“Show me someone with no ego and I’ll show you a big loser.”

~ Donald J. Trump

“It is nature that causes all movement. Deluded by ego, the fool harbors the perception that says “I did it.”

~ Bhagavad-Gita

Now that South Korean President Moon Jae-in jumped on board, it seems that the Trump Nobel Peace Prize bandwagon has indeed left the station. Hopefully the booze car will be open 24/7. Too bad Hunter Thompson couldn’t have hung around for this.

I recall vividly tossing back a cup of Virg’s peyote tea and catching a shuttle flight down Main Street to “The Forge” saloon upon hearing that Henry Kissinger had received the same award back in ‘73. “Boy, they’ll never top this,” I mentioned at the time.

It would seem that, every so often, the five members of the Norwegian Parliament charged with making the annual selection not only considerably lower the bar but remove it entirely. Not that Russian hacking would be a thumb on their scale or anything.

But what if North Korean President Kim Jong-un were to keep repeating his recent “assurances” of abandoning his nuclear program in exchange for an official ending of the Korean War coupled with a non-aggression pact with the U.S.?

I can just picture our esteemed leader standing in front of the mirror juggling the possibility of a Nobel Peace Prize against his overriding desire to smite that little squirt in Pyongyang. All while wondering, “How come he gets a parade and I don’t? Where’s the justice?”

Wherever Kim and Trump choose to meet, whether in the Joint Sanctuary Area of the Korean DMZ, some “foodie” hangout in Indonesia recommended by Anthony Bourdain, or the Walk-In Cooler of the Timpanogos Tavern in Heber City, Utah, you just know Trump is going to be sporting a tie of more length and pigment than anything from Kim’s rack.

Bourdain made the cut due to his recent episode of “Parts Unknown” from the heart of West Virginia coal country, or as he put it going in, “the heart of God, guns, Trump, and football — all of which I really don’t relate to in any way.” His exit interview was much more understanding of the mindset, however.

He characterized it this way: “Here in the heart of every belief system I’ve ever mocked or fought against, I was welcomed with open arms by everyone. I found a place both heartbreaking and beautiful — a place that symbolizes and contains everything wrong and everything hopeful about America.”

No “bout adout” it, it was some great TV. They weren’t afraid to get in his face and neither was he to return serve. Bourdain’s ending said it all: “Whatever your views, respect these people — what they do and what they’ve paid.” Amen! It’s easy for me to jump on board. Some of my best friends are Trump folks!

Of course, some of my best friends also hate him! The fact that I identify more with the latter group, however, doesn’t make me love the former any less. John Prine, as usual, gets to the heart of the matter: “Cause you got gold, gold inside of you. Well I got some

gold inside me too.”

So here we are. Admittedly, there existed an uncomfortable layer of acknowledgment once Obama got his Peace Nobel, infinitesimal as it was. Due more than anything, I suppose, to the fact that my passion reaches its Nobel apex at the intersection of the Literature Prize and the fact that I am an Obama fan.

Not to say I don’t keep in touch with the Medicine, Chemistry, Economics, and Physics laureates and the nuances of their collective work. It’s just that being somewhat of a “slow study,” my learning curve is less hyperbolic than I attempt to imply.

The only upside I envision if Trump were to actually walk away with such an honor would be when the Scandinavian Royals-in-question attempted to mate a green laurel wreath with his prematurely orange headdress.

Don’t you think that Donald might get just a bit fidgety up there in the same pantheon as Martin Luther King Jr., Malala Yousafzai, Mother Teresa, and Elie Wiesel? You never know, Henry Kissinger might even stage a walkout.

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and has been an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social and political scenes for more than 40 years.

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“Theater of the absurd. n. A form of drama that emphasizes the absurdity of human existence by employing disjointed, repetitious, and meaningless dialogue, purposeless and confusing situations, and plots that lack realistic or logical development.”

~ The Free Online Dictionary

Renaming southern Utah’s iconic S.R. 12 for Donald Trump? You gotta be kidding me. Could someone please check and see if French philosopher Albert Camus is still in his grave? And while you’re at it, find out if Sisyphus punched in at his jobsite this morning.

Utah State Democratic Senator Jim Dabakis had the only logical reaction when he tweeted: “H.B. 481, ‘Donald J. Trump Utah National Parks Highway Designation’ passed House Committee 9 to 2. If it gets to the Senate, I will present an amendment that the frontage road be designated as the Stormy Daniels rampway.”

Stormy, of course being the lung-rich porn star who has been in the news of late as having been paid off to the tune of $130,000 by Trump’s lawyer to cease discussing an alleged sexual encounter with our horndog-in-question back in 2006.

You can’t make this stuff up! If any section of scenic roadway ever spoke to the sacredness of red rock country it would have to be that stretch of asphalt from U.S. 89 south of Panguitch eastward through Red Canyon, nudging the entrance to Bryce Canyon, through Escalante, past Calf Creek, into Boulder Town, and up along the flank of Boulder Mountain to Torrey.

Sheer desecration is what it would be. And, as others have reasoned, that may well be the point: to rub our noses in it. What better way to demonstrate to us “elites” who is running the show. Elections, it would seem, even if rigged by the Russians, do have consequences.

I would offer that if it is to be named for a humanoid that it be for someone who worked to protect the Earth rather than use it for personal gain — maybe an Aldo Leopold or Wallace Stegner or David Brower or the like.

I would even nominate Edward Abbey, an obvious choice for the honor, except that it would probably cause him to emerge, shaking his fist, from his well-rumored burial site in the “Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge” along the Arizona borderland with Sonora.

A cantankerous sort, Abbey’s argument would probably be something along the lines of “how could we possibly disturb his slumber to protect a paved road?”

One of my favorite Abbey quotes came about when he was asked when he planned on leaving his job as ranger at Arches (then a national monument). He responded, pointing at the rough dirt byway running through the park, “the day after they pave this.” Abbey, as you no doubt have figured out by now, didn’t spend much time championing pavement.

And, as I understand it, that was pretty much, time-wise, how he orchestrated his exit. They paved it and he hit it, the road that is. Although I totally understand his purist notions, I choose to not side with him on this issue, at least in the manner in which, through hubris alone, I laid it out. Naming it for Trump is completely beyond the pale.

From what planetary blasphemy did such an idea occur? Why, from the narrow minds of Utah State Representative Mike Noel, R-Kanab, and his Kane County constituents who kept him in office long enough to rise to the chairmanship of the House Rules Committee.

Of course, from there it was easy sledding. All Noel had to do was fail to report his obvious conflict of interest of owning a chunk of land inside Grand Staircase that once his fellow Republican Trump finished carving up both Bears Ears and GSNM, found itself on the unprotected side of the line.

Noel pays his debts, however. Hence, the proposed “Donald J. Trump National Parks Highway.” Explaining the motivation for his proposal, however, he, no doubt with a straight face, closed the book on it being politically motivated.

“Contrary to some beliefs out there, Donald Trump really is a supporter of public lands. He’s a big supporter of national parks.”

You could have fooled me.

“For me personally,” Noel continued, “I was really, really happy that he downsized the Grand Staircase monument and Bears Ears because I believe that multiple use of public lands with adequate environmental protections is better than taking everything off the table.”

How do you say “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” in Navajo?

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“Music is such a joy. Just an absolute joy.”

~ Mavis Staples

Right off the bat I recognized the group name from a chunk of vinyl that for whatever reason had survived countless whittling-downs of the record collection without getting played much, if at all, around the house.

Somehow, probably through readings involving the “civil rights movement” and what became known as the “ ‘60s folk scare,” their name, “The Staple Singers,” had acquired a “cachet,” a historic presence, as it were. And that was enough for them to continually “make the cut.”

Of course, once I got my first high-production-value look at the group performing with “The Band” in the latter’s swan-song film “The Last Waltz,” I began paying more attention to their lead vocalist, the youngest daughter of the family quartet, Mavis. Record label A&R reps of the time referred to it as a band’s “visual component.”

It would be later, once the platter itself arrived in its natural state spinning upon the turntable, that what also became evident was that not only did her lead vocal sound lower in register than most female voices of the day, but that it contained such natural musicality, power, and purpose. Mavis Staples was a musical presence that could be ignored at one’s own peril.

The family patriarch, Roebuck “Pops” Staples, had this ingratiating humility that made everyone want to hug him. No doubt honed during his youth on the Mississippi Delta’s famed Dockery Plantation, it also showed-up in his laid-back bass vocals and guitar riffs.

Pops, who learned delta-blues style guitar from the legendary Charlie Patton in between his 10-cent-a-day cotton-picking chores at Dockery, later moved to Chicago where Mavis was born.

It would be on the living room floor of their home in Chicago where Pops, after a falling out with another band, sat young Mavis, her older siblings, brother Pervis and sister Cleotha, in a circle, gave them each vocal parts, and viola, “The Staple Singers” were born.

During the 60s, once it had entered the folk legend that up-and-comer Bob Dylan had asked Mavis for her hand in marriage, others began to pay attention. Funny how that works.

Well, anyway, after a time Mavis went solo, began touring, and quickly achieved a cachet of her own. The Park City Institute has brought her to town multiple times, both as part of their “Big Stars, Bright Nights” summer productions at Deer Valley’s Snow Park Amphitheater and their “Main Stage” shows at the Eccles Center, where she will appear this upcoming Saturday evening, March 3.

Having caught her and her wonderful band two nights running down in Salt Lake somewhat recently opening for that same Dylan character that was mentioned a few paragraphs previous, I can hereby state that she remains a “must see” artist in her own right.

She will insinuate herself, her joy, and her soul into your life, count on that. Not only is jumping up from your seat and testifying allowed at her shows, the vibe in the hall will most certainly lend itself to it. At least, if history means anything, it’s always been difficult for your humble scribe to remain in a seated position when Mavis is holding court.

During her Salt Lake shows, which were obviously abbreviated due to her being the opening act, she mixed songs from The Staple Singers catalogue including “The Weight,” which they performed in “The Last Waltz,” with covers such as The Buffalo Springfield’s “For What it’s Worth.”

She mostly showcased, however, songs from her recent studio albums, some of which were produced by the likes of Jeff Tweedy of “Wilco” and the legendary Ry Cooder. A beloved performer who shows little sign of quitting either the studio or the road, she continues to both recognize and share her gifts with the world.

If you’ve never experienced her “presence,” well this is your chance. Mavis Staples, multiple Grammy winner and member of both the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Blues Hall of Fame is coming to our town for a show this Saturday night March 3 at the Eccles Center. And boy, could we use a dose of her joy right about now.

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“How nice — to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.”

~ Kurt Vonnegut

 First of all, due to Trump’s FCC changing the level of the “net neutrality” playing field, the first “hit” that appeared when Googling “assault rifle ammunition” is an ad from Cabela’s for their “high-grade rifle ammunition featuring a wide variety of .223, .308 & 5.56mm, .270 rifle ammo.”

Not information concerning the makeup of the rounds-in-question or defining any of the relevant terms but the location where one can most easily, in a bought and paid for profit-and-loss scenario, acquire them.

No doubt Cabela’s is a member of a trade group whose lobbying arm played a role in convincing the current administration that it would be better for business if net neutrality became a thing of the past and Corporations were allowed to run the Internet.

Plus, there was an added bonus for the intellectuals running the West Wing these days. Counting as one more pin in their Obama voodoo doll, it could join other prickly reminders of the Trump rollbacks on healthcare, environment, trade, education, criminal justice, immigration, and public lands.

This is not an attempt to single out specific retailers whose walls are lined with high-powered assault rifles but rather to report on which routes were made available to my Internet search engine and the pecking order of through whose doors it was granted entrée. Of course, if any of the shoes that dropped fit, well, slip them on your corporate feet.

As a longtime hiker, camper, and trout hunter, there is a mess of eye-candy to be had when wandering through such emporiums. Admittedly, I’ve shown up at their checkout counters with armloads of paraphernalia aimed at reducing the philosophical distance between couch and campsite.

How many digressions is that? Anyone keeping score here? Actually, if one maintains the intended point of the piece in its crosshairs, a feat that oftentimes eludes your humble scribe, the answer is zero. It will all become clear soon enough. Or so he says.

Take Vietnam for instance. Many of us protesting that war felt like if the public could only get a clearer picture of the devastation, the attendant support for the conflict would diminish to a point of no return, forcing the Johnson and Nixon mindsets to rethink their convoluted exit-with-honor strategy.

Our point back then was that if the news of the day was going to in any fashion speak to the actual cost of the war, it should include representative photos of body bags, coffins, and the carnage on the ground.

Well, a conveniently designed censorship due to “national security” kept that from happening, of course, causing, along with other mitigating circumstances, the war to drag on. There are those in the gun-control trenches today that feel that history is once again repeating itself.

To wit: the true cost of the current gun laws is being kept from the American people. What we need, as difficult as it would be on our collective stomach and sleep-cycle, are actual photos of the butchery and bloodletting in classrooms and schoolyards spread across front pages, TV screens, and billboards.

Putting up with the seemingly neverending cash flow from the NRA to their bought-and-paid-for Republican lawmakers is getting more difficult by the minute.

Let’s pull out all the stops and demand photographic evidence of what their money is actually purchasing: young bodies ripped apart by “high-grade ammo.” We need our noses rubbed in the open wounds and severed arteries. Until then, we’re only getting part of the story.

We need to cease allowing time to heal the psychological wounds of senseless slaughter. The collective outrage needs to be maintained between these atrocities. Fuel added to the fire, as it were. The alternative being, of course, the continued cycle of mass shootings followed by condolences and the wringing of hands.

Although far from being a groundswell, there have been a few assault rifle owners emerging from their closet to call for more stringent rules of engagement when it comes to purchasing requirements of the weapons involved. Not enough to sway the GOP congress, of course. Only money can do that.

Keep your thoughts and prayers and show us the carnage! Let’s get real for a change. Let’s feel something and thereby earn full credit for being alive.

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and has been an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social and political scenes for more than 40 years.

The post Jay Meehan: The gun violence debate needs to get ugly if we’re going to spur action appeared first on Park Record.

“In darkness there is light.”

~ Henerishi

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times — a tale of two festivals. Nah, too Dickensian. Anyway, it wasn’t about best and worst as much as light and the tranquil absence thereof.

Early in the first week, you kill time between films loitering in whatever shadow avails itself. It’s all about keeping ambient light at bay — ducking inside the head envelope of your “hoodie” or “slicker,” slogging toward the venue in your crosshairs, your comfort zone a solo act.

You mutter to yourself about your last film preview or review and the ones in the wings. Not that it’s an angst-rich environment or anything. You’re not exactly interpreting the art-in-question, just what it was like to rub up against it. The old adage that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture” always hovers near the surface.

Contemplation over a beverage is not unheard of. Neither is ending a sentence with a preposition. For whatever reason, possibly due to sponsorship product placement, Stella from Belgium has long been a favorite Sundance companion. One particular afternoon, our bonding was such that it was suggested we get a room.

For whatever reason, with each succeeding round, I find my backpack-wares gaining in assertiveness while spreading themselves across Urethane-coated saloon tabletops. Once again, the latest from John Le Carré finds itself butt-welded to assorted festival swag of dubious distinction.

Jotting down random thoughts in one of those lined spiral notebooks adds to the overall sense of peace. If I’m not reading or making notes, cobwebs begin to appear on the edges of the frame.

While checking out the print film-guide, I notice a scheduling conflict between a panel discussion of interest and an act performing onstage at the Music Café. A few quick hand gestures later and resolution arrives on the arm of one of Stella’s sisters. Family is everything.

Figuring that I could always use a virtual reality fix, I point myself toward that quirky zone where the New Frontier folks have circled their wagons. Of course, the sirens call of Dolly’s bookshop and the cul-de-sac of its “Fiction” aisle intercept those best laid plans. I’m at home there, safe and snuggled in a print cocoon.

My original target on the back wall had been Pynchon but another word-loon soon caught my eye. William Gibson got a grip on me back in the day and quickly has me locked in that familiar motherboard VR of his own making.

By the time I bid adieu to the “stacks,” the Cosmos have flipped and I’m no longer a lone wolf on the prowl. It’s late in the second week of the Film Festival and it’s snowing and I’m on a “Theater Loop Shuttle” with a longtime crony and one of her partners in crime. No longer re-shaping shadows, I’m actually engaged with fellow film buffs. How novel.

I’m the “Doc-head” in the group, the others, not necessarily so. We’re off to see a documentary that the radical in me characterizes as a century-old act of corporate terrorism. The old mining border town of Bisbee, Arizona reenacted a 1917 mass deportation of mostly immigrant miners and the re-visitation of the incident has been captured on film.

The following day has us deposited in the very last row of the Eccles Center balcony for “Blaze,” wherein actor/author/filmmaker Ethan Hawke spins a three-prong outlaw-country yarn utilizing life incidents of the late Blaze Foley to tell a larger story. Hawke is like that. Gonzo, indeed.

It takes a while to “come down” from Sundance, the transformation both welcome and less so. You miss interviewing those on the inside and the access afforded by a “Press Pass” but there’s also something to be said for lazing about at home in the foothills twenty miles away.

There is an understanding that, while locals share both an attraction and repulsion to the annual inundation of film-folk, it’s become, at least in the culture-sphere, a large part of the Park City vibe. Myself, I choose to partake. I sit in the dark, therefore I am.

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and has been an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social and political scenes for more than 40 years.

The post Jay Meehan: Wrapping Sundance appeared first on Park Record.

“My tongue will tell the anger of my heart, or else my heart concealing it will break.” ~ Shakespeare

“You can always tell a pig by its grunt.” ~ Nikolai Gogol

As a defense mechanism against the current President’s attempts to re-create the Constitution in his own image, my recent reading habits have led me mostly to Shakespeare and the Russians. Which, in turn, has caused me to spend an inordinate amount of time figuring out how to make a buck off it.

Hence, I’ve come to the realization that my best bet is to put my money on the “Russkies” and let it ride. I’ll convert all my doubloons into rubles, take the points and Putin, and bet the Dacha. If only there existed a fantasy league for selling our country to the highest bidder, we could double-down and make a killing here.

With so-called Christians at the helm of both careening nation-states, it’s all “faith-based.” Corporate America will not despoil once-sacred and protected national monument lands for profit. Neither will they turn the soon-to-be-much-less-fairly-accessed routings of the Internet into their own toll road to an ever-expanding bottom line. Trust them! Have faith!

Roy Moore may have lost in Alabama but Jim Crow maintains his proxy. The Trumpians will get to the bottom of why so many non-whites were allowed to evade the carefully positioned German Shepherds and fire hoses on their way to the polling booths and then, that will be that. Trust me. Have faith.

The wagers, in the main, will more than likely involve stringing together a moderate slew of sure things with long odds. Like whether or not congressional Republicans will shut down any and all in-house investigations that appear to be closing in on the (gasp!) truth. Holding such votes in the middle of the night while their colleagues from the other side of the aisle are out of town, or sorts, seems to have a high probability.

The longest shot out there, of course, would be a bet that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will survive the onslaught of fake news directed at him by the Nazis at Fox and the West Wing. Vlad and the Donald won’t stand for it. They have too much to lose as it were. As Dostoyevsky once warned: “The formula ‘two and two make five’ is not without its attractions.”

My plans are pretty much downrange and all-inclusive. I’ll assemble my windfall from this Trump-Putin sports-book parlay and hide it under the new GOP tax bill umbrella. I mean, that’s a given. Why in the world would I want to pay tax rates that have been assigned to the middle class, or the “great unwashed” as the GOP likes to refer to them.

Actually, I find little reason to lose faith in the evangelicals within the Trump advisory groups. I won’t be slapping down any loot on whether or not they will be adopting real Christian values anytime soon, that’s for sure. They’ll be too busy shoring up the levees protecting corporate America from the waters rising against their continued assault on diversity.

And with Trump stacking his judiciary appointments with those flaunting a mental acuity somewhat equal to his own, having faith that the courts of the present and, especially, the future will atone for his excesses is fading by the day. I never once said these fools were dumb.

Then there is the philosophical cleansing going on within the Environmental Protection Agency and other cabinet-level departments to rid them of science-based personnel and monitoring procedures. Hopefully the diligence applied to the email-scanning of those who may have once voiced ecological understanding of the problems involved will be echoed by the office of the Special Counsel.

I no longer ask how we got ourselves in such a predicament. Looking to Shakespeare again, I find, if not solace, at least an internal roadmap: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.” Me and my kind are not totally blameless here. We must shoulder at least a modicum of responsibility for the emergence of Trump. Not that we should consider standing for it, of course.

Maybe I’m just finally getting to understand horror from the eyes of Lady Macbeth: “Out, damned spot!”

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and has been an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social and political scenes for more than 40 years.

The post Jay Meehan: Lost in the gulag again appeared first on Park Record.

You had to forgive Rhiannon Giddens for not being able to totally subdue the slight bit of sashay that was working its way into her entrance manner back during her “Carolina Chocolate Drops” days. It’s almost as if she knew she was heading to the pantheon of creative performance art and the bearing was just a natural part of the shtick.

As a musical essence, she appeared well aware of and comfortable with the wondrous profundities that swirled around in her head and had just chosen to take her time identifying the proper key within which to share them. From our end, we loved everything about her immediately and for the longest time she was all we could talk about.

In the beginning I had her pegged as part of the virtuoso arm of the continuum that came out of the echoes of the ‘60s, both civil rights movement and folk revival-wise. But looking back, it has become obvious that I had little if any clue as to the width and breadth of either her interests or ability to creatively channel the idioms involved.

Take the African American string band tradition for instance. My “Old Timey” listening chops were strictly derived from Appalachia via the British Isles in those days. The African roots that evolved over time on the Carolina Piedmont had escaped my gaze until the “Drops” turned my historical music sensibility on its head through resolute research and performance.

Although their music reeked of academics and the marriage of fiddle and banjo, their obvious joy within the primitive brought them a 2010 Grammy Award for their debut recording “Genuine Negro Jig” in the Best Traditional Folk Album category.

But it would be Rhiannon’s stunning, and startling, rendition of Odetta’s “Water Boy” during the T Bone Burnett-produced one-night tribute to the music from the Coen Brothers’ film “Inside Llewyn Davis” at Town Hall that caused heads to turn and jaws to drop recording-industry-wide.

Not too much longer after that Burnett had talked her into the studio to record her solo debut “Tomorrow is my Turn.” The chick showed just how all over the musical map she had traveled by channeling the spaces between Dolly Parton and Patsy Cline on her way to riffing a singular proto-jazz-and-blues style of her own making. What can I say? She’s a goddess!

Then came another T Bone project that included Ms. Giddens, one perhaps you’ve heard about. It seems that back during the latter part of the ‘60s when Bob Dylan was on the mend from his famous Triumph motorcycle accident and choosing to hang out near Woodstock with five guys who would later gain fame as “The Band,” his song-scribblings would encompass more than what would later show up on the various bootlegs known as “The Basement Tapes.”

Gathering the likes of Elvis Costello, Taylor Goldsmith, Jim James, Marcus Mumford, and our very own Rhiannon Giddens in Sinatra’s old digs on an upper floor of that iconic Capitol Records building just up Vine Street from Hollywood Boulevard, Burnett assigned them the task of making complete songs out of Dylan’s old napkin musings.

I’m not going to infer that she once again stole the show, but I can testify to an obvious drop in my coefficient-of-interest whenever they cut away from her in the documentary film they fashioned from their days in that studio. If you haven’t caught the film as yet, I would highly recommend “Lost Songs: The Basement Tapes Continued.”

All this T Bone Burnett hoopla surrounding Rhiannon makes it somewhat difficult to not connect similar dots to her emergence as a headliner on the television show “Nashville” in that T Bone helmed the Music Director chair of the series in its infancy. Makes perfect sense to me why the world has come a’calling. She is one hot ticket with little sign of cooling off.

Then, although she pretty much guffaws at the term, there is her “Genius Grant” of $625,000 that accompanies her MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in five annual “no strings attached” installments. At the least it must provide a bit of validation for the multicultural creative path she finds herself riding.

And with her Park City Institute-produced New Year’s Eve show at the Eccles Center just around the corner, we’ll all soon enough have a chance to see for ourselves what all the fuss is about.

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and has been an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social and political scenes for more than 40 years.

The post Jay Meehan: Rhiannon Giddens — an elegant brilliance appeared first on Park Record.

The first thing you notice when you pull your head out of the sand, a common occurrence in these times, is the roughness of the granules themselves. They fall from your eyebrows to hang suspended from any facial whiskers currently making the rounds.

With Trump visiting Utah to carve up national monuments for the drill-baby-drillers and cement his spot in the afterlife with church elders, maintaining the big picture (i.e. visualizing the post-apocalyptic landscape) has a way of seeking out denial in its more gritty forms. As for me, I’m quite able to invert myself into whatever finely divided rock and mineral particles avail themselves.

An alternative, of course, at least this time of year, is full immersion into the celluloid. And that would be where I’m heading. It’s time to cut to the chase and “roll film.” The 2018 Sundance Film Festival looms and that, with more than 100 feature films already identified and on the table, is where I’m going to be sticking my head.

Right out of the U.S Dramatic Competition chute we get “Blaze,” a film treatment of the life and times of Texas outlaw music legend Blaze Foley, a work ramrodded by Ethan Hawke. Hawke, a native-born Austin lad himself and an actor-collaborator on much of legendary Texas film director Richard Linklater’s cinematic art would seem the perfect fit to helm this long overdue tale.

Foley, a singular songwriter and guitar fingerpicker, existed in a musical landscape that presaged the movement that would make many of its practitioners a quite comfortable living. The modifiers “idiosyncratic” and “quirky” might also be brought into play.

Within the U. S. Documentary Competition lineup, an entry that quickly made my “must see” short list was “Bisbee ’17,” a film that delves into the mass-deportation of 1200 immigrant miners from the now-quaint and trendy Arizona border town of Bisbee almost exactly 100-years ago. Quite timely, one might say.

The World Cinema competitions, both dramatic and documentary, have long kept close touch with my personal ticket selection processes due to the improbability of any of them showing in the near future upon the screens in my hometown of Heber City. You gotta grab ‘em while you can.

One shortcut I often take when normal procedures fail in these categories is to allow those with festival portfolio to take the reins, as I did this year in the World Cinema dramatic competition with the Brazil-Uruguay co-production “Loveling.” This World Premiere selected for screening during the prestigious “Day One” window, made my list pretty much by default.

On the World Cinema Documentary side of the aisle, you might say a film collaboration from Russia and the USA entitled “Our New President” figuratively grabbed me by my Putin-ishly thin lapels and has yet to release its grip.

According to the blurb, it is the “story of Donald Trump’s election told entirely through Russian propaganda. By turns horrifying and hilarious, the film is a satirical portrait of Russian media that reveals an empire of fake news and the tactics of modern-day information warfare.” Sounds very much like my cup of Stolichnaya. If that wasn’t enough, it is also a “Day One” selection.

The “Next” category has hosted some of the more edgy and interesting fare within each year’s festival lineup and this time around it very much appears to have followed suit. My initial choice from this grouping happens to also be the preordained winner of the prestigious Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize for the 2018 go-around and that would be “Search,” a thriller that unfolds mostly on a missing teenage female protagonist’s computer screen.

The “Sloan” is awarded annually to the film deemed the most science-friendly of the lot. And, in these times when science is debunked from on “low,” it doesn’t take much at all to get me onboard.

From the always popular “Premiere” category, I’m going with “A Futile and Stupid Gesture,” a film dealing with the life and times of Doug Kenney, the co-creator of “National Lampoon,” “Caddyshack,” “Animal House,” and other zeitgeist comedic touchstones of the ‘70s.

The fact that Doug seemingly met his demise just down the road from where I type this on the island of Kauai also seemed a sign I couldn’t ignore. There is something about the precipice overlook of Waimea Canyon that one should never treat lightly.

Come on in, the waters are fine. Celluloid is the real true grit.

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and has been an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social and political scenes for more than 40 years.

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He should be all ready to go by now. His bag should already be packed, the kitchen floor mopped, the dining room table clear of stacked stuff. He’s running late and he knows it. Daylight’s burning. Twenty-some hours from now and he’ll be airport bound. And, still, there remains much to do. He’s operating on borrowed time.

He could start with making his bed, of course. Then there would be a flat surface upon which to lay open his awkwardly-sized travel bag so he could deal with the problem of finding space for all the “must-takes” from his carefully crafted list.

What he should have done, of course, is to begin the process at some earlier point. He’s only been aware that this moment would call in its marker for, what, two or three months? All due dates loom with an evil grin no matter to what extent they are put off. Heisenberg’s law? Probably not.

It matters not that his destination is tropical and a smart traveler could fit all they would ever need in a gym bag. No, that isn’t his style. It would seem he played hooky on the day they covered “time and resource management” in his “life skills” class. Oh, that’s right, he dropped that particular elective at the last minute in favor of Latin II.

None of his friends would be a bit surprised that he finds himself in a quandary of this nature. If memory serves, he lost his sense of proportion to some bloke who drew out to an inside straight back during his Army days.

They would probably re-spin the yarn about how when the tribe would go Christmas tree hunting up off Daniel Summit. He would always, after much thought, select a conifer with suitably more girth than the room in which it would later repose.

He would then, after much struggle to hoist said timber upon his shoulders, re-point his backcountry boards downhill until he crashed somewhere within a day’s hike of his truck. As I said, no sense of proportion, whatsoever!

You do see how the aforementioned parable folds into his current conundrum? The manner in which it dovetails into his lacking sense of relevant ratios? As Bobby D. once said, “He ought to be made to wear earphones.”

Hell, by now, the aircraft in question is probably pulling into its assigned boarding gate and will soon be disgorging cast and crew from its previous leg. But, no worries, our hero will no doubt locate a path upon which to successfully fumble through. It’s not like he or the personality-rich cup of Joe that sits next to him haven’t seen all this before.

He could be forgiven, I suppose, if it weren’t for the fact that he goes through these same exact motions every year. Of course he can never relocate last year’s list or coax his memory lobes in enabling whatever pattern recognition might ease the ever-increasing level of anxiety.

Restarting from scratch is most always the modus operandi of choice. And with it taking uncounted months, days, and hours to properly dishevel the joint to the point where all Trump’s teens and all Roy Moore’s tweens couldn’t possibly put it back together again before liftoff, well, that’s the crux.

Locating this year’s reading-material-of-choice probably won’t raise its head until his luggage has him in a headlock and is wrestling him out the door. Not even Jean le Carré could locate it in the available timeframe and he wrote it. However, our bumbler-at-large distinctly recalls placing it on the bedside table and telling it to “Stay!”

No one listens to him anymore, most especially himself. The last time logic brushed his surface must have been sometime during the second Nixon administration, the abbreviated one. The only task that will get checked off in timely fashion will be his knee-jerk deletion of the list itself. Behavioral change seldom comes a-knockin’ in these parts.

He could check in online with the airlines that drew the short straw in his logistics lottery I suppose, but let’s keep that to ourselves. Also, the curbside check-in option. Having him stand and then shuffle endlessly in line up to the counter would seem the more proper punishment to fit the crime, don’t you think?

Remember, this is borrowed time we’re talking about, and I’m pretty sure the new trickle-down health care will resolve any late fees once they become due.

Jay Meehan is a culture junkie and has been an observer, participant, and chronicler of the Park City and Wasatch County social and political scenes for more than 40 years.

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“Ah, but they’ve never seen the Northern Lights/They’ve never seen a hawk on the wing

They’ve never spent spring on the Great Divide/They’ve never heard ol’ camp cookie sing”

~ Michael Burton

His given name was something like Rance or Vance or Chance. I only heard it spoken once and his mutter was as pronounced as my own. It turned out not to matter much, however, since the elders and younger tribal-folk manning the Trading Post counters in Teec Nos Pos all referred to him as Coyote.

It was the mid-’90s and I was about a quarter-way through what turned out to be a rather elongated solo truck-camping mosey in red rock country. By the time I’d crossed the Arizona line from New Mexico, I’d already put Shiprock, Mesa Verde, Hovenweep, Lake Powell, and an up-and-over of the northern Henry Mountains in my rear-view mirror.

To flesh out the “Coyote” character a bit more, imagine, if you will, a young, slightly more brash, Gabby Hayes. The physical comedy of the role seemed completely intact to the point where, if I weren’t mistaken, he would now and then throw in an improvised Walter Brennan riff or two.

When I entered, Coyote was going off on the Santa Clara pottery technique of Maria Montoya Martinez, her of the San Ildefonso Pueblo just north of Santa Fe. As one with a growing interest in Maria’s iconic work, I hung around within earshot, which, with Coyote’s resonating pipes, wasn’t all that difficult.

Some shape-shifting from Maria to Everett Ruess proved as seamless as you’d expect and it wasn’t long before we had found a crease in the Big Rez geology in which to ever-so-furtively slug down a few cold ones and bond a bit.

Although Coyote had an offshoot of Butler Wash in his plans and my own crosshairs were occupied with a campsite near Navajo Nation Tribal Park, we convoyed up to Four Corners National Monument and spent the next few hours smoking the peace pipe and musing on what we both considered a sacred landscape.

“They’re coming alright! Pretty soon they’re going to have this whole place looking like that gawd-awful exposed strip-mine down on Black Mesa.” I got to love it whenever he talked like that. Coyote had a way of constantly re-contorting his face in such a manner that audio punctuation in the normal sense became unnecessary.

You could just tell that his copy of Cactus Ed’s “The Monkey Wrench Gang” had not only become more dog-eared than most but also probably smelled of Karo Syrup that had spilled from a surreptitious assault on a Caterpillar D-9 tractor somewhere in the deep strata of the Mesozoic.

Lately, I’ve been wondering how well ol’ Coyote, whom I haven’t seen or heard from since that trip, has assimilated the Trump mindset. Somehow I think of him hunkered down between the Bears Ears buttes with hand-hewn catapults loaded with a stew of wildlife “scat” and poised for Interior Secretary Zinke’s impending National Monument shrinkage.

I always half-expected to run into him at an “Earth First!” fundraiser or the like back then but unless he had gotten into some self-abuse with a razor, the particular Gabby Hayes visage I searched for proved elusive.

I did get an unsigned postcard once from Flagstaff that waxed radical about the land-use politics of the day and, admittedly, I had my suspicions. But other than that, diddly-squat! No doubt, he’s out there somewhere nosin’ around for Everett Ruess’s journal or Maria Montoya Martinez’s pottery wheel or an idling D-9 Cat.

The trigger for Coyote to re-enter my memory lobes this time around was the lyrical singing voice of Buffalo Joe Jeffs as he, with eyes closed and head tilted back, reached the chorus of “Night Rider’s Lament” up at “The Notch” saloon last weekend.

Buffalo’s voice has always had a way of mentally transporting me to some gorgeous and lawless land west of the Pecos. This night was no different. There I sat under a full moon as Coyote howled and our campfire danced and ol’ camp cookie joined in. Where would I be without music?

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