OCEAN OF PEARLS

With all the hoopla regarding healthcare, with all the hoopla giving tax credits to movies shot in Michigan, you would think "Ocean of Pearls" would be a box-office success; let me make myself clear: it’s definitely worth seeing and it deserves every penny it gets. Unfortunately, I counted nine folks in the audience (eleven if you counted my brother and me). Granted it was Sunday morning, a holiday for people of Indian descent, but I’m willing to bet most people reading this post have never heard of it. Until now.

How did I discover “Ocean of Pearls”? Trailer on television? YouTube? Newspaper article? Nope, nope, nope.

A coworker, someone I carpool with, someone with the same urologist as I, mentioned the movie on the ride to work. Without getting into his health issues, let me just say my passenger-friend sought out a doctor for a second opinion, and if he hadn’t, I’d probably be driving to work alone. Thanks to Dr. Neelam, my friend is still with us.

Dr. Neelam is also the movie director of “Ocean of Pearls,” most of which was shot in the Metro-Detroit area thanks to his access to hospitals and medical centers. There are also some familiar City of Detroit scenes as well. (Incidentally, he did not receive a tax break due to filming in 2006).

I’m in total shock that a main distributor has not picked up this film. Although the storyline is about a young doctor who questions his Sikh faith while moving from Toronto to Detroit, it’s also about the discovery of a seriously flawed United States’ healthcare system.

If you have the opportunity to see this film, please do. You will not be disappointed. In fact, if Dr. Neelam directs another full-length feature film, I’ll be first in line to buy a ticket.

Posted by JR

TAKE A MINUTE...IF YOU WILL

If you pass through this page, and we know you do because there is an embed counter to monitor traffic, nothing serious. it is a numbers only collector and not a tracking widget, I would like you to take an extra few minutes for me and answer a question or nine.

It doesn’t matter if you comment anonymously or with your call back logo because I am only interested in the answers provided.

1. Are you native born to the Detroit area, a transplant, or currently living somewhere else?

2. Did you leave Detroit and Michigan and would you move back?

3. What conditions made you leave and what conditions would have to happen before you would move back?

4. What is your impression of Detroit, when the word comes up what does your gut tell you?

5. Compared to where you grew up/live does Detroit compare favorably or unfavorably and briefly why?

6. Have you ever visited Detroit as a tourist destination? What did you come to see? Did it meet your expectations?

7. Did you encounter any violence while here either as a resident or a visitor?

8. What is your impression of the people you met or know in Detroit?

9. What would it take for Detroit to lose its reputation as a hardcore city?

OK that’s about it. I’d like to thank you for taking the time to answer and thank you for stopping by. I am working on a few pieces of writing and I am trying a new tact in formulating them. I want the images your answers presented to me to filter through my brain and see what comes out the end of my finger tips.

Be Well and Be Kind

Mark C Durfee

aka

The Walking Man

Detroit from the Other Side

Detroit's downtown looks so beautiful from Windsor, from the Detroit River, skyscrapers and all. This is a still from the opening sequence of HBO's Hung. Can't see the desolation from afar. But up close, that's another matter . . .

In Detroit, 1942

Race relations. Often strained in Detroit and everywhere else. This photograph is courtesy of the Library of Congress, and has to do with housing wartime black workers. Nice.

Have we made progress since 1942? Yes, but it's been tough going. Is race more culture or skin color? The human race is one, so what's up? What about someone with "mixed blood," like Salma Valgarma Hayek Jiménez (Salma Hayek)? She may pave the way for the future, when we can all get along.

-- PM.

Detroit During Wartime

Detroit has had its share of troubles, especially during wartime. 1812. 1943. 1967. 2009.

1942 was a time of severe housing shortages for emigrant workers in Detroit, especially for African Americans. Here's a photo (courtesy of the Library of Congress) of soldiers with fixed bayonets patrolling the perimeter of the Sojourner Truth Housing Project. Not hard to believe -- not at all.

For more:

http://www.detroit1701.org/Sojourner%20Truth%20Housing%20Project.html

MOZART NEVER KNEW THE BEAUTY II

Eine kleine nachtmusik

Cosi fan tutti

The symphony bridge

Between the Uzi and the Mac 9

The crescendo of the bass AK

With the overlay of the

Semi automatic Glock

filling in the string tempo

the symphony is

a lovely thing

just a little Detroit

night music

to lull you to sleep.

1-31-07

r/7-18-09

© TWM

It All Starts In Detroit

"What's your tool?" the motivational speaker in HBO's new show, Hung, asks a group of disenfranchised Detroiters searching for ways to make money. One older man says offers advice, maybe he could charge for it. Another woman who has lost her Poet in the Schools job says she wants to make bread with poems in it -- lyric loaves. Our protagonist, a washed out baseball player and teacher at the high school he attended, thinks about it and realizes the only thing he has that is exceptional is his big, umm, appendage. I have a friend who calls motivational tapes/seminars/etc. sunshine enemas. I have to laugh because his characterization is correct. He and my sister listen to The Secret audio cds for laughs. The voice and accompanying massage spa music is perfect grounding for such bon mots as "Avert your eyes when you see an obese person. Do not look at that you do not wish to become." Jeez, and I thought it was all those twinkies I was stuffing in my mouth. My mistake.

At any rate, Hung's pilot is funny. The poet finds lyric loaves not to be the money-making endeavor she'd hoped so she agrees to pimp out our protagonist whose first attempt at selling himself is an ad in the Detroit Examiner (a stand-in for the Metro Times)that offers women endless enjoyment with "Big Donnie." He could use a wordsmith and she could use the money. There's an ex-wife, twin children, and a new husband who makes a lot of money, a fire. It seems like the kind of show about lowered expectations and sadness that I enjoy. I've always liked the line we're all in the gutter/ looking at the stars (Oscar Wilde/Chrissie Hynde -- take your pick of source), but I often find myself in the gutter, looking closely at the gutter. There's a lot to be said at being where you are, not where you wish to be. After all, the stars are reflected everywhere, even in the most unlikely places.

-- mmb