Pacho vs. Piero

Happy birthday to Mary.

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Some old-ish news:

For the second straight year, an Ecuadorian will win the UEFA Champions League. Paris Saint-Germain (the holders) and Arsenal will contest the final. Willian Pacho plays for PSG, and Piero Hincapié plays for Arsenal.

Both play for the national team, and they used to be club-mates at Independiente del Valle.

I don’t care which club wins the Champions League. Arsenal once were purists; now they’re pragmatists. PSG are delightful to watch, but one can only drum up so much enthusiasm for a propaganda arm of the Qatari state.

What about the players? Should I cheer more for Pacho or for Piero? Pacho won last year, and Piero hasn’t won. (Advantage: Piero.) But Pacho is likelier to play more minutes. (Advantage: Pacho.)

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Recent news:

CR7’s club failed to clinch the Saudi league title because of this very late “own” goal:

May’s poem

… is from Bernard Mandeville’s Fable of the Bees (the poem, “The Grumbling Hive,” was first published in 1705).

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

The worst of all the multitude

Did something for the common good.

This was the state’s craft, that maintain’d

The whole of which each part complain’d:

This, as in music harmony

Made jarrings in the main agree,

Parties directly opposite,

Assist each other, as ’twere for spite;

And temp’rance with sobriety,

Serve drunkenness and gluttony.

The root of evil, avarice,

That damn’d ill-natur’d baneful vice,

Was slave to prodigality,

That noble sin; whilst luxury

Employ’d a million of the poor,

And odious pride a million more:

Envy itself, and vanity,

Were ministers of industry;

Their darling folly, fickleness,

In diet, furniture, and dress,

That strange ridic’lous vice, was made

The very wheel that turn’d the trade.

Their laws and clothes were equally

Objects of mutability!

For, what was well done for a time,

In half a year became a crime;

Yet while they altered thus their laws,

Still finding and correcting flaws,

They mended by inconstancy

Faults, which no prudence could foresee.

Thus vice nurs’d ingenuity,

Which join’d the time and industry,

Had carry’d life’s conveniences,

Its real pleasures, comforts, ease,

To such a height, the very poor

Liv’d better than the rich before.

And nothing could be added more.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

(Lines 167–203)

Speaking of changes in fashion: time was, there was a market for satirical political philosophy written in verse, and now there is none.

Dory

The kitten – now named Dory – is still with us. She came through her surgery just fine.

She’s a sweetheart. The children love her.

This photo is cute, but it doesn’t show how long-bodied and scrawny Dory is.

We mostly confine her to the bathroom. We’re introducing her to the house and to the other cats a little at a time, as advised in books. We’ll keep her if: (a) she and Jasper and Ziva get along, and (b) we don’t find anyone else who would like a cat.

A photo of Karin and Dory:

As you can tell, Dory already has ruined some of our blinds.

Cat people

My 2025–2026 reading cycle has ended. On the last day, I finished reading six books. I came up three books short. (The final tally was fifty-seven.)

I thank Karin for her tolerance.

I caught Samuel trying to put one of my books on its shelf. He couldn’t slide it into the space; he was jamming it in. I stopped him before he could wrinkle the cover.

He’d brought the book downstairs from his play-room.

“Why did you take my book upstairs?” I asked.

He said: “I just wanted to copy out some of the text.”

I didn’t object to that answer. Indeed, I was rather pleased.

We have a new cat in our house: a young “queen” that Karin rescued from a gang of “toms.” We’re keeping her in our bathroom. The plan is to get her spayed ASAP; we’ll then consider whether to give her up or keep her. She’s starved but friendly, a year or so old. She may be the offspring of the winsome, irresponsible cat that lives across the street.

The “toms” have been prowling outside our house all day. I just saw them have their way with another “queen.” One can’t save them all.

Jasper and Ziva are none too pleased, perhaps because a new cat is in the house, perhaps because Karin medicated all three cats against fleas.

1996, the best year in movie history, pt. 98: When it rains; The final insult

I saw Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1978) almost twenty years ago. I gained little from it, which was my fault. Roger Ebert’s review should have prepared me for what the movie was like and for what it was trying to say.

It also would’ve helped to have been familiar with two of Burnett’s later, smaller pictures: When It Rains (1995; 13 m.) and The Final Insult (1997; 55 m.). The lead actor in both short movies is Ayuko Babu. Los Angeles is the setting.

Here is the IMDb’s description of Killer of Sheep:

Set in the Watts area of Los Angeles, a slaughterhouse worker must suspend his emotions to continue working at a job he finds repugnant, and then he finds he has little sensitivity for the family he works so hard to support.

Worth noting: the episodic nature of the storytelling, the judicious use of music, and the blending of “acted” and “candid” footage. These elements are present, to a greater or lesser degree, in the shorter movies.

When It Rains is the most accessible of the three movies. The plot is simple. A woman and her daughter are evicted from their apartment. The woman tracks down a jazz musician (Babu) and asks for help. The jazz musician talks to the landlord, who refuses to budge. (He is “crazed,” the jazz musician mutters, perhaps a little unreasonably.) The jazz musician goes around to various acquaintances to raise funds “for a Sister.” Most refuse. A kindly scrapyard worker gives a few dollars. This money is subsequently – and humorously – lost. Reconciliation with the landlord, when achieved, is not financial; it occurs because the jazz musician is able to find common cultural ground with the landlord. It’s not enough that all of the characters are Black; they have to like the same music. The jazz musician reflects that he was fortunate not to have been seen carrying a hip-hop record.

In The Final Insult, Babu plays a banker who advises business owners to hire temporary workers in order to avoid paying taxes and employee benefits. At the end of his shift, the banker goes to his car. This is where he resides. He may have a job and wear a white shirt and a tie, but he is homeless (or quasi-homeless). The car is not in good shape. The banker is one breakdown from disaster.

Blended with this story are interviews with and “candid” footage of real homeless people of various racial and class backgrounds. The point of these grueling passages, I guess, is to show that homelessness is no joke.

When It Rains is about the threat of homelessness, but it’s easy to watch because it’s funny. On the other hand, while The Final Insult contains passages of poetry and piquant irony, these are swamped by the prosaic bitterness of real people’s sufferings.

The banker is not a real person, as Jonathan Rosenbaum points out. His misadventures become more and more artificial as the movie goes on. I don’t believe the banker is meant to invoke our sympathy. He is “most of us” – but we are unlikely to admit it. He symbolizes a transitional status. He is a prosperous person fallen on hard times who retains a bourgeois attitude. An automobile dweller, he is mostly insulated from the horror of forced pedestrianism in a traffic-heavy society. Other homeless people react angrily when, at last, he calls for revolution.

Intriguingly, the theme of finding common ground through music is revisited. Another homeless character – a (possibly educated) white man – sings Korean ballads at a bus stop to a group of Korean women. They are charmed. How do you know this music?, they ask. From listening to records, he says. The man also sings Italian opera songs, and he can speak Spanish.

But although the man’s encounters are uniformly positive, they provide no lasting material relief. He remains homeless. The question is whether positivity and human connection can be enough. The movie doesn’t say.

Open-ended and loosely structured, the two short movies do manage to say a good deal. One is pleasing; the other is a downright slog. Considering them together is more enlightening than considering them apart.