Movie Mumbai from the Suburban Parking Lot Lagoon:
Globalization in Stereo from an American Mini Mall
in Grand Rapids, MI

The urge to type comes to me often sitting in theaters. Does anyone have links to where I can buy a silent, one-handed keypad? Or need we invent this device? Or wait for commercial scale wink sensors? Or plugs to the brain?

What a joy tonight sitting with Mom in a packed showing of "Slumdog Millionaire" in suburban West Michigan. I'd never been to a sold out show in Grand Rapids (near where I grew up). The usher made us stand up and scrunch to the center.

For some reason I suggested we buy tickets early. Then we were stranded far from the familiar in cold winter suburban parking lots of fake Italian summer cottage restaurant facades. The most appetizing was Chili's, which I commented was the whitest Mexican restaurant I'd ever been in, as most customers were eating hamburgers. I had coffee and a Corona.

The next moment we were sucked into what just might have been some of the most eye-opening depictions of India most of these crowded-in Dutch descendants had ever seen. The "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" storyline and a fab RS movie review gets movie goers in; perhaps Hollywood-style depictions of "other" people with own emotions still living in landfills will open suburban minds to the way most of the world's urb lagoons. Or maybe these scenes are just another series of war spectacle money shots lacking the immediacy I sense from interviewing Nicaraguan huelepegos children living in Managua's city dump and being robbed by their older brothers. Or Caracas at sunset with the same fear that your roommate won't come back with the key.

How the mind steers around our memories. And then back to work. That we may know our fellow humans slightly better is my wish for 2009. That I might manage my time better is my resolution. Time better managed, because we're running out of it the way we're running out of space. Bottlenecks await, my friends! Now will I to the chink in this wall and get a view of what I may.

What is the phrase? En el pais de los ciegos, el tuerto es el rey.

Estmos finalmente abriendo los ojos....

Labels: bottlenecks, globalization, movie review, suburbs