#Salon Magazine

[scottguy]

Article: "Traumatized by Trumpism": The toll of outrage fatigue on MAGA

"Traumatized by Trumpism": The toll of outrage fatigue on MAGA

Here's the original article that two sections of were posted previously.

[eros-thanatos89]

(Ok, this interview is linked in the article about Lalo which I posted earlier, but it’s really good, so I wanted to post it separately, too!)

I love how thoughtful Michael Mando is and how he waxes poetic in all of his interviews ❤️❤️ It’s evident that he’s extremely passionate and puts a ton of heart and soul and thought into his roles!

I really appreciate that here, he highlights the importance of Nacho as more than a one dimensional criminal, and rather, a complex character. And “a brown man who is heroic” through Nacho’s arc of “breaking good” as he first strives to escape from the criminal lifestyle, and then ultimately sacrifices himself to save his father.

Speaking of his father, I also really appreciate that he highlights Manuel Varga as one of the most honest and virtuous characters in the whole BCS/BrBa universe, and a single father who is a brown-skinned first generation immigrant 🤎🤎

Michael is so right! We need more representation of complex, fully human Latino and immigrant characters! ❤️ (That was one of the flaws of the BCS/BrBa franchise. Most of its Latino characters are pretty one dimensionally “bad”. Nacho and his father, along with Steve Gomez and Andrea are the few exceptions.)

Please, someone in TV/movie production, hear my prayers and cast this man in more variety of roles, not just drug dealers and gangsters 🙏

[bodybybane]

"They didn’t think I was pretty enough": Winona Ryder on almost missing out on an iconic role https://www.salon.com/2024/07/12/they-didnt-think-i-was-pretty-enough-winona-ryder-on-almost-missing-out-on-an-iconic-role/

[krispyweiss]

Basketball Great and Grateful Dead Enthusiast Bill Walton Dies at 71

- “Our hearts are heavy today in the Grateful Dead community,” Dead & Company’s Oteil Burbridge says

NBA Hall of Famer Bill Walton - who was also one of America’s biggest, and largest, Grateful Dead fans - died May 27 at 71 of cancer, the NBA said in a statement.

In addition to his HOF induction, Walton was the NBA’s most valuable player and two-time league champion, making him “one of the most consequential players of his era,” said the Boston Celtics, where Walton finished his playing career.

“He derived great joy from basketball and music and deeply cherished his moments with teammates and friends,” the team said of Walton. “As a Celtic, Bill overcame years of debilitating injuries, regained his zest for the game and helped guide the 1986 Boston Celtics championship with both his play and his spirit. The Boston Celtics celebrate Bill’s wonderful life and legacy and send their deepest sympathies to the Walton family.”

Walton saw more than 850 Grateful Dead concerts and could be seen towering over audiences at concerts by post-Jerry Garcia spin-off bands, as well. He credited the band for his passion on the court in a 2016 interview with Salon, in which he quoted lyrics from “Terrapin Station.”

“I learned from them about how to become a champion,” Walton said. “I became the basketball player that I was because of the Grateful Dead. I am the human being that I am today because of the Grateful Dead. They’re right there at the top of my teachers. Their inspiration moved me brightly.”

“I loved Bill Walton,” Grateful Dead co-founder Bill Kreutzmann said. “As we say in the land of the Dead: ‘May the four winds blow him safely home.’”

Walton’s “favorite thing to do was to inspire people to love life as much as he did,” Dead & Company bassist Oteil Burbridge said.

“He brought out the best in people,” Burbridge said. “If his name ever came up in conversation, everyone broke out into a big smile. … Our hearts are heavy today in the Grateful Dead community. A community that he loved so dearly. He embodied the best spirit the Grateful Dead world has to offer.”

Other musicians who became friends with the six-foot, 11-inch guy down in front - including the Marshall Tucker Band and John Fogerty - also eulogized Walton.

“He was truly a very special and joyful person and his megawatt smile made everyone smile,” Fogerty said. “His enthusiasm for life and all things rock and roll was unstoppable and we miss you Bill.”

Former Sen. Al Franken last saw Walton at a Dead & Company gig. The comedian remembered his friend as “a sweet, giant of a man with a sweet and giant spirit.

“My heart goes to his family and all who had the privilege of knowing Bill,” Franken said.

Walton also became a “dear friend and supporter” of Dark Star Orchestra, the country’s best-known Grateful Dead cover band.

“The whole DSO organization sends condolences to his family and those closest to him,” the band said. “We always enjoyed every moment around him and share in the community’s collective grief of his loss.”

5/27/24

[whileiamdying]

Ray Bradbury: The man who made sci-fi respectable

The late Ray Bradbury wrote more than high-tech tales. He should be considered alongside Hemingway and Faulkner

By TED GIOIA PUBLISHED JUNE 6, 2012 8:30PM (EDT)

FILE - This Jan. 29, 1997 file photo shows author Ray Bradbury at a signing for his book "Quicker Than The Eye" in Cupertino, Calif. Bradbury, who wrote everything from science-fiction and mystery to humor, died Tuesday, June 5, 2012 in Southern California. He was 91. (AP Photo/Steve Castillo, file) (AP)

Science fiction icon Ray Bradbury, who died Tuesday at age 91, picked out his epitaph long before he passed away. His headstone, which is already in place at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, reads “Author of 'Fahrenheit 451.'“

Can I lobby for a bigger headstone and a longer text? Ray Bradbury’s legacy rests on much more than that one book, even a remarkable work such as “Fahrenheit 451.” It’s fitting that the week Bradbury leaves us, the New Yorker releases a issue devoted to science fiction. No one did more than Ray Bradbury to legitimize sci-fi in the eyes of the literary establishment, and pave the way for today’s newfound respectability of genre writing.

His books contained powerful ideas, even when they seemed to deal in the most fanciful topics. In a genre famous for escapist concepts, Bradbury refused to use the escape hatch. His books told us about ourselves, even as they ranged widely over the universe. Can you fit that on the headstone?

“I’m in shock,” relates author John Scalzi, president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, in a phone call from Book Expo America in New York. “He was the last of the greats, the last connection to the Golden era. You think of Clarke, Heinlein Asimov and Bradbury. To have him gone is closing the door, for the culture of science fiction and the literature of science fiction.”

“We won't ever forget,” adds novelist Neil Gaiman, who in an eerie coincidence recorded the audiobook version of his contribution to a forthcoming Bradbury tribute book — “Shadow Show: All-New Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury” — just yesterday. Other tributes have poured in from writers, editors, actors and celebrities, the very range of the response testifying to how many lives Bradbury touched and the scope of his influence.

Bradbury first captured the imagination of the younger generation, teenagers and college students, but soon even the professors took notice, assigning “Fahrenheit 451” alongside Hemingway and Faulkner. And for good reason. Bradbury was much more than a teller of high-tech tales. No science fiction author of his generation had a more polished or more poetic prose style — a skill that stood out all the more given the slapdash sentences of his pulp fiction contemporaries. But Bradbury’s greatest skill was his ability to inspire readers to reflect deeply on our society and values, even when his books dealt with Mars or the future or some other tried-and-true genre concept.

With book burnings and repression of ideas still part of our daily news, Bradbury’s most famous novel has much to teach us even today. You may remember “Fahrenheit 451” — or the celebrated film François Truffaut made from it — for the disturbing scenes of “firemen” whose job is no longer to put out blazes but to start them, consigning all literary works to the flames. But Bradbury’s story has other lessons to teach us. What you may have forgotten about “Fahrenheit 451” is that communities only started burning books after they had lost interest in reading and the exchange of ideas. Their immersion in entertainment compromised their engagement as citizens. That lesson may be even more timely in modern America, where flames are hardly necessary to undermine our political and civic institutions.

Bradbury lived up to his ideals in other ways. He was a longtime champion of book culture and reading. “Libraries raised me,” Mr. Bradbury once commented. “I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries.” He often spoke at libraries and campaigned to keep them open and well funded. Bradbury started his writing career at the bottom. At age 14, he managed to convince comedian George Burns to look at some his writing, and placed some of it on the popular Burns and Allen radio show. Bradbury’s first piece, “Pendulum,” published in Super Science Stories in 1941, earned him just $15. But Bradbury was both ambitious and prolific — he leaves behind more than two dozen books and over 600 short stories — and conquered markets for sci-fi that few of his peers could match. He moved from Weird Tales to Mademoiselle, and from there on to Harper’s and the New Yorker, a path that anticipated the later evolution and legitimization of the whole sci-fi category.

Despite his status as a science fiction guru and futurist, Bradbury was ambivalent about technology, and sometimes decidedly hostile to innovation. Don’t be fooled by the Jaguar in his garage; Bradbury never learned to drive a car. In a 2001 interview with Salon, he derided video games as “male ego crap.” When Yahoo approached him about putting his works online, his pithy response was: “To hell with you and to hell with the Internet.” Are you surprised? Not if you have paid attention to Bradbury’s stories, which reveal more apprehension than admiration about technocracy and future-tripping. What you may not know is that some of Bradbury’s most moving writing is about the past, and drew on his own Midwest childhood in Waukegan, Ill., where he was born in 1920. His books “Dandelion Wine” and “Something Wicked This Way Comes” contain some of the most poignant explorations of youth and small-town America in our nation’s literature.

That’s how I would like Bradbury to be remembered: as a connecting point between the richness of the past and the promise of the future, celebrating both, but always with caution, sometimes with firmness and outspoken views. Yes, his legacy includes one seminal book, but even more, he told us why we should cherish all the other books too, and he kept us vigilant against those who wish to destroy or marginalize our literary heritage. While others fought for their place in the library, he fought for the entire building, and the broader culture and openness it represented. We can honor him with words of praise, but even better would be to continue to uphold these same ideals now that he’s gone.

TED GIOIA new book, “The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire,” will be published by Oxford University Press in July

[cheryllclayton]

[claramaridiary]

[eros-thanatos89]

How am I just coming across this think piece about Lalo?

It’s a very well written piece and reflection on his ability to be a “chameleon” and blend in wherever he needs to.

And one of the only pieces of writing about Lalo I’ve ever seen (hit me up if you know of any more!) that recognizes his light-skinned privilege and ability to “pass” as non-Latino. Tony Dalton is a güerito, which gives Lalo a unique ability among the more morenito Salamancas and cartel members to pass in majority White spaces. It’s not something that’s terribly relevant to the plot of Better Call Saul, but does add another interesting layer of privilege to his character. And contributes to his chameleon nature and his ability to be confident and charming in almost any setting.

[pettycentral]

[midnightfunk]

Where does McConnell factor into all of this?

Well, considering that the intelligence community unanimously agrees that Russia is still actively interfering in America's elections, it stands to reason that patriots on both sides of the aisle should want to beef up our election security so that our democracy will remain intact. Yet McConnell has obstructed legislation that would do precisely this, and the only logical explanation for him doing so is that he knows Russian meddling is likely to benefit Republican candidates. When he was called out on this with the insulting but deserved epithet "Moscow Mitch," he responded with a Senate speech in which he whined, "Keeping our republic means we can't let modern-day McCarthyism win. So here is my commitment: No matter how much they lie, no matter how much they bully, I will not be intimidated."

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat who has actually been accused of being a traitor simply because of her politics, responded to an analogous McConnell tweet by writing on Twitter: "McCarthyism is the practice of baselessly accusing political opponents of being communists as unjust grounds for targeting & harassment. You are blocking action to protect US elections despite official DoJ pleas. That doesn’t make you a communist. It just makes you a bad leader."

[claramaridiary]

[babakca]

Estetica Magazine cover Shot by BABAK Photo   www.babak.ca 

The image is the winner of the Goldwell Trend Zoom 

[midnightfunk]

You thought Trump was opposed to “sharia?”

#DementiaDon