RE: One Day at a Time, Ann Romano's weekly gossip column.
DEAR MERCURY—I love Ann Romano's column. I now MUST have my copy of your magazine the minute I can get one on Thursdays! I am a corporate professional in my 50s with grown children. I read your magazine from cover to cover and support your advertisers because Ann Romano makes me laugh out loud.
-Sue
RE: "Cops Ignoring a Big Question" [Hall Monitor, May 10], regarding the city's new drug-crime exclusion zones and the Portland Police Bureau's apparent silence on how and whether they're tracking arrests in those zones by race.
You have got to be kidding me? Speaking as someone who lives in one of these zones, I'm a little perplexed as to this kind of racial baiting. The drug dealers, at least the ones I've seen openly operating as I'm walking around the neighborhood I live in, are by and large ALL minorities. Many of their customers are white, but the dealers themselves? Not so much. Please put your foot on the ground before lashing out in an all too PC attack against the police just for the sake of getting a rise out of people. It may look racist on paper, but I dare you to walk out there right now and find me two white drug dealers in these zones operating in the open on the street.
-posted by observational hazard
RE: "Team Barnabas" [Film, May 10], in which author Wm. Steven Humphrey unfavorably reviews Dark Shadows.
I'm not a big fan of Tim Burton, but Alice in Wonderland took in more than a billion dollars in 2010. It's the 10th highest-grossing movie, ever. And it won two Oscars. So even if YOU didn't like it as much as his earlier indie movies, it's ridiculous to call him "a once-great auteur unable to relight his former spark." He's never been more successful.
-posted by Reymont
RE: "Creative Class" [News, May 10], a report on the desperate state of arts funding in Portland schools.
Maybe if we stopped electing business people, we could get some budgeting shit done. It's a sad day for Portland when you gotta cut schools funding, when you compare Portland Public Schools with say, Mississippi.
-posted by TheOnlySanePersonInTheWorld
Don't forget that Portland steals school money through urban renewal. Currently about $100 million a year of property tax money is diverted from basic services such as schools, social services, and fire departments to give to urban renewal, mainly for millionaire condos.
-posted by jim
RE: Film Shorts [May 10], which contained a one-sentence review of classic film The Searchers: "Hey, look, it's the most overrated Western in the entire history of the Western. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ."
TO THE MOVIE CRITICS—Unbelievable. First you drop a deuce on The Rules of the Game, then you turn your attention stateside to vomit all over The Searchers, one of the indisputably great American contributions to the cinema. The Searchers, along with High Noon and My Darling Clementine, was one of the first films for adults in a genre that had always targeted kids. It was the first Western to consider the Native American perspective or dare to paint the Cavalry in a negative light. Shit, the location shooting in The Searchers ALONE makes it worth seeing, worth admiring, especially at a theater as affordable as the Laurelhurst—which should, by the way, be commended for allowing modern audiences to appreciate important older films on the big screen, as they were meant to be seen. Apparently terrific writing for the screen does not inspire terrific writing in print. The Searchers documents a distinct slice of both American history and mythology through the endeavors of a richly complex protagonist, and does so with artistry and grace. It's too important to dismiss with such arrogant ambivalence. You're making your job too simple, and in mocking the highlights of a medium you're supposed to be championing, you're only mocking yourselves. Grow the fuck up.
-Dave Jaworski
SINCE YOU LOVE The Searchers SO MUCH, Dave, we're giving you two tickets to the Laurelhurst Theater for winning this week's letter of the week. 'Cuz THAT'S how grown up and mature we are. Dave and The Searchers sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.
