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Pundits of all stripes and persuasion have not only been confounded by Donald Trump's surprising traction in the early months of the Republican presidential primary, but plenty have also been stymied about how to stop his seemingly runaway train.

There've been secret meetings among the GOP establishment, and party hacks have issued their suggestions for derailing the Trump Express. Former Scott Walker strategist Liz Mair (who lasted all of one day on the Walker campaign) recently offered "10 ways to blow the billionaire out of the water," none of which would have even the slightest impact on the Trump battleship. Talk about wonk challenged. What's abundantly clear is that the political elites in this country are clueless when it comes to voters in the hinterlands.

Come now the great divider -- indeed, the most polarizing figure in American politics -- Sarah Palin. She appeared with Trump on Wednesday at an anti-Iran-deal rally in Washington, D.C., and for the first time in months, she did what no one else has been able to do -- she actually sucked some of the oxygen out of Trump's appearance.

Palin garnered headlines, Internet traffic and television sound bites by referring to members of Black Lives Matter as "dogs." In what the Washington Post described as yet another "winding speech," Palin screeched out a "word salad" with references to "Obama's selfie stick," "suppin' with Sharia," "sprinkly fairy dust," and "pretty pink kaleidoscopes," while professing "sweat is my sanity."

Donald who?

Those who have dismissed Trump's candidacy -- and let me be the first to admit that I most certainly did when he originally announced--have failed to grasp the surprisingly broad swath of his appeal. Anyone who thinks he's the candidate du jour or the GOP "flavor of the month" à la Bachmann or Cain had better think twice.

Polls indicate that The Donald's support has been coming from an unexpectedly complex cross-section of the American populace -- one, in the words of the New York Times, composed of "a demographically and ideologically diverse coalition, constructed around personality, not substance, that bridges demographic and political divides."

Palin's, on the other hand, comes exclusively from the marginal right -- the Tea Party and beyond. If Trump ever hopes to broaden and expand his base, he won't be doing it by veering starboard, into the same dark corner of extremism into which Palin painted -- and continues to paint -- herself. It's a lose-lose proposition.

One of Trump's various appeals is that he's truly an outsider to the political process -- while Palin has been a career politician ever since she first ran for the Wasilla City Council nearly a quarter-century ago. Moreover, in spite of her constant shrieking at being "anti-government," there are now four generations of Palins slurping from the public trough in the Matanuska Valley. The hypocrisy is mind-boggling.

Trump's favorability ratings actually have moved up in recent weeks. That's a rarity in politics, but they did. Palin's have only moved in one direction. Ever since her catastrophic cameo as John McCain's running mate, her favorability ratings have headed straight for the floor. Even among Republican voters, she's anathema. In Alaska, her numbers are strictly sub-Arctic.

Palin teased out runs for the presidency in both 2012 and again in 2016. Both times she chickened out. She neither had the gumption -- nor the intellectual bandwidth -- to get up on that particular horse. When it comes to political fortitude, the quitter governor is all hat and no cattle.

The next several months will prove whether Trump's for real or not. So far, little has tripped him up. The one proven millstone on the GOP roster is Sarah Palin. If anyone wants to stop Trump, just encourage him to keep Shotgun Sarah as his sidekick. She'll sink him faster than a proverbial lead balloon.

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Award-winning writer and filmmaker Geoffrey Dunn's best-selling The Lies of Sarah Palin: The Untold Story Behind Her Relentless Quest for Power was published by Macmillan/St. Martin's in May of 2011.

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Trumpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Trumpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Trumpty together again.

As far as we know, Donald Trump, unlike Richard III, does not have a hump. He has a lot of money. That is his crutch, and that may doom him in the end.

It is true that Trumpty Dumpty has not plotted to murder his rivals so he can be king.

Instead, Trumpty Dumpty has plotted to overwhelm us not only with his funds but with his much-trumpeted intellect. As he told us on Wednesday at a rally in Washington, D.C., our country is run by "very, very stupid people."

He was presumably referring to President Obama.

Trumpty Dumpty would have us believe that he, unlike Obama, is a genius because, as he never stops telling us, he went to Wharton. He actually transferred there for his bachelor's degree after spending two years at Fordham.

It has never been reported that President Obama, who himself transferred to Columbia after two years at Occidental, or Trumpty Dumpty graduated with honors from college, and we would know if either one did, since neither man is shy about touting his perceived successes.

In the president's case, as we all know, he was the first African-American to be president of the Harvard Law Review, and, as we have also been informed, he graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. In Trump's case, he has made billions of dollars.

It must be said that both men have benefited from their fathers' pedigree. Trump took over the family real estate business. Obama's acceptance at Harvard Law School was undoubtedly eased by the fact that his father attended Harvard for graduate school.

Though Trumpty Dumpty may not have excelled academically, many bright people have not thrived in school.

Perhaps, Trumpty Dumpty is less of a genius than a "super genius" like Wile E. Coyote, who plotted to kill the Road Runner.

In true super genius fashion, Trumpty Dumpty has succeeded in catching and diminishing the original Republican front-runner, Jeb Bush, mocking him for his "low energy," for his speaking Spanish, and for his soporific effect on attendees at his events.

While Trumpty Dumpty has not assembled any Acme devices, as Wile E. Coyote did, to trap Jeb and others, he has deployed his trademark bombast to foil his foes.

He denigrated John McCain, a war hero, for his military service, even though Trumpty Dumpty got numerous deferments when he was a student at Fordham and his beloved Wharton, deferments that enabled him to avoid the draft and the Vietnam War.

Trumpty Dumpy also famously bashed undocumented immigrants to this country as "murderers and rapists."

And he showed his casual misogyny by suggesting that Fox anchor Megyn Kelly was under the gravitational pull of the moon at the time that she questioned him in the first Republican debate.

More recently, in a Rolling Stone profile, he criticized Carly Fiorina, one of his Republican rivals, for her facial appearance, though he claimed on CNN this morning, September 10, that he was referring to her persona.

Few will believe him given the tasteless remarks he has made in the past about women.

At this point, that has not stopped Trumpty Dumpty from topping the most recent CNN poll with 32 percent of Republican voters choosing him as their nominee. But, like all super geniuses, Trumpty Dumpty will have a great fall. One must keep in mind that the Acme products always backfired on Wile E. Coyote, who invariably ended up tumbling off a cliff before getting conked on the head by an anvil.

Richard III was foiled in the end too.

One might wonder if Trumpty Dumpty will blame it on his marital past.

"My divorce! My divorce! My kingdom for a divorce!"

We might reply, "Which one?"

Of course, few care about Trumpty Dumpty's two divorces except insofar as they reveal his quantitative attitude toward women. "She's so much more than a ten," he once allegedly said about his second wife.

"You'd be impressed," he once told Gloria Allred about a part of his anatomy. Her reply, if memory serves, echoed the spirit if not the wit of Truman Capote's quip about how he could initial, but not sign, his name on the member of a Trump-like solipsist.

The anvil may not come for a while, but there is just so long before Trumpty Dumpty will meet his own Joseph Welch on live TV. I am looking forward to that moment when someone stands up to the bully.

Hillary Clinton is more than capable of doing so. She has the strength and the smarts.

But, hopefully, Trumpty Dumpty will meet his fall before then, amongst his Republican brothers and sisters.

It may be a moderator who refutes Trumpty Dumpty's claim that every tough question is a "gotcha question," or it may be a Republican rival who demands that Trumpty Dumpty stop demeaning the intelligence and facial appearance of his foes.

Trumpty Dumpty will find out that you can't keep making excuses when you screw up, as he did in confusing the Quds and the Kurds on Hugh Hewitt's show. And you can't keep maligning people if you hope to get elected to the highest office in the land.

Will Carly Fiorina be the one to take on Trumpty Dumpty? She appears to have the poise and the confidence for the task.

And it would be nice if Jeb joins in by standing up for immigrants, narcoleptics and the Bush family name, from which he has been said to distance himself.

Poppy Bush had to fight off his own image as a bland wimp.

Let's see Jeb unleash his inner W. and go mano a mano with Trump, the chicken hawk.

Wile E. Coyote may howl as Dr. Carson separates them. But Trumpty Dumpty is more likely to utter a whelp.

That is when we will know that the stunts of the super genius have backfired, when Trumpty Dumpty will have his great fall, when he will crack and splatter like an egg.

Then we will find out that Trumpty Dumpty has no hump, that it was all a charade. As Marty Feldman said in Young Frankenstein, "What hump?"

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I had wanted to like The Visit as it was filmed where I live and that is the beauteous surroundings of suburban Philadelphia and its Chestnut Hill area, but The Visit is one big narcissistic flop. Waiting to be scared is boring. What a pity with the fine acting and excellent production values that the writing of The Visit is high school at best. It is written by the director M. Night Shyamalan. Too much control at the helm and no objectivity. Someone had to tell M. Night Shyamalan the truth during the creation of this dreck, but it is obvious that only compliments were in order. And so boredom set in after the first few minutes and continued for ninety percent of the film. And fine talent is wasted.

The Visit is about two children in their early teens who go to stay with their grandparents whom they have never met. Naturally these grandparents are elderly and suffering from sundowning which affects senior citizens with dementia. Their behavior is peculiar at best. If you can make it to the end of the film, all the odd mannerisms of the grandparents is explained in a shocking conclusion. But, alas, it took so long to get here that my interest had left the station. A failed attempt at self-involved humor concludes this film.

The use of silence as a sound track in the fleeting moments of fright works and was the star of this failure. Camera work was good as well, but the music in the finale was absurd. The child actors were charming, clever and skilled considering the mediocre material. The film stars Olivia DeJonge, as a precious Becca who is an aspiring director and making her home movie of her life. Ed Oxenbould is Becca's younger brother who is assisting Becca in making their movie, but is a frustrated teenage rapper who does this with great agility and charm throughout this film. Deanna Dunagan plays the grandmother, Nana, with conviction. Peter Mc Robbie is Pop Pop who is the caretaker of Nana who suffers from sundowning. Kathryn Hahn is the Mom who sends her children to their grandparents from whom she is estranged. Hahn is taking a much needed vacation from her children as she is a single parent. She lifts The Visit every time she appears on screen, pulling it from the doldrums of a film that tries to be scary but is one big snore.

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When I first had the idea for my Astro Hero series the New Moon had just begun. This was on June 10, 2010. Of course, I noticed the date because I wanted to use the moon's energy to boost my energy and creativity. And you can too.

Whatever your idea or goal is begin any project at the beginning of the lunar cycle, i.e. a New Moon. In the sky we cannot see the actual new moon until it becomes a sliver of light then over 14 days the moon grows in size and brightness until it peaks at the Full Moon. This waxing and waning of the moon happens every month. If we follow this moon power rhythm we have more bounce, energy, and flow. Let me give you an example of how this works.

Shortly after that June New Moon I wrote the outline of a story about 12 kids, each born under a different astrological sign, who become Super Astro Heroes. I wrote in the morning consistently from the New Moon until the Full Moon. Practically every month afterwards, the New Moon found me pounding away at the keyboard. There were a few interruptions for colds, family matters, and work but I kept to my idea and after six months had a manuscript.

Then came phase two. What to do with this story? I thought the story was very visual and would make a wonderful graphic novel. Problem! I can't draw.

For a couple of new moons I searched for artists and through some lucky connections found my artist, Jai Granofsky. You can see his terrific art here and in blogs to come. I also met another artist, Israel Peak, who helped me storyboard and make thumbnail sketches.

Now we had the team but the money? The lunar cycle gets you going and helps ideas flow but manifesting anything requires more than moon power. Saturn, planet of detail, structure, and reality was my guide here. I turned to the crowd funding platform, Kickstarter.

On the new Moon in May, 2013 we went live with our project funding page. I emailed, tweeted, called, and spoke with everyone I knew. The campaign lasted exactly one month from New Moon to the next New Moon and we raised our target amount plus. In addition to moon power, I am eternally grateful to all my backers. They not only contributed money but creative ideas. Some of their terrific suggestions for their Astro Hero's costume, as well as special weapons, have been incorporated in the story.

How can you use the moon's power? It's simple. Begin new projects at the New Moon. Take a look at a calendar or consult www.lunarium.co.uk and find out exactly when the New Moon occurs. Make a wish list of whatever you would like to initiate in your life: a new sofa, a new relationship, a new job or a new general goal. Perhaps you won't take action every New Moon but recognizing what you would like to activate counts as a beginning. In the 2 weeks that follow the New Moon (until the Full Moon), work on your project. Then after the Full Moon let things simmer. You will come back to the active phase with the next New Moon.

Last blog you saw the beginning of the series Tree of Keys and met Nefos and Zalinda. Here on page 2, these two are setting up a plan to control and use Moon Power. The plot thickens. If these two fictitious characters can move the heavens for their own design, imagine what you can create in your own life?

The next New Moon will be on September 13th plus an eclipse! Make your wishes and intentions clear and watch how they grow.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

BY EVE PEYSER

Mad Men may be off the air, but fans are still hungry for gossip about tall drink of water Jon Hamm. Hence why the actor and his longtime girlfriend, director/writer/actress Jennifer Westfeldt, publicly announced their split after nearly two decades together.

"With great sadness, we have decided to separate, after 18 years of love and shared history," the couple confirmed to People in a joint statement on Monday. "We will continue to be supportive of each other in every way possible moving forward."

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A cursory Google search shows some news outlets reported this story with as much tact and grace as possible:

john hamm jennifer

Heck, even TMZ and Perez Hilton--celebrity gossip blogs infamous for their poor taste--used acceptable headlines.

But The Hollywood Reporter took a different approach by omitting Westfeldt's name in their headline, reducing her to just being Hamm's girlfriend:

Jon Hamm Splits from Longtime Girlfriend http://t.co/NCgfhn5UOb pic.twitter.com/BN8ULMLPg5
— Hollywood Reporter (@THR) September 7, 2015

Post-Mad Men, Hamm is without a doubt more well-known. But even the most cursory IMDb or even Wikipedia search shows that Westfeldt is far more than just a celebrity ex-girlfriend. In fact, for most of their adult lives prior to Mad Men, Westfeldt was the far more successful half of the couple (namely, for writing and starring in Kissing Jessica Stein in 2001).

Of course, the good people of Twitter responded immediately:

@THR the girlfriend isn't important enough for you to squeeze her name in this tweet, right?
— Dobs™ (@badlydrawndobs) September 7, 2015

@THR"Jon Hamm and Jennifer Westfeldt split but whatever let's just say he dumped his longtime girlfriend because women aren't important"
— Dave Quinn (@NineDaves) September 8, 2015

She has a name. It's Jennifer Westfeldt. She's a very successful actress, writer, and director. Women are not just girlfriends. @THR
— Birdy (@palebirdy) September 8, 2015

The omission is reminiscent of the treatment of Amal Clooney, a lauded human rights lawyer who happens to be married to a very famous George. When the couple married last year, publications ranging from the BBC to the Guardian reported the story with headlines like "Film star George Clooney marries in Venice." One can understand why a site called the Business Woman Media cheekily flipped things around and used the headline: "Internationally acclaimed barrister Amal Alamuddin marries an actor."

So now seems as good a time as ever to briefly share some of Westfeldt's many accomplishments, which any reporter can easily find on Wikipedia:

Wrote the films Kissing Jessica Stein, Ira & Abby, and Friends with Kids

Directed and starred in Friends with Kids

Starred in over 25 off-Broadway plays

Won the 2003 GLAAD Media Award

Tony Award Nominee

Yale graduate

And for future reference, here are some alternate headlines The Hollywood Reporter can use about Hamm:

"Salon.com 2007 Sexiest Man Living splits from 2003 GLAAD Media Award winner"

"One time Girlsguest star splits from one time contestant on The Date"

"Gap scarf ad breaks up"

"Emmy-nominee and Tony-nominee split"

"Jennifer Westfeldt and Jon Hamm split"

"Two actors split"

This article originally appeared on the Daily Dot.

Also on HuffPost:

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BY JOEY KEETON

In one of Entourage's later (that is, bad) seasons, Vincent Chase stars as Pablo Escobar in a movie-within-the-show called Medellin. The production was a wreck, and Chase's venture into the world of arthouse films ends up going straight to DVD.

While watching the latest big-budget Netflix Original, Narcos, I couldn't shake the idea that I was watching Medellin. It's gorgeous, expertly acted filmmaking, but it's clear -- by around the third episode -- that the season will never gel into a cohesive narrative, and it won't really have anything poignant to say by the time the final episode's credits roll. It's eight and a half hours of the most expensive, and utterly aimless, dicking around that any large production has ever accomplished.

But here's why you need to watch it anyway.

The show is based around the partnership of two DEA officers, Steve Murphy and Javier Peña, and their hunt for the Colombian drug lord/Fortune 500 member/philanthropist/most dangerous criminal in the world/brief congressman Pablo Escobar.

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Pablo is pretty wealthy at the start of Episode 1, but the accumulation of his ridiculous levels of wealth is covered in one of those montages where stacks of money are shown in rooms, and a voiceover says stuff like "A week later, Pablo would be importing 600 million tons of cocaine an hour into Miami," while Pablo stands next to a Cessna airplane and negotiates with a goofy-looking pilot. It's an oddly paced show: A great deal of time is given to man who originally brought Pablo the cocaine refinement method, which would later make him rich, but then it hardly shows him actually getting rich at all. Most of the time we see Pablo, he's casually sauntering around by himself, looking into the sun with puppy-dog eyes that are simultaneously ablaze with ambition and hazed over by a fog of inevitable self-loathing and doom.

Wagner Moura takes a script that gives Pablo very little to do and adds at least six emotional layers to it, solely by the way he moves his eyes. He adds about three more layers by the way he carries his beer-keg belly, and, when all's said and done, he's responsible for a several-dozen-layered character that was written with maybe two in mind.

Each episode feels like it was written in total isolation from the others, like the cool parts of Pablo's rise to infamy were scripted out, laid next to each other, and tied together with only the thinnest strings of plot to connect the pieces. Consequences rarely carry over from one episode to the next, each one dutifully following the formula of "Pablo does something bombastic, and the cops go "damnit, we got nothin to nail this guy with!" -- until the very last episode, which would have made a fucking fantastic first episode.

Boyd Holbrook and Pedro Pascal have great chemistry as DEA agents Murphy and Peña; they're just not given anything to do. Murphy's main role in the season is to provide the voiceover, which, with a few possible exceptions, could have been lost with no consequence whatsoever.

It's such a frustrating season: The performances are great, the action (and everything else) is directed extremely well, the presumably expensive Colombian film shoot makes every single frame shot outdoors look stupidly amazing... but there's just something missing. When I read an interview with the real-life Murphy and Peña, the missing thing was suddenly very clear: It's a story based on two DEA agents who didn't actually know each other in real life for 80 percent of this season.

"I was only in Colombia about three days when Escobar surrendered to his custom built prison," Murphy told the Observer. In the show, that happens in Episode 9 (out of 10), with Murphy coming to Colombia in the first episode. This explains a great deal of the dicking-around done by the agents in this season; they really didn't have anything to do.

But having spent nearly this entire piece badmouthing this season, here's why it's worth watching: The second season, which will pick up where the show should have started, is probably going to be fantastic.

This season ends with (spoiler alert) Pablo escaping his personal prison, which the government allowed him to build for himself. Here's what Murphy told the interviewer from the Observer about what came after his escape, which this season closes with:

During that 18 month period, there were 143 Colombian National Police Officers killed as a direct result of the manhunt for Escobar ... For those 18 months, Medellin became the murder capital of the world.

In the same interview, Peña confirms: "In Meddelin, you would have 30-50 people murders every weekend that were all Escobar related."

In other words, who knows why this season even exists. Maybe, due to there being nothing but extreme violence after Pablo's escape, Netflix wanted to take a cheaper approach to the first season: Film the more boring, political parts of Pablo's life to see if this crew could competently produce a show, and then give them the big bucks (and a million squibs) for the next and, logistically, final season.

For all its flaws, Narcos' first season could just be one hell of a prequel to a mindblowingly good second season. Let's just hope they have the episodes written in the same ZIP codes this time around.

A version of this story was originally published on the Daily Dot.

Also on HuffPost:

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This article originally appeared on Inverse.

2015-09-09-1441823716-9295500-slackimgs.com.gif

By Eric Francisco

"Everything I'm sayin', I'm super sayin' like Goku" - Childish Gambino, "My Shine"

Dragon Ball Z was a landmark anime. Created by Akira Toriyama and produced by Toei Animation, the series was an epic martial arts/sci-fi fantasy that followed the adventures of an alien warrior named Goku. Through 291 half-hour episodes, Goku goes "Super Saiyan" (a temporary, powered-up form) to defend the planet from the evil Frieza, Cell, Majin Buu, and other dangers while searching for the fabled Dragon Balls that hold the cosmic power to grant a wish.

The anime premiered in Japan in 1989 and was syndicated in the United States on Cartoon Network's Toonami block from 1998 until the programming block's end in 2008. Alongside Pokemon, Dragon Ball Z became a pop culture phenomenon that ushered in the anime craze of the late '90s.

It also became hip-hop's favorite anime of all time.

"When I'm on the mic I'm blazing / Man, who am I? Just like a Super Saiyan." - B.o.B, "Autotune"

In the hierarchy of nerdy fandoms, Dragon Ball Z is dwarfed by titans like Star Wars, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings. But you almost never hear of Mordor or the Starship Enterprise in a freestyle. More than any other anime or "geek" property, rap artists constantly reference Dragon Ball Z and its bizarre mythology.

"It's something I've been aware of since actually back when we originally showed it," Adult Swim creative director Jason DeMarco told me in a phone interview. "[It's] definitely much more prevalent now that generation has grown up."

Prior to his current gig of shaping the voice for the college-skewing Adult Swim, DeMarco worked as an associate creative for Toonami, a mini-channel on Turner's Cartoon Network. "Back then our mandate from the network was to create an after school block of action cartoons for boys [aged] 9 to 14. Dragon Ball Z was sort of our first big step in building that audience."

That audience, DeMarco and his team quickly discovered, tended to be ethnic minority youths. "We have detailed breakdowns of our audience. Even then research was a huge thing. We knew that Toonami and Dragon Ball Z in particular overindexed with boys, and even more with minority audiences." Toonami and Cartoon Network, DeMarco points out, functions like any other TV network and they always try to attract a broad audience. "[We] try to get as many different kinds of people watching as possible ... [but] anecdotally out in the world, when we would go to festivals or conventions, or just sometimes go speak at schools, there was definitely a large number of minority kids that would come up to me and talk about how much they love Dragon Ball Z or Gundam."

Recognizing the hip-hop-leaning fanatics watching Toonami, DeMarco designed the award-winning on-air signatures and promos with that sound in mind. The result was an edgy presentation and attitude that let it stand apart from the other kids' TV channels.

"Smoking on some Goku, buds like Dragon Balls" - Danny Brown, "Shootin' Moves"

"We always used a lot of hip-hop, as well as drum and bass, so not only were they seeing a show that appealed to them [but we also had] the music, and the way it was presented was appealing to them much more than sort of other kids networks were," he said. "Hip-hop is sort of a natural fit for Toonami already."

These years cultivated a devoted audience for Toonami that thrives today, but in 1998 they were just getting started. DeMarco and his colleagues knew what could place Toonami on the map would be this really weird, action-heavy show full of color and energy. "We had been on for about two years before we got Dragon Ball Z, but we had been trying to get [it] that whole time. We were just convinced that we would give it the right home and make a hit out of it. Luckily we were right."

Today's biggest artists and rising stars of the game who stand in the booths uploading tracks on Soundcloud were those same 9 to 14-year-old boys who watched Dragon Ball Z close to twenty years ago.

"It's be bang banging likes Pops on the Wayan's / And even through the hating and wars they thought I stay in / Who you playing, I done went Super Saiyan." - XV, "Awesome"

Historically, it's not unusual for rap music to reference kitschy TV or movies as a tool for empowerment and to exude sharp, cultural acumen. The Wu-Tang Clan famously called back to '70s kung-fu movies as part of their identity, but Dragon Ball Z isn't quite Shaw Brothers. So just how did a wacky kung-fu cartoon featuring a goofy dude in a bright orange onesie become rap music's go-to nerdy resource for killer lines?

"I think it was just sort of a combination of a bunch of different factors, and kind of being in the right place in the right time with the right piece of entertainment," DeMarco tells me. "[The show] didn't speak down to these kids, who maybe were being spoken down to in other ways."

"That soft pink matter / Cotton candy, Majin Buu / Close my eyes and fall into you" - Frank Ocean, "Pink Matter"

Whether hip-hop's admiration for Toriyama's seminal work was an unexpected perfect storm or just the inevitable, DeMarco is unsurprised by its enduring popularity. "The most common comments I hear is 'Toonami raised me' or 'Dragon Ball Z raised me' or 'That's my childhood.'" Television often succeeds as a primary after school activity for children in lower-income households and urban neighborhoods where programs like sports are virtually nonexistent.

DeMarco continues. "It's clear to me for a lot of families who did not have a lot of things for their kids to do after school ... their TV was their babysitter, because that's just the way it worked out. A lot of those kids remember Toonami and Dragon Ball Z as being hugely important in terms of teaching them certain values [and] giving them something to look forward to at the end of a shitty school day."

"F-ck 5-0 I make my own rules / Suck my dragon balls b-tch, call me Goku" - Waka Flocka Flame, "Wild Boy"

From Power Rangers to Grand Theft Auto, violence in pop culture is a hot button issue that is cyclically renewed. Dragon Ball Z, an import product from Japan with differing content standards than the U.S., got its share of scorn from horrified parents during its red-hot run on Toonami. DeMarco and his team at Toonami were aware, but not concerned. "At the time we were acquiring Dragon Ball Z, we knew it would be a new, fresh type of entertainment for most of our kid audience that American cartoons just weren't taking [to the level that] Dragon Ball Z did in terms of the stakes, in terms of, to be frank the level of violence."

It wasn't the exertion of power that attracted its impressionable viewers like moths to a flame, but feeling powerful. "All the things that as a kid who's going to school, who may or may not be in a great situation, sometimes entertainment can relieve some of those pressures," DeMarco observed. "I think Dragon Ball Z did that for a lot of kids."

Music, hip-hop especially, can give power to the powerless and a voice to the voiceless. DeMarco chalks up the show's enduring legacy in its hero, Goku, who regularly one-ups his adversaries after brutal, intense fights. "Dragon Ball Z is in just watching it, an empowerment fantasy, so of course if you feel powerless, or you feel beat-down, it's good to watch a story about a hero who is reaching deep within himself and coming back even from death to beat the next challenge, because he overcame all the odds and adversity thrown at him."

For many artists who "started at the bottom" as troubled youth unable to improve their place in life, they find echoes of themselves in an immigrant alien still fighting to understand his full potential.

"I push ki like Dragonball Z, you see what I'm Saiyan'" - Lupe Fiasco, "Free Chilly Freestyle"

"I totally get why a kid would watch that," DeMarco told me. "I get why that same kid would become a rapper, and then rap about wanting to be like Goku because you take your heroes where you can get them. There's nothing wrong with a kid whose hero is a carton character if that hero encapsulates the values that hey want to, the type of person they want to be. Media can be aspirational, just like real life heroes can be aspirational."

"I'm amazed that it's come back the way it has," DeMarco said towards the end of our call. "I'm gratified, and it seems like I'm hoping we create a whole new generation of fans like we did 15 years ago."

Update: A previous version of this article described Goku as "half-alien, half-human." The author was mistakenly thinking of Goku's son, Gohan. That mistake has since been corrected.

Photos via Toei Animation

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Yesterday I wrote about Donald Trump's open letter to CNN President Jeff Zuker asking him to donate the profits from the upcoming GOP debates to "various VETERANS groups" of Trump's choosing. I also suggested a response that Mr. Zucker might want to send to him.

Trump previously asserted, "I'm going to do the debate, but I want $10 million for charity." He added, "Otherwise I'm not going to the debate. And honestly, I think they'd pay me."

Could Trump be looking for an excuse not to participate? Maybe he doesn't appreciate hard questions.

Some would conclude that he sounded a bit confused about foreign policy issues in a recent interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt.

The following day he reportedly called Hewitt a "third-rate radio announcer." Hewitt's questions certainly were first-rate, given that Trump wants to be commander-in-chief.

As a pageant promoter, Trump knows that beauty contestants sometimes have trouble responding to what they perceive to be difficult questions.

It may be recalled that Trump was also displeased in the first debate when Megyn Kelly of Fox News asked about him reportedly calling some women "fat pigs, dogs, slobs, and disgusting animals," or him telling a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice that it would be a "pretty picture to see her on her knees."

Trump's now infamous post-debate review of Ms. Kelly included this gem, "You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes; blood coming out of her wherever."

Trump has nothing to gain from participating in future debates. He has a solid lead over the other GOP candidates, and if he falters in any debate he could look more foolish and lose ground. On the other hand, his behavior so far seems to have only helped his poll numbers, which continue to rise. And they called Ronald Reagan "Teflon."

Trump often does media interviews by telephone. Maybe he can simply phone in his participation in the debates, reserving his comments until they are over. He can fight his war of words on Twitter and other outlets and never need to leave the comforts of Trump Towers.

The other Republican contenders would be relieved if Trump were a no-show. They could strut their stuff without any bantam rooster doing all of the crowing.

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The Republican and Democratic parties have mostly offered the regular party insiders as potential candidates for the 2016 presidential election. Both parties' insider candidates are busy campaigning against each other and are focused on dividing the country. They are engaged in tired old political rhetoric of fear and seem to be more worried about the Middle East than Main Street America. Democrats and Republicans both look towards Wall Street and the military industrial complex to solve our problems. All the while, our leaders have been stealing from our kids and have mortgaged their future to fulfill their insatiable appetite for spending. Therefore, it should not be a surprise to see the popularity of Donald Trump on the Republican side and Bernie Sanders from the Democratic side.

The American public's anger, disillusion and frustration with Washington is manifested by the attention both candidates are getting. Trump's ascendancy in the recent polls has thrown a monkey wrench to the Republican Party leadership's plan of anointing one of their own. They even got him to sign a pledge not to run as an independent. However, it is not binding and there is nothing anybody can do to stop him from running as an independent, if he feels that he is not fairly treated by the Republican Party. On the left, Sanders has been catching up to or is even ahead of Mrs. Clinton, according to recent polls. Both Trump and Sanders do not seem to fit the profile of their party's potential nominees chosen by the party leaders. After scrambling for a while, power brokers in both parties will figure out a way to get Trump and Sanders out of a possible nomination from their sides.

One of the reasons this will happen is due to the Presidential Campaign Industry (PCI), a multi-billion dollar operation and a part of The Beltway Beast. It is projected that the 2016 presidential campaign could cost $5 billion, a significant chunk of which will go to the PCI. There are 56 separate categories for political professionals, according to the American Association of Political Consultants, who primarily make a living out of political campaigns. Trump, who is the master of marketing and branding, does not need any pundits, pollster or image makers. Having him in the race will reduce their potential source of income during the Republican presidential primary. Even worse is if he gets the Republican nomination for the 2016 presidential election. Sanders' strategy on the other hand is not to spend time on fundraising. He has raised about $8 million with an average donation of $40. Therefore, he would not need the PCI machinery for his campaign either.

Trump is in a win-win position. He does not need to work for a living nor does he need the Republican nomination. However, he seems to be having a good time stirring the pot, so to speak, in the Republican primary. Moreover, running for President can only help his brand. How else can he get so much free air time? Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is the longest serving independent member of congress and reflects the public's mood at this moment in time and again is not obligated to the Democratic leadership for his allegiance.

Therefore, a likely scenario of a four-way race of two independents, a Republican and a Democrat may take shape given the public's discontent with traditional politicians and the way Washington works.

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Donald Trump has now thrown the Republican Party the latest in a long line of curve balls (or, in Chris Christie's preferred idiom, punches to the face). Reversing position from his previous Presidential run in 1999, the Republican front-runner now says he supports U.S.-Cuba diplomatic relations--just not the way the Obama Administration did it.

"I think it's fine, but we should have made a better deal," Trump told The Daily Caller in a Sept. 7 interview. What would the self-proclaimed master of The Art of the Deal have done differently? Trump didn't say, and interviewer Jamie Weinstein didn't ask. As puzzling as Weinstein's failure to follow-up is, we can be sure that this won't be the last time Trump is asked to elaborate on--and defend--his newfound support for U.S.-Cuba relations. Among the first to jump will be fellow Presidential aspirants Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio, both of whom have roundly denounced the move.

Bush and Rubio are, of course, both Floridians with longstanding ties to South Florida's Cuban-American community, which makes their opposition less than surprising. For the past half-century, the support of Cuban exiles has been indispensible for any Florida Republican to achieve statewide office. The same logic has long applied for any Republican hoping to win electoral-vote-rich Florida in a Presidential election.

But as Trump has perhaps figured out, that logic may no longer hold. Obama won Florida in 2008 and 2012--both times resoundingly carrying Miami-Dade County, historically home to the reliably Republican Cuban exile community. Even John Kerry, who lost Florida in 2004, carried Miami-Dade County.

All of this makes Trump's apparent reversal on Cuba a fascinating, if not necessarily game-changing move. In 1999 candidate Trump, briefly of the Reform Party, espoused a hard line against Cuba, calling Fidel Castro "absolutely a killer" and promising cheering Cuban-Americans that he would have "two words for him: 'Adios, amigo!'" Trump also shared his intention of building the first hotel in a free Cuba. As recently as last month, his (now former) adviser Roger Stone assured POLITICO that the candidate remained opposed to opening relations.

So what lies behind Trump's apparent about-face? Is his statement that the opening of U.S.-Cuba relations "is fine" just an off-the-cuff comment, a brief aside in a long interview that covered many other topics? Or does it signal a change in his political calculations? Trump's thinking has "evolved" in several other areas this election cycle, but in almost every case he has moved closer to Republican orthodoxy: on abortion and marijuana legalization, which he once supported but now opposes; and an assault-weapons ban, which he once backed but now does not.

But in changing his Cuban tune Trump stands in direct opposition to every other Republican Presidential candidate except for Sen. Rand Paul, whose backing of Obama's Cuba policy has gained him no support and may have cost him (although his recent slide in the polls and inability to raise money are probably attributable to larger factors, among them Trump's rise). How might a position that has done nothing for Paul work in Trump's favor, considering that the Cuban exile vote remains key to winning the Florida GOP primary?

Perhaps Trump has written off Florida. That would make sense, given Rubio's and Bush's longstanding ties to the state. If that is the case, then one wonders whether Trump's shift on Cuba is calculated to deprive Paul of an issue that distinguishes him from the pack. But then why Cuba? And why concern himself at all with a guy who's polling in the low single digits?

The answer to Trump's 180, assuming that it is a calculated one, likely has less to do with Rand Paul or Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush than it does with Cuban-Americans. He's not so much writing off Florida as he is the Cuban exile vote, which holds nowhere near the muscle it did back when he so enthusiastically courted it in 1999. As Trump's various policy shifts have made exceedingly clear, he is at his core a businessman who, unlike his more ideologically-bound opponents, knows a bottom line when he sees one. He recognizes that renewed U.S.-Cuba relations have already happened, are happening, regardless of his or anyone else's continued opposition to it, and that it's best at this point to get on the right side, if not of history, at least of the money trail.

If standing against U.S.-Cuba relations helps the eventual Republican nominee win the Florida GOP primary, it will do them no favors in the general election--especially in already-blue Miami-Dade County, where even Cuban-Americans are turning away from the hard line. Trump, I think, gets this. His fellow Republicans, especially Rubio and Bush, may continue to Party like it's 1999, but they do so at their political peril.

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This is getting really interesting, "bing, bing, bong." Pay attention folks. Labor Day has come and gone and the real push for a new president begins. Hillary is on an apology email tour as she is tanking, Joe is jogging, for the last time, Jeb inaugurates Colbert, and Trump proves he is no chump as he "bing, bing, bong" trash talks the minority on the stump to reincarnate Nixon's Silent Majority.

This is exactly what America needs, The Donald trumping "bing, bing, bong" on the stump, his new rallying song to impassion Nixon's secret reactionary social militia to come out from the political shadow to help him make America great again.

Remember those celluloid heroes that stood up to a changing America, the ones that represented the sentiments of Nixon's silent majority, the Hollywood caricatures of that hardhat working class cursing, racist, misogynist "Joe," played by Peter Boyle, or the living room sexist and racist, "Archie Bunker," or the white redneck professional original drive-by hit men types from "Easy Rider?" Now, they are in the flesh at Donald Trump rallies. Finally, real, original Americans have their blue-eyed, blonde ( or whatever ) haired warrior, to lift us to the Promised Land.

Trump has coyly "loonied" them back from their Hollywood Boulevard star-grave to take America back. If we include the Moral Majority and then Phyllis Schlafly for his Vice President, I know the Chinese, Russians, Iranians and Mexicans will run scared. And, with Trump, Bible in-hand, but none of the content in-head, bullies to keep soaring in the polls promising lots of "bing, bing, bong" and maintains his front-runner status, our enemies will know we have become great again by unleashing our most deadly weapon, "Dr. Strangelove, the one who flew over the civilized nest," the one who will verbally beat up anyone, the one who knows how to close the deal, and they will know there are no stupid people left in Washington. Trump will loom larger than the combined spirits engraved at Mount Rushmore.

Donald Trump, the really smart guy figured out, it's about attitude, it's about we are so sick and tired of platforms, ideological diatribes, soaring rhetoric, mind-numbing position stump speeches recycled and polled to target the hand-crafted organic, natural ingredients of a political party base. He knows we are madder and crazier than hell and will not take it any more. He knows we want a president with authenticity, who is raw and un-melting pot racist, misogynist, that hits a bellow the belt sucker knee jam into the delicate privates of the establishment, and who will viciously tongue-fu back against press elites who hide behind the skirt of the first amendment.

Trump knows we just want to be great again, and playing nice and civil and making apologies makes us look weak. We want a great man who repetitively says he is great to lead us to the great land that is free from illegal immigrants.

So, he stumps and insults. He stumps and thumps. He stumps and dumps with his eloquent low information "bing, bing, bong" until he, Donald Trump the chump, falls not too far from his stump, with his 30% of the 15% and claims because of him, because he made us talk about problems, made America great again.

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In the past 70 years, roughly 15 men have portrayed the heroic Robin Hood in film and on television - Kevin Costner, Russell Crowe, Sean Connery, Errol Flynn. Now Sean Maguire, the sophisticated, sexy and suave British actor joins that coveted list. This gifted actor has brought his special interpretation of the romantic hero to ABC's hit fantasy drama Once Upon a Time which premieres Sunday, September 27 from 8-9pm ET/PT on ABC. Sean, a fan favorite, has recently been made a regular cast member for Season Five.

An actor's actor, Sean's career spans television (East Enders, Grange Hill, Criminal Minds, CSI New York), film (Songs For Amy, Waterland), and music. Yes, he actually flirted with the UK pop charts in the mid-1990s placing nearly a dozen singles in the Top 30, but surely his proudest credit yet is becoming a father for the first time. He and his wife, Tanya, welcomed Flynn Patrick this summer.

And here's another Sean Maguire fun fact: Sean's first role (at age five) was in the film Voyage Around My Father with Sir Lawrence Olivier, which also happened to be the legendary knighted actor's final role. I caught up with Sean via phone who was in Vancouver filming Once Upon A Time.

Sean Maguire (Photo courtesy of AEFPR)

Xaque Gruber: Robin Hood has existed for about 600 years since the late Medieval period, and his popularity has continually endured. To what do you attribute this? Were you a Robin Hood fan growing up?

Sean Maguire: Yes, I was always a Robin Hood fan, and now I have a nephew who is five and he likes to pick up a pretend bow and arrow and sword like he wants to be a knight. It's a universal thing with little boys I think. At his core, Robin Hood is a good guy with nice ethics but he does good things in a kind of naughty way. He's robbing from the rich to give to the poor. I think the idea of Robin Hood has become bigger over the centuries because most of us relate to doing the wrong thing for the right reasons.

XG: Do you have any clear memories on working with Sir Lawrence Olivier?

SM: I was only five so all I have is snapshot memories. It would be kind of ridiculous to say I learned the Stanislavsky Method of acting from him (laughs). I do remember the day before working with Olivier, my father saying to me "tomorrow, you will be working with the best actor in the world so you need to be on your best behavior. It is most important to be very well behaved when you are in the company of this man." Of course years later I realized how tremendous an honor and how special it was to begin my career working with him.

Sean Maguire and Colin O Donoghue (Captain Hook) share a laugh on the set of Once Upon A Time. Photo courtesy of ABC.

XG: I've often heard that UK actors have a certain training that gives them an edge in America. There's certainly an abundance of British actors working in American television. Can you explain this?

SM: Well, first of all I think America has just as many brilliant, talented actors. If there were any reasons to explain this - well, Americans like the accent and associate it with Shakespeare and the classic literature, which for many Americans believe gives Brits a weight and gravitas. And there's a cool novelty with the accent. Growing up we watch Americans on television and so hearing American accents isn't a novelty to us, but Americans don't grow up watching British accents on television so it's something fresh and different. Also in England, there are so many good actors, and it's a much smaller industry so acting is extremely competitive - even more than here. I feel you work your ass off to break in and beat those guys who are already on British TV. You have to know your lines, come in on time, you don't mess about, you play well with others, you can't have an attitude, you have to show up with your very best game. I think this British work ethic that is engrained in us is very appealing to American producers.

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Wil Traval (Sheriff of Nottingham on left) and Sean Maguire (Robin Hood on right) with Once Upon A Time director Billy Gierhart (middle). Photo courtesy of ABC.

XG: Many people may not realize that you had a string of pop hits in the 1990s.

SM: The pop music thing shouldn't have happened to me. I wasn't a gifted musician or singer. I wasn't even a huge music fan growing up - I listened to only a couple bands. My dad played a lot of opera. I played a popular character on a show (East Enders) and they offered me a record deal and I said, "No, I don't have any skills or musical talent to speak of. It should go to someone who can play the guitar and sing - not me." And so I kept turning the offers down, and then I had a very bad motorcycle accident and very nearly died. I was 18 and laying in the hospital for about 11 days, and I felt lucky to be alive. So the offer to do music was still there and I thought "carpe diem - I should seize the day and roll the dice and do it." I recorded one song after another - enough to fill up two albums over three years. I look back on that three years or so of being a recording artist and realized I behaved very badly at times, and had a lot of growing up to do in that period. The music was secondary really. I never truly believed in myself as a musical artist. The crowds were there and so I thought I will play the character of a pop star. I was sometimes embarrassed by the cheesiness of the records, but ultimately I'm glad I did it. It helped form me as an adult.

XG: What music are you listening to?

SM: I'm a big Mumford & Sons fan and I just saw George Ezra play at the Squamish Music Festival in Canada and really liked him. I'm listening to the original Gene Wilder/Charlie And The Chocolate Factory soundtrack with my son. An eclectic mix.

XG: Is there a certain kind of role that you'd like to play?

SM: I'd like to play somebody not nice. Somebody disturbed. I tend to play relatively nice guys more often than not. And I see on Once Upon A Time the actors who play villains and how much fun they have with that. Playing something a little darker and a little bit more villainous appeals to me.

Sean Maguire (left) with the rest of the main cast of Once Upon A Time. Photo courtesy of ABC.

XG: You play a lot of very physical roles, and I know you're a big sports fan. Would you call yourself a jock?

SM: Definitely not a jock, no. I'm a fan of sports, with football - or soccer - being my sport of preference, but I disconnect with the term 'jock.' I don't know if this is right, but in my head the 'jock' mentality seems to go a little hand in hand with a sort of bullying and whipping kids with a wet towel in the locker room who are good at science.

XG: I understand you're friends with James Corden.

SM: We have a number of friends in common - and I hung out with James and had a few drinks together. He is a tremendously funny guy.

XG: You worked with Bernadette Peters in Prince Charming, and she's one of our most beloved stage talents. Makes me wonder if you would consider doing more stage work.

SM: I'd love to do a play again. I've been offered to do a musical part, but actors in musicals are doing eight shows a week - it's an enormous endeavor. They have to protect their voice. So a commitment in a musical might be tough for me, but I am keen to do a good play.

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Sean Maguire (left) describes this photo as him not understanding a joke told by Once Upon A Time's 1st AD Rob Duncan. He adds that his castmates (seen here) clearly did understand it. Photo courtesy of ABC.

XG: Robin Hood has been put through an awful lot of drama with the devious diva Zelena in the last season of Once Upon A Time. What can we expect from Robin Hood in Season Five?

SM: Robin Hood is in a tricky situation to navigate, which is that Zelena is his archnemesis and bearing his child. I think frankly he'd like to kill Zelena, and now he is torn between the woman he loathes who is the vessel that carries his child - and he loves his unborn child more than anything. It's going to be a very tricky problem to resolve. I'm as excited as you are to see where it all goes this season.

XG: What are some of the codes that Robin Hood lives by that you would like to share with your child?

SM: I would share with him the fact that Robin Hood lives by the code of practical decency, and doing the right thing. Doing what is right rather than what is easy. Everything I've been told about being a father is true - being sleep-deprived and all that, but this boy is extraordinary.

Sean Maguire and his wife Tanya. Photo courtesy of AEFPR.

Sean Maguire is on Twitter at @sean_m_maguire

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The last ten years have been tough ones for M. Night Shyamalan. After the late-'90s/early aughts trifecta of The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs marked him (per a Newsweek cover story) as "The Next Spielberg," he ran aground with 2004's The Village, and things only got rougher from there. With his After Earth disappointing two years ago, it's understandable that the writer-director would return to kind of small scale chiller-thriller that paid so many critical and commercial dividends for him early on. Unfortunately, The Visit isn't so much a bold reconquest of his home turf as it is a sad marker of just how far those glory days are.

Serving as the director's entry into the "found footage horror" sweepstakes, The Visit again revolves around Shyamalan's propensity for taking seemingly benign scenarios and slowly revealing a seedy, supernatural (?) underbelly. In this case that scenario is youngsters Becca and Tyler (Olivia DeJonge, Ed Oxenbould) going on a long distance trip to spend a week with the grandparents they've never met (Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie). While things seem Norman Rockwell enough at first, it isn't long before the seams start to show. Something is "off," and we're in the passenger seat alongside Becca and Tyler as we try to solve the mystery.

In the early goings, Shyamalan actually does a pretty good job of drawing us in, displaying a noticeably lighter touch as we get to know our young leads, as well as setting up the film's central conceit of Becca making a documentary about their trip (thus allowing for the whole found footage thing). The kids are both likable and engaging, displaying an easy chemistry and kinship with each other. Further, and without giving anything away, the dawning realization that things aren't entirely right with "Nana" and "Pop Pop" is paced in a way that the build up to the reveal feels worth it (and it's a pretty decent twist, so I won't deign to spoil it here).

Now, we've seen countless found footage flicks since The Blair Witch Project arrived in 1999 (mere weeks before The Sixth Sense, actually). Some have managed to pull it off more successfully than others (Chronicle and Cloverfield come to mind as better examples), but I've yet to see even one example of the genre that can get past the inherent artifice of the format. That is to say, the notion that no matter how stressful or terrifying a situation might be, our characters still manage to keep their camera rolling and capture the footage that comprises the narrative. For all of his confidence with the form, this is a trick not even Shyamalan can manage.

Also, for as much as The Sixth Sense indelibly shackled him to his reputation as "Twist Ending Guy" (something that's really only the case for about half of his output), based on what happens in The Visit, he doesn't seem to be in much of a hurry to divest himself entirely of that rep either. (Although, rather than put it at the end, the big reveal here arrives around two-thirds of the way in, so I guess that kind of qualifies as a twist itself.) However, once the secret is out, there's really nowhere interesting to go from there. And so we sit, biding our time as the story winds down.

Unlike The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable, both of which are legitimately good movies capped off by brilliant final act swerves, The Visit's structure is such that its only reason to exist is that swerve, after which we have the rest of the film to work backwards and see all the ways it doesn't particularly hold up to scrutiny. When I reviewed After Earth, I noted that, "at just over 90 minutes, it doesn't really stick around long enough to become actively offensive. It comes and it goes, and then it's forgotten." And I can apply the same sentiment here. The very best thing about this visit is that it's a brief one. C

For some more thoughts on the varied career of M. Night Shyamalan, as well as all the latest out of Hollywood, catch the latest episode of the MovieFilm Podcast at this link or via the embed below:

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"It's largely about empathy," says Steve Earle of his mandate as a songwriter. "The job is about empathy whether you're writing love songs or political songs." The musician, author, actor and activist's newest song hits iTunes today and it clearly shows how empathy can be the prime motivation for the political. Entitled "Mississippi, It's Time," it's his response to the Confederate flag controversy that flared following the church massacre of nine black Americans in Charleston, South Carolina in June.

After photos of the serial killer brandishing said flag surfaced, both Alabama and South Carolina removed it from statehouse grounds. The last holdout is Mississippi who incorporates it in the design of their state flag. Son-of-the-South Earle is aiming to help convince the Magnolia State to eradicate the offensive symbol. Speaking on the phone while on tour in Knoxville, Tennessee, Earle notes that what's considered the Confederate Flag is neither indigenously from Mississippi or even historically accurate. Through a bureaucratic error, the state went without an official flag from the early 1900s until 2001, when voters approved a measure legally restoring the so-called Confederate flag to Mississippi's standard-bearer.

"It's the Battle Jack of the Army of Northern Virginia," Earle notes. "It has no history in Mississippi until the 1890s. And state flags did not exist until the Civil War. We were one country and we had one flag." But that's hardly its worst sin. "I don't think that anyone can argue now that it no longer represents racism. Whatever you want to say about cultural heritage, that flag doesn't represent anything but racism now -- and it especially represents racism to black folks, which is reason enough for white folks not to ever fucking wear it. It's disrespectful and a form of terrorism to subject them to it." Earle believes that sentimentality over the Confederacy is simply wrong. "I lived all of my life in the South until I was 50 years old and I don't believe that Southern culture is the Civil War. I believe it's the least of Southern culture. To me Southern culture is Faulkner and Tennessee Williams and the blues and jazz. To make the Civil War who we are as Southerners is a huge mistake."

A native Texan, Earle turned 60 earlier this year and is old enough to remember Jim Crow, i.e. American apartheid. "Northeast Texas is definitely a Southern culture rather than a Southwestern culture. There's black folks there and the movie theater was segregated when I grew up. My mother's mother had a maid and she would take us to the movies and we had to sit in the balcony -- black folks couldn't sit on the [ground] floor. I remember the local restaurant being desegregated -- they didn't put up quite the fight that people did in Alabama and Tennessee, but it was definitely a change." Earle never doubted which side he was on. "I was not raised to believe that the civil war was fought over states' rights. I was led to believe that the Civil War was fought to preserve the union and that it was about slavery and that the South lost and that the right side won."

But divisive racial rhetoric and symbolism have long been used as yet another device to keep working people from banding together to identify those who unfairly profit from their labor. "It's important to remember that there are people who have a vested interest in other folks believing that all the bad stuff is happening to them because of the other. It's an old American thing -- Donald Trump's doing it right now. In hard times you can get people to respond by convincing that something foreign -- something from the outside -- is the reason for all their problems. White folks in the South have been told that about black folks from the South ever since Reconstruction.

"The people who were in power in the South before the Civil War were the same people who were in power after the war. The problem is that in addition to all the poor white people were all these [newly-freed] poor black folks and the only way to control this situation was to set them against each other. To me, that's what this stuff's about. It's about economics -- the most powerful people have a vested interest in fostering hate because it keeps working people neutralized."

The genesis of the song began with South Carolina finally removing the flag from their statehouse. Soon afterwards, at his annual songwriting intensive called Camp Copperhead, Earle began sharing the evolving composition with his students. "It was banging around my head and the class could see me write the song. I put it up on a screen. I rehearsed it in sound checks with my band and in Chicago we booked a studio and went in and recorded it. I contacted Southern Poverty Law Center and we were off to the races." The whole process took two months. Driven by Earle's hard-strummed mandolin, the song incorporates lyrical and musical references to the work of Nina Simone and Jesse Winchester, as well as the American standard "Dixie" -- a revealing encapsulation of his eclecticism.

Profits from the song's sales go to the SPLC, the venerable civil rights group. "They've been watching the Klan for us for a long time. I chose to give the money to someone because I wanted to make sure no one confused this with fiscal opportunism," he laughs. A longtime anti-death penalty activist, Earle worked with the SPLC on that ongoing campaign. "That's a racial issue in the South whether anyone wants to admit it or not -- and it always has been." Earle remains optimistic. "I know for a fact that music changes things. At least four -- maybe five times -- I've had people come up to me and say 'I changed my mind about the death penalty because of a song you wrote.' All I can hope to do is to change one person's mind -- it's literally one heart, one person, one pair of ears at a time. That's not nothing -- that's how change happens."

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Frank Salvaterra was the Head of Equity Trading at Sandler O'Neill and Partners on the 102nd Floor of 2 World Trade Center. He was a talented trader and an even better man. Tragically he died in the horrific events of 9.11 but I have some wonderful memories.

Frank loved all kinds of music and he was up for anything. One of the first shows which we went to together was Doc Watson and Dave Grisman at Town Hall, a fabled New York City landmark built in 1921. I bought tickets online and we were escorted to our seats. They were in the last row in the center of the balcony. I had never been to Town Hall so it was exciting. The capacity is only 1500 and it is an intimate and historic venue. Frank smiled his big smile, a smile that lit up a room, so big his eyes squinted. "You know, Neil, we have a ticket broker. We don't have to sit in the last row."

Duly noted.

I made amends when we saw BB King at the Beacon Theater a month later. We sat in the second row, thanks to Frank and his ticket broker. And we saw a bunch of shows at Madison Square Garden in the Sandler O'Neill box, including Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen and the Eric Clapton and Friends benefit for the Crossroads Recovery Center in Antigua on June 30, 1999. That was a great show which was augmented by some very special guests: Bob Dylan, Sheryl Crow, David Sanborn and Mary J. Blige. My wife, Erin, joined us in the box for the Clapton gig, and she and Frank shared a special connection. They were born on the same day in the same year. That was a very good day and a very good year! Frank always asked how the birthday girl was, especially when she called the desk. He was always kind, thoughtful and generous.

One of Frank's favorite songs was a Dylan tune, "Not Dark Yet" off Time Out Of Mind (1997). When a trade was going south, or the desk wasn't making money, Frank would quote Dylan: "It's not dark yet, but it's getting there." There is always a fair amount of gallows humor around Wall Street, but Frank would leaven this quote with his effervescent smile. He was serious, but never took himself too seriously. Rare and endearing qualities in a head trader, a boss, or anyone for that matter. When Dylan played the opening chords to "Not Dark Yet" and Clapton started riffing tasty fills, I think my smile was bigger than Frank's. It was a great concert, a great night with great company.

I miss Frank Salvaterra and all the other Sandler O'Neill colleagues who perished so senselessly on 9.11.01. The years pass but the wound never fully heals. Each year on October 4, we add an extra candle to Erin's birthday cake in remembrance and celebration of a great friend.

I sent this Sting story out last year on 9.11, and I will probably keep sending it out every year. I will never forget my friends and wish blessings for their families.

Neil

Outlandos D'Amour (1978) signed by Andy Summers, Sting

Reggatta de Blanc (1979) signed by Andy Summers, Sting

Herman Sandler was a founder of Sandler O'Neill, a financial services investment bank. Along with his partners, he ran a very successful and lucrative practice. Herman was also a benefactor, who gave generously to the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra and The Rainforest Foundation. He looked like Daddy Warbucks: shaved head, glasses perched on the top of his forehead, fit and disciplined like the US Army Captain who had served his country in Vietnam. He was tough and he did not suffer fools. I was lucky to work for him and his very talented team of bankers and salesman on the 104th floor of 2 World Trade Center until I left in May 2000.

In November '99, Sting was playing four shows at the Beacon Theatre in NYC. One of my clients was a big Sting fan and asked if I could get tickets. Tickets were at a hefty premium, because the venue was so small - only 3000 seats vs. Sting's normal Madison Square Garden gig with 20,000+. I bought tickets through a ticket broker, and I asked Herman for backstage passes. Herman was on the board of The Rainforest Foundation and he was a friend of Sting and his wife Trudie Styler. Herman said, "No problem." Everything was no problem with Herman, even his boat was named "No Problem.". Herman secures the passes the next day and hands them to me. No problem.

The night of the show, I meet the client and her trading assistant for a quick dinner at the Ocean Grill, near the Beacon. They are very excited to see Sting. We finish our meal and head over to the Beacon. The backstage entrance is near the loading dock. We flash the passes, and we are escorted in. We are told there is no real backstage area, so we can stand along the wall or go to our seats. I look at the wall. That doesn't look very promising, and it's too early to go to our seats. Let's try this again I tell the clients, follow me. We go back where we came from, and an elevator door opens. A roadie gets off. We get on. Taped to the elevator wall is handwriting: Sting 6, Costumes 5, Band 4, Catering 3. This is helpful. I press 6 and up we go.

The elevator opens on the 6th floor into an anteroom and Sting has his back to us. He is being interviewed, speaking into a microphone attached to a large tape machine. I walk by Sting, nod and my clients follow me and stand in the corner. Actually, they cower in the corner, they are so star struck. The interview concludes, and I greet Sting. I tell him I work for Herman Sandler. "Herman is a great friend and good man. We're doing some great work together on the Rainforest Foundation." Sting signs a couple albums, and I ask if he will take a picture with my two guests. He agrees. I coax them out of the corner and they flank Sting as I take a picture. No iPhones in those days, I rely on a throw away camera just purchased at Duane Reade. I take the picture, no flash. I stall, 'Hey Sting we got everything working now' as I take another picture. No flash again. Sting says, "You got everything working except the camera." He laughs, shakes everyone's hands and leaves. We head back to our seats and Sting puts on a great show. My clients were very thankful that they got to meet Sting, less so when my pictures got developed and came back blank.

Tragically, Herman Sandler died on September 11, 2001, along with 66 of his Sandler O'Neill colleagues, and some of my best friends. Sting later performed his song "Fragile" at one of the benefits to WTC victims, and dedicated it to Herman's memory. I miss Herman Sandler, David Rice, Frank Salvaterra, Bruce Simmons, Howard Gelling, Tom Clark, Tom Collins, Doug Irgang, Stacey McGowan, Kristi Irvine, Mike Edwards and all the other Sandler O'Neill colleagues who senselessly died on that horrible day. Although the years pass, their loss is a wound that never fully heals.

Sting All Access Beacon Theater, NYC 1999

Synchronicity (1983) signed by Andy Summers, Sting

Frank Salvaterra

David Harlow Rice

Herman Sandler

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01: Somebody New

We started moving things into our studio in October/November 2013. It took a few weeks to get everything painted and set up to our liking, but a slick purple and gold paint scheme in the control room made it feel distinctly ours (the shade of purple we selected was called "Success"). Sessions for How Do You Feel Now? had actually begun earlier in October down in New York. A few of the songs required big rock drums, which we tracked at Premier Studios in Manhattan. Taking the files back to our place in Rochester, we decided to start the recording process with "Somebody New", a song that we'd been playing live for about a year but hadn't had the capacity to record until now. The track had been written before the 88888 mixtape, but it didn't feel right with fake drums, virtual instruments, etc. We shelved it at the time and decided to wait.

This song is probably the most polished and tightly edited track on the record, a fact which I attribute to its being first. We recorded the album in a linear fashion, so we'd complete one song before moving on to the next. This is probably the only song on the record where we asked ourselves "is this professional? Are we professionals now?". Andy Wallace mixed the song for us, and we got to sit in the room with him in New York while he did it which became one of the highlights of our HDYFN recording sessions. Our label A&R (Hi Mio) refers to him as "Yoda". I could recap Andy's illustrious career, but here: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Andy+Wallace

Lyrically I refer to "Somebody New" as a "lazy love song". Yes, it's about monogamy, but it's really coming from a place of feeling simultaneously unappreciated by the world around you and not good enough. As far as the production/musical palette of the song is concerned, we wanted to make something that felt like The Matrix. I had DJ'd a goth/industrial club in Rochester several times throughout 2012 and 2013 (with our now tour manager Bud) and the patrons there were always fascinating. I remember playing that "they will not control/degraaaaaaade us" Muse song and everyone losing their minds. We wanted to capture a bit of that spirit as well.

A few technical notes/facts for those who are curious:

The initial idea was built from a bass riff I'd dreamt one night. In my dream, international celebrity superstar dj Skrillex was performing at a club, and the "Somebody New" bass riff was blasting through the system as kind of a "wub wub" synth line. When I awoke, I laughed it off for a minute before deciding it might work well as a bass guitar part.

The riff for the recording was played on a Fender American Jazz Bass, then Sean and I beefed it up with a synth sound or two from our DSI Prophet 12. A few other signals are present as well, including a DI bass going into an API 3124, one through a Tube Screamer/70's Fender Bassman 410, and a third through an Electro Harmonix Bass Micro Synth pedal. Live you're probably hearing the synth bass pedal and Tube Screamer mostly.

I believe we used a '72 Fender Telecaster Thinline reissue for all the guitars on this song. A '62 American Jaguar may have snuck in as well. Most of the guitars are through a Fender Twin Reverb that came into our possession a few years back, but we also used this little Fender Tone Machine amp with a Royer R121 in front of it that we liked for the lead line. We love guitars, but not in the way most guitarists do. The more we can break traditional guitar rules, the better. We also used a Boss Terra Echo pedal for some of the lead lines on the track.

The big screaming synth hook thing is actually my vocal pitched up an octave. I think I yelled that into a mic that came with a Fender Passport PA we bought in 2005. This was from the initial demo that I made. We passed the signal through a UA610 tube pre to warm it up a bit, and obviously there are a lot of plugins on it, probably half of them are SoundToys.

The sound you hear at the beginning of the track is the master recording passed through an app called Yellofier.

Studio lobby as we found it.

Control room before painting.

Live room.

Vocal booth before setup.

Beginning of "Success".

Lots of "Success".

Fender Bassman setup.

--------

Joywave
How Do You Feel Now?

Somebody New

Carry Me

Tongues (feat. KOPPS)

Destruction

Parade

In Clover

Fees Like a Lie

Traveling at the Speed of Light

Nice House

Bad Dreams

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This article originally appeared on Inverse.

2015-09-09-1441822278-7704241-slackimgs.com.jpeg

By Sean Hutchinson.

Disney figures to bank so much money on Star Wars merchandise this year -- maybe $5 billion in sales in the first year -- that the company has gone so far as to brand the very day it shows us those toys. "Force Friday" is upon us, when, in the words of the Mouse, "new Star Wars themed merchandise and more will land in our galaxy." This is to action figures what the Dec. 18 opening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is to actual, uh, Star Wars movies.

The "unboxing" of the toys began earlier this week. Crammed under Christmas trees this year will be: a Jedi master lightsaber kit ($50), Chewbacca figurines ($20), a Nerf stormtrooper rifle ($40), tie-in sets from Micro Machines and Lego, and a fat-ass Millennium Falcon that's going to cost parents $120 on the way to blowing their kids' minds.

Star Wars is nothing if not a merchandising empire. George Lucas' greatest vision, arguably, was to guess the extent to which that would be true. On the original 1977 Star Wars, as the Hollywood Reporter has told it, "Fox let Lucas pass up an additional $500,000 directing fee in return for keeping licensing and merchandising rights for himself -- a decision that would cost the studio billions." In the first 35 years after that film, the six Star Wars movies generated some $20 billion in merchandise sales, more than quadruple what the movies made at the box office. The movies, often lambasted as toy commercials, are very much that -- nakedly, in fact. But they happen to be outstanding toy commercials, supplying depth and mythology to things kids absolutely love to play with. There's a nobility in that. Children are going to use these toys to launch infinite hours of imagination and storytelling. People have paid billions for cast-plastic figurines and Lego sets and the rest because they're totally worth it.

The kids who will soon be improvising scripts for their Kylo Ren and Supreme Leader Snoke figurines in minivan backseats and in sandboxes will be enjoying a joyous creativity that Lucas has long since ditched. As producer and Lucas confidant Gary Kurtz put it to the L.A. Times in 2010, toys controlled Lucasfilm. "It's a shame," he told the paper. "They make three times as much on toys as they do on films. It's natural to make decisions that protect the toy business, but that's not the best thing for making quality films." No stranger to profligate merchandising, Disney paid more than $4 billion for Lucasfilm in 2012 largely to get at the franchising tie-ins, the theme park rights, and the stocking-stuffers.

Toy sales kept Han Solo from getting killed off in Return of the Jedi; to quote Harrison Ford, "George didn't think there was any future in dead Han toys." And toy sales no doubt led Lucas to set the decisive battle in that movie on Endor, a planet run by sentient teddy bears. Critics were ready for him when the prequels -- great toy commercials, garbled cinema -- started rolling out. In his 1999 review, Hollywood Reporter critic Frank Scheck said The Phantom Menace "seems designed more as a promotion for Lucasfilm's billion-dollar merchandising concerns than a meaningful chapter in the Star Wars canon."

Lucas probably didn't set out to make three hot-garbage kids' movies, but don't blame toy sales for that. The kids-at-play mentality is the very purpose of having Star Wars in the first place. When they take on the voice and the direction of children, even frickin' Jar-Jar Binks action figures become creatively redeemed. Star Wars toys give kids a tangible expressive outlet, a vivid way to take on new identities, and create their own stories.

Writers who grouse about the flood of Force Awakens toys, like Forbes' Scott Mendelson, warn that "perhaps Disney should remember that they can sell a lot more Star Wars merchandise off of a good Star Wars movie than a bad one." While that's true, it's also easier to make reliably awesome toys than it is to make a magical movie. And which will bring children more hours of joy, in all? I remember hours of entertainment at my disposal with my prequel trilogy Naboo fighter in one hand and my original trilogy X-Wing and Millennium Falcon balancing in the other. It didn't matter that 20 years should have separated their storylines. They were my very own impossible Rogue Squadron, emphasis on my own.

A fellow Star Wars fanatic friend who remains a toy collector to this day, explained that the appeal of the toys is their endless customization. "It's a perfect way to get a roster going with all your favorite characters, and utilizing them in stories that you've only fantasized about," he told me. "And now these fantasies are becoming a reality because of you." He elaborated: "Now you were able to change any little detail about the story you wanted. You could give Boba Fett more screen time or you could make Luke and Vader rule the galaxy as father and son. The Star Wars universe was quite literally in your hands."

To get a more serious angle, I asked writer and toy historian Mark Bellomo, who literally wrote the book on Star Wars toys. "The more a developing child participates in playing with an object, the more they utilize executive functions (and self-regulation skills) -- an umbrella term that behaviorists and child psychologists use for a person's management of their cognitive processes," he explained in an email. "Like deductive and inductive reasoning. Problem-solving. Planning and execution. Task flexibility. Focusing attention. Remembering instructions. Setting and achieving goals." On Star Wars toys in specific, he said: "Star Wars action figures encourage creative play ... which directly influences a kid's social and emotional development. Through manipulating action figures, they recreate what they've seen previously, mimicking what they've observed: They then imitate adult roles."

And, be realistic, my fellow adults -- this is still how many of us role. To wit, in what universe does this BB8 toy not look dope as hell?

Or this remote-controled Millennium Falcon?

Forget about drones, this new remote control Millennium Falcon is even cooler! #ForceFriday pic.twitter.com/kkrj9YiLhZ
— Indigo Chapters (@chaptersindigo) September 3, 2015

The kids playing with these are going to be the ones to continue imagining the next hundred years of Star Wars stories. The director of The Force Awakens, J.J. Abrams, grew up a die-hard Star Wars fan, and his "Mystery Box" mentality suggests a type of nostalgia that pushed him into being a filmmaker. The same goes for Rian Johnson, who's directing Episode VIII, due out in 2017. He discussed his boyhood affinity for Star Wars toys in a podcast interview with fellow filmmaker Terry Gilliam. "I grew up, not just watching those movies but playing with those toys, so as a little kid the first movies I was making in my head were set in that world," Johnson said. "So a big part of it is that sort of direct connection, its almost like an automatic jacking-in into childhood in a weird way I guess."

To hijack a Nietzsche observation, the Star Wars director of the future will be trying to reattain the seriousness he had as a child at play with Star Wars toys. This is the feature of the films that adults so often miss: The movies are nothing more than elaborate prompts, ultimately, for a galaxy far, far away. There, kids with action figures and Legos and plastic lightsabers write their own scripts, make their own sound effects, devise their own plot twists, build their own sets, scout their own locations, and live their own stories. And maybe something awakens.

Photos via www.flickr.com/photos/jdhancock

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LOVE MAKER -- Ep.12

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Trumpty Dumpty Will Have His Great Fall

Movie Review: The Visit... Yawn!

Getting Things Done With Moon Power

Jon Hamm's Longtime Girlfriend Deserves to Be Acknowledged

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The Real Reason You Should Be Watching 'Narcos'

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How Rap Music Harnessed Dragon Ball Zs Fighting Spirit

GOP Debates: Will Trump Be a No Show?

The Independents Are Coming

Trump's Change of Heart on Cuba: Master Stroke or Political Suicide?

The Trump Falls Close to the Stump

Sean Maguire Breathes New Life Into Robin Hood in 'Once Upon a Time'

TRACE -- Ep.12

PRETA -- Ep.12

Zaki's Review: The Visit

Steve Earle: "Mississippi, It's Time!"

Frank Salvaterra, Sting, Herman Sandler, 9/11 and Me

Why Be Credible When You Can Be Incredible? 01 Somebody New

Force Friday Proves Star Wars Toys are the Best Reason to Make the Movies