New free poetry chapbook AMERICA 2021: CHANGE WITHOUT CHANGING

 Here’s a roundup of some recent poems (with occasional revisions) that have appeared on my blog:

 https://www.scribd.com/document/510102209/America-2021-Change-Without-Changing

Clint Eastwood at 91

I was too young for the original run of RAWHIDE, but I can remember the impact of Clint Eastwood’s Man With No Name in the Sergio Leone trilogy released 1967-68 in America.  Eastwood, dispensing with niceties and amused/bemused by the transparent scheming of others, was a transgressive figure in an era where John Wayne’s unyielding patriarchy was still a predominant influence on mainstream Westerns.  In those days, black and white stills of Eastwood wearing his trademark poncho were turned into posters bought by antiestablishment youth.

And we know the rest of the story: Eastwood became a director in the early 70s, began courting film critic Respect with 1976’s THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES—and, as filmmaker, has a canon that mixes thoughtful classics (BIRD, WHITE HUNTER BLACK HEART, UNFORGIVEN, MYSTIC RIVER, LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, the underrated CHANGELING, FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS) with simple reactionary shoutouts to his aging, first generation audience who want their political/social conservatism validated (HEARTBREAK RIDGE, GRAN TORINO, THE MULE, RICHARD JEWELL).  One hopes Clint’s latest in a subgenre of valedictory films, CRY MACHO, will be a try-following-this mic drop to an almost seven-decade career.  [UPDATE 9/20/2021: It isn’t.  Less reactionary, but also paced like drinking a glass of warm milk before bedtime.]

Bonus episode of REVIEWS AND OTHERWISE podcast: 10 GUILTY PLEASURES

Discussion of films released between 1961 and 1982—including Roger Corman underwater and in outer space, Willian Shatner’s Italian Western, 50s pop star Fabian as 30s gangster Pretty Boy Floyd, the 1978 remake of THE BIG SLEEP and Bette Davis as a bank robber in hippie disguise  https://anchor.fm/terry-mccarty/episodes/Bonus-Episode-TEN-GUILTY-PLEASURES-e11puoe

Link to my new film/television reviews podcast.

 This is a project in its infancy, but should become stronger and more vibrant in the weeks to come.

 I now have a podcast with the title REVIEWS AND OTHERWISE, focusing on film/TV present and, sometimes, past.  Here’s a link to the premiere episode: https://anchor.fm/terry-mccarty/episodes/Reviews-And-Otherwise-Episode-1-e11oab6

Enjoy and subscribe if you wish to hear more.

New Poem: TEXAS, THEIR TEXAS

 Keep Texan children from thinking

 For themselves to make it easy for

 Parents to not explain sins of the past

 Or teachers too, for that matter

 >

 Deny non affluent women the right of choice

 Restage The Handmaid’s Tale as modern-day Western

 >

 Unemployment checks to feed families during pandemic?

 Utter waste of money and time

 Make them Beat The Clock to avoid starvation 

 >

 Unthinking children grow to subservient adulthood 

 The eyes of a chosen few Texans are upon them

 Making sure they stay peasants

 Waving the state flag

 Hating taxes 

 And whoever else they’re told to hate

 

New Poem: MTG vs AOC

 it’s the children’s magazine comic Goofus and Gallant come to life

 Goofus is now named Marjorie who peeps through mail slots

 refuses to do hard work with others on actual legislation 

 much easier to torment Alexandria (Gallant) for QAnon pleasure

 Congress is now the new stage for extremist performance art

 >

 the center-Left, saying “see Marjorie’s latest video outrage”

 becomes unwitting spreaders of ideological disease

 all over social media at Alexandria’s (and public) expense

 >

 America, this is the divided House you chose to build

 

New Poem: THE OTHER PLACE RAMBLE

It was a two story house close to the railroad tracks and just across from the train station mostly closed since passenger trains stopped coming through in 1967 the house had a brief alternate life as the small town’s teen center The Other Place for about eight months between 1973 and 1974 and it was quintessential small town 70s with jukebox playing China Grove, Smokin’ In The Boys’ Room and Basketball Jones downstairs with occasional dancing (one time I danced alone because I was too shy to approach girls)  and Wednesday night Bible study upstairs where one time things were running late so we watched some of the ABC-TV edit of FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE to kill time and just down the upstairs hall was a pool table where I would watch the people who knew how to play pool really really well and as I said earlier it returned to being a two-story family dwelling sometime in 1974 and from that point onwards I took young people’s theater classes on Saturdays in the city half-an-hour’s drive away which was good until my parents didn’t want me to play Billy Bibbit in a production of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST scheduled for the summer of 1975 at the theater and I didn’t stand up for myself and rock the boat—instead, all the acting I was allowed to do was One-Act Play competition in the small town (which led to competition in other towns and cities) and the Junior Class Play and that kept me busy for as long as these enterprises lasted

I wish The Other Place could have stayed open at least until my graduation in 1977 so I might have had somewhere to go to practice social skills and, if that had happened, it could have made a certain difference in how the remainder of the 70s and early 80s played out for me

Chris Cuomo explains to Don Lemon why Rick Santorum isn’t likely to leave CNN

By now, readers of this post are aware of a certain racist remark at the expense of Native Americans made by televised-by-CNN house conservative panelist Rick Santorum.

Santorum was a guest on Chris Cuomo’s Monday night show.

Don Lemon wasn’t having it.  Below is a link to the Cuomo-to-Lemon show transition:

https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1389402315359199233?s=21