Coming 2 America

A week ago Hawk and I watched the movie Coming 2 America on Amazon Prime Video. TLDR: it was awful.

The film was so bad I paused it twice In the first 10 minutes to tell Hawk I was ready to leave the room. She was ready to quit, too. We had three major objections, all in just the first 10 minutes:

1. The movie portrayed African cultures with every corny, 1980s vintage US stereotype about how they're silly and obsessed with dancing, sex, and violence. If this movie were not produced by, directed by, and starring Black people it would be roundly condemned as racist.
2. The plot was premised on the existence of a law that treats women unequally— which nobody, including the reigning monarch of the land, thought could be changed. (What would it take to change it? Uh... the reigning monarch of the land simply saying so.)
3. The plot was also premised on rape. A rape that the film telegraphed would be played for laughs. (Also, the victim of the rape would be criticized for it, and the perpetrator(s) of the rape would be excused.)

We decided several times to continue watching the move despite our grave concerns. "Maybe it gets better," we told ourselves several times. And it did get better... though just barely. A few of the guest appearances from music stars were good. They raised the movie overall from an F to a D-.

One thing that really has me shaking my head about this movie is Eddie Murphy's involvement in it. After he became the hottest comedian and one of the hottest stars in Hollywood in the late 1980s he largely stepped away from both movies and comedy. He said he didn't like how Black people were portrayed. Now he comes out of decades-long early retirement... to shit this massive turd on us.

You needed the money, didn't you, Eddie? You needed the money badly enough to repudiate every principled thing you ever said. You're just the kind of money-grubbing Hollywood liar you spent 30 years asking people to stop giving money to.

Where Would You Live?

I was chatting with one of my sisters the other day about where she and her family might move as her husband pursues a new job (she's a SAHM). "If he gets & accepts an offer from the one in Indianapolis," she noted, "We wouldn't even have to move. They've said he can work 100% remotely."

"If you could live wherever, where would you live?" she asked.

It turns out I've thought about this a number of times already. Where I live has been growing less and less important to my work for the past 10 years as companies become more comfortable with hiring good people without regard to their ability to work in an established company office location. Within the area of technical sales it's more, "Live somewhere convenient to the region you're hired to support" or just, "Live near a major airport so you can travel." For example, at my two previous employers with headquarters near San Francisco, my bosses lived thousands of miles away in Charlotte, NC and Boston.

Moreover, the experience of the pandemic has shown companies how to work with remote workforces. In sales we've shown we can succeed through 100% videoconferencing for the past 12 months. Will we return to conducting meetings knees-to-knees some of the time as the constraints of the pandemic lift? Absolutely we will, but the emphasis on physically-present meetings will certainly be less than before 2020. Plus, at my age I'm thinking in terms of semi-retirement. I could shift laterally (in the org chart though not in term of salary) to a role with no requirement for onsite travel.

Just because I've thought about it numerous times, though, doesn't mean I have a firm answer yet. Oh, I've considered a number of ideas over the years. For example, Puerto Rico when we visited there in late 2015. It's part of the U.S. so many of the complexities of expatriation removed. That idea soured when a hurricane devastated the island in 2017 and a bad hire in he 2016 US election showed the island's 3 million residents could be left for dead.

Both before and since then I've entertained other ideas. There's a long list of constraints I'd like to solve for, though. Cost of living, weather, culture, and proximity to good restaurants, shopping, and medical care are a few. To make it even more complicated, Hawk and I have different red lines.

So, no definitive answer yet on where I'd want to relocate for a 100% work-remote job. The answer is still somewhat academic, anyway, as Hawk's line job isn't doable remotely yet. Maybe in another few year it will be. Until then we've got time to think about it.

Where would you choose to live if you could do your job from anywhere?