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10.23.2020, No. 27
“For the rest of my time with you today, we are only going to play music by Black composers” — part of the on-air statement WUOL program director Daniel Gilliam delivered to address a racist and anonymous letter the station received
FIVE.
1. ABC News and the C-J did an interview with Jonathan Mattingly, one of the LMPD officers involved in the shooting that killed Breonna Taylor in her apartment on March 13. Speaking publicly for the first time, Mattingly recalled the details of that night, including being shot in the leg by Taylor’s boyfriend (who has said he thought the officers were intruders) and a confrontation with a neighbor before the botched raid. “I remember him saying at one point, ‘She’s a good girl, leave her alone’ or something to that effect,” Mattingly said of the latter.
“I hurt for her mother and for her sisters,” he said. “It’s not just a passing, ‘Oh, this is part of the job, we did it and move on.’ It’s not like that. I mean, Breonna Taylor is now attached to me for the rest of my life.
In his column — headline: “Jonathan Mattingly needs to just stop talking” — Joe Gerth brought up Mattingly’s comments about “criminal profiling,” and his email that referred to protesters as “thugs.” Gerth wrote, “We’ve got a problem in Louisville with police and how they get along with the people they are supposed to protect.”
2. The Reckoning, a public-radio and podcast series by Dan Gediman, with support and collaboration from Louisville Public Media and Louisville Magazine, challenges the sanitized history of slavery in Kentucky. I can’t stop thinking about the descendants of slave owners and the descendants of enslaved people visiting Oxmoor Farm and imagining their ancestors at the former hemp plantation behind the mall on Shelbyville Road.
3. Several weeks ago I had the staff at Planet of the Tapes, the Barret Avenue comedy club that rents out DVDs, answer this question: If 2020 were a movie, what would it be?
This week, Soozie Eastman of the Louisville Film Society (whose outdoor Family Film Night Series at the Mellwood Art Center continues tomorrow with The Princess Bride, then Coco on the 30th and Goonies Nov. 6.) asked her friends in the local movie community the same question.
“The Mask.” — Christopher Saint Booth
“13th. While both extremely tragic and inconvenient, the impacts and isolation of COVID are incomparable to the confines of social inequities that BIPOCs have been living within for 400-plus years. This film eloquently demonstrates the need for the racial revolution in which Louisville has deservedly found itself as an epicenter.” — Eastman
“The Room is a completely nonsensical disaster from start to finish, overseen by a wealthy lunatic who has no clue what he’s doing. And that wealthy lunatic maintains a cult following no matter how badly he does his job.” — Steve Squall
“Actually, I was thinking Room, not The Room. As a parent, Room has been very relatable. 2020 has felt like I’m stuck in a very small space with my kids driving me crazy and no place to escape!” — Josiah Justin Gustavison
“Very Bad Things. It was supposed to be a good time, but things just kept escalating and escalating and escalating. When you think things couldn’t get worse, they still do. We still have two levels left in Jumanji 2020.” — Gary Barragan
“Idiocracy.” — Ilya Lyalin
“Airplane. Surely you can’t be serious.” — Scott Shuffitt
“Fellini’s 8½ is a surreal dream.” — Silvio Wolf Busch
“12 Years a Slave.” — Bryan Howard
“Existo because it’s really weird, with a lot of self-expression vs. overbearing, awful politicians.” — Jessica Mathis
“Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. Because it sucks.” — Sellus Wilder
“Human Centipede.” — Brennan Clark
“The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King because every time you think it’s over, there’s more.” — Mark Rabinowitz
“Home Alone. Because some of us are consistently home in isolation trying to fend off intruders (COVID-19).” — James Neat
“And just when you think things can’t get any worse — BOOM, paint can to the face!” — Aaron Patterson
4. Louisville rapper Jack Harlow named his new song “Tyler Herro,” after the snarling Miami Heat rookie and former UK Wildcat (who makes a cameo in the music video). Fave lyric: Rhyming “mean” with “I’m ’bout to globe-trot when they know a vaccine.”
5. Anybody else going as one of those green Humana masks for Halloween?
The Eye Care Institute supports this newsletter, and has since I started writing it six months ago. A huge thank you to them.
And now, the “Five. Oh! Too…” version of an eye exam:
Can you read this? Wait, you can? Whoa. You must have super vision or something.
Can’t read it? Maybe get your eyes checked.
OH!
A little something from the LouMag archive.
The Advertising Federation of Louisville has been naming a Louisvillian of the Year for seven decades, and this year’s goes to 73-year-old sculptor Ed Hamilton.
Chris Kenning profiled Hamilton for the October 2019 cover story, with the artist reflecting on the 1960s and saying, “I wanted to go out and march, and (my mother) wouldn’t let me. ‘Nope, you’re not going out there. Nope, nope, nope.’ My parents were from the old school. Some folks were adamant about going out and participating, and you had some people who were passive and didn’t want to be a part of that. So I never got a chance to out there and hold up a sign.”
Hamilton also commented on all of the accolades he has received over the years. “Sometimes I’m a little bit embarrassed about getting all these awards. When I go past Ninth Street, there’s a big old banner on the wall. How do you deal with that? I appreciate it, but I don’t get high-falutin’. I consider myself a person who is lucky to be here, lucky to have the talent I have. If people honor that, I’m humble. I’ve done enough things to seal my legacy here. If I expire tomorrow, I have no regrets.”
TOO…
How about a newsletter slow clap for this yard sign near our office on Cherokee Road?
Read past newsletters here.