Everything Counts

The grabbing hands
Grab all they can
All for themselves after all

It's a competitive world
Everything counts in large amounts

  “Everything Counts,” Depeche Mode

 above, Depeche Mode in 1983; below, Alan Cohen and his collections

 

Ron Cohen’s 83-year-old brother Alan died in Berkeley and left a huge collection of knickknacks, figurines, ceramics, mugs, record albums, books, and other quirky items, according to the estate sale representative. Ron’s daughter Alysha retrieved a few mementoes. In a frame was the Depeche Mode lyric, “Everything Counts / In Large Amounts.” The English synthpop band Depeche Mode, still going strong, recorded “Everything Counts” for the 1983 album “Construction Time Again” as a condemnation of corporate greed and corruption.  It’s on the soundtrack of PlayStation’s action-adventure video game Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, released in 2006.

I watched “Red Sparrow” on HBO despite poor reviews because it starred talented Jennifer Lawrence as Russian ballerina Dominika Egorova. After a career-ending injury, she’s recruited by villainous Uncle Vanya (Matthias Schoenaerts) to attend a spy training center (Sparrow School) nicknamed “whore school.”  Dominika consents in order to retain medical care for her mother.  Despite Lawrence's stunning performance, “Red Sparrow” pales in comparison to the TV series “The Americans,” which presented Soviet intelligence operatives as sensitive and dedicated rather than heartless automatons.  Roger Ebert com’s Christy Lemire deemed it “more like a cheap exercise in exploitation than a visceral tale of survival.”  Lemire wrote:

 The cruel and emotionless leader of Sparrow School (Charlotte Rampling) known only as Matron, gives a speech to the class about how the West is weak, tearing itself apart with racial divisions and social media obsessions, and how it’s Russia’s time to step in and assert itself as the ultimate world power. This is about as close as “Red Sparrow” comes to addressing the renewed Cold War between Russia and the United States. (I guess a whole movie in which Jennifer Lawrence sits in a Moscow office building pumping out anti-Hillary Clinton Twitter bots would’ve been hard to market.)

In John Updike’s “Licks of Love in the Heart of the Cold War,” originally published in the Atlantic Monthly, proper Russian guide and translator Nadia accompanies Eddie, a banjo-playing musician, on an October 1964 good-will tour. Right before Eddie’s scheduled departure, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev was pushed out of power in a bloodless coup. In a hallway unlikely to have been bugged, Nadia confided: 

  Eddie, it was not civilized.  It was not done how a civilized country should do such things.  We should have said to him, “Thank you very much for ending the terror.”  And then, “You are excused – too much adventurism, O.K., failures in agricultural production, and et cetera. O.K., so long but bolshoi thanks.”

Each night Nadia and Eddie said goodnight with a handshake.  At the airport, in a scene more intimate than any of the anthology’s many sexual couplings, Eddie recalled, “We leaped the gulf between our two great countries and I kissed her on one cheek and then the other, and hugged her, in proper Slavic style.”  I was in Virginia Law School watching the 1964 World Series when a special bulletin announced Khrushchev’s overthrown.  As bumptious and cold-blooded as he had seemed, the deposed Soviet boss seemed less threatening than the faceless bureaucrats who succeeded him. I was in Virginia Law School watching the 1964 World Series when a special bulletin announced  Khrushchev’s overthrown. As bumptious and cold-blooded as the deposed Soviet boss had seemed, he seemed less threatening than the faceless bureaucrats who succeeded him.

 John Updike

A lover of banjo music, I often played my Flatt and Scruggs album in law school.  During his Soviet tour Eddie eschewed political and Cold War in favor of a brief history of the banjo, brought from Africa by slaves and a staple at minstrel shows.  In the comedy series Divorce Frances (Sarah Jessica Parker) meets a high school girl ridiculed for taking banjo lessons, who repeats this riddle: “What do you need when you find 100 banjo players up to their necks in water?”  Answer: More water.  My oldest friend, who I think of every day, played folk songs on his banjo. This evening I put on Steve Earle’s “Back Out on the Road Again,” which has a great banjo solo. 

Sarah Jessica Parker in Divorce

Updike’s “Licks of Love” stories are from the perspective of men in their sixties looking back to “a sweet time of self-seeking”on “the breadfruit island of Eisenhower’s America.”  In “How Was It, Really?” Don’s first wife Alissa gossiped about affairs and divorces; with wife number two Vanessa the topics were health and death. Don ruminates: “Between Vanessa and him there had come to prevail the tact of two cripples, linked victims of crime.”  

In Updike’s “His Oevres” faux Beat novelist Henry Bech encounters lovers while on a book tour reciting from a decades-old literary output that by his own admission was devoid of almost all that mattered.  Bech hated Q and A, especially questions about the meaning of his work or one such as, “How did you like the movie of [his road novel] “Travel Light” starring Sal Mineo?”  In Indianapolis one fan gushed, “It’s wonderful to have you here in the Hoosier State.”  Among the “devout Quaylites [Republican supporters of lightweight politician Dan Quayle] and Butler University evangels” he spotted Alice Oglethorpe. He recalled them playing bridge aboard the Santa Fe Super Chief and that he “timidly failed to bid a small slam though Alice had given clear signals that her hand was loaded.”  More memorable than the copulating in her sleeper was his dashing from the Chicago station during a brief stop “to buy, in that era just before the Pill’s liberating advent, a three-pack of Trojans at a Rexall’s” and that “the sly, blond-mustached clerk tried to talk him into an entire tin of fifty.”  Next evening, he could have used them and shuddered when Alice said she wouldn’t mind having his baby.

 Gary mural of Black Freedom Fighters near 10th and Broadway (Curtis Strong on left) 

According to Ruth Needleman’s “Black Freedom Fighters in Steel: The Struggle for Democratic Unionism,” Curtis Strong supported A Martin Katz against Richard Gordon Hatcher in the 1967 Democratic primary for mayor because the incumbent had a proven pro-labor record.  After Hatcher emerged victorious, he and wife Jeannette, president of the NAACP local chapter, worked tirelessly for the nominee in the general election.  Jeannette Strong’s father had been a supporter of Black nationalist Marcus Garvey and she had been active in the United Steelworkers (USWA) even before meeting Curtis. In 1968 they traveled to Mississippi together to assist in black voter registration. Jeannette later became Indiana state NAACP director.  In the Gary Crusader Needleman wrote:

  Curtis Strong was born in Mississippi in 1915, described by friends and foes alike “as a firestorm.”He grew up in Dixon, IL and then hired into the tin mill in 1937. His father was the son of the slave owner who had owned his mother’s family. Staying in Mississippi was never an option. Curtis grew up confident, conscious and militant and never got over the racism that kept him out of the air force. He wanted to fly planes.  He became the first Black griever at Gary Works in the Coke plant, founded the first Black caucus in steel, the Sentinel League, and then the Eureka Club, was vice president of his local, and then later went on staff.

According to “Black Freedom Fighters in Steel,” autocratic Joe Germano, USWA’s District 31 Director for a quarter-century, despised Curtis Strong and only agreed to promote him to a staff position under pressure from the rank-and-file and on condition that Strong be soon reassigned to the International’s Pittsburgh office.

In an essay titled “Trump and the Long View of History” Ray Smock compared Watergate with Trump’s lawbreaking:

    Even in the darkest days of Watergate, I never felt that the basic institutions of the United States were in jeopardy. What I saw with the investigations into Watergate was Congress doing its job and protecting the Constitution. What I saw in the press was a diligent quest for the truth while cover-ups and lies were the order of the day. What I saw in Nixon was a greatly flawed president who ultimately bowed to the rule of law and stepped down. He was a crook. But he faced the fact that his powers as president were not sufficient to place him above the law. 

    Trump is more troubling than Nixon and Watergate because he is defiant and far more corrupt than Nixon ever was. Nixon was a major American politician who went bad. Trump is a major American politician who started out bad and got worse. Trump came into office as a fraud and a criminal. Nixon had to work at becoming one. Nixon, for all his faults, was a skilled American politician. Trump is a complete disaster who does not know the first thing about how to govern. Nixon could still think of the Constitution and the good of the nation. Nixon could still listen to members of his own party who told him it was time to resign. Nixon was a staunch anti-communist who rose to power fighting against communism and the Soviet Union. Trump is a stooge of the head of the Russian Federation who used to be the head of the dreaded Russian spy agency, the KGB. 

Alan Yngve at IU Northwest; photo by Samantha Gauer 

Congratulating Chesterton bridge director Alan Yngve on becoming a Silver Life Master, regular partner John Polles told Barb Walczak for the bridge Newsletter:

  Those who know Alan know that he has developed an interesting bidding scheme he calls Demand Minor.  We used it against a well-known pair of senior life masters.  One of our opponents became agitated with our bidding – not understanding it and believing he was being taken.  Finally, in a fit of pique he challenged Alan by asking if Alan’s system wasn’t just another name for the Montreal Relay.  Alan with a hint of a smile simply answered that it was a little similar – but only better!  Modesty only goes so far.  Don’t mess with Alan.  L’Shalom

Like the Hawaiian word Aloha, Shalomin Hebrew can mean hello or goodbye, as well as peace, prosperity, tranquility or harmony.  Thus, the salutation  L’Shalommeans “In Peace.”

Charlie Halberstadt and I scored a 63.49% at Banta Center, top among the 17 couples.  Having eight and a half tables allowed Charlie, the direct, to employ the Mitchell movement where North-South couples are stationary and play three hands with each East-West pair.  Sally and George Will were the top East-West pair with 61.61%. Two cakes were on hand to celebrate the birthdays of Naomi Goodman and Al Marks.  They went fast, and Ed Hollander noted that soon only the Jolly Ranchers would be left.  Lo and behold, on the treat table was a large bag of the hard candies that I had never heard of before Matt Simmons told an anecdote at James’s graduation party about IUN Education Professor Vernon Smith tossing Jolly Ranchers to deserving students, a practice Simmons adopted at East Chicago Central. 

I was tempted to ask Daryl Penfold if she had a brother named Daryl, a running joke in the silly Bob Newhart series.  Onetime partner Dee Browne is in the hospital; unsettling and all too common among aging duplicate players. One hand I was dealt 7 Clubs to the Ace Queen but with no other high cards except for a Jack.  I preempted 3 Clubs and Charlie, void in Clubs but with a very strong hand, bid 3 No Trump.  He got set by Judy Selund and Don Geidemann, but those couples that played in 3 Clubs went down 5 because one opponent was also void and the player to my left held 6 Clubs, most higher than mine.

actress Julia Butters in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"

Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” features bravado performances by Leo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt as an insecure spaghetti western actor and his Vietnam vet sidekick. Julia Butters as a wise 8-year-old actress and Margot Robbie as innocent Sharon Tate are incandescent, points of light undimmed by cynicism, according to Rolling Stonecritic Peter Travers.  Charles Manson’s harem are portrayed as zonked out crazies hooked on drugs and TV.  I loved the use of 1969 shows such as “FBI” and movies such as “The Wrecking Crew” starring Dean Martin, Elke Sommer, and Sharon Tate, which the actress watches starry-eyed in an L.A. theater. In the row in front of me at GQT Portage 16 was a man and teen-age grandson.  Afterwards, as the older man was explaining the Manson murders, I told him, “I’m glad it ended when it did.” Before the unspeakable carnage. If, at the conclusion of the tumultuous Sixties, the moon landing signaled the triumph of technology, Sharon Tate’s death marked the end of the Age of Aquarius.