![]() And ocean lovers everywhere are now lesser for it. ![]() Jimmy Buffet, who never took himself too seriously, was a helluva writer ( not just songs, either), and lived an absolutely charmed water life, has moved on to the next world. It’s 5 o’clock somewhere, Jimmy, and I know you’d be smoking a joint with a drink in your hand and a huge smile on your face like any good pirate would. I really don’t want to believe such a fine man is gone but I’m thankful and lucky for the times we had. But I do feel blessed to have had some really incredible memories every single time I hung out with him, whether it was him flying me to my brother’s bachelor party in Key West, joining us for a surf and a dinner in Hossegor, making me play a song with him at his restaurant, or giving me his guest house in Palm Beach for the night and taking me for a round of golf the next day. And I’m having a tough time accepting that. Yesterday Jimmy passed on to the next life. He laughed about making a living out of 3 chord songs and once told me, ‘Ya know, if Jack ( would just let me do his marketing I could make him a looooot of money!’. I’m not sure I’ve met many people with as positive an attitude who were as welcoming and giving as Jimmy has been to me, just one of the many thousands of friends he’s had around this world. ![]() He told me life was too short not to take every good opportunity that came along and go live it. I met Jimmy in France in 2010 about 8 years or so after my dad died and the first day I told him how much he reminded me of my own father and from that moment on he kind of became a surrogate to me, occasionally calling me from some far off land telling me he missed me and I had to come visit him wherever he was. His music basically outlined the lives we desired…fishing, diving, dreaming about being in the tropics, playing music, and just living the dream. Not for nothing did this premiere at the Park City film festival this past January - clearly the programmers recognized that was both a nod to golden-oldie–indie days and the sort of elliptical character study in miniature that the fest helped turn into something game-changing and revolutionary.I grew up listening to my family. military’s evacuation planes that ferried citizens out upon the Taliban’s return.) Yet the style, bone-dry humor, and overall vibe of this deadpan look at the diaspora blues makes you wonder if it’s actually been sealed in a Sundance vault since the late Eighties or early Nineties, back when black-and-white movies about near-expressionless characters with quirky gigs were synonymous with independent filmmaking. (Zada herself arrived in the States several years ago on one of the U.S. pulling out of Afghanistan in 2020, clearly sets Iranian-born, England-bred writer-director Babak Jalali’s exquisite dramedy in the present-day. The fact that Fremont revolves not just around refugees uprooted by war, but also the aftermath of the U.S. “Too busy with my social life,” Donya notes, accompanied by a barely perceptible sarcastic shrug. It’s just worse now because every time we feel like we’re starting to turn a corner towards normalcy we get smacked in the face. I just wanted to get out of there.” Besides, she adds, she doesn’t have time to think about anything. That’s basically been the feeling for the whole year. Asked what she thought America would be like when she first arrived here, Donya replies, “I didn’t think how it would be. She neither smiles nor scowls, preferring to stay as blank a slate as possible. Still, other than the chronic lack of sleep, nothing really phases Donya - not the blind-date adventures of her single-and-ready-to-mingle coworker (Hilda Schmelling), not the eternal optimism of her chipper boss (Eddie Tang), not the White Fang obsessions of her psychiatrist (Gregg Turkington), not the uncertainty of her fellow refugees who’ve escaped their war-torn home country and still aren’t quite sure where they fit into this one. Every evening, she returns home and suffers through bouts of insomnia well into the wee small hours. Every day, she commutes from an apartment complex populated by Afghan immigrants into the City by the Bay, where she works in a fortune-cookie factory in Chinatown. Now, this young woman lives in the Bay Area town of Fremont, a stone’s throw from Silicon Valley and a dozen or so BART stops from San Francisco. A long time ago, in what might as well have been a galaxy far, far away, Donya (Anaita Wali Zada) was a translator for the U.S. WAKE UP In the NFLs infinite wisdom we have football three days early Eat your cheese and thaw your brats, its Game Day 201.
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