A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Slipcover art from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker's Multi-Screen Edition Blu-ray. © 2019, 2020 Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Well, it's Sunday, March 29, 2020, and it's the last weekend of a tumultuous month unlike any other since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks against America. Once again, the entire country is facing a danger that's posed not just to human lives, but to the values that many of us hold dear - civility, decency, moral courage, and a belief that we as a nation can unite despite partisan divisions and persevere in the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, unlike those dark and scary times after the Twin Towers fell and part of the Pentagon was scarred by the impact of an American Airlines Boeing 757 hijacked by Al Qaeda terrorists, when a mediocre Republican President named George W. Bush managed to rally the nation and prepared to strike back at our enemies, the ship of state is rudderless,. Most of...

Illustration Credit: Pixabay Another message to my conservative friends in South Florida and elsewhere, especially those who are die-hard loyalists of Donald Trump: Dear Friends, Do you remember those long-ago (or seemingly so) days in 2015 and early 2016, during the Republican Presidential primary season, when it looked like Donald Trump might, just might, become the presumptive nominee of your party? We warned you then: "He's not fit for the Presidency. He is a con man. A bigot. A notorious liar and braggart. He has no experience in government. He is abrasive and spiteful. A Trump Presidency will be disastrous." You dismissed us. You laughed at us. You bought your red MAGA caps (made in China, by the way) and called us "snowflakes." "Communists." "Libtards." You mocked us for wanting to avoid putting a rude, crude, and inept "businessman" in the White House. You had the gall to post photos of Melania Trump and opine th...

Chart Credit: Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU)  On the last week of March 2020, the United States of America reached a dark milestone in the novel coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic: the number of confirmed cases in the country exceeded those in China for the first time. As of 7:57 AM on Friday, March 27, there were 85,996 reported cases in the U.S. and its territories (including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. 1,300 persons have died from COVID-19, including 365 in New York City alone, over the past three months. And as more cases get reported due to more testing and more people die due to the uncoordinated and even lethargic response by the inept and morally bankrupt Trump Administration, those numbers are likely to spike upward before they stabilize and then gradually slope down sometime in mid-spring. Clearly, the current President of the United States, Donald Trump, is not up to the task of guiding this nation in a major...

Unbelievable. In the same week that Texas' Republican lieutenant governor Dan Patrick suggested that grandparents should sacrifice their lives in order to save the country and President Donald Trump rosily predicted that the war on the novel coronavirus will probably end in time for Easter, Glenn Beck piled on with his own idiocy. According to the Huffington Post and Media Matters, the popular right-wing commentator and author apparently shares Patrick's apocalyptic vision of older Americans going out to the workplace while their children and grandchildren stay at home, even though the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have determined that COVID-19 is more likely to kill older people who become infected. Per Huffington Post's story : “I would rather have my children stay home and all of us who are over 50 go in and keep this economy going and working,” he said in comments posted online by Media Matters. “Even if we all get...

Just when you thought Donald J. Trump, the 45th President of the United States, could sink no lower in his levels of incompetence, the Buffoon in Chief is signaling his impatience with the medically-necessary steps to limit the spread of COVID-19 and is making irresponsible predictions that the pandemic will end "before Easter." At a televised"town hall" arranged by Trump's favorite conservative media outlet, Fox News, the man who once said that the coronavirus pandemic would not have a serious impact on the U.S. and that the Democrats were exaggerating the gravity of the situation for political gain during an election year was irritated and, at the same time, making rosy predictions about when America could go back to business as usual. Per the New York Times:   President Trump said on Tuesday that he wanted to reopen the country for business by Easter, on April 12, despite widespread warnings from public health experts that the worst effects of the co...

So now we've come to this. As President Donald Trump questions the wisdom of putting into place medically-necessary measures to protect Americans from the world-wide coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic because they're "doing more harm than good" to the economy, his Republican acolytes are clamoring for an end to quarantines, closures of businesses, and a return to normal activities. It's no secret that the GOP has long had a reputation for being the party of Big Business. The alliance between the Republican Party and what we now call the "One Percenters" began sometime after Reconstruction and was solidified by the time of the 1912 Presidential election, the race that split the party's pro-business wing (led by incumbent William Howard Taft) and its more progressive one (led by ex-President Theodore Roosevelt). In that intramural battle royale, TR and his adherents ended up forming a third party (the Bull Moose Party); as a result, a weakened Taft...

Graphic by Open-ClipArt Vectors from Pixabay From Facebook's Captain Grammar Pants group : This is a non-standard post, driven by the fact that I am in self-quarantine; it has nothing to do with grammar. If you want all of your friends to (figuratively) blow up your newsfeed, just ask them to take a film title and substitute "toilet paper" for one of the nouns. For example: O Toilet Paper, Where Art Thou? My Fractured Toilet Paper Movie Titles A Toilet Paper Too Far The Toilet Paper on the River Kwai Toilet Paper Now The Battle of Toilet Paper Zero Dark Toilet Paper Captain Toilet Paper Raiders of the Lost Toilet Paper Revenge of the Toilet Papers Zulu Toilet Paper Band of Toilet Papers The Lord of the Toilet Paper Star Wars - Episode I: The Phantom Toilet Paper Star Wars - Episode II: Toilet Paper of the Clones Star Wars - Episode III: Toilet Paper of the Sith Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Toilet Paper Star Wars - Episode V: The Toilet Paper S...

To my conservative friends who are posting false comparisons between the Obama Administration's handling of the swine flu outbreak in 2009 and the current Administration's handling of COVID-19 on social media: Stop it. When the world experienced the swine flu pandemic, Barack Obama was just settling in as President. The first cases were reported by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in late March, around the same time that the Obama Administration was dealing with the disastrous state of the economy, which had been battered by the Great Recession of 2008. It took the federal government less than a month to declare a public health emergency, but because the novel Influenza A/H1N1 was a new strain, it took the medical community several more months to get a handle on the outbreak and its spread. President Obama declared a National Health Emergency on October 24, 2009. In all, the CDC estimates that at least 60 million Americans were infected, 274,000 were hospitalized, an...

Hasbro Star Wars: The Black Series #91 contains Rey and the droid D-O from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Photo Credit: Hasbro, Inc. © 2019 Hasbro and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) On October 4, 2019. 11 weeks before the premiere of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Hasbro released a "wave" of eight Star Wars: The Black Series action figures for the company's "Triple Force Friday" assortment of new  Star Wars collectibles and toys. This wave consisted of: Supreme Leader Kylo Ren Cal Kestis Rey & D-O Sith Trooper The Mandalorian Offworld Jawa Second Sister Inquisitor First Order Stormtrooper Although several of the Star Wars action figures in the October 4 wave are based on characters from video games (Cal Kestis is featured in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order ) and Lucasfilm TV shows ( The Mandalorian and Star Wars: Rebels ), four figures represent the then-unreleased final film of the Skywalker Saga, Star Wars - Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker. ...

Jannah, a former First Order stormtrooper, is Hasbro's 98th Star Wars: The Black Series six-inch scale action figure. Photo Credit: Hasbro, Inc. © 2019 Hasbro and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) On December 20, 2019, Walt Disney Motion Pictures Studio released Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (aka Star Wars - Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker ), the ninth and final film of the Skywalker, in North American theaters. Co-written by Chris Terrio and J.J. Abrams and directed by the latter, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker grossed over $1.074 billion worldwide and was nominated for three Academy Awards (Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing, and Best Visual Effects). But even before the film premiered, Hasbro had already released a wave of action figures, vehicles, and other toys and collectibles based on The Rise of Skywalker. These included the 23rd wave of Star Wars: The Black Series six-inch scale action figures, which consists of: First Order Jet Trooper Luke Skywalker (Yavin Ce...

Graphic by Open-ClipArt Vectors from Pixabay In these dark and scary times when most of us ﹘ except virus deniers, stubborn individualists, skeptical libertarians, the occasional inebriated Spring Breaker and #CoronaKatie ﹘ are coping with the New Normality of self-quarantines, social distancing, and trying to remember the symptoms of the novel coronavirus known as COVID-19, humor is an excellent and essential coping mechanism. Now, I know that laughter is not the best medicine to fight the virus itself; avoiding infected persons, washing hands with soap and water, staying away from places where 10 or more people gather, and being mindful of your surroundings are the best preventive measures. But in a world where the reports of more cases and more deaths assail our eyes, ears, and nervous systems on a 24/7 basis, humor ﹘ even gallows humor ﹘ helps keep us sane and a bit less stressed out. So, without further ado, here are some suggestions for Broadway musicals with a COVID...

Image by Miguel Padrinan, via Pixabay We Said, They Said: An American Tragedy He's unfit for the job, we said. He's incompetent and dishonest, we said. "But her emails..." they replied. He's a fuckup, we said. "But our 401Ks are doing so well!" they chanted. Now. COVID-19. DJIA below 20,000. We told 'em so. © 2020 Alex Diaz-Granados

Hasbro's #102 Star Wars: The Black Series 6-inch-scale action figure features Wedge Antilles, veteran of the Battles of Yavin, Hoth, and Endor during the Galactic Civil War.  Photo Credit: Hasbro, Inc.© 2019 Hasbro and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL)  In 2019, in anticipation of the release of Star Wars - Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, Hasbro (originally known as Hassenfeld Brothers) of Pawtucket, Rhode Island released several "waves" of Star Wars themed collectibles and toys. Some, like the Star Wars Vintage Collection's Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Poe Dameron's X-Wing Fighter, were aimed at adult collectors (such as me!) with their retro late-970s/early 1980s-styled packaging and use of the old "Kenner" brand's logo. I received this beauty as part of my birthday gift during a two-day visit to Disney Hollywood Studios' Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge attraction. Photo Credit: Hasbro, Inc. © 2019 Hasbro and Lucasfilm Ltd. (LFL) Hasbr...

Map showing active cases of COVID-19 throughout the world as of 6:33 AM Eastern Daylight Time. Credit: Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). An open message to my conservative friends (those who will listen to reason, anyway): The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has hit our shores. As of this morning, there are 4,661 confirmed cases in the United States. 85 persons have died; 17 have recovered. The others are still sick. And, as more tests become available to healthcare workers, the number of COVID-19 patients will increase exponentially. So will the deaths. This is not alarmism; this is the reality of how viral diseases spread. I don't make it a habit of visiting my Trump-supporting friends' social media pages, but (at least on Facebook) my newsfeed often shows me posts from my conservative friends' timelines and comments from posts. The least offensive and relatively harmless posts are ones that are of a religious ...

The number of confirmed cases and fatalities as of March 15, 2019. Credit: Johns Hopkins University.  Life in America in the time of Coronavirus-19 (COVID-19): An ex-beauty queen from Nevada, Katie Williams , has become the poster child for entitled, coddled, and contrarian conservatives who laugh in the face of the COVID-19 outbreak. On Saturday, Ms.Williams, who became notorious last year as the Trump-supporting Miss Nevada who was uncrowned by the Miss Nevada organization for violating its ban on political commentary on social media by contestants, bragged about going to a local Red Robin burger joint in defiance of the federal government's recommendation of social distancing to prevent COVID-19's spread. In response to a tweet by Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY 14 District) that called for young adults (in the 20-30 age bracket) to avoid gathering at restaurants and bars to help contain the coronavirus, Ms. Williams had this to say: Screenshot of the infamous ...