Downtown Boise has quite a few movie theaters and my “escape from the Florida heat” plan featured 100-degree temps so I dragged a somewhat reluctant 10-year-old to see Elio, a movie about a Latinx boy who ascends into the heavens to join the “Communiverse”. Hard SciFi fans will be disappointed to learn that all of the universe’s life forms are able to breathe the same atmosphere and drink the same drink. The bad guy who ultimately is turned into a good guy bears a strong resemblance to Satan in The South Park Movie. Queers for Palestine members will be disappointed to see “Jennifer Jew” in the credits.
All of the good humans in the movie are Latinx and/or Black. The senior military officers are Latinx and female. The military base is Latinx (“Montez Air Force Base” in a city called “Montez”). The big bad bully kid is… white male.
I’m not sure why this movie gets 83 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Star Wars is more interesting in terms of trying to conjure up what an alien society might be like. Elio envisions a universe inhabited entirely by Jar Jar Binks’s spiritual and intellectual cousins (plus a few bad guys who are, in fact, all male (the movie does not seem to envision anything beyond the gender binary).
Separately, here’s a Communiverse F-86 aircraft shared during the Korean War by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. From the Warhawk Air Museum in Nampa, Idaho (not to be confused with NAMBLA):
the anti-elio. parental discretion advised
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYatLKK31-g
tl;dw version:
A local once told me “Boise is like death in July.” Any reason for choosing that instead of Glacier, Yellowstone or the Utah high country?
Steve: I had a meeting in Sun Valley with a patent litigator who fled San Francisco during Coronapanic. I figured it would be good to show our son some of the rest of the state so we drove to Twin Falls and Boise after Sun Valley (which is nice, but it isn’t “Idaho”).
I am not sure any part of Idaho is “Idaho.”
Boise is increasingly West Coast transplants. It resembles Spokane or Seattle, albeit cleaner and safer. Highlights include the Boise Rose Garden, the State House, and various museums.
If you drive west, there are beautiful cherry orchards, which abruptly transition to cannabis dispensaries on the Oregon border.
The panhandle is largely mountain men and secessionists, although that too is changing with migration.
Eastern Idaho could easily be confused with Utah, as it is heavily LDS. Idaho Falls is my preferred stopping point en route to Jackson, Yellowstone, or Stanley. The roaring falls make for lovely evening walks, and the people are very polite. Perhaps you could find an excuse to tour Idaho National Laboratories.
The most “Idaho” tourist gimmick is the Idaho Potato Museum in Blackfoot. Once you gawk at the world’s largest potato chip, you can order a fresh baked potato and watch the trains roar through town behind the museum. The loose volcanic soils east of Craters of the Moon are ideal for growing potatoes.
Hope you make it back!
Both Twin Falls and Boise are becoming Islamic. There is apparently at least one nonprofit getting rich off the refugee/migrant flow. https://archive.is/MWLbo is a Washington Post story about the Islamicization from 2016. We found one mosque and saw a lot of people wearing hijabs in Twin Falls. Google Maps shows four or five mosques in Boise.
If the movie had been in Spanish language with English subtitles, it could have earned a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes.
And if they have had a Palestinian character for a peacemaker who reforms the big, bad white bully kid, Elio would be on its way to a Nobel Peace Prize, just like Obama did.