Do the Right Thing

“Don’t worry be happy was a number one jam

Damn if I say it you can slap me right here.
    Public Enemy, “Fight the Power”

 

I vaguely recall seeing Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing” (1989) at IUN but observed many things watching it again that I had missed or forgotten.  It opens with a saxophone rendition of “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” and stars Spike Lee as pizza delivery man Mookie (after 1986 Mets hero Mookie Wilson), first seen wearing a Dodger uniform with 42 and Robinson on the back. Samuel L. Jackson is spot-on as a mellow, hip deejay who plays everything from jazz and soul to hip hop. Throughout the movie we hear Public Enemy on Radio Raheem’s boom box, which provokes the climactic riot, during which the crowd chants “Howard Beach,” a white neighborhood where a black man was murdered in 1986. There’s also references to Michael Stewart, killed while in police custody after being arrested for spray painting graffiti on a New York City subway wall.

 

“Don’t Worry be Happy,” referenced by Public Enemy, was a surprise number 1 hit in 1988 for Bobby McFerrin, who claimed the slogan came from Indiana guru Meher Baba (1894-1969), who was in vogue in the 1960s and whose following included the Who’s Peter Townshend.

 

Self-isolated for the better part of a month, I’ve been averaging a movie a day OnDemand. Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” was disappointing except for a brilliant performance by Jack Nicholson as a Boston mob boss and strong performances by Matt Damon and Leo DiCaprio, who have such a resemblance to one another it was hard at first to tell them apart.  Much more moving was “Blinded by the Light,” about a young Pakistani immigrant, Javed Khan, living in England during the 1980s whose life is transformed after someone introduces him to Bruce Springsteen.  Set, like “Do the Right Thing,” in the late 1980s, it shows the racism Muslims encountered in Great Britain.

 

Two good movies about lonely people are “The Station Agent” with Peter Dinklage (of “Game of Thrones” fame) and Bobby Cannavale (so good in “Boardwalk Empire”) and “The Yellow Handkerchief” (2008) starring William Hurt as an ex-con and Kristen Stewart before the “Twilight” series.  I first saw Hurt in “Altered States” (1980), and he played a scarred Viet vet in the 1983 classic “The Big Chill.”   I’ve looked forward to any movie he’s in ever since although for the past dozen years he’s mainly wasted his talent in “Avenger”-type flicks.  Born in 1950, Hurt’s only eight years my junior.

 

In addition to TV watching, I finished John Updike’s “Rabbit Is Rich” and am deciding whether to tackle the sequel, “Rabbit at Rest” or start a 700-page Tom Wolfe novel that takes place at the end of the century, “A Man in Full.”  Updike summarized the Texas culture of “money, booze, and broads” with these words: “God didn’t go west, He died on the trail.”  Describing Harry’s elderly mother-in-law, Ma Springer, looking shrunken and bent at the Philadelphia airport, Updike wrote, “Her former look of having been stuffed tight with Koerner pride and potential indignation has fled, leaving her chin collapsed in random folds and bloodless.  Deep liverish gouges underscore her eyes, and her wattled throat seems an atrocious wreck of flesh.” Ma Springer uses a Pennsylvania German word, ferhuddled, that means confused or befuddled.

“What you lose when you age,” Updike wrote, “is witnesses, the ones that watched you from early on and cared, like your own little grandstand.” My dad, Vic, died at fifty, Midge lasted till age 99.  Last year best childhood pals Terry Jenkins and Wayne Wylie died.  Grandstand nearly empty.

Through the magic of Facebook I’ve been getting likes on my posts from Kimberley McGrath, the daughter of high school classmate Susan McGrath and the sister of Maria, whom I met at a history conference in Montreal and have been friends with since.  Recently Maria posted an Alfred Camus quote that accompanied photos taken during a walk in the woods.  I commented: “As Camus wrote, even if the world is absurd, we must proceed as if our lives are meaningful.”  Kimberley responded, “Exactly.”

 

Robert Blaszkiewicz forwarded a post from Doug Ross recommending that people keep plague journals, something I’ve already been doing with my blog. Buying groceries at Strack and Van Til, I noticed disinfected shopping carts were ready for use, and additional hand wipes were by the door. The aisles were marked so as people would only go down them one direction. While there was a limited toilet paper supply, I did find a roll of eight and a three-pack of facial tissues.  About half the customers and staff were wearing masks, and shoppers were keeping a good distance from one another.  Tom from Toyota called with an offer to pick up my Corolla in regards to the airbag recall, then called to say my oil change was due in 800 miles and if I wanted them to do that plus rotate the tires.  Another call to suggest new tires, which I agreed to since a sale was going on and I trusted Tom, who’s been wit the company for over 30 years.  Next day I was able to pay the cashier by Discover card over the phone, and an hour later the car was back in the driveway. 

 

WW II vet James Forsythe, 95, of Crown Point passed away two weeks after his wife of 73 years Marge.  Growing up during the Great Depression from a family of eight that barely scraped by, he was drafted in 1944 at age 19 after failing to get into the navy and merchant marine. He served in England as a dental technician, met Marge while at Camp Atterbury in 1946 where he was a medical photographer, and served again in the Korean War.  He worked for many years for Indiana Bell and became active in veterans groups and Crown Point politics, serving two terms as mayor (1984-1991) after retiring from the telephone company. He was especially proud of leading efforts for the restoration of Crown Point courthouse (the Archives came into possession of nineteenth-century Land County land records when it had been scheduled for demolition).  Forsythe often dressed up as Abraham Lincoln for Fourth of July parades and, dressed as “Honest Abe,” recited the Gettysburg Address in front of the Indiana General Assembly.  Year ago, I was at the Portage library listening to a talk on Lincoln when a man arrived dressed as Abe and sat in the front row.  He never said a word and got up and left silently when it was over.  Could have been Forsythe.  NWI Times reporter Mary Freda wrote:

    James Forsythe always had a corny joke or silly song at the ready for any occasion, his children recalled. “There was always music, whether he was playing his guitar or music on the radio, or whistling – he whistled all the time, his daughter Margaret Wood said.

The obit added that Forsythe’s first job was delivering milk from a horse-drawn carriage at age 15 and that 77 years later, James, 92, was still jamming on guitar at Crown Point farmers market.