D Rock The Menace

[Michael]

Righthere is the menace in machine-made music! The first rift in the lute has appeared. The cheaper of these instruments of the home are no longer being purchased as formerly, and all because the automatic music devices are usurping their places.

And what is the result? The child becomes indifferent to practice, for when music can be heard in the homes without the labor of study and close application, and without the slow process of acquiring a technique, it will be simply a question of time when the amateur disappears entirely, and with him a host of vocal and instrumental teachers, who will be without field or calling.

When a mother can turn on the phonograph with the same ease that she applies to the electric light, will she croon her baby to slumber with sweet lullabys, or will the infant be put to sleep by machinery?

On Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency was supervising the draining of contaminated water from the defunct Gold King Mine above the town of Silverton. The water suddenly surged, overwhelming the crew and spilling into a tributary leading to the Animas River. The EPA initially estimated the spill at 1 million gallons, but tripled it to 3 million gallons Sunday.

McGrath said at a public meeting Sunday that officials had tripled the estimate of the toxic spill based on data from a U.S. Geological Survey water gauge downstream. He said that the leading edge of the plume could no longer be seen from the air and that Cement Creek, which carried the sludge into the Animas, appeared to be running clear.

The danger posed by mines was laid out in a1993 report from the Mineral Policy Center, a Washington think tank dedicated to identifying threats to natural resources. The studysaid there were about 557,650 of these sites in 32 states and 50 billion tons of untreated waste covering public and private land. The waste included arsenic, asbestos, cadmium, cyanide and mercury.

About 40% of all Western headwater streams are polluted by old hard-rock mines, the EPA has said. Colorado has 22,000 such mines, ranking third behind Arizona and Nevada. Cleaning them up is difficult because the owners are often dead or unknown. Even if they are alive, many fear making matters worse by trying to remedy the situation, as the EPA just did.

Many here believe the EPA had good intentions in trying to clean out the mine but faulty methods. And those methods could cost the city and entire region for years to come. The heavy metals in the plume will settle to the river bottom and get stirred up again and again by rains and runoff.

"Young and Menace" is a song by American rock band Fall Out Boy, released on April 27, 2017, through Island Records and DCD2. It was released as the lead single from the band's seventh studio album, Mania.[1] The music video was released simultaneously with the single.[2][3]

In deciding what "Young and Menace" would sound like, Pete Wentz took inspiration from artists he admires like The Clash, David Bowie, and Kanye West whose musical direction evolved over time. Wentz told Andrew Trendell of NME that the original version of the song was so "extreme" and "chaotic" that "It sounded like a 1990's modem. It didn't even sound like music. So we reigned [sic] it in from there." The band felt that the track might not be radio-friendly, but that it could resonate with the wider culture.[4]

The music video features a young biracial child suffering through domestic violence within their household. The child's parents are dressed as llama/alpaca puppet "monsters". Wentz has stated "The concept of the video is realizing that your place in the world is maybe not just what you thought it was growing up. I grew up as a weird kid in a place where I felt like I didn't fit it. It wasn't until punk/rock and stuff where I felt like I found other people [who] similarly didn't fit in."[9]

The gritty story of 18-year old Watts native Caine (Tyrin Turner) was both familiar and shocking to moviegoers; here was a movie that somehow managed to convey the universal navet and recklessness of youth but also the specific dangers of growing up in a violent environment. The film was the brainchild of two ambitious brothers who would go on to sit amongst the most distinct filmmakers of their generation.

Allen and Albert Hughes were only 21-year olds when they made their directorial debut with 1993s evocative Menace II Society. A look at the life of a young Black male growing up in the Watts section of Los Angeles, the movie was one of the most critically-acclaimed Black films of the early 90s; and a standard-bearer for then-popular "hood movies" that had begun to proliferate to theaters post-Boyz N The Hood. Menace... is often compared to Boyz... for obvious reasons: both feature "growin' up in the hood" narratives set in early 90s L.A.; both feature noteworthy Hip-Hop stars in prominent roles; both arrived against the backdrop of racial unrest in Cali - Boyz... hit theaters just two months after the Rodney King beating; while Menace... started shooting just after the 1992 L.A. riots. The parallel relevance of the two movies feels obvious.

In Kaydee "Caine" Lawson, the Hughes brothers crafted a Black teenage antihero a la Henry Hill in Goodfellas. Hill is bred into a life of crime at a relative early age, nudged towards criminality by both poverty and environment. His working class family earns a meager living, so teenaged Henry becomes infatuated with the wiseguys down the street. In Menace..., little Kaydee sees drugs and violence around him regularly; he even witnesses his father murder a man in their living room during a card game. Both protagonists grow up with an almost cavalier attitude towards hustling and killing, though the strains of their lifestyles eventually push them near a breaking point.

The Hughes Brothers were transplants to Pomona, CA from Detroit and they'd developed the movie bug early. Scorsese flicks were a major influence on the teenage Allen and Albert, as they recreated scenes from movies like Goodfellas in their mother's house. In high school they moved to the mostly-white L.A. suburb of Claremont. By their early 20s, the burgeoning filmmakers were like creative sponges, soaking up cinematic and cultural influences.

Joe Pesci won an Oscar for the similarly-unhinged Tommy DeVito in Goodfellas, a whirling dervish of terrifying rage and insecurity. Tommy seemed to murder people for even the slightest infraction; from a young bartender firing back after Tommy insults him to an elder wiseguy making cracks during drinks. Tate's performance as O-Dog is as impressive a turn; perhaps even moreso when one considers Tate's youth at the time; he was only 16 when he landed the role. O-Dog kills almost entirely on impulse; callously murdering a Korean couple that owns a neighborhood store; shooting a crack addict after he propositions him for rock money. O-Dog is a teen sociopath, and Tate was coming from a world of family sitcoms. He told "The Breakfast Club" in 2016 that he was eager to break away from any boy-next-door image.

The Hughes' approach to storytelling and their cinematic flourishes throughout Menace II Society evoke directors like Scorsese and Lee. The main narration from Caine is another choice that feels reminiscent of Goodfellas, dropping the viewer, not only into the world they're depicting, but into the direct perspective of the main character. It makes the experience more visceral and immediate; while also humanizing a not-always-sympathetic character. The script was written by 24-year old Tyger Williams, but the Hughes had long carried inspiration for telling this type of story about this kind of character.

"This movie has been in our heads since we were 15: how kids become what they become, how the environment affects them," Allen Hughes told the New York Times in 1993 after the film drew raves. "Fifty percent of this is from-the-heart stories of people we know. The other is from interviews."

As A-Wax, MC Eiht gives an unfussy, surprisingly effective performance as an older gangbanger who serves as elder statesmen to his teenage compatriots. A-Wax serves in the Jimmy Conway role that Bobby DeNiro delivers in Goodfellas. DeNiro's Jimmy is lovable and something of a mentor, but pushes his younger cohorts into all the wrong directions. By the time they're all grown up, Jimmy is just another one of the guys, getting long in the tooth but still getting in on the action.

Of course, there obvious distinctions to be made between Menace... and ...Fellas. The inexperienced Hughes Brothers haven't yet fully mastered their craft (later films like Dead Presidents and From Hell would show the brothers' growth by leaps and bounds), and it's an obviously low-budget affair. This inexpensive Black film didn't get the sort of lofty budget a prestige production from a Martin Scorsese would have gotten even three decades ago.

But at a time when Black cinema is suddenly Hollywood viable again, it's interesting to look at the history of Black antiheroes onscreen. It says a lot about American culture that white criminality and corruption can be fodder for so many cinematic classics without being asked to represent whiteness wholesale; while so many Black films are tasked with conveying "the Black experience" in a way that teaches us something about that experience. White films about white bad guys are supposedly meant to tell us something about the human condition; Black films about Black bad guys are just supposed to tell us something about Black people. That's one of the most insidious facets of racism; the suggestion that Black storytellers must always overcompensate for the limitations of racist depictions. In Menace II Society, the Hughes Brothers delivered an unsettling masterpiece of dark, urban storytelling. We should appreciate that kind of storytelling; and embrace Black art that is authentic and evocative. Without punishing it for how it makes us look to racists who will never see past their stereotypes anyway.

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