.  Hopefully, all of us who are affected by Sandy’s aftermath can find an alternate polling place and also vote.

Tomorrow my blog will continue with a light-hearted guest post written by thriller author Gina Fava.

…and NY and Connecticut and…the list goes on.  The pictures of the banshee storm Sandy from space said it all:  don’t mess with Mother Nature.  One scientist with nothing better to do estimated that the storm contained the equivalent of 10,000 of the a-bombs dropped on Japan at the end of WWII.  That impersonal and frightening number can’t begin to match the scenes of damage and destruction so tragically affecting people on a very personal level.

The headline of this post was borrowed from the headline of New York’s Daily News in a special edition filled with disaster photos of the tri-state area.  Probably the worst photo, displayed under a similar headline with NJ replaced by NY, was a view of Breezy Point in Brooklyn where fire, whipped along by winds gusting at sixty plus miles per hour, destroyed over 100 homes, creating a scene reminiscent of Dresden after the allies bombed it in WWII.  The next worst pic on my list was a water tanker lifted up by storm surge and deposited on land in Staten Island, silent testimony to a hurricane’s power.

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Maybe I’m just a pessimistic old curmudgeon, but it seems to me that the real losers in an election, federal, state, or local, are the voters, the American public.  Here are some scenarios and some reasons.

Elections are generally close, unless a candidate is running unopposed (alas, that often happens in states of one color or the other, or in “safe districts” the politicos have gerrymandered in such a way that an opposition candidate has no chance).  By close, I’m talking about winning margins of sometimes just hundreds of votes on a local level and just thousands for a national office.  Majorities are too often simple.  There are no mandates.

Some people would just say, “That shows the two-party system is alive and well.”  Maybe.  But with our national discourse so polarized, the problem is exacerbated.  The two parties are strong, pander to their own base, and insult each other.  There are politicians who step above the fray, for example, the imminently sage and reasonable Colin Powell, a Republican who endorsed Obama.  He stands in stark contrast relative to daffy Donald Trump whose “October surprise” was yet another attack on Obama’s race and claim to U.S. citizenship.

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[For those on the East Coast of the U.S.—basically from North Carolina to Massachusetts—you have enjoyed, or are enjoying, the gentle caresses of hurricane Sandy + energetic cold front from the West + jet stream adding energy + astronomical high tides = wild banshee storm.  However, if you have power, you might be reading my posts this week, although I’m scheduling them early in case of I have to get out of Dodge myself.

Here’s the post schedule: today “Invisible Issues,” a post about the issues both parties have ignored; Wednesday guest blogger Gina Fava comments on last summer’s Cape Cod Writers Conference;  and Thursday I’ll on post an op-ed, “How the American Public Loses Elections.” Enjoy if you can.  I pray that you and your family are safe if you can’t—actually, I do that anyway, but I’m talking about that monster storm, of course.  There will be no post on Election Day.]

Mr. Romney has received much criticism for being short on specifics (my paraphrase:  we’ll make up those seven or eight trillion in tax cuts and increased defense spending by closing loopholes and eliminating deductions—just ask us after the election what they are).  Mr. Obama hasn’t been much better (my paraphrase:  give me another four years to complete my agenda—don’t fret yourself with the details).  The candidates’ five-point plans are jokes, bullets on a Powerpoint chart without any substance.  I’ve seen enough of that.

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