The Advocate

When I first heard they were making a new movie based on the Clown Prince of Crime, I was immediately repulsed. I thought that the well of Joker takes was dry, with the best vintages reserved by Ledger, Nicholson, and Hamill. It felt like another Spider-Man reboot circa Andrew Garfield. As the release date approached, I saw the varied reservations from my fellow social justice class members, as well as a few comic purists, mental health advocates, and Jared Leto stans. They ranged from issues with the problematic centering of White male suffering to the breaking of DC canon. For my part, I tried to ignore them. I figured I would see the movie when I saw it and didn't really care for it otherwise. Recently, a close friend invited me out to see the film. So, I went. (Spoiler alert.) What I saw was nothing less than a cinematic masterpiece that filled me with horror and dread. It was a great movie. It was a terrible movie. It was too real... It was way too fucking re...

(Credit: Zdzislaw Beksinski, Untitled, 1994) Slowly, very slowly, working on my 3rd book. Another collection of poetry that has somehow shoved my novella to the back of the queue. Here's a small, not-final-draft piece: fear shapes thought like whetstones sharpen knives and bars paint prisons and the edge of a cliff beckons as if it were a lover’s whispered gesture irrationally as dreaming it begins with a small pebble of anxiety cragged as an old face then lovingly polished to a fine smooth rounded goose-flesh-down dread and how that uncertainty creates a certainty of what i am worrying will happen as if reality were nightmare's despondent whim how powerless i am in my terror the irony is palpable that i can put pretzels to shame with the twists but not so strong as metal more like a spider's gossamer and just as creeping across my face i suspect with a bondsman’s surety cashing in my doubt like the zealotry believes with such despair as only lost hope could ever know ...

(Photo credit: Black Music Scholar ) I'm not Christian. I'm definitely not Black. I don't believe in Jesus; certainly not as the messiah or my personal lord and savior, at any rate. I can't exactly relate to the Black American experience on a personal level (other than in very limited circumstances). My upbringing was deeply segregated from the musicality and pathos of spirituals. That's why it's probably going to feel weird for  some  people that a White Jewish boy is a fan of spirituals. Yet, I love 'em  —  Take My Hand Precious Lord, His Eye Is on the Sparrow, Wade in the Water, Sing Low Sweet Chariot, Down By the Riverside, and so on. But there's something about those songs that just speaks to my heart, despite the lack of any substantive rationale. The field hollers, camptown verses, folkloric lyrics, subversive interpretations, and endlessly creative instrumentation. They've got sorrow, hope, laughter, weeping, joy, love, life, death,...

(By Banksy) Every day, I read and watch the news. My eyes bounce from MSNBC to Mother Jones, from Fox to Vox, from WaPo to HuffPo, from NYT to JDF, from Facebook to Twitter to Instagram to even fricking LinkedIn. The world is full of sad shit. People die. Lives are ruined. Monsters and villains run amok. Communities crumble from disparities in wealth, health, diversity, equity, equality, liberty, tolerance, justice, and peace as our planet literally cooks us all alive in a polluted mess. Every day, I read and watch the world, wondering what the hell is happening, feeling like the problems are too big for me to comprehend, let alone solve... So I tear my eyes away. I look at my family, look at my career, look at myself. I look away in fear, feeling powerless. I look away in shame, embarrassed that I am part of oppressive systems. I look away in exhaustion, expending so much energy merely to keep myself even. I look away and laugh, if only because I was never very good at crying. (H...

(Source.) There are times when I feel as if I cannot trust myself. There are times when I feel as if my own judgement is insufficient to conquer my doubts, the internalized fear that has been with me since childhood. There are times when I fall into the trap poignantly stated by William Butler Yeats, Bertrand Russell, and even Charles goddamn Bukowski. These times are often no more feverish than when confronted with antisemitism... Here is paraphrased excerpt from Irena Klepfisz's "Anti-Semitism in the Lesbian/Feminist Movement" (pgs. 49-51), offering a series of questions that "both Jewish and non-Jewish women might consider asking in trying to identify in themselves sources of shame, conflict, doubt, and anti-Semitism." (H/t to The Debate Link for their summary and sourcing.) 1. Do I have to check with other Jewish people in order to verify whether something is antisemitic? 2. Do I distrust my own judgement on this issue? 3. When I am certa...

Manic. Pixie. Dream. Girl.  MPDG. The term was originally coined by film critic Nathan Rabin in response to Kirsten Dunst's character from Elizabethtown , circa 2005. The MPDG is "a type of female character depicted as vivacious and appealingly quirky, whose main purpose within the narrative is to inspire a greater appreciation for life in a male protagonist." Of course, the notorious MPDG significantly predates 2005. Indeed, the first nigh-universally agreed upon MPDG is Katharine Hepburn's Susan Vance from the 1938 comedy Bringing Up Baby . Subsequent MPDG's include notables such as Goldie Hawn in Cactus Flower, her daughter Kate Hudson in Almost Famous, Zooey Deschanel in... basically every character she plays, Rachel Bilson in Last Kiss, Audrey Tautou in Amelie, Ramona V. Flowers of the Scott Pilgrim comics, and (my personal favorite), Natalie Portman in Garden State. Key characteristics of the MPDG include: eccentricity, quirkiness, idiosyncrasies, full...

(Attribution) I've lived a life that has provided me with a near-endless supply of anxiety-induced, paranoid, cinematic, catastrophic nightmares. The Dead Man's Hour  is typically when this happens, waking up in a state of sleep paralysis  -- or possession by a Dybbuk . Because of course . Scenes of madness, of improbable (if not impossible) tragedy. Unspeakable but, apparently, not unthinkable. Grotesque evil filling the folds of my grey matter like sewage water until I feel as if I'm drowning. I tell myself scary stories of loved ones dying, loved ones violated, sudden illnesses, protracted injustices, years of good people eating shit in sufferance while the avaricious spend long lives of cruel bigotry and blissful ignorance. They rotate and repeat, varying the cast of characters, but playing the same soundtrack of horror. I imagine myself fighting back, a desperate gesture of a futility, and then falling... falling... until the closing dark suffocates me and ...