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Author Archives: Stephen Robinson

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About Stephen Robinson

Stephen Robinson is a writer and social kibbitzer based in Portland, Oregon. He's on the board of the Portland Playhouse theater and writes for the immersive theater Cafe Nordo in Seattle.

Goodbye, Columbus, Georgia…

Georgia will most likely pass an extreme gun bill that will most likely end my visits to the state.

As also noted last week, if a police officer spots someone carrying a weapon in a government building, a bar, a church, an airport or anywhere else in public, the officer will be forbidden by state law from stopping that person to see if they have a gun permit. The change renders the law almost impossible to enforce, and in effect gives everybody in the state — criminal or upstanding citizen, sane or insane — an open-carry permit.

— If someone claiming to have a permit for the gun in their possession is arrested, law enforcement will have no quick way to determine if it’s true. Under HB 60, the state is forbidden to compile a list of those who have valid permits to carry, and permit holders who don’t carry their permits with them are now subject to a whopping $10 fine.

— Convicted felons who are banned by law from possessing firearms can still use the Stand Your Ground defense if they use a firearm to kill someone.

I enjoyed my last few trips to Athens, and I was looking forward to seeing Savannah again. I will now only see Georgia if I’m driving through it, and I will avoid if at all possible contributing to its economy. These laws provide stimulating banter at a cocktail party on the Upper West Side, but for someone of my particular skin complexion, they usually result in un-prosecuted death.

Abandoning Florida, as I did last year, was no big loss to me, but I will miss Georgia. I just prefer civilization more. This slow creep of madness will probably eventually send me outside of the country’s borders, but it was never really mine in the first place.

 
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Posted by on March 25, 2014 in Social Commentary

 

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Legal Coordination…

A reliable TV shorthand for an incompetent lawyer is the inability to hold on to important papers without dropping them all over the floor. This is why all your best lawyers have superior hand-eye coordination and a history of athletic excellence.

The last picture is from an episode of Law and Order, in which ADA Ross drops her papers on purpose so that the defense attorney will assume she’s incompetent and not take her seriously. Thus, the poorly coordinated lawyer trope combines with the pool hustler trope for a great bit of legal maneuvering.

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Posted by on March 13, 2014 in Pop Life

 

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Something Approximating Annie

The trailer for something they’re calling Annie starring Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz looks as lousy as it is terrible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrxc8rS2W2E

The race change for Daddy Warbucks (now named “Will Stacks” because there are only white people with the surname “Warbucks”) and Annie possibly requires the update to modern-day New York, but the depression-era setting was critical to the original stage production. If you change setting and character (and a race change is a character change — the experiences of a white orphan and a white millionaire from the 1933 is drastic enough from that of a black orphan and black millionaire from 2014 as to essentially make them different people), you’re no longer adapting the original story but rather producing something that is merely “inspired by.”

Aside from being far more faithful to the source material, the 1982 film featured Carol Burnett, Anne Reinking, Tim Curry, and Bernadette Peters, and the best you can give me 30 years later is Cameron Diaz and stale George Clooney and Facebook jokes? Really? It’s like no one told Diaz that she’s playing Miss Hannigan in an actual movie rather than a late-night TV show sketch.

 
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Posted by on March 11, 2014 in Pop Life

 

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Sbarro Falls…

Sbarro files for bankruptcy. I suppose 3D printing technology made it too easy to reproduce pizzas of similar quality in your own home.

The New York-based company, which is set to close 155 of its 400 locations nationwide, says “an unprecedented decline” in traffic at America’s malls is hurting its business. Emptying malls have also put the squeeze on Hot Dog on a Stick, which filed for bankruptcy just last month, and retailers like Abercrombie & Fitch, Wet Seal, and RadioShack.

According to real estate analytics firm Green Street Advisors, about 15 percent of U.S. malls will fail or be converted into non-retail space within the next 10 years. But for some, these companies are something other than victims of circumstance.

“Sbarro has been stuck with an outdated business model,” said Michael Whiteman, a restaurant consultant and president of Baum & Whiteman LLC in Brooklyn, New York. “Its biggest shortcoming is that it sells food that has been sitting out for a while.”

Wait? Hot Dog on a Stick is gone? And why is there such a thing as a Hot Dog on a Stick? Are we really that busy?

 
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Posted by on March 10, 2014 in Social Commentary

 

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Ukraine Shenanigans…

Fred Kaplan from Slate on the Ukraine situation.

A Romney administration’s response would have been to shout louder and get tougher (although corporate wheeler dealer versus former KGB agent seems a lopsided battle), which demonstrates to me how bad U.S. foreign policy has become in the past 20 years. It’s no longer whether we should get involved but how poorly we should bungle our involvement.

I also reject the notion that it’s perceived “weakness” that compels another country to defy U.S. interests. First off, Pee-Wee Herman could be president and he would still command the largest military in the world. It’s easy to speak loudly when you’re carrying other people’s sticks.

John Green helps you understand the Ukraine. In my younger and more vulnerable years, this is what I imagined 24-hour news networks would give us.

 
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Posted by on March 8, 2014 in Political Theatre

 

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Gentrified…

Gentrified…

Great piece in what was once The Oregonian about gentrification in Portland.

“We have both some bad history and limited history,” said State Rep. Lew Frederick, a Democrat who represents some of the Northeast Portland neighborhoods most changed or in the process of changing. “Most of the folks in Portland, the white folks, really do not interact with African Americans at all. When you start talking about this as a problem they go, ‘Where?’ because they don’t see it. They have no clue.”

Anna Griffin’s article is in response to recent statements Spike Lee made about gentrification in Brooklyn. One of the more irritating un-truisms New York publications like to repeat is that Portland is “Brooklyn without black people.” Of course, the Brooklyn that makes the pages of these New York publications is the “Brooklyn without black people.” It’s as “awash in hipsters” as Mississippi Avenue.

Gentrification’s effect on a city’s African-American population is often unspoken, but it’s interesting to note how they are an “In-Between Generation.” White Portland Boomers might have grown up in Northeast, but their Gen-X children were raised in the outer suburbs, and now those kids are returning to Alberta Street, after a fashion.

Prior to the attention Lee’s statements received, there was an interesting documentary on the subject called Gut Renovation.

By the way, I’m currently living in a gentrifying neighborhood in Seattle. As part of a biracial family, I never know if I’m part of what’s coming in or what’s going out.

 
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Posted by on March 7, 2014 in Social Commentary

 

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Not worth a Yugoslavian pfennig…

Not worth a Yugoslavian pfennig…

So, Lena Dunham is going to write an Archie comic.

Archie Comics have announced that Dunham will be writing a four-party Archie story to be published in 2015. Dunham story will follow Archie and the gang when they run into a new reality show filming in Riverdale.

“I was an avid Archie collector as a child — conventions, first editions that l kept in plastic sleeves, the whole shebang,” Dunham said in a press release. “It has so much cultural significance but also so much personal significance, and to get to play with these beloved characters is a wild creative opportunity.”

Dunham was born two years after I started reading Archie comics. My first was a copy of Archie Annual No. 45 for $1 that I bought from the Gulf Station down the street from my house. The crazy bearded Duck Dynasty-esque manager always looked like he’d blow my brains out if I breathed on a comic book without immediately paying for it.

I didn’t store that issue, which I still own, in a plastic sleeve at the time. Instead, I carried it with me everywhere I went and read the hell out of it, as comics were intended to be consumed before the dark times, before the speculator boom of the 1990s, and the Hollywoodification of comics that has almost destroyed the industry.

When I was 9, all I cared about were the stories in an Archie comic. If Molly Ringwald or some other popular figure of the time had written a story, I wouldn’t have noticed or cared. Years later, I learned the names Dan DeCarlo and Samm Schwartz but by then I’d already associated them with luscious depictions of Betty and Veronica and hilarious adventures with Jughead respectively.

I’ve no idea if Dunham is a four-color humor writer on par with George Gladir or Schwartz, but the following depresses the hell out of me:

Getting Dunham on board was the first official move of new Archie Comics Chief Creative Officer Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, who thinks she will be a “stunning fit” for the brand.

“When we found out Lena was a fan, the first thing I did was call Roberto,” Archie Comics Publisher and CEO Jon Goldwater said. “And he said, instantly, ‘Let’s try to make this happen!’ And here we are. It’s been a magical confluence of events, and it further cemented why Roberto is the ideal person for the CCO role, and why this is the next logical step in Archie’s evolution as a real pop culture company – a place where the strongest, most unique voices can come and contribute to Archie’s world. The best part is – we’re just getting started.”

No, I know how Jughead felt when he dug up that pot of gold and discovered just one Yugoslavian pfennig.

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Posted by on March 5, 2014 in Pop Life

 

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Starbucks… After Dark

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When the sun sets, the ubiquitous coffee chains makes a stunning transition from the place where you buy overprice lattes to the place where you buy overpriced glasses of Costco wine.

Starbucks… After Dark.

Do you want some bruschetta heated in the microwave for a predetermined time and served on a white plate with some random olives?

You can only find that at Starbucks… After Dark.

How about some macaroni cheese in a mini cast iron skillet? That’s just one of the many exciting, slightly forbidden things you’ll discover at Starbucks… After Dark.

 
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Posted by on March 3, 2014 in Social Commentary

 

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Noah

The upcoming Noah film starring Russell Crowe and Emma Watson (one of whom is playing Noah — it’s been a while since Sunday school) will have an advisory message to clarify that the film is fiction, unlike the Biblical story of the guy who built an ark so his family could survive a flood God caused in a genocidal fit of pique and then presumably repopulate the planet by incestuously mating with each other and seasick animals.

“The film is inspired by the story of Noah. While artistic license has been taken, we believe that this film is true to the essence, values, and integrity of a story that is a cornerstone of faith for millions of people worldwide. The biblical story of Noah can be found in the book of Genesis.”

The trailer looks absurd, but Crowe’s involvement tends to amp up the absurdity meter on most of his recent films, especially Les Miserable and Man of Steel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KETiiptWKM

As a comic book fan, for whom New Comic Day is my version of the Sabbath, if any film required an advisory because of its violation of the source material, it would be Man of Steel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OToWrnzK3gw

 
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Posted by on March 1, 2014 in Pop Life

 

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Utah gets all up in your business…

From Raw Story:

Utah state Rep. Jim Nielson (R) says that he is sponsoring a bill to force divorcing couples to take classes because he says that men are often “surprised” when women want to end the marriage.

The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that Nielson had filed a bill that would require couples to take part of mandatory divorces classes even sooner than the law required when Utah became the first state with the mandate in 1994. Nielson would like to see couples take at least half of the $55 two-hour classes at the beginning of divorce process.

While Nielson told The AP that he hoped the classes would reduce the divorce rate in Utah, he was even more specific about his goals earlier this month on an Internet show called DadsDivorce.com.

“The friends that I have that have gone through a divorce, most of the people that I know personally that have gone through that personally are men,” Nielson explained to host Matt Allen. “And my sense, at least from the men that I interact with, is that they’ve usually been surprised by the divorce request, by the filing.”

The women I know who have “surprised” men with divorces or break-ups had consistently made clear the problems in their relationships… but their spouses/boyfriends never listened or didn’t take it seriously until she — to quote the Gap Band — “burned rubber” on them.

http://youtu.be/EjL9-gCPzPc

Now, many of these men had every intention of seriously working through the issue in their relationships… as part of a formalized process with a clear end result (she comes back). They however either lacked the inclination or the ability to become more empathetic or engaged in the relationship on a consistent basis.

I call this the Romantic Comedy Myth. Vince Vaughn or Owen Wilson or Ben Stiller or some other overpaid man child has spent the past 90 minutes demonstrating to their partner and the audience that they shouldn’t be in a relationship with anyone but during the final 10 minutes of the movie, they make some grand declaration of love (showing up unannounced at her place of business with a mariachi band or rushing past security to board her flight out of town and tell her how he can’t live without her — failing to realize that his codependency is not her problem), and the credits roll as the couple kiss and make up. Fortunately, fiction and Fox News don’t have to reflect reality, so we don’t see the couple spiral back into the same problems.

 
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Posted by on February 28, 2014 in Political Theatre

 

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