Freedom 250

Most of the speakers, Trump, Vance, Hegseth, addressed the Christian nation rally by way of video. Is it MAGA or MACA, make America Christian again. The most important political figure to appear in person was Mike Johnson . UFC Freedom 250 will occur on the South Lawn of the White House, July 14. The Freedom 250 Grand Prix is scheduled from August 22-23. The route turns down Ninth Street onto Constitution Avenue, crosses the National Mall on Seventh Street, and loops back via Independence Avenue and Maryland Avenue to Third Street. Drivers include such well known names as Christian Rasmussen and Josef Newgarden who will speed past crowds almost 200 mph. The question is do you have to be Christian to attend?

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star 

Childhood

Childhood is a long slog. Holden Canfield says:  "If you really want to hear about it...and what my lousy childhood was like." You're always hungry, your feet are frozen and your fingertips sting from the cold. There's nothing to do. School days go on forever. You come home snack, study, eat dinner by yourself at 5 since you can't wait for dad  who's always in a hurry though he always comes home later with the small of whiskey on his breath. Your parents' fighting frightens you. You want everything to be alright. You hold the hope that the book report you hand in will garner an A. You are always wishing for improbable things and are surprised only in those moments when you're not looking. Good news is like a rabbit punch. You don't see it coming, but it will always be this way. Your stomach churns in the morning. You say the pledge. The teacher calls the roll. The mocking laughter dies--one of those swells that never becomes a wave-- the second your name is uttered. The linoleum in the hallways smells like vomit. You need a pass to go to push the door marked "Boys." You hope no one else is in the bathroom. You're mostly lucky. Everyone has that one experience of being bullied by the smell coming from a stall--which makes you gag. Recess and dismissal both become mimicked in your life as an adult.

ead "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star 

Power of the Purse

Hermès Birkin Bag

It's almost inane to point out the preposterous contrarieties of MAGAism. Trump backing flavored vapes is the latest. What about Dobbs? No matter. You would rather be a big tobacco company then a woman who chooses to use Mefipristone--which according to the right-to-lifers needs more evaluation, for women's sake. For God sake's! Continued strategic ambiguity on Taiwan, continued appeasement of Russia on Ukraine? Why not fatten up Russian coffers with the Strait of Hormuz blocked? Value-free politics, realpolitik--which ever way you put it, the buck stops here.

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star 

Donald Trump Captured!

South Entrance Quincheng Prison in Peking

What if Xi Jinping pulled a Maduro and put Trump under arrest for criminal behavior? The equivalent of The Metropolitan House of Detention where Maduro is being held (and Jeffrey Epstein was held) is Quincheng, notorious for holding political prisoners. What crimes could Trump be accused of? Violating the emoluments clause and the War Powers Act, commencing the demolition of the East Wing without approval of the group of architects and preservationists who supervise The White House,  awarding an $18 million dollar contract for a reflecting pool at The Lincoln Memorial without going through the normal bidding process--are just a few of the many infractions that Xi Jinping might cite. The fact the President of the People's Republic of China has no jurisdiction over the President of the United States is irrelevant in world fueled by gaslighting. Everyone always knew that behind the Chinese leader's avuncular exterior was a ruthless tyrant. The recent purge of the generals is only one example. John McCain famously stayed in the Hanoi Hilton. Trump must have built up enough points for admission to the Peking version.

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star 

2 New Yorker Poems

There are two notable poems in th 5/4 New Yorker. "Tompkins Square" by Anthony Walton includes the following lines: "content with indefinite apprehension," "sprang from the facticity of her body," "simple theater of one man and one woman," "swallowed all intentions," "Experience and Recrimination," and "uncertain scholars of the inevitable." Spoiler alert: the two would be lovers consummate  in a friend's studio. The second poem is a "A Theory on the Origin of Language" by Tishani Doshi.  Is she tipping her hat to "Pale Fire "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain," when she begins. "a lapwing piercing the still dark still." Later,  "The ancestors of lapwings--they had feathers for a million years before ever using them to fly."  From an evolutionary point of view, this last line is spot on. But the title is the poem too and it makes the reader take one step back. Is it hyperbole or supposition?

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star 

Death Redux

"The Waters of the Lethe by the Plains of Elysium"

  
When one of you is no longer there, the other will feel rejected. Death is the ultimate rebuff. There's always the hope you can turn someone's head around, change the feelings of the client who has decided to change their loss of supply. Death won't be convinced otherwise. It's impossible to absorb death or the idea that there are no possibilities left. Why not one final word, one last chance to set things straight or even just say goodbye? Finality is itself an impossible concept to entertain. Doesn't every one gets a fortune cookie's length of reprieve, the chance to exchange an aphorism, pieties or merely just one last neither/nor. Not the tired "Neither a borrower nor lender be." That's silly advice to the dead, but just the truth, "For loan often loses both itself and friend."

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star 

painting by John Roddam Spencer Stanhope

Visconti's Bellissima

Visconti's Bellissima (1951), currently in revival at Film Forum, is "romantic neorealism." It’s an obvious vehicle for Anna Magnani whose operatic flourishes make one cry. It’s about the depredations of cinema albeit in their most melodramatic form. At one point Magnani beautifully and simply says that acting is being someone else, but the plot centers around a contest. You’ve seen the crowd scenes and screaming mothers in other films particularly In Pasolini’s Mamma Roma and Fellini’s Roma. Here the histrionics reach the level of farce since all the mothers including Magnani are promoting their 5-8-year-old daughters. Spoiler Alert: Magnani is depicted in her usual desolate state, but the little girl who has been the subject of ridicule gets the part—in fact because of her lack of beauty and ability (she can’t even blow out the candles on a cake). It's meta to the extent that the film is about the film, the casting of an Italian Shirley Temple. American films are everywhere with Magnani and her husband watching a John Wayne western on a huge screen put up on their neighborhood street and one of the would-be child stars lifting her skirt to do a Lana Turner. You may feel the film is not the Visconti at his best while appreciating the set pieces which include some wonderfully sublime portraits of Magnani's face.

read "Double Reverse Midas Touch" by Francis Levy, The East Hampton Star