Golden Arm + The Ongoing ICE Situation

And Wearing Cuffs

Lincoln Hawk walked so “Golden Arm” could run.

Lincoln Hawk is the amazingly-named protagonist of “Over The Top”, which, after all these decades, remains the most famous arm wrestling movie ever made. Frankly, I’m not fully up on the arm wrestling canon. South Korea’s “Champion” seems like something I could review later for this site, and I’ve been curious about “P.K. And The Kid” and the frankly awesome-sounding Italian thriller “Hands Of Steel” with John Saxon and a cyborg. But for now, it’s cool that we have “Golden Arm”, an arm-wrestling comedy for the ladies.

Maureen Bharoocha’s “Golden Arm” is proudly dumb, and for that we should be grateful. Men are allowed to be whatever they want. But unless a woman is pleasing to the male perspective, they are not allowed to be stupid creatures. In “Golden Arm”, they’re dopey, messy, sloppy, gross, scared, uncertain and even a little inconsiderate. I was in prison for so long, and I miss women. So it’s a delight to see them be just ridiculous clowns here.

This has a pretty basic structure. Betsy Sodaro, a comedy vet whom I don’t recognize, is the hellraising Belushi-type, an arm wrestling, hard-drinking, fast-loving menace who is slapping arms every night. But she has grown distant from her best friend, who, as it turns out, turned her back on being a near-legendary arm wrestler. The joke is that particular character is played by prolific comedic beanpole Mary Holland, who had previously slayed in “Veep”, “Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates” and “Greener Grass”, and who most definitely does not look like an actual arm wrestler.

Of course she gets talked out of retirement, and of course there’s a tournament. There’s no joys in following the tic-tac-toe plotting of this film. There are movies that sacrifice plotting for gags, and there are some movies that emphasize the narrative while making you believe the characters are actual human beings with an outer life offscreen. “Golden Arm” is somewhere in between, coasting on charm and good vibes and settling for a minute or two of screentime where things are mostly genial as opposed to laugh-out-loud.

So “Golden Arm” is funny, but the laughs are confidently spaced out. A couple of ringers pop up, like standup comedian Ron Funches and longtime scene stealer Dot-Marie Jones, but they end up doing solid character work to make this world believable. The theatricality of the arm wrestling will remind people of “Dodgeball”, so, don’t come into this looking for verisimilitude. But if you love the structure of sports films, there’s no reason this won’t satisfy.

I don’t have a direct connection between “Golden Arm” and my prison experience, so I felt this was a good opportunity to talk about solitary confinement. Solitary confinement is the perfect example of what the public thinks is public policy. I’m sure people hear of plans to end solitary confinement all the time, legislation proposed somewhere by someone. And when this stuff circulates, people who endorse the “hard on crime” narrative actually think that it’s been applied, and they disapprove. As someone who has dealt with solitary confinement, I feel as if they shouldn’t disapprove. But regardless, most of the criminal justice reforms you hear about as a member of the general public are proposed, but not actually passed. And then it gets politicized, people think that criminal justice reform is being honestly applied. When, in fact, federal prison officials have already acknowledged that not only do they not want to end solitary confinement, but they believe it’s a necessary answer to overcrowding.

I could go on about solitary confinement – I spent months there at different institutions, where it was in the SHU – the Special/Solitary Housing Unit. There’s a lot I could write about it, and will, eventually. But I want to emphasize that many of the small cells in the SHU (which are meant to hold TWO people even though they’re not fit for one) do not have a shower. Since you are typically in the SHU for disciplinary reasons (but not always), you cannot leave your cell on your own volition. They allow you “recreation” every couple of days, and they let you go shower on a similar schedule. Every time they take you from your cell however, they insist on shackling you up, hands and legs. Then, they unshackle you for whatever purpose, you get your showering done (the recreation means being taken to an open-air area so you can basically stand in place, at least in the institutions I occupied), and then they shackle you once again. I haven’t done the math on this, but because of this repeated process, I have been put in cuffs dozens of times, maybe even a hundred times. Now, I ask you – do you think that does something to someone?

A quick word on an escalating situation…

I’m hoping Americans living in certain areas are aware of the gravity of what is happening across the country right now. We are living in a frightening dystopia, and some of us are seeing it with our own eyes. There have been hundreds of minorities seized by ICE officials in several American cities. Some were taken from schools and churches, which is illegal, though legality is hardly the first word off the lips of the average right wing politician, for whom, as the accurate saying goes, cruelty is the point.

These are abductions. These are kidnappings. Immigrants are being treated like dangerous animals and they are being shackled and carried off from places meant to be sanctuaries from cruelty. And the insensitive among you will crow and claim these people are illegal immigrants, they are criminals breaking the law by somehow believing America may be a more prosperous place than anyplace from where they may have come.

Except that the other day, an American citizen was taken along with the other immigrants. He was taken from Newark, New Jersey. And he was Puerto Rican.

I am in Newark, New Jersey. And I am Puerto Rican. Pardon me if I take that personally.

He was a military veteran who fought for this country, and now he was a warehouse manager. That wasn’t good enough to stop him from being abducted by goons. Goons who have long ago surrendered their integrity, who now operate as foot soldiers for a scumbag President who doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. A wannabe mob boss with no courage and no brains. A man that wouldn’t even be a player in prison. If you’re an ICE officer who claims you have to make a living by doing what you do right now, maybe you’re just not fit to make a living. Maybe you need to look in a mirror before you realize schools are handing out “Know Your Rights” cards to children in schools so they know what to do before you illegally enter and kidnap them. Because you’re no better, and you may barely be an equal, to the dirtbags I knew in federal prison.

Donald Trump cowardly campaigned on the back of the idea that immigrants are the enemies, that immigrants are committing crimes and killing people and stealing jobs. This even though statistically immigrants do not commit as many crimes as American citizens, even though crime is statistically as uncommon as it was in the nineties (and, by some metrics, earlier) and unemployment is at record lows.

The kidnapping of that Puerto Rican man in Newark was meant to send a message. The Trump administration is telling the average unthinking person that there’s a certain class of people who belong in handcuffs: brown and black-skinned people. It doesn’t even matter if you’re American — the message is loud and clear. You can steal, you can grift, as everyone in the Trump family understands. You can lie and cheat. You can even commit rape — in fact, that might get you a cabinet position. But if you’ve got darker skin, you’re a target. And now it’s been confirmed to me in Newark. As if being an ex-con didn’t make me enough of a target.

Please, everyone, anyone, remember — when ICE approaches you, be like the hardest man on Cell Block D and demand to see their paperwork. Demand it all. Inconvenience these gutless criminals, make them produce as much paperwork as possible, and demand to know why they think their presence is required. Delay and distract and make them work for their blood money.

American is no place for henchmen.