#the racket

[mudwerks]

Real Story Book / A. Dick / The Racket

King Publishing Company / USA 1928

[thatstormygeek]

But it isn’t worth getting lost in the pedantic details; details that even Trump doesn’t waste time on. What matters here is the overall image he and his coterie wanted to paint: an image constructed by surrounding the doddering, terrified 78-year-old manchild with comic symbols of hypermasculinity (Hulk Hogan, Kid Rock, Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White—the latter of whom was last seen drunkenly slapping his wife in a Mexican night club on New Year’s Eve); by Trump kissing the fireman’s uniform of his “fan” killed by a stray bullet at his rally, and wearing the comically oversized ear bandage to remind everyone of his near-brush with death. It is the image of Trump as God-appointed leader, the nation’s savior, and protector against the violent “un-human” hordes. Major media, parroting the Trump team’s pre-spin, had promised for days that the speech would be an exercise in “unity,” reflecting a newfound humility that Trump had allegeldy gained from his brush with assassination last weekend. Racket readers were better prepared: As I argued on Tuesday, Trump’s obvious move would be to follow the example of fascist leaders before him —including Generalissimo Francisco Franco and, yes, Hitler — in claiming that his near-death experience was “proof” that his authority was sanctioned by the divine.

An insane, rambling mess of lies

On Trump's 2024 Republican National Convention acceptance speech. Plus a quiz: Who said it, Trump or Hitler?

The New York Times tried to “contextualize” Trump’s threats a few days ago, noting that the “costs and hurdles would be enormous.” But this is, again, missing the forest for the pedantic trees. The point isn’t that it would be easy or legal to round up 20 million people, any more than it was going to be easy or possible to “build the wall” during his previous term. It’s that this is the direction he wants to drag the entire country in. And don’t be confused about this: Rounding up 20, or even 10 or 5, million people is a project that will touch every aspect of life in the United States. It will mean checkpoints and random raids at workplaces and in neighborhoods; it will mean mistakes, wrongful detentions and deportations, racial profiling and state violence at an unprecedented scale. I can tell you from having covered past threatened mass expulsions, particularly in the Dominican Republic, that even when the full extent of the government’s threat is not realized, in practice it is an exercise in terror and a virtual carte blanche for violence against the targeted minority, up to and including outright lynching. The Times wrote that “consensus among immigration experts and former homeland security officials is that logistical, legal, bureaucratic and cost barriers would make it virtually impossible to carry out the mass deportations Mr. Trump seeks in the span of a four-year presidential term.” But what legal barriers? The Supreme Court just ruled that a president can do whatever he wants, so long as it is an “official act.” And who says Trump — who, again, tried to overthrow an election by force — will allow himself to be limited to just one more four-year term? And I guess, at root, that’s why I and other political observers sat through all 92 minutes of the longest, most rambling, incoherent speech by a major party nominee in televised history. Because if the Democrats, media, and the rest of the supposed pro-democracy opposition don’t get it together and figure out how to stop this immediately, it will be a preview of the next chapter of our lives.

[forthegothicheroine]

New-to-me movies seen in 2024: The Racket (1951)

"Born with an alibi in your mouth, huh?"

The Big Noirvember: Starring Robert Mitchum

[thirtytwoelvismovies]

The Racket (1951). Dir. John Cromwell.

[filmnoirfoundation]

We hope that you enjoyed FNF prez Eddie Muller’s presentation of THE RACKET this weekend on @turnerclassicmovies Noir Alley. We devoted NOIR CITY e-magazine No. 2 to the multi-faceted actor Robert Ryan who co-starred in the film. Buy it here.

Your bucks go towards the Film Noir Foundation's restoration efforts. E-mag art design by Michael Kronenberg.

[dearduende]

not-knowing my way through the entropy swells

You know that moment when you first wake, even before you open your crusty eyes? That moment of not-knowing. What day it is, or what time. Even where you are. Like the first few nights in a new city, a new bed, new traffic sounds outside the window. Car horns sound differently in different countries. The air smells differently too, maybe heavy with humidity and clay roads, or dry through your sinuses from the heater on blast all night. Or you’re suddenly waking, back in your childhood bedroom. 

That split moment of not-knowing as I’m just waking, maybe that’s something like what the Buddhists refer to when they speak of not-knowing. Not ignorance. Just, not-knowing. A vague openness to my awakeness, to the day ahead. Before I scrunch up my face, hit snooze, and roll over. Before scrolling through the notifications on my phone or checking my calendar. Before I remember how things are different. 

I get out of bed and splash water on my face, brush my teeth. Make the bed (most of the time) and change into my clothes for the day. I hold onto these little routines even if I have nowhere to go, nobody to see. Smear some SPF moisturizer on my face as a promise to my future self to try to go outside, catch some sunshine. While I hold my toothbrush or start up the kettle waiting for the water to boil, I wonder how many hundreds or thousands of times I have performed these little rituals. These passing in-between moments that weave a constant through my days. 

Even now. 

Sometimes, it’s while I’m getting ready in the morning, standing at my sink and he’s sitting there, on the edge of the tub to my left. Or as I putter around the kitchen waiting for the water to boil for my morning mug of lemon ginger tea. And he’s right next to me, saying hello or reaching out to me. And just as I turn, he’s gone. This is the closest thing I know to ghosts. Memories—or maybe they are spirits—apparating into my present blip of time and space. 

And more than remembering, I feel the black hole in my chest, knowing he’s gone. They say grief comes in waves. One after another as I move through my little universe and come across these invisible black holes throughout my day. One by one. Heart sinking, breaking open wide each time in the gravity of it all. 

“Break often, not like porcelain but like waves.” - these words by poet and psychologist Scherezade Siobhan that I have clung to for many years while learning how to ride these waves of life.

I like to believe there is light on the other end of this black hole. All that matter, all the light of the universe must go somewhere, right? Each time my heart breaks, maybe it cracks open a little wider. So I can hold a little more, care a little deeper. 

As I ride these entropy swells, while everything changes within me and all around, the bittersweetness of loss and love glows in me. I can feel it here in my heart. Oh, how I wish I could just hold him again, comfort him. How he feels both like my child and also an elder—a teacher—all at the same time. Even in his final days, as I curled up in a sleeping bag on the floor next to him, he reached his white paw to my face. Yearning to be held? Or maybe to console me. 

Even when he couldn’t eat, refusing the fresh chicken I fed him by hand. Even when he lost his strength to stand. I carried him to the piano where he used to jump up, stretch out, paws dangling over the strings. Eyes closed, content, purring. And I played him all the songs he knows. I brought my guitar to his bedside and sang him this song [”Say a Little Prayer”]. Letting my song be a form of prayer too. Nourishment comes in many forms. 

This is my own precious loss, my tide pool within our ocean of pain, suffering, fear. Love and loneliness and loss. Our dreams and our grief. That we are all swimming in right now. Maybe not even swimming, maybe some of us are doggy paddling. Or treading desperately to keep our heads just above the choppy waters. All of us—I see our faces, I can feel our hearts—just beings, bobbing together among the entropy swells. 

Do prayers work? I don’t really know. I do like to think we’re all connected in some way deeper than we might know. So here I am, not-knowing, yet again. And singing along with Lianne and Aretha and Dianna. And I say a little prayer. Like sending off a paper airplane love letter. Sometimes for him and his memory-ghost. And more often, for all the rest of us, still here and riding these waves. Sometimes, the moment I wake up... And also while brushing my teeth or while waiting for the water to boil as I prepare my tea.

--

In memory of Tiger (05/2007 - 4/12/2020)

Written for and read as part of The Racket Reading Series: Songs from a Room, Thursday 4/16/20 via Zoom during the covid-19 quarantine, by invitation of Noah Sanders.

Prompt: choose a song that has been helping you get through these times and write about it

Song: Say a Little Prayer - Lianne La Havas

[ozu-teapot]

The Racket | John Cromwell (& others) | 1951

Lizabeth Scott