Good afternoon. It is I Gigi the parti poodle here to introduce this week’s blog. It started late last week, my novelist feeling a little off and later feeling off turned into a full-blown cold. This greatly irritated her has she had both her flu and covid shots this year. I told my dear canine friends I would have to let them work on the missing cat dilemma whilst I nursed my novelist back to health. I was rather bored with the task since she slept a great deal and decided to go on the internet to see what was going on in the world. It is rather disturbing out there as there is a list of people who apparently went to an island and willingly hurt children. I was most distressed about this. My cups of tea did not settle me down. When my novelist woke up in the late afternoon, I confided in her what I’d been reading. She nodded her head and said, “I’m going to tell you two stories about two different people. Both stories are true and both people in them are real. I am going to call these two people B and C. I’m going to start with C.

“C was someone who worked at a place they called a video rental store. He was in his twenties, was a likeable man and he had a wife. One day he came into the video store to start work, and he went up to the counter and set a video or DVD down in front of his fellow employee. The video was a pornographic movie. He admitted he took it home and watched it and some other sordid details. He told his co-worker he was wrong, that he’d disrespected his wife, felt great guilt in doing it, and he apologized. His other co-workers thought this was hysterical. They laughed at him and made fun of him for quite a while. And then eventually life went back to normal and they left him alone.

“B was someone I met in kindergarten. The first time I saw him I said to myself, “I feel sorry for him. I don’t know why.” When B entered middle school, he became an underhanded bully. He got his friends to pick on other students and make them feel low and frightened and humiliated. He and his friends wrote mean things on students’ locker in permanent ink and made up cruel nicknames for them and got other students to call them those names. He never apologized to the people he hurt or tried to make amends.

Years passed and one day I was sitting in my room reading a book. My phone rang. I was surprised to find it was a friend I’d grown up and went to school with calling. They sounded distressed. They said, “Last night B stuck a shot gun in his mouth and blew the back of his head off.” I must tell you at that moment I felt stunned and then as if a great weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I was filled with elation. I felt guilty feeling good about his demise, but it is what I actually felt.

I looked at my novelist with confusion. What does all this mean? I asked.

She said, “It means that some people on that list are B and some are C, dead, alive or otherwise. Some of them are going to take one road and some are going to take the other. In the present world people have come to believe in the illusion that truth is what you decide it is. But that is not so. Truth is reality. Not your reality, not my reality, not anyone else’s reality, but Truth’s reality. You can try and buy your way out of it, you can lie about it, you can run. But you’re only going to get so far. Because Truth is the house. And the house always wins. It may take a very long time for Truth to win but Truth never loses, and it always comes to collect its debt.”

I pondered her words and they gave me renewed hope for our missing cats. Until next week, I bid you adieu.  

MY BOOKS

You can check out my books Chicane and all five installments of the Musicology book series Musicology: Volume One, Baby!, Musicology: Volume Two, Kid!, Musicology: Volume Three, Twist!, Musicology: Volume Four, Sweetie! and Musicology: The Epiquad on Amazon in Kindle and Paperback editions. You can also check out Musicology’s web site at www.musicologyrocks.com and vote for who you think will win Musicology!

STREAM OF THE WEEK: SINNERS (2025)-HBO MAX

Nominated for sixteen Academy Awards including Best Picture, comes this period piece/vampire movie written and directed by Oscar nominee Ryan Coogler. The film is stylish and intriguing with excellent performances throughout. It blends the power of blues music with racial tensions during 1932 in Clarkston, Mississippi. I do think the film goes on a scene or two too long, but overall, it is a solid story.

Identical twin brothers World War I veterans Elijah “Smoke” and Elias “Stack” (both well-played by Oscar nominee Michael B. Jordan) return home from Chicago after working for the mob for several years. They have steadily siphoned money from their employers and have amassed enough to open a juke joint for which they employ their talented younger cousin Samuel or “Sammie” (Miles Caton), the son of a preacher named Jedidiah Moore (Saul Williams) to sing and play guitar. Jedidiah is not happy about Sammie’s musical talents, considers them tools of the devil, and does not want him to play at the juke joint. But Sammie is determined to perform.

The twins purchase an old sawmill from a landowner and local KKK leader named Hogwood (David Maldonado). They then enlist several locals to assist them including pianist and harmonica player Delta Slim (Oscar Nominee Delroy Lindo), a married singer named Pearline (Jayme Lawson) whom Sammie has a crush on, shopkeepers Grace and Bo Chow (Helena Hu and Yao) to be suppliers, a field worker named Cornbread (Omar Benson Miller) to be their bouncer, and Smoke’s estranged wife Annie (Oscar Nominee Wunmi Mosaku) who practices Hoodoo, to be a cook. Smoke and Annie have a difficult past because their daughter died in infancy. During their recruitments, Stack runs into his old girlfriend Mary (Hailee Steinfeld) who is mixed race. Because she passes as white, Stack left her in order to protect her.

Meanwhile, an Irish-immigrant vampire named Remmick (Jack O’Connell) hides away from Choctaw vampire hunters looking for victims.  

Other Oscar nominations for the film went to Autumn Durald Arkapaw for Cinematography, Ruth E. Carter for Costume Design, Michael P. Shawver for Film Editing, Ken Diaz, Mike Fontaine and Shunika Terry for Makeup and Hairstyling, and Ludwig Göransson for Original Score.