Happy Hump Day, friends!
Mentally preparing myself to get on a Zoom call with video
Maybe this notice applies to you… “Wanted: Young People To Work The Polls This November,” per NPR. As many older poll workers are opting out of putting their health at risk to run polling stations this fall, there’s a need for a new generation to take the reins.
Here’s why this is important, according to Bob Brandon, president of the Fair Elections Center: “If you have a disability that requires you to be on an accessible machine to vote, you need to be there in person. If you're in a community that has terrible mail service, which many poor communities complain of, that's an important need. Many people in the African American community have a distrust of anything different than taking a ballot and putting it into a machine, because of the history of voter suppression that they've encountered.”
Feel inspired to get involved, or to support those who are? Check out the organization Power the Polls, which is looking to mobilize 250,000 new poll workers for the November election. They answer pretty much any question you might have on their site, so check it out!
Now, what you came for…
DAY 146: My Cousin Vinny (available on Hulu)
I’m all about a good, old-fashioned courtroom drama. But I can get genre fatigue just like anyone else from watching too many that follow the “did they or didn’t they?” pattern to a T. One of my favorites remains My Cousin Vinny because it adds in another wild element to expand the movie’s charms: a fish-out-of-water comedy.
What happens in the trial of two college students from New York wrongfully accused of murder while driving through Alabama is only the pretext for a larger culture clash. One of the accused, Ralph Macchio’s Bill Gambini, calls up the only lawyer he knows — his cousin Vinny, Joe Pesci’s motor-mouthed Brooklynite ball of fire. There’s just a slight problem in that Vinny has never tried *any* case, and certainly not one in a Southern state that’s uniquely ill-equipped to tolerate his brash, unapologetic Italian-American attitudes and demeanor.
Not only must Vinny navigate a tough trial in which the deck seems stacked against his clients, he must also placate a judge who upholds strict decorum all while managing first-time jitters. Lucky for him, he also wheels into town with his fiancée Mona Lisa Vito, played by Marisa Tomei in a deservedly Oscar-winning turn. She’s the embodiment of the phrase “behind every great man, there’s a woman rolling her eyes” (which I thought was said by someone smart, turns out it’s just a Jim Carrey quote from Bruce Almighty). My Cousin Vinny would be primarily a comedy of errors and missteps were it not for Mona Lisa injecting common sense or professional knowledge, and she often only offers them begrudgingly.
The movie gets a lot of mileage out of watching Vinny and Mona Lisa’s fast-talking, no-BS New York style collide with Southern gentility. It’s clear that neither has been in many situations where people were not accustomed to their chutzpah and spiciness. Yet many of the traits that make them underdogs and outsiders to start the film end up being valuable assets as the trial gets underway, and it’s certainly thrilling to watch them both fit their square peg personal dispositions into the round hole of the buttoned-up legal system.
Be good to yourselves and to each other,
Marshall