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Film: Wild Card

Uncategorized

Jan 10, 2018

Recalling “Dude” Lebowski’s habit of laying on the floor and listening to cassette tapes of the sounds of bowling tournaments in the 1998 film The Big Lebowski, one wonders if he’d be a fan of Aaron Sorkin scripts. Debuting as director in Molly’s Game, the eminent screenwriter (Moneyball, etc.) uses Oliver Stone/Martin Scorsese-style visual overload to accompany all of the endless proactive talk.

In this film based on her memoir and its aftermath, Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain) is a beautiful woman in peril from the law, because of the ultra-high-stakes gambling parties she ran in Los Angeles and New York. Movie stars, hedge fund managers and Russian mafia rubbed shoulders and lost fortunes, before squealers and the feds ruined the game.

Such a woman sounds like a sport. Sorkin won’t have that, laying down several inches of dramatic mortar showing us that compulsion, bad luck and poor parenting resulted in Bloom’s alleged crimes. Her debonair lawyer Charlie Jaffey (Idris Elba, squandered) tries to wring the truth out of this stubborn client, insistent on her as a victim of circumstances.

Molly’s Game has a repellant counterpoint under its magazine-cover feminism. It suggests that women are smarter, and that’s why we men have a duty to mold them. Who will crack this brittle woman first—either Jaffey, the lawyer who acts like a shrink or the actual shrink who sired her?

If only Molly’s Game allowed Chastain a less bulletproof, more human touch to the role, instead of this all-you-can-stand buffet of Type A, whip-smart dialogue. Sorkin as director shows what an Aaron Sorkin script looks like before someone takes a red marker to it. Below and above everything in Molly’s Game is the dialogue. Except for speculation over whether one of the unidentified celebs at the poker table is supposed to be Tommy Wiseau, there’s not much to the movie but the words.

Food & Drink: Counting Carbs

Food & Drink

Ari LeVaux

Jan 10, 2018

After a lifetime of undisciplined eating, I finally embarked on my first real diet, just in time for the holidays. Making my dietary choices by gut instinct, it seemed, had resulted in a gut-centric body. Now I’m going after the core of my guts in my belly, the visceral belly fat, the insidious deposits that lurk between your internal organs, and sometimes in them or on them, far beneath the abdominal wall. It’s the fat you can’t squeeze, no matter how wide your grip. And it’s activist fat. The visceral deposits start to act like their own internal organ, even releasing hormones, some of which have been tied to inflammation and disease.

As diets go, I didn’t pick an easy one. The ketogenic diet used to be nicknamed the “starvation diet,” when it was the only known cure for certain neurological diseases. But in fairness, with this diet it only feels like you’re starving, even though the deprivation is real; complete deprivation of carbohydrates, that is, in an effort to get your body into a fat-burning mode called ketosis.

Success at fat loss (and keeping it off) ultimately boils down to finding a diet and exercise routine that you can actually stick to in the long run. The diet itself can be low-carb, high-carb and even carb-agnostic. Ketosis called to me because I felt like I was already halfway there. I knew I could live on bacon and eggs, because sometimes I practically do. So why not cut out the cake and go for it?

Literally, ketogenic means “ketone producing,” a reference to the splitting of fat molecules into ketones, which are similar to sugars in that the cells of our bodies are able to convert both of these molecules into energy, which, in essence switches the cells from sugar- to fat-burning.

Being in ketosis is thought to impart so many health benefits that many adherents aren’t even trying to lose weight. You won’t lose weight, in fact, unless you eat fewer calories than you consume. In the first week I actually gained four pounds, before losing it back and then some, once I got the hang of it.

Since fat is so dense, you could drink a day’s worth of calories in melted butter, and pretty soon your stomach would be growling. And you can’t go crazy on protein, because if carbs are scarce your liver would sooner convert excess protein into sugar than break fat into ketones. By limiting protein and fat, the physical size of the material available to fill my belly was getting hard to scrape together, especially since many veggies, like potatoes, carrots, onions and others are high in carbohydrates as well. No roasted roots for me, and a plain bowl of oatmeal would contain my entire daily allotment of carbohydrates.

Since I’m not a beer and bread guy, I thought it would be easier. To get your body anywhere near ketosis you have to count them ruthlessly, and counting carbs is as intellectually challenging as it is physically and emotionally demanding. They are everywhere, and the most hardcore practitioners try to keep their daily carb intakes to less than 20 grams per day. A handful of pecans, which are the most kept-friendly nut there is, still delivers about four grams of carbohydrates, or 20 percent of that daily allowance. Ditto for a carrot. The body and belly are feeling better, even if I still find myself wandering around the kitchen wondering what the heck I’m supposed to eat.

I had figured out how to stay on the fat-burning diet and still have a full belly. It came down to the one carbohydrate I’m allowed to eat as much of as I wish: Fiber. A catch-all term for any carbohydrate that we can’t digest, fiber, like other carbs, has a way of filling the belly. Unfortunately, lots of high-fiber foods, including many fruits and veggies, also contain sugar and digestible carbohydrates. Finding enough fiber to include in one’s ketogenic diet, then, becomes a necessity.

This isn’t a bad thing, because fiber has a long list of beneficial impacts, including the lowering of blood sugar levels, scrubbing your digestive tract and keeping your gut bacteria happy and well-fed. Basically, find yourself some high-fiber veggies that are low on sugars. Leafy greens like spinach, kale, mustard and chicory, as well as lettuce and other leaves. Eat leaves until full, dressed in a high-fat, low-carb manner, which is hardly a tall order among salad dressings.

I’m not saying that anyone should follow me and do what I do. In fact, as a general rule I suggest doing the opposite. But nonetheless, allow me to leave you with a recipe for Eggs in a Forest that anyone will like. It’s basically eggs and bacon, plus fibrous leafy green veggies. It could just as easily be cauliflower or broccoli, but today I’m doing greens.

Get the bacon going, chopped or in strips, with some olive oil. Add the toughest leaves, like kale. When tough greens and bacon are nearly done, add onions and garlic, chopped, adding butter as necessary—redundancy among fats is a beautiful thing. Then crack an egg or two on top of the tangled business. When the egg is nearly done to your liking, smother the pan with tender greens, like spinach or tat-soi, and put a lid on briefly. Sprinkle with salt or soy sauce and pepper, and serve with mayo, and the hot pepper of your choice.

Upfront: Alabama Slammer

Upfront

Tom Gogola

Jan 10, 2018

Scanning the daily headlines for a minute there on New Year’s Day, it looked like the biggest cannabis issues facing California in 2018 would center on some of the unsettled areas of policy that attended the new law that legalized the sale and purchase of recreational pot in the country’s largest and most diverse state.

Full legalization, which occurred after a rousing and affirming vote by Californians via Proposition 64 in 2016, was a moment decades in the making. Possessing up to an ounce of cannabis has been legal in the state since last January. As of New Year’s Day 2018, the new day had indeed fully dawned.

The next-day headlines spoke of long lines at places like Peace in Medicine in Sebastopol—but none in Marin County, which has not embraced legalization; they spoke of a cannabis-consuming populace coming out of the shadows, and they hinted at a growing pro-pot bias even among non-users who were beginning to feel that a bush that springs from God’s green earth ought to be liberated from the grips of a self-defeating federal drug law that bans it outright.

The moment of full legalization in California evoked the staying power, and the suasion power, of the classic cannabis-freedom tome, The Emperor Wears No Clothes. The book came out during the “Just Say No” days of 1985 and underscored the cultural history of hemp and cannabis and their suppression in the United States. It’s a book that’s often cited as the jump-off point for a decades-long push for cannabis access as a civil right. The Emperor Wears No Clothes was and remains the major printed-matter driver for cannabis-legalization efforts in this country.

So on New Year’s Day, who could not take a moment to marvel at the somewhat ironic fact that, just as a president was at his most wretchedly naked and exposed—thanks to a blistering new book, Fire and Fury, from journalist Michael Wolff—the sixth largest economy in the world had just thrown cannabis into its commerce mix with very little actual fuss.

The naked-truth moment signaling cannabis comeuppance and general acceptance was not to last, as we all now know. On Jan. 4, in a move that was shocking, while not surprising at all, Attorney General Jeff Sessions stepped in and rescinded the Cole Memo.

The memorandum, undertaken under President Barack Obama and former U.S. Deputy Attorney General James Cole, eased the way for states like California to enact legal weed regimes without fear of a federal crackdown on peaceful pot people and their plants and extracts. It sought to address a looming schizophrenia between states’ rights under the 10th Amendment of the Constitution, and a federal Controlled Substances Act that equates cannabis with heroin and declares it has no medical value whatsoever. It also sought to highlight that the feds would still take an abiding interest in drug cartels and international drug trafficking, as it directed U.S. Attorneys to focus its prosecutorial discretion in that area and not work to stymie new state laws that legalized or decriminalized pot.

The Sessions pushback on legal pot put the overall health and wellness of California’s landmark Proposition 64 into question, and with it, the health and wellness of the state’s millions of cannabis consumers, recreational and medical alike.

As the month unfolds, nothing much has happened yet to amplify the Sessions announcement into on-the-ground action, but the tone and tenor of the news reports about cannabis at once shifted to consider the Sessions move and its potential implications. All eyes are now on the four U.S. Attorney’s offices in California, says Ellen Komp, deputy director of Cal NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws), who adds that the Cole Memo was a highly useful guide to state policymakers as they set out to create the new regulations that animate the state’s legalization regime.

Now, says Komp, attention shifts to the U.S. Attorneys who occupy or will occupy Department of Justice prosecutors’ chairs in the state. One key post is unoccupied. Just as Sessions was announcing the rescinding of the Cole Memo, the Obama-appointed U.S. Attorney for Northern California, Brian Stretch, announced he was stepping down to join the law firm of Sidley Austin.

Pro-pot activists and state leaders were quick to lash out at Sessions, including California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who pledged to fight the anti-pot push from the Trump White House. In a statement, Lori Ajax, chief of California’s Bureau of Cannabis Control, said her office was conferring with Becerra and other states as a new bureaucracy now tangles with a new wrinkle from the feds.

“We expect the federal government to respect the rights of states and the votes of millions of people across America, and if they won’t, Congress should act,” Ajax says. “Regardless, we’ll continue to move forward with the state’s regulatory processes covering both medicinal and adult-use cannabis consistent with the will of California’s voters, while defending our state’s laws to the fullest extent.”

Republicans in legalized states, such as Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado, also vowed to fight the Sessions move which would undo, in that state, a legalization regime that’s brought in billions in new revenues.

As the news of Sessions’ slap-down of the Cole Memo seeped out, progressive military veterans chimed in across social media to express their dismay over the lack of empathy for struggling vets, many of whom struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and suicidal depression after their service. In recent years, cannabis has gained therapeutic acceptance among veterans and their caregivers for its various health benefits. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has itself been slow to follow, but did announce a new policy in December that allows VA doctors to at least talk about cannabis therapy, even if they can’t sanction it.

“It’s up to the veteran to bring it up,” says Aaron Augustis of the new policy at the VA. Augustis founded the North Bay–based Veterans Cannabis Group (VCG) in 2016 and has been pressuring the VA to embrace cannabis therapies ever since. At the VCG, the emphasis is on “getting healthy, not high,” and the nonprofit has been a leading advocate for cannabis therapies for veterans. On the group’s website, Augustis, its Marin-based founder and a U.S. Army combat veteran, stresses that, “We do not advocate cannabis as a cure-all, but as a medicinal tool that should be incorporated with other healthy tools and lifestyle choices.”

Reflecting on Sessions’ revocation of the Cole Memo, Augustis says he’s glad to be in California, where Gov. Brown and Becerra have pledged to stand up for the state law. “We’re not going to follow the Sessions lead, essentially. But you never know, and it’s kind of scary and disturbing that someone so far away can have such a potential impact on something that we’re doing here.”

The Sessions move also highlighted the fraught health and wellness of our nation’s judicial system under an administration that has taken a less than friendly posture toward the rule of law and the role of the courts in meting out justice. That concern just got a whole lot more localized with the abrupt departure of U.S. Attorney Stretch. As the deeply Republican Modesto Bee pointed out last week from the heart of the wholesome Central Valley, “Stretch’s decision allows Sessions to appoint an interim U.S. Attorney just as he announced he was rescinding an Obama-era policy that paved the way for legalized marijuana to flourish in California and other states.”

Legalization advocates remain in a wait-and-see mode after the Sessions’ move and hope that Becerra and Ajax will use their offices to ensure a proper and legal rollout of the new law. Komp says she was encouraged by their respective statements that highlighted the necessity of Proposition 64 participants to be in compliance with state law. That, she offered, may make it less likely for a federal crackdown to ensue.

“It remains to be seen,” she says. “A lot will be at the discretion of the four district attorneys.”

On Monday, the DOJ announced that the First Assistant U.S. Attorney under Stretch, Alex G. Tse, was named acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District. This bud’s for you, Alex.

Film: Front Page

Uncategorized

Richard Von Busack

Jan 3, 2018

Attempting to start with a grabber, Steven Spielberg’s The Post commences in Vietnam in 1966, whereby a typewriter-bearing Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys) has come to observe the troops.

The trip to ’Nam shows us the cost of the war, bringing context to The Post’s centerpiece—the New York Times and the Washington Post’s revelation in 1971 of the leaked Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg risked jail to unleash a decades-long secret history of deception, ass-covering and refusal to read the writing on the wall. One can argue the worthiness of the war in Vietnam. What’s inarguable are the thousands of Pentagon documents demonstrating that the public was kept in the dark by the U.S. Department of Defense.

The Post studies the conflict between the gruff editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) and the Post’s publisher Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep)—a patrician Washington widow who had the paper as her family business. The relatively small and “barely solvent” Post is about to be taken public on Wall Street. Moreover, Graham is good friends with the people she needs to expose.

Streep can’t make Graham’s personal heartbreak and portfolio problems as interesting as the story of how the news got out, how the Post was scooped by the New York Times on their own turf and how the revelations were almost blocked by President Nixon and the courts.

The invaluable information in the film is covered in more depth in Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith’s 2010 documentary, titled in honor of Henry Kissinger’s description of Ellsberg: The Most Dangerous Man in America. It tells of Ellsberg’s decision to leak the documents and how this leak begat Nixon’s counter-intelligence team, who inaugurated the Watergate affair. In 2010, I wrote “A feature film would have handled this ending on a note of triumph: The full story is sadder.” Informed that the war had been conducted under false pretenses, the public didn’t care. They returned Nixon to office in a landslide. Exult at the end of The Post at the press’s triumph over the sinister Nixon.

Music: New Light

Music

Charlie Swanson

Jan 3, 2018

Folk songwriter and multi-instrumentalist John McCutcheon cannot keep himself from singing. Since 1975, McCutcheon has written, produced and put out a staggering 39 albums, with his latest LP, Ghost Light, slated for release in early February.

“I had not planned on making an album this year,” says McCutcheon, whose last album, Trolling for Dreams, was released in early 2017. That album garnered some of McCutcheon’s best reviews, and his thought-provoking and socially conscious approach to storytelling music continues with Ghost Light, written last spring after McCutcheon led a songwriting camp.

“In the closing of camp, people wanted to know how do we keep this up,” says McCutcheon, referring to the inspiration to write music, such as in the camp’s setting.

In response, McCutcheon shared the story of Vedran Smailović, known as the “Cellist of Sarajevo,” who in 1992 performed a piece of music every day for 22 days in a bombed-out downtown Sarajevo marketplace after a mortar round killed 22 people there during the Bosnian War.

“It was a vigil, it was a defiant thumb in the eye of the violence surrounding him,” says McCutcheon. “This is what musicians can do, and must do, in fact. So, if you want an exercise, honor that. Sit down and make music every day.”

McCutcheon took his own advice, and on May 27 last year, the 25th anniversary of that bombing, he began a daily songwriting exercise, and Ghost Light is the result of that.

Financially, McCutcheon calls himself an anachronism for his prolific output, but he has no plans of slowing down any time soon. “In this world where people don’t buy CDs anymore, I’m putting out these things still believing in the power of a group of songs telling a story that’s greater than the sum of its parts.”

John McCutcheon performs on Friday, Jan. 5 at Freight & Salvage Coffeehouse, 2020 Addison St., Berkeley, 8pm, $28-$32, 510/644-2020 and on Monday, Jan. 8 at Sebastiani Theatre, 476 First St. E, Sonoma, 7:30pm, $25, 707/996-9756.