Andy Rants

RIP Uncle Sam

2011-09-01T08:15:00.000-07:00

We buried Uncle Sam a few days ago. I am not referring to the metaphorical incarnation of our nation but rather my actual uncle, Sam.

Well not my actual uncle. My mother's uncle, making him my great-uncle. Well, not actually my great-uncle, but a really great guy to be sure. He and Aunt Catherine, my mother's mother's sister, never married, so technically he wasn't my mother's uncle or my great-uncle. But he was the most significant person in Aunt Catherine's life for close to forty years. They never chose to have their love and commitment to one another sanctioned through any legal or religious ceremony. That, in my opinion, displays even more love and commitment. If someone can pack up and leave you at any time--without hiring a lawyer--then the fact that they stick around and put up with all your gross personal habits that they discover after you start living together really means something. I'm pretty sure that's why marriage was invented in the first place. So couples wouldn't split up when one of them realized that the other one picks his toenails in bed.

I never knew Uncle Sam that well. I saw him at family gatherings here and there, a couple times a year at most, and usually less. And to be perfectly honest, now that he has gone to his rest, I seldom understood what he was saying most of the time. He had a distinctive and priceless mumble that all but obscured his actual words. I eventually learned to just nod in support. Words, like marriage, are overrated and unnecessary. Sam always had a smile on his face, and smiles are much more important than crisp enunciation. If I could catch a word or two in there, that was enough.

Sam: Hyyahnnewdidddazeedduhgae? Hoowabooudahcatwimadducks? Thawazoomkatwhunit?

Me: (thinking. I think I heard him say Maddox. He must be talking about the Phillies game! (this was 30 years ago):

Yeah, I saw that catch. It was great!

People toss around the phrase "the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet" a little too liberally in my opinion, but I think it applied to Uncle Sam. Anyone nicer than that would just cross the line and be annoying as all hell. So damn the cliche! Full speed ahead! Sam was the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet.


Sam loved to golf. Here he is with a trophy. And a smile.

I, along with everyone else, don't know what happens after we leave this realm of existence. Sam was a Catholic, so I can only imagine him in front of those pearly gates with Saint Peter serving as doorman, as per standard Catholic eschatology.

Saint Peter: Ok, sir. Just a few standard questions before we let you through.

Sam: Yuhdazzzzukie, sherizuhnyzplazeheuh. Yugoagolphupinheauh? I woodamine ittin ateeenolz.

Saint Peter: (boggles for a moment, then smiles and nods) Step right through sir. And enjoy your eternal reward.

Rest in peace Uncle Sam. I hope they have golf in heaven.

More Film Reviews

2011-07-20T21:12:00.000-07:00

Dirty Dancing 7 Stars

I saw this as part of guy film/chick flick exchange program my girlfriend and I set up. She has to watch some films in which things and/or people explode and/or get filleted by sharp metal objects. I, in turn, must endure films in which a good looking bad boy is won over and changes his ways because of the tireless efforts of one strong woman who never lost her faith that, if she tried hard enough, she could change him. This is the quintessential chick flick, and I not only endured it, I enjoyed it. I really did. Next up in the film series: Highlander. Good looking bad boys win over less good-looking, even badder boys by cutting them in half with swords. Oh yeah.

Norma Rae 8.5 Stars

Sally Field gives the performance of a lifetime. I’m pretty sure that’s what the real reviewers said about this movie when it came out over 30 years ago.They weren’t exaggerating. I have the benefit of having witnessed three additional decades of that lifetime, and while Ms. Field has given many fine performances, she’s never topped this. I don’t want to be taken too far afield (no pun intended!) on a political rant, but I have some mixed feelings about unions. When our local SEPTA workers regularly strike, shutting down mass-transportation in our region and terribly inconveniencing me and all the other working folk who utterly depend upon it to get around, it pisses me off. Especially when I know that the lowest paid Septa worker already makes a lot more money than I do. On the other hand, before unions came along, industrial workers were almost uniformly treated like dog shit, except I think dog shit got better health plans.

Discussions of decades-old films often include the line “as relevant today as it was then.” Given the current state of the economy and the pervasive pro-corporate / anti-worker sentiments that have gained an insidious hold upon our culture, I think this may be even more relevant. And given a choice of living in a world where SEPTA ticket-takers make more than I do, and one in which textile workers slave away for next to nothing while factory owners make more money than God’s stock-broker, I’ll take the former any day. And heck, maybe I’ll start drinking a lot of water to pass that stupid drug test and just go apply at SEPTA. I hear they have great benefits.

Salt 6 Stars

It’s a half-decent spy movie, with lots of twists, intrigue, shootouts, and Angelina Jolie kicking vicious, sexy ass. But what’s terribly amusing is that, over two decades after the cold war has ended, the Russians are still the bad guys. Yes, Boris and Natasha are still sipping their vodka as they plot the downfall of western imperialist capitalist dogs. Even though the International Communist Conspiracy has been dead so long, the neighbors have long ago alerted the police about the funky smell, and Karl Marx probably has fewer truly ardent followers than, say, Carrot Top, we should still worry about the dirty reds hiding underneath our beds. And these pinko bastards are sneaky too. Oh sure, they say all they are doing is regulating insurance companies and whatnot, but the next thing you know we’ll all be singing the Internationale while we salute Mother Russia and publicly poop on The Wealth of Nations.

(Spoiler Alert) Megashark vs Crocasaurus (Too Late!) 2 Stars

The title of this film is pretty much the entire plot. There is absolutely nothing to give away. It’s about a shark the size of the QE2 fighting with a crocodile the size of a crocodile-shaped shark the size of the QE2. Seriously. That’s the entire film. No subtlety here. Oh, it’s so bad it is simply breathtaking.

I was going to give this just one star, but then realized that’s what I gave Mama Mia, and it would be unfair to put this in a class with that. At least I was briefly entertained by the sheer absurdity of it. At least this had absolutely terrible special effects going for it. And neither shark nor crocodile attempted to sing, though I’m sure either would have done a better job than Pierce Brosnan.

Where the Buffalo Roam 5 Stars

For years I was told that I should see this film and that I would find it disappointing. I was not disappointed. It was every bit as disappointing as I expected.

Hot Tub Time Machine 8 Stars

This was much funnier than I expected it to be. And much raunchier too. Do not watch it with your mother, unless you and mom routinely make jokes about, oh, let’s just say messy blowjobs. In spite of the appearance of “tub” in the title, this is not good clean fun. It’s good dirty fun, though. Those with a sick, juvenile, sense of humor should enjoy it. I did.

The Manchurian Candidate 7 Stars

This is the newer one, with Denzel Washington, not the older one with Frank Sinatra. That one was great, as I recall, but it’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, so I don’t remember it very clearly. Or maybe there’s a reason it’s hazy in my recollection. Maybe fake memories have been implanted in me so that I won’t recall being programmed to become a“sleeper agent.” I may, at any moment,be called upon to kill at the behest of my nefarious programmers, who might be a secret cabal of corporate conspirators, or extremely optimistic and resilient commies, depending upon which one is a more plausible menace to modern society. You should probably watch both movies. And you should probably routinely have yourself screened for secretly implanted devices. I always do. So far it’s always been from the corporate conspiracy and not the communists. It’s not that they are more diabolically evil, but they are so much better at it.

Thor 6 Stars

High art, it was not. But I saw this with my family, right after we all went out for dinner on Mother’s Day, and that was a lot of fun, so I’m going to give the movie a tepid thumb’s up. I know that’s not fair to the other films that I see by myself on the small screen and rate poorly because I’m alone, depressed and drunk when I see them, but that’s just tough shit.

(I could provide some discussion of the film itself, I suppose. It’s about Thor. Not Thor Heyerdahl. The other one. That should be enough.)

Sucker Punch 4 Stars

The cool parts were amazingly, jaw-droppingly cool.

There weren’t nearly enough cool parts.

Get Shorty 6 Stars

A fairly good gangster film rendered only slightly less palatable by the fact that I was not at any point really aware of what was going on. I was confused because a lot of Hollywood bigshots and mobsters appeared to be in a tizzy as to who got the rights to a script for a film. As if there aren’t enough scripts floating around tinsel town. I’m pretty sure Francis Ford Coppola just brings scripts that writers have shoved at him to the bathroom. (And all he’s reading in there is Variety.) From what I understand, writers are at the very bottom of the totem pole of Hollywood, at approximately dog-genital level. But I suppose Hollywood writers do get some measure of sweet revenge, because in the end they actually write the stories that end up on the big screen, and they can present a skewed and glorified image of themselves as respected members of the creative cinematic community. And actors can go along with the ruse. If they are good enough, we can almost believe it.

A Boy and His Dog 2 Stars

So astoundingly misogynistic as to boggle the imagination, and leave me feeling perfectly justified in giving it a shitty review after watching only about ten minutes of it. I’ll throw in spoilers too,because there’s nothing to spoil. The hero of our film is a serial rapist,presented as a rugged likable outlaw, the bit about the raping just a minor character flaw. An endearing little quirk, harmless and charming. But then it gets worse when one of his prospective rapees almost immediately falls in love with him. Yes, because if there is anything Hollywood has taught us, it’s that nothing turns a woman on like pointing a gun at her and demanding that she spread her legs. I’ll bet the women reading this are feeling a little wet down there right now, aren’t they? Oh you pretend you’re offended, but I know you’re all aquiver with excitement at the thought of being violently violated, right? Everyone knows that “no" means “yes.” I’m not sure what that knee to the crotch means, though. Oh, and the un-anesthetized castration, ok I’m pretty sure THAT means no.

Let the Right One In 8.5 Stars

I’ll say what I can without a spoiler alert, but you should stop reading when you get to it. If you’ve heard anything about the film at all, someone else probably already spoiled it, because most people suck.They’ll give away carefully orchestrated plot elements that the filmmakers build up masterfully, providing little bits of information at a time, so that viewers figure out for themselves the characters’ dark secrets and sanguinary motivations. It’s so much better if you just go into it knowing that it’s a dark and twisted tale, rather than if someone says:

(Spoiler Alert!!)

…

Best vampire movie ever.

Frankenstein Unbound 7 Stars

Far better than the vast majority of Frankenstein films. I have already expounded at length on these and promised I would give Mary Shelley a rest. (I lied, shamelessly. You should probably not believe me, ever.) But I’ll be much briefer than I usually am with anything associated with Mary Shelley. I consider Mary Shelley the grandmother of science fiction, and Frankenstein the first true science fiction novel. So it strikes me as an appropriate homage to weave in some additional science fiction tropes that have become standards of the genre in the nearly two centuries that have passed since she invented it. And it’s handled well. Shelley’s story itself remains intact, and does not suffer the appallingly barbarous mistreatment it endured in the 1931 “classic”or Kenneth Branaugh’s unspeakably painful butchery. But rather than trying and failing yet again to bring the novel to the screen, which apparently cannot be done unless you make it a satire, like Young Frankenstein, this instead weaves a story around her story. I see that I have failed to be brief in my exegesis, and have once again rambled on. I told you I couldn’t be trusted. Did you think I was lying?

Body Heat 7.5 Stars

Is it hot in here, or is it just Kathleen Turner? The chemistry between her and William Hurt is so steamy, the fan in my computer kicked on and didn’t shut off until the end of the film, at which point it demanded a cigarette. A very sexy thriller. Watch it in your underwear.

Kick Ass 9 Stars

Yeah, that’s right: I gave this 9 fucking stars. You like comic books and superheroes? This is just the movie for you. I consider films featuring “ass-kicking chicks” to be the highest form of cinematic art, and this one incorporates a clever variation on that theme, which I’m not going to tell you about, because it would ruin the surprise. Ooh, it’s done so well, you can almost feel the blood splattering across your face. Genius.

Impromptu 6.5 Stars

Hey, George Sands was a woman; who knew? So was George Elliot! George Orwell was a man though. As was George Burns. And George Washington. And the first George Bush. So now that we’ve gotten our Georges straight*: George Sands was a 19^th century novelist whose works you have almost certainly never read, unless it was assigned to you in the 19^thcentury literature class you took in pursuit of your feminist studies degree. If you already knew that, you’ll probably enjoy this dramatization of her life,or at least that portion of her life in which she fawns over / stalks Frederic Chopin. Because, as those aforementioned feminist studies majors can attest, a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle, unless that man plays a mean piano.

* George Strait: Also a man

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 8.5 Stars

I watched this right after Elizabeth Taylor took her final bow and went to the great cast party in the sky. I can see what the fuss was about. She’s brilliant in this, as is Paul Newman. Overall, it’s a great film, even in spite of the savage Hollywood butcher treatment it received. In the interest of not offending a sensitive and undoubtedly bigoted mainstream American audience, the filmmakers essentially buried one of the most central elements of the plot: the fact that Newman’s character was as gay as Tennessee Williams. But to give them some credit, they didn’t remove it completely, just made it so subtle that you’d never figure it out unless you were very sensitive and, probably, gay. If you are already in on this little secret as you watch the film, it all makes a lot more sense. I didn’t figure it out. My girlfriend told me after we watched it. In retrospect it 's so obvious. The guy is married to Elizabeth Taylor and he’s withholding sex. What could be gayer than that?

Good Rupert / Evil Rupert

2011-07-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

Good Rupert

Evil Rupert

All American Meal

2011-07-11T19:52:00.000-07:00

Sara and I celebrated July 4th in as quintessentially American a fashion as we were able without actually invading anyone or handing bankers piles of money. We drank beer, ate hot dogs, cole slaw, and potatoes, polished off with cookies and ice cream while listening to country music. The only thing preventing us from being more patriotic was the pesky 7 day waiting period for purchasing a handgun.

A closer examination of our at first glance 100% American meal reveals signs of latent commie pinko subversive tendencies. The hot dogs were not all beef franks. They weren’t even chicken. Some hippie freak made them out of soybeans of all things. Just to fill you in, in case you missed the bright pink memo, everything made out of soybeans is, like gay marriage, part of a subversive plot to dismantle our once great nation.

The hot dog buns were made from organic whole wheat, healthy for both my intestines as well as the long term sustainability of the ecosystem. As such I can only imagine that somewhere a “citizen’s group” made up of ordinary Joes and Janes and not in any way affiliated with any massive corporate agribusiness is up in arms over these buns.

The cole slaw was actually shredded apples and carrots topped with walnuts and craisins and a light dressing of apple cider vinegar. The potatoes were steamed, not fried in the proper American Way to do potatoes, producing a healthy, patriotic level of saturated fat. They were lightly drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled on top with dried rosemary, grown right here in South Philadelphia at our community garden. And you know what else starts off with “communi--” besides “community garden”? That’s right: communism.

The beer was not Budweiser. It was locally brewed in Philadelphia, and it was delicious. This is usually a good sign that it’s some elitist commie beer: it tastes good. And as you could probably already guess, the ice cream, though icy, wasn’t actually “cream.” It was, once again, made out of that most subversive and dangerous of all legumes: the soybean.

I’m a firm believer in eating healthy, and I’m happy to live in a society that allows me to make that choice. Contrary to popular misconception, well fertilized with active disinformation, I, and most like-minded and like-stomached folks do not have the slightest desire to take away from anyone the right to shovel in food-like products as if there’s a prize to see who can make it to the intensive care ward first.

I support everyone’s freedom to make unhealthy choices. Including myself, and I’ve made plenty, though detailing them here would be irrelevant, embarrassing and potentially incriminating. The specifics aren’t important. I do more than my share of unhealthy things. But I do not suffer from an increasingly prevalent delusion that making the unhealthy choice itself is admirable or patriotic.

About a month ago, I observed a street jackass performing some street jack-assery (more generous folks can use the terms “magician” and “magic.”) During the course of the prestidigitation he pulled out a cigarette, and felt an insatiable need to get a dig in on the First Lady. “Who’s gonna tell you can’t smoke? Michelle Obama?” he muttered derisively.

This was presumably motivated by Mrs. Obama’s subversive campaign to provide accurate health information and encourage people to consider making healthy choices. And her pinko organic garden too. Doubtless growing red beets.

Sarah Palin, always a reliable source of pure, high-quality, unprocessed, raw stupidity, showed up last year at a Pennsylvania elementary school with cookies that she personally dipped in lard and asbestos to protest a state law restricting unhealthy foods in the schools, describing the proposed regulation as the “nanny state run amok.” Afterward she handed out Garcia Vegas to all the kids and told them that once they got past the hacking and the coughing they would recognize that the unfamiliar flavor in the back of their mouths was the taste of freedom. Or possibly incipient throat cancer, but most likely: freedom

This is the bizarro world our nation has become, where growing an organic garden and encouraging children to eat all their vegetables and only take a small slice of cake, and not start a pack-a-day Marlboro habit is somehow, if your brain is twisted in just the right way, the hallmark of the collapse of Western Civilization.

A colleague of mine wrote a book satirizing the war on drugs, parodying it as a war on junk food, in which a thriving black market dealt in contraband cupcakes and ding-dongs. People are locked up and do hard time for being caught with twinkies. Undercover cops stake out notorious donut smugglers. I thought it was hilarious, mainly because it was so silly. It was effective at illustrating the insanity of the extremes of the drug war, precisely because our society does not treat food the same way. But it’s amazing how many people from the Palin school of thought (that’s the school with no books, and almost no thought) present this scenario as the inevitable conclusion of any regulation of consumer products whatsoever. As if putting a tax on cigarettes is entirely equivalent to handing down a life sentence at hard labor for eating a slice of pie. http://www.encpress.com/JUNK.html

I myself wrote a book satirizing both corporate agribusiness and well-meaning but ultimately just incredibly annoying pro-healthy food advocates. By making good hearted jibes on both sides of the healthy food debate, I succeeded in alienating myself from both camps and selling very few books. http://www.encpress.com/MM.html

I will not try to replace your all-beef wieners with my soybean-based abominations. I won’t even try to ruin your appetite by reading aloud selected passages from Upton Sinclair or showing you pictures of slaughtered pigs just as you are chowing down on some pork ribs. I used to pull that sort of shit, but realized that I was accomplishing absolutely nothing but confirming persistent rumors that I might be some kind of asshole.

The freedom to make an unhealthy choice is as American as hot dogs and apple pie. But there’s nothing admirable or patriotic about making those choices. Choosing to smoke or eat deep fried lard balls is not a bold act of patriotic defiance against tyranny. And you should probably not listen to the American Lard Council when they tell you that it is, because they are manipulating you like a little tool to serve their ends. There is nothing un-American about making a healthy choice nor about encouraging others to do the same. My veggie dogs and carrot slaw are every bit a celebration of American freedoms as your char-broiled walrus blubber and crack salad.

Oh, and yes: For our 4th of July meal, we were listening to Toby Keith. But we were listening ironically.

A king, a dad and a bird

2011-06-19T22:09:00.000-07:00

In celebration of the day after Father’s Day, I’d like to share a poem my father wrote. He’s quite the talented wordsmith, and I think everyone will find his stirring verse as inspirational as I did:

Ode to a Robin

As I awoke one morning

I heard a robin trill

A sound so bright and cheery

Upon my windowsill

What merry bursts of melody

This tiny creature chirped

A sound to ease the tragedies

Of life’s unending work

As I listened silently

A thought then crossed my mind

What kind of world would this world be

Without that voice divine?

With cheery notes piercing my brain

My thoughts from sleep still dull

I gently lowered the windowpane

And crushed his fucking skull

Pretty brilliant, eh? Oh, and for any of my critter-loving, tofu-eating, non-fly-swatting cronies out in the audience: Relax there, Mahatma. It's just a joke. I’ve hugged my share of bunnies and still somehow manage to maintain a sense of humor. But just to eliminate any confusion:

No robins were harmed during the crafting of this poem.

…………………………………….

My dad wrote this poem long before I was born, in 1963 or 1964. So he was somewhat amazed to discover this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lXRHcLInnc&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Yes, that’s Elvis Presley, reading a remarkably similar poem he claims to have written, and this recording is from the early 1970's. So there are really only three logical explanations.

1) Elvis plagiarized my dad.

2) My dad and Elvis both read a similar poem and then forgot about it before each wrote his own.

3) Elvis and my dad have eerily similar sick and twisted minds.

My father and Elvis share many qualities (Dad can play the guitar, and although he does not regularly dine on fried ice cream, I’m sure he wouldn’t turn it down), but I think it stretches credulity to suggest that they each independently came up with this delightful poetic homage to justifiable avicide. Elvis must have gotten the idea from somewhere. If not from my dad, then from somewhere else. As stated, Dad wrote it no later than 1964. So I went searching for some reference to this poem appearing in print somewhere earlier than that.

I found this one:

As I awoke one morning when all sweet things are born,
a Robin perched upon my sill to hail the coming dawn.
It was fragile, young and gay and sweetly did it sing,
and thoughts of happiness and joy into my head did bring.
I listened softly to his song and paused beside my bed,
then gently closed the window and crushed it's f*cking head.

But there is no source given. Also, my dad’s is much better. And not only because he has enough balls to include that offensive letter "u."

Searching further, I found these two versions:

As i awoke one morning, when all good things are born
A robin perched on my window sill to welcome in the dawn

He was so small and fragile and sweetly he did sing
Of thoughts of joy and happiness in my heart did spring
I smiled to myself as i stood beside my bed
And slowly brought the window down and smashed it on his head.........

I woke early one morning,
The earth lay cool and still
When suddenly a tiny bird
Perched on my window sill,
He sang a song so lovely
So carefree and so gay,
That slowly all my troubles
Began to slip away.
He sang of far off places
of laughter and of fun,
It seemed his very trilling,
brought up the morning sun.
I stirred beneath the covers
Crept slowly out of bed,
Then gently shut the window
And crushed his little head

But again, there was no reference supplied as to who allegedly wrote it and when.

And all the sensitive souls out there who wince every time the robin gets smashed: maybe you should just sit this blog out. It doesn’t get any better.

Back to variants on this cruel/hilarious poem. Here are two more:

As I awoke one morning, when all sweet things are born,

A robin perched upon my sill to welcome the coming morn.

He whistled a song so sweetly, and so softly did he sing,

That thoughts of joy and happiness to my heart did he bring.

As he cocked his little head, and paused for a moments lull,

I quickly closed the window, and crushed his fucking skull.

A songbird came and perched itself

upon my window sill.

It sang to me a song so sweet

in a soft little trill.

I thought to myself, how wonderful

this world of ours must be,

if God could send this little bird

to sing its' song for me.

A world of peace, a world of love,

of beauty and of joy.

A happy little haven

for every girl and boy.

And as I bent down to listen to

his gentle little lull,

I quickly slammed the window down

and crushed its' fucking skull!

Which, once again, is not as good as my Dad’s version, and is not attributed to any pre-1964 source.

The more I searched, the more versions of this I found. Here’s another:

As I awoke one morning
when all good things are born

A blackbird perched upon my sill
to hail the happy dawn

The robin sang so sweetly
as I crept out from my bed

And bought the bloody window down
and bashed his noisy head

Not only is this version shorter, later, and not nearly as good as Dad’s, it also inexplicably brings a blackbird into the poem at the beginning, only to smash a robin by the end of it.

Oh but the variants, they keep a coming:

As I awoke one morning I heard an airle bird sign,
it stood upon my windowsill and welcomed in the spring,
As I lay on my pillow I listened to its song,
its sweet and cheerful melody carried me along,
I carefully tumbled from my bed my heartstring it did pull,
I gently closed my window and crushed is foooking skull.

Which at least adds the twist of a Scottish dialect to it, which is all one needs to suspect that maybe Robert Burns wrote it, which would place the poem well before 1964, in fact somewhere squarely in the 18^th century. This would tie things up neatly if it were true, but it’s not.

Returning to Elvis’s version: it sold at an auction for thousands of dollars a few years ago. The hubbub surrounding the auction has shed a little light on the search for the original source, but not much. You couldn’t read by it, for example, but it would probably keep you awake at night.

According to one site: "Long before Elvis stumbled upon the ODE TO A ROBIN I saw it in Playboy magazine.” – attributed to John Wilkinson, a guitarist who played with Elvis for many years.

So I looked for any further references to the poem having been printed in Playboy, and found nothing. So while I am satisfied that Elvis definitely did not write it, I’m still not convinced that Playboy didn’t plagiarize my dad. But of course it's possible that both of them read it in Playboy or somewhere else, and subconsciously appropriated it for their own work. I figure they are both in good company. If a great man like my dad can do that, then I'm not going to fault Elvis for doing the same thing. Or vice versa.

Happy Father's Day! (1 day late)

(And for the record: be kind to animals. Don't crush them.)

Some People Have No Sense of Humor

2011-05-31T19:35:00.000-07:00

(email addresses and names have been slightly altered, because I’m not a total dick. Just a partial one.)

…..........................................................................

from lxxxxx@notes.cc.xxxxx.edu
to andrew.breslin@gmail.com
date Tue, May 10, 2011 at 3:07 PM
subject Fw: THR 315 Fall 2011
mailed-by notes.cc.xxxxx.edu*************

Hi,

You have been given permission to register in THR 315 for fall 2011.

Thanks,
Laura
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Laura xxxxxx
Theatre Arts -3046 Staller Center -
Hours: Tue - Wed 8-4, Thurs 8-12
Art Department - 2225 Staller Center -
Hours: Mon & Fri 8-4, Thurs 12-4

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
******************************************************
This e-mail message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by e-mail and destroy all copies of the original.
*******************************************************

….....................................................................................................................................

from Andrew Breslin andrew.breslin@gmail.com
to lxxxxx@notes.cc.xxxxxx.edu
date Tue, May 10, 2011 at 11:12 PM
subject Re: Fw: THR 315 Fall 2011
mailed-by gmail.com

I am, of course, simply beside myself with delight at having been given permission to register in THR 315 for fall 2011. And I mean that quite literally. My doppelganger is here, and he too is pleased. The champagne is flowing copiously, though this may reflect nothing more than the fact that both of us are raging alcoholics, and a bad influence on one another.

But our rapture and ecstasy is tempered with no small measure of confusion. For, you see, I have not a hint of a whiff of a clue what it is about which you speak. And mind you: we haven't had much to drink yet.

I mean no offense at all, or certainly not very much, when I note that I have absolutely nothing to do with your institution, and, perhaps more to the point, never ever have. I mean not even a little. I was not, until very recently, aware of its existence. In fact, I still don't know where I am writing, but gather from the "edu" that it is some sort of educational establishment, but this insight brings with it not even the vaguest suggestion of what it could possibly have to do with me. All that fancy book learnin' was never my demitasse of Darjeeling. I got my education on the streets, which is why I am an expert on both asphalt and roadkill.

I am not writing one of those angry emails that so taint our otherwise amiable interwebs, and you will note a conspicuous absence of exclamation points. I usually let my exclamations speak for themselves in any event. My maxim is that it is a pretty weak exclamation that needs to be pointed out. I shall even add a smiley, lest my sarcasm be taken in a manner more hostile than intended. Here it is: [,< I'm not very good at these and know that random punctuation marks are involved.

But curiosity, though fatal to felines, according to at least some circumstantial evidence, afflicts both myself and the doppleganger (whom I've taken to affectionately calling "Dop.")

Ole' Dop and I are wondering: how did my email address possibly end up attached to this email, which one would have to go to great lengths to be of a subject less applicable to me?

(If this is some sort of a contest to do just that, the next time, include something about pork belly futures. I'd be simply overwhelmed with a lack of interest.)

Dop just had a thought, and managed to share it with me before passing out from the entire bottle of champagne he just chugged: Perhaps we both have yet another doppleganger. Perhaps an andrew.breslin@yahoo.com or something of that ilk? Or some similar ilk? That other Andrew Breslin could be frantically chewing his fingernails down to the bone as we speak (or as I type, and then, later, as you read, if he has any fingers left by then) wondering whether or not he has been given permission to register in THR 315 for fall 2011. I would hate for the poor lad to be driven out of his tiny mind with suspense, so maybe someone could let him know.

Have a lovely and delightful day, Laura. And don't take life too seriously. I never do.

Andrew Breslin and Dop.

….........................................................................

from lxxxxx@notes.cc.xxxxxx.edu
to Andrew Breslin
date Wed, May 11, 2011 at 9:14 AM
subject Re: Fw: THR 315 Fall 2011
mailed-by notes.cc.xxxxx.edu

sorry - but we have a student who listed the same email address as yourself.......hmmmm.....he must have written it done wrong....

Thanks,
Laura

…................................................................................................................

Hola, Laura

Wait, so he actually wrote "andrew.breslin@gmail.com"? Now this has catalyzed an existential crisis of unprecedented proportions--at least while I was not out of my mind on triple-dipped blotter acid--and may necessitate a re-examination of the laws of physics as we know them, or at least as I understand them from watching science fiction movies.

My best working theory is that this other Andrew Breslin is in fact the same Andrew Breslin . . . but from an alternate universe.

I have yet to devise a plausible explanation as to why this other Andrew Breslin is interested in registering in THR 315 for fall 2011, and not only because I have almost no idea what that means. My current postulate is that this has something to do with taking an art class, something this Andrew Breslin would not even consider. As mentioned, this one has a generalized disdain for "education" though it should be emphasized that this does not extend toward those employed by educational institutions, such as yourself, or the doppelgangers thereof. This Andrew Breslin is, in particular, extraordinarily skeptical that "art" is anything more than a grand hoax. See: http://andyrantsandraves.blogspot.com/2011/04/artsy-fartsy-i-recently-visited.html

I assume, of course, that you are familiar with the Star Trek episode in which the crew of the Enterprise encounter their counterparts in a parallel (or possibly perpendicular) universe. You will recall that Spock's sported a devilish goatee, and was diabolically evil to boot. This seems entirely appropriate. Anyone with any sense knows that facial hair is evidence of malicious intentions. But the point, from which I am attempting not to stray too far, is that our alternate universe doppelgangers (not to be confused with the ones we pal around with here in our own universe, like my good buddy Dop here) might exhibit personality traits far removed from our own.

The fact that this other Andrew Breslin is interested in taking an art class causes me little concern. What worries me is that he might be from the same alternate universe from which the goateed Spock hailed, and might possibly be the apotheosis of evil.

Do you happen to know: Did this other Andrew Breslin have a beard? The fate of the world (or at least this one) may depend upon it!

Andrew Breslin

(the one from this universe)

…......................................................................................

(No reply)

Artsy Fartsy

2011-04-26T07:21:00.000-07:00

I recently visited Washington, DC’s Hirshhorn Museum, hoping to ogle my favorite piece of art, Ron Mueck's “Big Man,” a disturbingly lifelike rendition of a giant obese naked man who looks like he’s having the worst day of his life and might, at any moment, squash your voyeuristic little ass. He’s gorgeous. Definitely the most beautiful giant obese ugly angry naked man I’ve ever seen.

It’s so accurate in it’s detail that you can see the veins beneath the skin of his scrotum. Or at least I think you can. It’s been years since I saw him, and he’s out on tour now. But instead, I was treated to a new exhibit from abstract expressionist Blinky Palermo. If you are not familiar with abstract expressionism, here is how you recognize it: if you were to walk by it on the side of the road on trash day, you would not for a moment consider it out of place. You would never suspect that it was anything but garbage.

Kurt Vonnegut’s Bluebeard masterfully skewers the outrageous pretensions of the art world, and in particular the idea that “art” that is indistinguishable from garbage is not garbage, as long as enough elitist wankers in black turtlenecks say so. Vonnegut is the little boy who declares the emperor to have no clothes. And, unlike the Big Man, the emperor's scrotum holds no fascination for me.

My good friend and fellow irate malcontent, Larry Nocella, once wrote a hilarious zine about a guy who cannot contain his bowels and lets loose a massive dump in an art museum, only to have it hailed as a work of genius by the type of people who routinely declare pieces of shit to be works of genius. Heck, I’ll just give some unsolicited promotion to Larry with a link. You’ll laugh!

http://www.larrynocella.com/files/xc03_new.pdf

Vonnegut makes the same point, and though it takes longer and there are no silly pictures, the final effect hits the reader like a brick in the face, only in a good way. You should read the entire thing, yesterday, if possible, but here it is boiled down to its quintessence: Art that is about nothing but itself is about nothing.

Bluebeard is a true work of art, and long after anyone gives a rat’s ass about Blinky Palermo’s spray-painted two-by-fours (I shit you not, this was one of the pieces of “art.” It wasn’t even a well spray-painted two-by-four. If you were on your way to a hardware store on trash day to buy a two-by-four, you would still walk right past it, I swear), they’ll appreciate this artistic citizen’s arrest. I have no doubt that it will outlast the smile on the Mona Lisa.

Now there’s a nice piece of art too. Almost as nice as a big fat naked guy.

Film reviews

2011-03-08T08:06:00.001-08:00

Duel 6.5 Stars

[spoiler alert: but only if you are extremely dense and don't see it coming]

I can imagine the conversation then-unknown young director Steven Spielberg had with the producers of this, his first film:

Spielberg: What’s my budget for this picture?

Producers: $500,000.

Spielberg: Okay, and how much would it cost to have a huge 18-wheel truck get smashed into oblivion at the end of it?

Producers: $ 495,000

Spielberg: Great! Let’s do it!

Spielberg is one of the most successful and influential directors in history and so, as a responsible student of cinematic history, you really need to see this. And, for a low-budget made-for-TV movie, it’s damned impressive. You can see why it got the attention of hot shots in Hollywood. He masterfully builds suspense and engages the interest of the audience with the limited resources of one character and one locale: a long lonely stretch of dessert highway. Brilliant.

But it is now almost four decades later. We don’t have to wonder what this guy could do with a humongous budget and big Hollywood stars. We’ve already seen ET, Jaws, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler’s List, etc. We are not living under a rock, after all. Or, if so, we have a DVD player under the rock with us. We’ve seen what Spielberg can do.

I try to be as much of an obnoxious snob as I can, disdainful of big-budget blockbusters and superstar actors, but sometimes I just have to be brutally honest with myself and the four or five people in my audience: Duel is definitely worth watching for educational purposes, for both its historical relevance to the career of one of the greatest directors of all time, and for lessons in the craft of filmmaking. But for sheer entertainment, it’s got nothing on Raiders of the Lost Ark. Sometimes having a few million dollars to throw around can be a lot of fun. You can blow up several big trucks.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 8 Stars

First of all: this has absolutely nothing to do with Virginia Woolf. If you were hoping it did, check out The Hours, which will leave you entirely satisfied and, if all goes well, suicidal. But this is a deliciously bitter slice of dysfunctional family life. With the screaming, and the fighting, and the drinking. Oh the drinking! Just watching this film will raise your BAC above the legal driving limit, so it’s a good thing you are watching it at home. Watch out for a nasty hangover tomorrow. Pop a couple of aspirin before you go to bed.

I rode the blissful wave of schadenfreude without complaint up until the last half hour or so, at which point I had had enough and was ready to sleep it off. The dialogue is exceptional. Clever, witty, miserable people being cruel to one another. Brilliantly, eloquently cruel. It’s irresistible to watch, for maybe an hour and 45 minutes. But then it keeps going. You can only sustain the level of emotional intensity for so long, keeping the audience on a razor’s edge between laughing and doing whiskey shots until they pass out. Other than going on a bit past the point that I could comfortably stand it, it’s a fabulous film. Also: nothing to do with Virginia Woolf.

Death and the Maiden 5 Stars

I was just a little too conscious of the fact that Sigourney Weaver was acting to lose myself in the gripping story, which also depended on a thoroughly improbable coincidence to carry it forward. I was already suspending my disbelief, and was approaching the tensile strength limits of my disbelief suspender. It’s not that she isn’t a talented actor, but the demands placed on her by the role—a character undergoing a total emotional breakdown—were so extreme that only the very best could pull it off. “OK, Sigourney,” the director should have said, “in this scene I want you to act like you are Meryl Streep.” I mean no disrespect to Sigourney, but I’d much rather watch her kick alien ass.

A Cry in the Dark 7 Stars

A true story of a grave miscarriage of justice in the misinformation age, when those accused of crimes are tried and convicted in the media long before they ever step into a courtroom. It reinforces an opinion of mine that “democracy” and “trials by jury” are not necessarily innately good things, when it means that our fates rest firmly in the hands of dim-witted, easily manipulated dolts. Swell. There’s some social progress for you.

Thus far I’ve been lucky, and have not been accused of most of the crimes I have committed, let alone any I did not commit. But if I my fortunes were ever to change, I’d rather take my chances with one impartial judge who has nothing to gain or lose either way, than with an ambitious and talented prosecutor manipulating twelve idiots who have already made up their mind from watching nonstop, irresponsibly sensationalistic TV coverage.

[spoiler alert! ] The dingo did it.

GI Jane 5 Stars

A friend of mine, observing a pattern in my cinematic tastes, once commented that I was obviously a masochist and desperately wanted a woman to beat the living shit out of me. “No,” I replied. “I just want to know that she could.” I’ve got a thing for hot babes who kick ass. And I have to confess that Demi Moore doing one-armed push-ups with that military buzz cut earned a rigid salute from me, if you know what I mean. I don’t think that makes me gay nor diminishes my standing as a peace activist.

But a hot ass-kicking, stereotype-busting babe isn’t quite enough to cut it. The film’s flaw is that ultimately they wanted to sell tickets and not make a great movie, so they threw it into Hollywood overdrive at the end, with the formulaic action movie climax and the melodramatic music playing as American soldiers wipe out the evil terrorists, or something like that. To be honest, I wasn’t even paying attention at the end. I rewound to the part where Demi is doing the one-armed pushups.

……………………

Bugs Bunny: Superstar 8 Stars

One of the most important figures in the history of cinema, Orson Welles, narrates this tribute to an arguably even more significant one, Bugs Bunny. Most of the content consists of Warner Brothers classics, shown in their entirety, with no embarrassing attempts to weave them into a cohesive story with original, inferior, filler sequences, as they did in the Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie. Looney Tunes fans should check that out as well, but they’ll like this better, if they have any sense, which they do, obviously, as they are not Hannna-Barbera fans. This one presents everyone’s favowite wabbit in all his waskelly gwory. And we also get a sneak peak at the guys who drew him and wrote his lines for him and whatnot, so that allowed cinematic snobs to pretend they were appraising a serious documentary film, instead of just getting high and watching cartoons.

Species 3 Stars

The principal character in this forgettable sci-fi snoozer is a super hot ass-kicking alien babe. So it was physically impossible for me not to watch it, even in spite of the glaring warning signs that it would probably be awful. The first of these is that it featured a star-studded cast, including Ben Kingsley, Forrest Whittaker, and Alfred Molina, but was about a super-hot ass-kicking alien babe. It is, sadly, within striking distance of “so bad it’s good,” but it’s just not quite bad enough, and so it remains “so bad that it’s almost good but is still quite bad.” It’s painful watching those excellent actors desperately trying to pretend that they are in a real movie. Waste your time if you want to, but if a super hot ass-kicking alien babe doesn’t do it for me, (who has a legitimate psychological condition, ok?), then you or any other normal person will probably hate it.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus 6 Stars

Having been mesmerized by Heath Ledger’s performance in Dark Knight, I will never forgive him for selfishly dying young and depriving us all of his thespian brilliance. So it’s at least some small comfort that his final, unfinished project was a classic Gilliam exercise in approximating a psychedelic experience through film, because if it had been any other director, there would have been no choice but to scrap the entire unfinished production. But having the main character played by different actors actually works here, in a weird way. “Hey, that’s a different guy,” says the audience. “That’s weird. Oh right . . . Gilliam.”

When the movie was over, I had only the vaguest idea what happened and memories of astounding visual stimulation, the specific significance of which quickly faded. I cannot rule out the possibility that one of my drug-addled friends dosed my beverage, but barring that possibility, this is about as close to a psychedelic experience as you are going to get without the psychedelics. I can only imagine it would be even better with some quality drugs to go along with it, but I’m fresh out. Maybe if I track down Gilliam, he’ll share. He obviously has plenty.

Moon 8 Stars

An underrated little science fiction gem. It’s hard to give it a decent spoiler-free review because most of the plot turns on a twist about of a third of the way into the film, and you would hate me if I ruined it for you, so I will remain annoyingly vague and cryptic, but just remember that I’m doing it for you. This film is obviously influenced by both Arthur C Clarke and Phillip K Dick. (The secret to SciFi success? A middle initial.) There’s a spooky homage to HAL by the now so aptly named Kevin Spacey. Any further discussion is likely to give something away, so go ahead and see it and then we can stay up late talking about deep nuances. Preferably after getting really high. Phillip K Dick would be proud.

Felon 7 Stars

In pursuing a recently completed a novel set in a prison, I conducted a fairly extensive investigation of life behind bars, and the filmmakers obviously did some hands-on research as well. As in: hands clenched tightly on their bunk while some huge sociopath re-purposes their rectum and/or esophagus. Yeah, prison sucks, and you may be forced to as well if you end up there, so try to avoid it.

A lot of prisoners are really bad people, and most of the people on staff are probably pretty decent folk. It’s important to make that point, because cinema tends to portray stories of unjustly-convicted guys tormented by sadistic corrections officers, which is not a complete picture of what’s going on behind the walls. But it’s equally important to note that those stories are not entirely implausible either.

You’ll have to pardon that brief rant on American penal policy. I spent a couple of years reading and writing about this stuff, so I can’t resist an editorial aside. Also, I wanted an excuse to say “penal,” because I’m extremely immature. This is a pretty good prison flick. Don’t drop the soap.

Resident Evil 5 Stars

You can’t have high expectations for a movie adapted from a video game. Even with low expectations, you might be disappointed, depending on how highly you regard video games as a narrative medium. There are a couple hot ass-kicking babes. Always a huge plus. And zombies. Can’t go wrong with zombies. But it didn’t provoke any desire to watch the sequel. I just want to play the video game.

XXX 4 Stars

There’s nothing wrong with mindless action flicks. I like silly movies in which explosions and cleavage take priority over deep, thought-provoking themes. My position is: I already think plenty. Just blow shit up and show me some boobs. But blatant inconsistencies ruin things for me. Having spent some time in Prague, I find it hard to suspend my disbelief when they rearrange the basic geography of a major world city to suit the plot. Reality is inconvenient, so you just ignore it? I wish I could do that.

I also can’t help but wonder how and why the bad guys chose the single most popular tourist site in the entire Czech Republic as the location of their secret evil genius lair.* I can only imagine the guide instructing the visitors (with a sexy Slavic accent, which is how my imagination works): “Please to be paying attention, peoples. Here is site of celebrated 1618 defenestration of Prague, key event in launching Thirty Years War. And over here some anarchists are plotting global terror. American ‘extreme-sports’ enthusiast will to be dealing with them later.”

Lots of shit blows up. Nothing makes sense. And given the title: not nearly enough boobs.

* a friend of mine who lives in Prague and worked on this film assures me that the scenes in question are not actually taking place at the castle in Prague, an enormously popular tourist site, but at a different castle located outside the city, several kilometers away, which is where they locate things in Europe. This knowledge ruined my review so I ignored it.

G.I. Joe: the Rise of Cobra 6 Stars

This was not nearly as bad as all the people who said it was so bad said it was.

Parse that beast out if you want to. Explosions, ninjas, and hot chicks with guns. That’s all I need.

Bill Maher: But I’m Not Wrong 8 Stars

Were it not for Bill Maher, I might long ago have given up all hope that there is any sanity left in this country. Between the idiot tea-baggers on the right and ineffectual wimps on the left, as well as self-perceived radicals who spend more of their time and energy trying to draw attention to how radical they are than to actually accomplishing anything, I sometimes feel as if all hope is not only lost, but too stupid to ask directions.

Maher is an unapologetic opponent of the corporate culture strangling our increasingly illusionary democracy. But he doesn’t cave in to bullshit political correctness, either. For example, he’s not afraid to come out and criticize Islam, and note the glaring truth that it’s an insane ideology mired in the Dark Ages and has perpetuated unspeakable oppression for centuries. He comes right out and says this, unconcerned that some liberals think it’s quite insensitive to be so clear and honest.

Bill sees through the lies foisted upon fools by corporate greed and blind religious faith, and he points it out with humor. To perceive evil, injustice, and stupidity all around, and to be able to illuminate it, to shine a light on ugliness, and to do so in a manner that might wake a few people up, and make them laugh while you are doing it, that is a rare and wonderful skill indeed.

I need to work on that myself. Screaming abuse and profanity at anyone who disagrees with me isn’t nearly as effective as I thought it would be.

No ho ho

2010-12-23T08:46:00.000-08:00

"I don't really miss God, but I sure miss Santa Claus."

~ from the song “Gutless” by Hole.

There is no war on Christmas. Oh there may be a limited police action, sure, but Christmas started it. Christmas invaded Poland. Christmas fired on Fort Sumter. Christmas crossed the 38^th parallel. Christmas assassinated Franz Ferdinand. (The Archduke, not the band.) Use whatever metaphor or analogy you prefer. The point is that the non-Christians of the world did not start the conflict with Christmas. We're just fighting back.

Some Christians are offended by seasonal greetings such as “happy xmas,” “happy holidays,” and, um, “season's greetings.” They complain that you can't say “Merry Christmas” any more. But they are wrong. Go ahead and wish your fellow Christians “Merry Christmas.” Do you hear any complaining? I just hear those sleigh bells jingling. A ring-ting-tingling too. Angels are getting their wings and dogs are salivating. But nobody is complaining.

There's nothing wrong with one Christian saying “Merry Christmas” to another Christian, and nobody anywhere has ever tried to stop this from occurring. The problem is that many Christians seem to assume that everyone else is a Christian too, and we're not. I am not a Christian. Nor am I a Muslim. I believe that both of those ideologies have brought great harm to the world. I also happen to believe that most Christians and most Muslims throughout the world are themselves good and decent human beings, albeit regrettably deluded.

The problem with the phrase “Merry Christmas” is that Christians routinely say it to non-Christians and don't see anything wrong with it. And I wonder how many of them would be annoyed if you wished them a happy Ramadan. Go ahead and try it, preferably deep in the bible belt. See if they wish the peace and joy of the season upon you. If you are religious, you might want to pray first.

Just about every religion in the world has some type of winter holiday, and whether they know it or not, it all goes back to traditions that started thousands of years ago, long before Islam or Christianity existed. Because when winter comes, everything dies, and the days get shorter and shorter, and it’s all so dreary, grim and depressing, so people needed to put some type of end-of-the-year festival in place to keep their spirits up. The specific mythology that people are celebrating is irrelevant. The point is that it’s cold outside, and it’s going to be a long nasty winter, but we’re all still alive, damn it. Throw another log on the fire, we’re still alive.

The basic human desire to celebrate at this time of year is deep and universal, and individual tales about various magical stuff happening centuries ago are not. I don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus, nor the prophetic status of Mohammed any more than I believe in Santa Claus, and I’m continually amazed that grown adults, who have long since realized that old Saint Nick was just a fiction created by other people to control their behavior, don’t realize the same thing about Yahweh, Jehovah, and Allah.

But that’s just me. If you believe that Jesus was the son of God, sent to Earth to save us all, because his dad would never let us in the door unless we killed his boy, then that’s okay. It doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense to me, but I respect your right to believe that, and to wish a Merry Christmas to each other. If you believe one of the other popular legends about things that I consider to be no more credible than the Santa Claus story, the same goes for you. And I truly and sincerely wish the peace and joy of the season upon you.

But I don’t know which one of the stories you believe in. That’s why I’m not wishing anyone a merry Christmas, Chanukah, Solstice, Ramadan, Kwanzaa, or anything else. Not specifically. That’s why I say “Happy holidays.” What this means is happy [insert your specific winter holiday here].

If you know someone else is a Christian, then go ahead and wish them a merry Christmas. If you really don’t know, or know for a fact that they aren’t, don’t assume that they are, or ignore the fact that they are not, because that’s disrespectful to them and their beliefs (or, in my case, militant lack thereof.)

I hope that everyone has a happy and healthy holiday season. And I hope that Santa brings you everything you wanted. I asked for worldwide enlightenment, whereby the people of the world discard primitive superstitions that squelch reason and rationality and have caused so much bloodshed over the centuries. I’m probably not going to get it. Santa is just a myth that people made up to control the behavior of other human beings, after all.

Happy holidays!

Film reviews

2010-11-27T11:00:00.000-08:00

The Lovely Bones 7 Stars

This was directed by Peter Jackson, and it was based on a highly acclaimed novel, but there all resemblance to Lord of the Rings ends. Or should, anyway. Some might also accuse Jackson of falling too much in love with CGI technology, compelling him to use it to visually overpower the audience when the story, which includes no trolls, wraiths or wizards, should be enough. When I say “might” I mean of course “have definitely done this, in every conceivable medium.” But this oft-cited shortcoming didn’t ruin the film for me. I was still drawn in by the unfolding of the short and tragic life, death, etcetera, of this young girl, whose spark was cruelly snuffed out too young by the evil dark lord Sauron. I may be mixing this up with another movie.

Dark City 2 Stars

This was advertised a “science fiction masterpiece” but I think this was because some people interpret “weird shit that doesn’t make any sense” as “science fiction” but it’s not, really. Sure, some science fiction is weird, granted, but not everything weird is necessarily science fiction. Some of it is just weird shit that doesn’t make any sense.

Hotel Rwanda 8.5 Stars

In 1994, close to a million people were brutally murdered in one of the most horrific examples of ethnic cleansing the world has ever seen. Or, more accurately, looked away so that it didn’t have to see. What makes these horrifying events all the worse is that the international community sat by and let it happen. As tensions mounted, peace-keeping troops from the United Nations and Western nations were pulled out, leaving millions defenseless against rampaging hordes of angry Hutus with chips on their shoulders and machetes in their hands.

My favorite line of the film is part a conversation that is taking place between some public relations flak, speaking on behalf of the UN or the USA, and a critic of their inaction.

“Yes, regrettably we have received reports that some acts of genocide have occurred,” the flak conceded.

“How many ‘acts of genocide’ does it take to make genocide?” the critic replied.

The flak was unable to quantify that.

The film encourages people not to stand idly by and ignore injustices of catastrophic proportions. Which would be great if we could all get into our time machines and go back and do something to prevent this preventable tragedy. But we can’t, and there are hundreds of thousands of butchered corpses in mass graves all over Rwanda to remind them of what we didn’t do, but should have. But maybe the next time we’ll do something. The next genocide, we’re definitely going to stop, for sure. As long as there is no sex scandal on TV or anything, we’ll pay attention next time.

Memoirs of a Geisha 7.5 stars

A few years ago, everywhere I looked, people were reading the book on which this film is based. In cafes, on the subway, in my own bathroom, everyone was reading Memoirs of a Geisha. “What’s that all about?” I wondered, making a note that some day maybe I’d read it. Now I don’t have to. Yes, book snobs, I’m sure the book is better than the movie. But I don’t have time and this was plenty good enough for me. A little peek inside the world of Geishas and a culture on the brink of irreversible change. And it dispels the myth that geishas were prostitutes. In reality they were women with no other avenues of advancement in a thoroughly patriarchal society who were reduced to anonymous entities existing solely for the purpose of serving and giving pleasure to wealthy men. So I’m glad we got that cleared up.

Nova: Becoming Human 8 Stars

This was a three-part Nova special using some pretty cool CGI to dramatize the newest discoveries in anthropology and evolutionary biology, demonstrating how we humans came down from the trees a few million years ago and liked it so much on the ground that we never climbed back up. It was both educational and entertaining, though its educational content must now contend with massive forces of dis-education, hell bent on making sure that the next generation is just a little stupider than this one, an ambitious agenda indeed.

It was over a century ago that Charles Darwin first proposed his theory of evolution, and since that time it has become established as an irrefutable fact of nature, which doesn’t stop quite a lot of idiots from refuting it. It’s worth noting that the people who refute it comprise uneducated, scientifically illiterate religious nutjobs who know absolutely nothing about science, and fearing what they don’t understand, have a general disdain for anything remotely scientific. These are the same people who will be creating the textbooks for the next generation of school children. Which leads us to the bizarre position as responsible adults to encourage children to pay less attention in school and watch more TV. (As long as it's Nova and not Fox "news.")

Evolution is real. It is not “just a theory” as creationist idiots like to squawk in a droning ignorant echo. It has been confirmed by such a voluminous body of evidence that it is beyond any question, scientifically. The only basis for objection is that it is incompatible with the scripture of primitive dessert nomads from thousands of years ago, who also thought the Earth was flat, that thunder was an expression of divine rage and had no meteorological explanation, and that infectious disease was evidence of demonic possession. Yes, believe it or not, primitive spear-chucking Bronze-Age tribes were not as intelligent and knowledgeable as modern scientists are.

Cosmos: 10 Stars

Carl Sagan was a visionary, dedicated to truth, knowledge, science, reason, and rationality, and as such, it’s somewhat comforting that he died 16 years ago, so he didn’t have to live to see the day when all those things would be viewed as enemies of liberty and freedom.

It’s been thirty years since Cosmos first appeared and it has lost none of its power to inspire and intrigue a willing questioning mind. Sadly, scientific thought is under attack on all quarters by religious fundamentalist idiots. Dr. Sagan succeeded in popularizing science, making it exciting, something little children would aspire to, inviting them to wonder about the universe and to turn for answers not, as has once again become the fashion, to the explanations offered by primitive wandering tribes for whom the wheel was still innovative high-technology, but instead to this wonderful thing called science.

Rest in peace, Dr. Sagan. There is still some hope.

Doctor Bronner’s Magic Soapbox 5 Stars

“Where do you hide money from a hippie?”

“Underneath the soap.”

This is one of my favorite jokes, which I am allowed to tell, because I am a recovering hippie. And as such, the only soap I used for years was Dr. Bronner’s. Contrary to misconceptions reinforced by irresponsible joke-telling film reviewers, some hippies did shower, occasionally, and this one would, while lathering up, deeply ponder the weird Unitarian religious sentiments covering the soap bottle. I figured the whole thing was a marketing ploy to sell soap to hippies, a clever maneuver to capture an untapped market in filthy hippies, enticing them to use soap, something they might heretofore have found unappetizingly hygienic.

Turns out that Dr. Bronner was in fact a straight-up lunatic. Which is not to say that there is anything wrong with his message of universal peace and understanding. I’m all for that, because at heart I am still a hippie. But I don’t think the medium of soap bottle labels is going to be able to compete successfully with, say, the Internet as a route to capture the hearts and minds of the population. Also, I’m pretty sure it’s still mostly hippies and peacenik types who use the soap, and they already agree, on the rare occasions that they use soap, anyway.

The problem with this film is the total absence of a narrative arc or any kind of tension or suspense. Here’s Dr Bronner. When he talks, he sound exactly like the label on his soap, which is to say, a peaceful crackpot. You get a little background on how he arrived at his position of sudsy evangelist. And then he just keeps saying the same weird shit over and over through the rest of the movie. It was interesting for about an hour or so, but then I turned it off and went to have a bath.

The First Amendment and Religion: Do bedfellows get any stranger?

2010-08-22T06:14:00.000-07:00

I’m a big believer in the First Amendment. I am in full agreement with the statement: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.[1]” Except for the death part. If you’re going to shoot your mouth off and get yourself lynched, you’re on your own. But I will definitely defend your right, in principle, from a safe distance.

When defending the rights of Muslims to build a mosque near ground zero, people should stick to the facts. The fact is that the First Amendment guarantees them that right. End of story. It’s absurd that there is any debate at all regarding their right to build a mosque. But instead of sticking to this simple fact, people seem compelled to churn out fabricated bullshit. Here’s an example:

“All of the world’s great faiths, including Islam, teach a core message of peace and tolerance.”

It’s not true. It’s not even close to true.

Some quotations from the Koran:

[8.12] I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.

[4.89] They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah's way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper.

[8.39] And fight with them until there is no more persecution and religion should be only for Allah.

[2:191] And kill them wherever ye shall find them . . . for seduction from the truth is worse than slaughter

Many will rebut these quotations with similar vile invective from the Old Testament. And I welcome this, because, frankly, I think it’s far more accurate to state “the world’s faiths teach a core message of hate and intolerance.” I’m not a big fan of religion. This is an understatement so large it is in danger of gravitational collapse.

But there are reasons to give special attention to Islam as far as an ideology almost perfectly incompatible with the First Amendment. Renouncing or criticizing Islam or actively promoting any other religion is punishable by imprisonment or death in Saudi Arabia, Iran and other Muslim nations. And it is not merely an artifact of an earlier, less-enlightened era, an archaic old law that is still on the books, like not being able to buy watermelons on Tuesday in Iowa. It is widely enforced in those nations where Sharia is the law of the land.

Many of those who are rallying to the cause of the proposed mosque, (which, as a firm believer in the First Amendment I feel is their inalienable right to build), are conspicuously less vocal about the blatant and repeated denial of free speech throughout the Muslim world.

That doesn't mean we should ever stoop to their level. The First Amendment is the single best thing this country has going for it.[2] We should earnestly defend the rights of any citizens to express any opinion, or to worship any god, be it Jehovah, Allah, or flying spaghetti monster. The principle embodied in the First Amendment is absolutely antithetical to that of the world's theocracies. And while we are on the subject of theocracies, there are many in the US who are earnestly endeavoring to turn our nation into one. Sarah Palin and her icky ilk would be happy to run the First Amendment through the shredder and set up a Christian fundamentalist theocracy right here in the U.S. This is a horrifying thought. Because theocracies are universally bad. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Amen to that.

We absolutely should defend the First Amendment protection of all our citizens. But people who are spending their time and energy defending the rights of religious devotees should spend at least some small fraction of that energy decrying the far greater injustices committed in the name of religion.

Filmmaker Theo Van Gough was brutally murdered in 2004 in response to his film, Submission, illustrating the appalling treatment of women throughout much of the Islamic world. And earlier this year the creators of Southpark received extremely graphic death threats, including grisly pictures of Van Gough’s butchered corpse, and promises that they and their families would meet the same fate if they continued their negative characterizations of Mohammed and Islam. And it worked. Comedy Central pulled the offensive material from distribution. Religious nutjobs: 1. Free Speech: 0 [3]

I don’t even like Southpark, and I was outraged by this assault on free speech. I was more outraged that it actually worked. Then I was driven absolutely apoplectic by the glaring lack of outrage by the very same people who defend the rights of citizens to erect religious buildings anywhere they want, (a position, I feel compelled to repeat and emphasize, with which I agree 100%), but don’t seem to have much concern for filmmakers and cartoonists exercising their right to free speech.

Speaking of cartoons, I recently saw one that made no sense at all. It depicted a church being built next to the site of the Oklahoma City bombing site, and someone screaming that this was insensitive to the families of the victims there. It didn’t make sense, because Timothy McVeigh was not a religious zealot. His stated reasons for the murder of all those innocent people had nothing to do with his religious views. In fact, McVeigh, though raised a Roman Catholic (much like myself, before I decided it was the embodiment of evil) had rejected it and become an agnostic and, more to the point, he was very explicit about his reasons for blowing up the building. It was entirely motivated by a frothing hatred of government.

Now I ask: suppose the tea-baggers wanted to set up their headquarters, promoting their droning “government is evil” message, right across the street from the devastated federal building.

1) Would you defend their legal right to do so?
2) Would you feel that this might be just a wee bit insensitive?
3) Would the people in the surrounding community, including friends and families of the victims, be justified in being a little upset by this? Would this make them xenophobes?

I know a few libertarian anti-government types. I disagree with their philosophies on many points, but they have as much in common with McVeigh as the proposed mosque-builders have with the September 11 hijackers. Still, I imagine they would probably choose a location far removed from the single greatest act of terrorist murder committed in the name of anti-government sentiment to deliver their non-violent anti-government message. If they didn’t, I would still support their First Amendment right to build it anywhere they wanted, but I would have to question the sincerity of their desire to heal the rift caused by those who share their same core philosophy, but chose a horribly unjust and violent means to express it.

I have already stated several times that I fully agree that the First Amendment protects the rights of US citizens to build their mosque anywhere they want. I have not stated, though you may have inferred, that I am personally opposed to it. If so, you inferred wrong. I don’t live in Manhattan. It doesn’t affect me. I really don’t care.

But what does bother me is that some people who have expressed their discomfort with the idea of a ground-zero mosque are immediately labeled racists and xenophobes[4], out of hand, without any acknowledgement that they may have legitimate reasons for their reaction. It bothers me that their critics uniformly lump them together and act as if they have a complete understanding of their objections—as if only a frothing right-wing hypocritical Christian fundamentalist xenophobic racist could possibly voice any disapproval—and then fail to listen to the actual objections raised.

I don’t like religion, but I know and like a lot of religious people. I’ve only met a few Muslims, but they’ve all been very nice people. I am somewhat baffled that they can accept the hateful passages cited above as unquestionable truth revealed directly from the almighty creator, whom they describe as “munificent and merciful,” seemingly oblivious to the staggering contradiction, but they’ve always seemed nice to me, albeit logically inconsistent. And I have no reason to doubt that the people who are proposing to build this mosque are nice people too.

But what would be really nice is if they’d openly reject some of those passages, and if they’d condemn Sharia law, and if they would put some effort into passing the equivalent of the First Amendment in Muslim nations around the world. I’d respect them more if they would go on record as according women rights equal to men, and denounce unambiguously the appalling degradation of women throughout the Islamic world. If they proposed to do something that immediately upset a lot of people, it would show a genuine commitment to fostering understanding if they would voluntarily reconsider the proposal, and at least engage in a dialogue about it, and not simply pigeon-hole those who voice discomfort with their proposal as xenophobes.

And I’d be a lot more willing to accept the sincerity of alleged champions of the First Amendment if they would be quick to condemn its violation by religious zealots, instead of remaining silent except for the much rarer occasions when it is the religionists potentially facing a denial of their free speech. Which, incidentally, they are not in the current controversy. Nobody is making any serious suggestion to legally deny anyone their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, religion, and assembly. Some people have criticized the proposal as insensitive, and that is what has generated the controversy. Critics of the mosque proposal exercising their right to freedom of speech. That, apparently, is controversial. Go figure.

Religion is a bad thing. Free speech is a good thing. Even if it’s about religion.

[1] This quotation is popularly and incorrectly attributed to Voltaire. I could give you the name of the person who actually said it, but all that will prove is that I know how to use google. I assume you do too.
[2] See http://andyrantsandraves.blogspot.com/2010/01/supreme-folly.html for a discussion of some abuses of our poor beleaguered First Amendment
[3] They apparently also pulled an episode critical of scientology. Religious nutjobs: 2. Free speech: 0
[4] And a lot of them are.

The opposite of "news."

2010-07-31T17:48:00.001-07:00

As I write this, the White House Correspondents Association is deciding which news organization should get the coveted front-row center seat in the White House briefing room, recently vacated by venerable journalistic legend, Helen Thomas. Back in the real universe, it went directly to NPR, without any debate or hesitation. Because NPR has the distinction of actually being a news organization. It’s filled with real live actual journalists, committed to informing people.

But that’s back in the real universe, the sane one. Not this crappy universe we’re in now. In this pathetic excuse for a universe, they are actually considering giving the seat to Fox, which is not and never was, and, barring the intervention of benevolent deities or aliens, never will be, a news organization. They are, in fact, the exact opposite of a news organization.

When people listen to NPR for an hour, they will know more than they did an hour earlier, unless they were listening to Car Talk. If people listen to Fox for an hour they will actually know less than they did when they started. Because Fox's mission is to ensure that people are misinformed. They are anti-journalists, at an anti-news agency. I would not be surprised if their staff is composed of positrons and anti-protons, and that, were they to come into contact with an actual journalist, they’d be annihilated in a great explosion of gamma rays.

Note to Fox viewers. That was a reference to something called "science," another concept foreign to Fox, along with truth. Science is the same thing that tells people called scientists that the Earth is actually more than 6,000 years old and that global warming is real. It also makes toasters work. Go ahead: Try praying for your bread to turn into toast. Not very effective is it? Now try science. Hey now, look at that! You’ll be amazed to learn that this “science” gizmo also works with understanding the atmosphere!

Fox has an agenda, and the agenda is not to inform people. Some surveys conducted shortly after Bush's gulf war was launched revealed that a majority of Fox viewers believed that inspectors had found WMD's in Iraq and that Saddam Husein was linked to Al-Qaeda and the attacks on September 11. These things are not true and not a shred of evidence has ever emerged suggesting otherwise. But somehow Fox viewers were convinced of the truth of those two demonstrably false things.

Just to keep things straight:

People who watch or listen to actual news: Correctly believe that no WMDs were found.

People who watch Gilligan’s Island reruns all day: Do not know whether or not WMDs were found. Do not care. Want Doritos.

People who watch Fox: Believe that WMDs were found.

Therefore watching Fox is actually less informative than watching Gilligan’s Island. Or even listening to Car Talk.

Similar studies today would undoubtedly show that a majority of Fox viewers believe that there is evidence that President Obama is not an American citizen or that he is a Muslim. Or that the recently passed health-care bill contains provisions for the erection of “death panels” that will decide to haul your grandma off to slaughter. This is only true in the case of one US citizen: Tripp Johnston.

This is not a case of reasonable people differing reasonably on matters of opinion. These are gross misrepresentations of basic facts, which is Fox's bread and butter. (They don't have toast. Toast requires science.)

A friend of mine suggested that the large number of people that consider Fox to be a valid source of news and information gives it journalistic legitimacy. I could not possibly disagree any more strenuously, certainly not without dynamite anyway. Truth is truth and a lie is a lie, no matter whether one, a thousand, or a million people believe it.

Fox is not news. It’s not a reliable source of information. It’s a source of lies, deceit, and disinformation. They do not employ journalists. As noted, journalists would probably explode if they walked onto the premises. They employ propagandists. Professional liars who are very good at making people believe the world is different from the way it actually is.

A few national treasures like Al Franken, John Stewart, and Bill Maher manage to point out this sickening state of affairs while still maintaining a sense of humor, something I try and often fail to do. I need to learn their secret, or I really might explode.

Passing Gas

2010-07-05T20:58:00.000-07:00

Fixing a hole in the ocean
Trying to make a dove-tail joint-yeah

~ The Beatles. “Glass Onion”

A lot of anger and ire has been directed at British Petroleum lately, accompanied by impassioned calls for a BP boycott, which strikes me as just a wee bit absurd. It actually strikes me as “naive and hypocritical,” but if I just came out and said that, I’d piss a lot of people off and get myself labeled an arrogant self-righteous asshole. And I’d hate for that to happen.

Boycotting BP, specifically, rather than, for example, getting rid of your goddamn car, implies that people should continue to purchase gasoline at the same rate, as long as they get it from different oil companies. You know, from the good oil companies. The ones that make fresh new oil from recycled old tires and produce that special gasoline that doesn’t churn out carbon dioxide when it burns but rather: patchouli and butterflies.

A friend of mine posted the following link to an article entitled “Boycott BP.” With a title like that, I wasn’t optimistic until I read the first line: “Because it’s much better to give your money to Exxon.” Even with my congenital inability to recognize sarcasm, I suspected that this just might be telling it like it is, not telling people what they want to hear to make them feel good about themselves.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/06/07/boycott-bp.html

I encourage everyone to check it out. It’ll give you the dirt on every major brand of gasoline with which you might be thinking of filling up your tank and it will effectively eliminate any smug and satisfied sense that you are making a scintilla of difference by boycotting BP. But it can be summed up by one succinct and telling line: “To find the ultimate culprits, look in the mirror.”

I can already feel waves of hatred directed at me, because nothing angers people more than hearing unwelcome, unflattering truths. If you want to annoy people, tell them lies. If you want to enrage them, tell the truth.

Make no mistake: I’m certainly aware that my very existence consumes oil and negatively impacts the environment. I do not for a moment think that I am excused from that comment about looking in the mirror. “Hey, there’s one of those no-good culprits now!” I say. “Handsome son of a bitch, though.” Looking closer I add, “What the hell is that weird zit-looking thing on his nose?” But I digress.

Though I try to buy locally grown fruits and vegetables, there’s no denying that a lot of it comes from far away. The Philadelphia banana crop was disappointingly sparse this year, and I’m pretty sure most of the ones I eat come all the way from South America. They get loaded onto numerous vehicles and motored along to me, burning gasoline all the while. The bad kind. Butterfly free. And though I keep the thermostat low in the winter and I just put in new insulation and I own numerous sweaters that I’m not afraid to use, I’m not about to turn blue in the interest of being green. I burn hydrocarbons to avoid freezing to death. I admit it.

But there is one thing I don’t do (and here is the part where my arrogant self-righteous assholery really comes to the fore, so get those label-makers ready): I do not regularly get into a metal box weighing several thousand pounds in order to transport my 165 pounds of flesh from point A to point B. Moreover, I truly believe that this is insane. There are billions of human beings who do this each and every day of their lives and I think that all of them are insane. Ironically, most of them feel the same way about me, or would if they ever met me. Few of them ever will, which is just as well. We wouldn’t get along.

Where did people ever get the idea that it was normal and natural to do this, to get inside a machine that weighs twenty times what you weigh and move it to move you? Where did they acquire the curious and deadly delusion that it is anything but utterly insane to burn an obviously limited supply of an irreplaceable commodity to do so? Where did they get the notion that moving ourselves around in giant metal boxes was so important that we were willing to contaminate and despoil the planet to get the stuff that makes them go? And where the hell are they all going, anyway? I’ve seen point B. There’s really not much to it. Marginally better than point A at best.

I owned a car for less than a year, back when I was a freshman in college and lived with my parents. The university was a twenty-minute drive away, so I drove back and forth twice a day three to five times a week. But after that first year, I got rid of the car. And it wasn’t just because I realized there was no way in hell I was going to get laid until I moved to campus. Sure, that was the primary reason, yeah. But I also just couldn’t rationalize it any longer. I called myself an environmentalist. I co-founded the first environmental student group on that campus. And there I was getting inside a one-ton metal box that burned dead dinosaurs and spit out poison. I felt like a hypocrite and I was right. I’m still a hypocrite, by the way, but less blatantly so.

I'm always baffled when I see environmentalist bumper stickers on automobiles. It strikes me as about as consistent as putting a “go vegan” sticker on your meat grinder. The automobile is the most anti-environmental device ever dreamed up in the darkest crevices of the human mind. Any quotation from Chief Seattle really ought to sizzle and burn when placed on a bumper.

The irony deepens when “green” folks live far away from population and economic centers, because they like to be surrounded by trees and nature and the happy chirping birds. Unable to abide the concrete and asphalt of the cities, they settle down out in the middle of some remote verdant and bucolic locale, where everything is spread out far and wide: home, work, recreation, and commerce centers, each miles in a different direction, thus necessitating the use of an automobile to do just about anything more involved than using the bathroom. But the car has a “Love Your Mother” bumper sticker on it, so that makes it ok . . .

And it’s probably a fuel-efficient car too, and that’s great. It really is. Credit where credit is due. Fuel-efficient cars are just wonderful. But you know what would be even better? Living, working, and shopping all in the same general area, the way human beings have for hundreds of thousands of years. And no matter how fuel-efficient your car is, it’s still nowhere near as efficient as mass transit, which in turn cannot compare to a bicycle. Not by a long shot. A long eco-system destroying global warming-accelerating shot.

It’s been over twenty years since I had a car and I am confident I’ll never have one again. Human beings as a whole managed to get along without them for a million years, but in a mere century have somehow gotten it into their collective irrational head that they couldn’t possibly live without them. I know that they are wrong. Driving a car is a choice. We all make choices. I make no claims of perfection whatsoever. Sometimes I make choices that hurt the world a little bit for my own comfort and convenience. I’m not about to give up bananas. We all make choices.

You can get in a giant metal box that burns a rapidly dwindling supply of dead dinosaur goo over which wars are constantly waged and which spits out a poisonous gas that is already beginning to choke our planet. But just remember that it’s a choice. It’s not a necessity. And when one of the companies that pulls the poisonous fuel out of the ground spills some, it doesn’t make any sense at all to get angry at that company, specifically, and buy your fuel from some other company until they spill a bunch of it. No sense at all.

Corporations are not people (in spite of an obscene Supreme Court decision to the contrary. (See http://andyrantsandraves.blogspot.com/2010/01/supreme-folly.html). They are utterly immoral entities that exist solely and exclusively for the maximization of profit. There is no point in getting mad at them. Corporations respond only to the demands of the market and, until Republicans get their way, regulations imposed by governments which in turn respond to the demands of voting citizens.

The newsweek article linked above describes legislation that could make some difference. I support it as superior to the status quo, but my support is luke-warm, unlike both our rapidly heating planet and my rage against not BP, but the internal combustion engine itself. If you are upset about what happened in the gulf, supporting the proposed energy and climate bill would do a little bit more than boycotting BP, which will do nothing but make you feel good. Or it might have, before I cruelly ruined it for you.

If you want to make a real difference, get rid of your goddamn car.

Oh my god, Andy you’re such an arrogant self-righteous asshole!

I know. I know.

More Film Reviews

2010-07-04T13:25:00.000-07:00

Mama Mia! / 1 Star

Animals caught in steel leg-hold traps have been known to gnaw off their own limbs in order to escape. Fortunately, I have a remote control.

Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog / 10 Stars

This is the best musical I’ve ever seen. Or heard, for that matter. It’s hilariously funny. It’s dramatic. The people involved are able to act and sing. The songs are top-notch, musically and lyrically. The characters are well-developed, fully fleshed-out entities, not mere puppets who go through the motions between excruciating song-and-dance numbers. There is a real story here, and not just some flimsy device to move from one song to another. It’s so good, you almost forget that it’s a musical. Sadly, only a (relatively) small number of Joss Whedon fans have ever heard of it, while the almost indescribably bad Mama Mia! released the same year has become the highest grossing musical of all time. That’s really horrible.

Battlefield Earth / 2 Stars

The only nice thing I have to say about this is that it isn’t quite as bad as Mama Mia!

Liar Liar! / 5 Stars

I was disappointed in this, as I was expecting a biography of Glen Beck. Turns out it’s a silly Hollywood comedy. It’s not terrible. It’s not phenomenal. Some of it is funny. Some of it would be funny, if you were less intelligent than you are. That’s the truth, for whatever that’s worth.

(The Glen Beck biography is Lying Sack of Shit. My mistake.)

Precious,

based on the novel Push by Sapphire / 9 Stars

This was great, but since when do film titles include their own credits? Seriously: who asked whether or not it was based on a novel? Who asked the title of that novel? Who asked the name of the author? What the hell happened to her last name? Does she know that her first name isn’t really a name but is actually a rock?

I’d never heard of Sapphire before, but that shiny precious stone wrote one heck of a story. If you are not emotionally involved, then you may well have a heart of stone yourself. There are some highly disturbing scenes, but it never quite crosses over to unwatchably depressing pathos. Deftly handled comic relief prevents the audience from succumbing to total despair, without detracting from the seriousness of the underlying social issues this film (based on the novel Push by Sapphire) addresses. A precious (based on the Latin, pretium, price, by ancient Romans) film indeed.

The Hurt Locker / 8 Stars

War is hell, but if you live in hell for long enough, it starts to feel like home. This would be my tag-line for this film, if they let me have that job. There’s obviously a good reason they gave that job to someone else. That person came up with “You know when you’re in it.” This is why I don’t write movie tag lines. That’s so much better than mine. I want that job, though.

This is a new kind of war movie for a new kind of war. Traditionally, war movies have followed a standard formula. The bad guys shoot at the good guys, and the good guys shoot back. The good guys shoot last. Now there’s nobody to shoot at. That’s the problem with these new-fangled wars that these kids today have come up with. The bad guys no longer line up politely to be shot. Instead they have these roadside bombs that blow people to little pieces. And there are courageous / crazy guys who defuse those bombs. I definitely, definitely do not want that job.

(Keep me posted if any tag-line writing positions open up though.)

Eddie Izzard: Definite Article / 6.5 Stars

Izzard is a visual comedian, and not just because he’s a transvestite and it’s sort of funny to see a man in a dress and mascara. You fail to notice this after about five minutes and he rarely brings it up. But I had this on while I was working, so I could hear the jokes but could not see them, and most of the punchlines consisted of funny faces and strategic physiognomic manipulation for comedic effect. It relied so much on visual, physical comedy that it bordered on mime, but without inspiring a desire to strangle anyone. Izzard actually played Charlie Chaplin in a movie, so it makes sense that he might gravitate to non-verbal humor. And much of his humor also assumes that you have some intelligence and education. So I think you’ll get a big kick out of this provided you are neither blind nor a member of the “tea-party.”

Persepolis / 8 Stars

Anything that enrages religious fundamentalists is going to get a thumbs-up from me. Two of them. And, while we’re waving symbolic digits around, a couple of middle fingers aimed at the fundamentalists. I can’t help but immensely admire, Marjane Satrapi, who wrote a graphic novel based on her own experiences in the oppressive Iranian regime, and then turned it into this excellent, eye-opening film. The Iranian government and Islamic clerics in other countries weren’t nearly as impressed as I was. This is probably because they are useless bags of vile reeking scum. Also: not everyone likes animation as much as I do. But I’m guessing it was the vile scum bit that accounts for our differing interpretations. In terms of message and theme, this was absolutely amazing. And the animation style, though not too fancy (I’ve become spoiled rotten by the big budget magic of Pixar), perfectly fits the mood of the story. My only complaint concerned pacing, and an occasional lack of forward narrative momentum. This weakens an otherwise stunning achievement, though it remains profoundly moving. Also: every time someone rents it, an Islamic fundamentalist somewhere starts sobbing so hard that he almost forgets to oppress women. You should move it to the top of your queue.

The Wrestler / 8.5 Stars

Mickey Rourke is gigantic. I remember when he was a regular actor, and he could play regular roles. But he can’t anymore. He can only play professional wrestlers, indestructible superheroes, or possibly a major land mass. But he’s still an excellent, albeit gargantuan actor and he put a full nelson on my emotions and pinned them flat here. I really cared about that big galoot up there. But like I said, he’s just too gimongous now to take on the vast majority of roles, which is a tragic waste of talent. So I’m really hoping that someone will do a major motion picture all about geography, because I think he’d be perfect as South America.

Documentary films I've watched recently while working on my house

2010-06-04T13:11:00.000-07:00

Life Beyond Earth: 6.5 Stars

I’ve been watching a lot of documentaries lately, though “watching” is an egregious overstatement. “Had them on in the room where I was doing work but was in no way able to pay any direct attention to them” is a far more accurate statement. This is a shame as some of them have covered important and fascinating subjects worthy of my full attention, but I’ve had a lot of work to do. I can absorb at least some of the content of a documentary even if engaged in aggressive spackling, whereas such distractions render most programming completely incomprehensible. I was able to grasp enough from this to regret not being able to give it my full attention. But not enough to do it justice in a proper review. In brief: there may be intelligent life somewhere outside my house, but I haven’t found it yet.

Super High Me: 7 Stars

In a nutshell: it’s like Supersize me, but with pot. A stand-up comedian goes 30 days without smoking any pot, and then spends 30 days smoking pot all day long, every single day from the moment he wakes up until he goes to sleep, or, as he describes it, returns to his regular routine. It’s moderately amusing but less so if you, like me, are currently going without pot, not in the course of making a documentary film but just because you don’t have any. Potheads out there, be warned: there are lots of scenes with juicy buds and if you don’t have any it’s going to be torture. And if you do have any, by the end of the movie you will have much less. And all your potato chips will be gone too.

The most interesting aspect of the film is not the comedian’s efforts to cope with not having any herb or with smoking steadily until he wears a hole in his bong. To be honest, this is exactly the routine I go through repeatedly: when I have some, I smoke too much until it’s all gone, and then I have none for a long time until I manage to get some again. I didn’t need a documentary to show me what the ganja feast and famine cycle is all about. Far more intriguing is the conflict between the state of California, which legalized medical marijuana, and the federal government (at the time of the film under the Cheney administration), which routinely raided cannabis distribution outlets that were completely in compliance with state law. It’s a fairly sobering look at conflicts between state and federal governments. Or it would be sobering, except, as I mentioned before: If you got it, you will smoke it.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room: 7.5 Stars

If you want to look upon the face of pure evil, undiluted, undisguised, in all its nefarious malevolence, bad not merely to the bone but to the very marrow, then don’t bother with Darth Vader, Sauron, Lucifer, or Loki. None of the villains from myth and literature can compare with the real thing. Truth, it turns out, is not only stranger than fiction, it’s also out-and-out nastier. The executives from Enron are such vile buckets of stinking, rancid excrement, it boggles the imagination and then, when the imagination has recovered, nauseates it. An excellent inside look at the nature of pure evil and the inner-workings of corporate America. Pardon that redundancy.

10 Trillion and Counting: 7.5 Stars

I’m always amused by people who have strong opinions about economics despite the fact that they have the mathematical acumen of, say, a grapefruit, and who have never opened an economics textbook and are unable to accurately calculate an appropriate tip in a restaurant. They’ve become a lot more vocal lately and they like to call the president a “socialist” even though they don’t really know what that means.

(Fun distraction: the next time you meet a tea-bagger who likes to call Obama a socialist ask, with a straight face: “is it his fiscal policy or monetary policy to which you object?” The tea-bagger will not know, because he hasn’t the slightest clue what either of them means. He will then say “and he’s a Muslim too!” to which your reply should be, “Really? Sunni or Shiite?” Get ready to duck after that. The tea-bagger will try to hit you.)

This program examined economic issues using actual economics with actual economists who have actual numbers and equations and everything. And the conclusion they come to, in a nutshell, is that it’s almost impossible to overstate how much damage George W Bush did to the US economy. He slashed taxes on the wealthiest taxpayers while massively increasing spending on an incredibly expensive war, thus vastly driving up the national debt. Your great-grandchildren will still be paying for the mistakes he made, and, incidentally, they’ll probably be speaking Chinese.

A Killer at Large: 8 Stars

Americans are fat. We eat too much. Way too much. For example, Johns Hopkins recently conducted a major study investigating American obesity, which, sadly, was never actually released because a rumor circulated that some of the data were “fudged” and a pudgy statistician devoured the entire thing. How did we get so disgustingly obese, some of us wonder, occasionally, between swallows of high-fructose corn syrup and deep fried lard balls. How can we, as a society, and a nation, lose a few million pounds? And, more to the point, how can we do it without doing anything that involves eating any less, and without getting up? This excellent documentary addresses these and other questions surrounding our big fat collective ass. And while we’re asking questions: hey, um, are you gonna eat that?

The Men Who Killed Kennedy: 7 Stars

Oswald didn’t act alone. This gets that right and makes the point clearly, so kudos for that. I have more than a passing interest in the subject matter, too. I’ve read more than my fair share of books about the Kennedy assassination. Just ask the FBI. They know all about every book you or I have ever gotten from the library or purchased on the internet. That’s not paranoia. That’s just realistic. And I have a special section of my personal library devoted specifically to the Kennedy assassination, which means, I imagine, that they’ve probably got a special file down in the J.Edgar Hoover building dedicated specifically to me.

Mark Twain: 8.5 Stars

A friend of mine once told me a true story about Ken Burns: A coworker of hers met him at some sort of event. This coworker had a brother who was dying of some particularly sadistic species of cancer. Said dying brother was a huge Ken Burns fan, had seen all his movies and bought the extended DVD collection, complete with expensive, boring bonus features. And all the books and assorted paraphernalia as well. He had the entire Burns oeuvre. The non-dying brother brought one of these books to this event to see if he could get Ken Burns to sign it. The book alone had cost in excess of a hundred dollars, and Burns had, over the years, gotten a significant amount of money out of this one loyal and now rapidly expiring fan.

“I don’t do autographs,” Burns said. The brother explained the situation very clearly: this was a devout fan and supporter who had bought everything Ken Burns had ever had anything to do with and now was lying, dying, in a hospital bed and this one signature would mean the world to him. “Sorry,” Burns repeated. “I don’t do autographs.”

Anyhow, this was a very good documentary about Mark Twain, one of my favorite writers of all time. But Ken Burns is a heartless piece of shit.

Frank Lloyd Wright: 7 Stars

Architects, like Ken Burns, tend to be assholes. This is what documentary films have taught me. Admittedly, I’ve only seen two documentaries about architects, so I have limited data on which to draw conclusions. The other one was My Architect, a far more personal account of a considerably less famous architect. But Wright was hardly Mr. Right either, to his wives and children, anyway. I often watch documentaries while working on something else, as the narration usually gets the story across without my having to pay close attention to the screen. But when the documentary is about a visual artist, I wind up missing the best part of the film, and accidentally injuring myself with power tools, trying to watch two things at once. There were lots of beautiful shots of beautiful buildings. I missed most of them. I was working on my own building, spackling cracked walls and ceilings. The house looks great, by the way, thanks for asking. But I don’t think Falling Water has anything to worry about.

The Civil War: 7.5 Stars

Did I mention that Ken Burns is an asshole? Good, because I want to make sure I make that very clear before I say anything nice about his work. And no, I didn’t watch this entire thing. It lasts almost as long as the war itself did. But I watched some of it and I’ll watch the rest of it, eventually. Because understanding the Civil War, though it happened almost a century and a half ago, is essential to understanding our nation today. The divide between North and South is very much alive. Almost all the states that were part of the Union in 1861 are now “blue states” and almost all the confederate states are now “red states.” Quite a lot of the red state denizens still proudly fly confederate flags, apparently seeing nothing wrong with displaying an icon associated with committing treason against the United States of America, causing the bloodiest war, by far, in our nation’s history, all in the name of continuing the brutal enslavement of other human beings. Yeehaw!

Let there be no ambiguity on this point: the South were the bad guys and the bad guys lost. The North and the South were not both fighting for their own separate but incompatible noble causes. The South was fighting for an evil cause, every bit as evil as the Nazi’s cause, and, in point of fact, a similar one. Do not be misled by apologists who characterize the war as an inevitable conflict between industrial and agrarian societies, or between state’s rights and centralized government authority. This is grade-A bullshit, suitable for fertilizing fields of slave-harvested cotton. The South wanted to continue a practice that most of the rest of the civilized world recognized as barbaric and evil, and they were willing to murder and slaughter anyone who tried to stop them from continuing this evil practice. Anyone who flies a flag commemorating the shameful institution of the Confederacy is a despicable traitor not only to his country, but to human decency itself.

Also: Ken Burns is an asshole.

IOUSA: 7.5 Stars

Watching one documentary after another for days on end is probably a good way to go mad. If you think of a better one, let me know, but it’s working out great for me, thanks. This was a lot like the aforementioned Ten Trillion and Counting, in that it was about economics and scared the bejesus out of me. This was a slightly less scathing indictment of George W Bush, specifically, but it certainly portrays him as the incompetent scoundrel that he is, if not as singularly responsible for the downfall of Western civilization. But because of him (more than any other single individual) and others, the USA is now the largest debtor nation in history. We owe a lot of money. And George owes us an enormous apology.

Les Paul: Chasing Sound: 8 Stars

Lesson learned: documentaries about musicians are the ideal accompaniment to tedious drudgery. Much better than documentaries about visual artists. You don’t need to watch the screen to appreciate their genius, and Les Paul deserves that lofty designation. Rock & roll, and, by extension, whatever the hell the kids are listening to today, would not exist without him. He virtually invented the solid body electric guitar, rock’s most iconic instrument. Imagine a world without solid-body electric guitars. Makes you shiver, doesn’t it? And overdubbing, delay effects, multi-track recording, everything that makes modern music possible, that’s all thanks to Les. This film was made on the occasion of his 90^th birthday, and he was still going strong, still knocking them dead with his signature sweet licks. A few years later (in 2009) he finally gave up the ghost and joined the great jamboree in the sky. Watch out now, because the heavenly choir has officially gone electric.

Six Reviews of Films Inspired by Mary Shelley's Frankenstein

2010-04-03T10:06:00.000-07:00

Frankenstein (1994) 2 Stars

It’s painful to have so many people that I greatly admire all associated with such a steaming pile of crap. These include Robert DeNiro, Helena Bonham Carter, John Cleese, Kenneth Branagh, and, worst of all, Mary Shelley. When you are working with one of the greatest novels ever written, you are setting the bar pretty high for yourself. Branagh has successfully bounded similarly high set bars before, deftly bringing Shakespeare to the screen. But he slammed right into it this time. Oof. That must have hurt.

There’s an appalling double-standard surrounding modern cinematic interpretations of classic literature. While Shakespeare is usually edited (Branagh’s Hamlet is a notable exception) even in theatrical productions, this is always a matter of cutting out some portions of the play. Never changing it. It wouldn’t occur to Branagh or anyone else to change the ending of Hamlet to suit modern cinematic expectations and formula, but he and others have no problem doing this to Frankenstein.

He admittedly changed the story much less the now iconic 1931 version. DeNiro is fantastic as the monster, playing him as the complex character Shelley created, not as the lumbering oaf forever etched into our collective conscience by Boris Karloff. But this just makes the failed effort even more disappointing. A few minor changes through the course of the film serve to condense the action. Justine is lynched for young William’s murder, rather than tried and executed as she is in the novel. I can accept this. She dies for a murder she did not commit, that’s the gist of it. The film just makes it happen more expeditiously. But Branagh goes on to make far more significant changes that would have Mary Shelley spinning in her grave, if Branagh has not himself dug her up for his own sick experiments, which I wouldn’t put past him. He had no problem desecrating her art. Why would he hesitate at doing the same to her corpse?

Worse than any of this, however, is the incomparably awful musical score. It’s absolute torture, the over-the-top melodramatic orchestral accompaniment to the story, suggesting, nay, stating outright, that the audience is too dim to pick up on what emotion they should be feeling and needs to be hit over the head with booming kettle drums and violin crescendos in order to grasp that something important is happening on the screen. I’ll be expanding on this in another blog post, but suffice to say: it’s unbearable.

Branagh may have had lofty ambitions about bringing this extraordinary story to life on the screen, but he created a monster.

Frankenstein (1931) 4 Stars

I have a confession to make: I wrote my earlier essays on Frankenstein, including a denunciation of this famous film version, before I ever saw the film. So I had considerable bias going into it, having already gone on record as hating it. I was not disappointed, which is to say, it sucked, as expected. What I found so repulsive, as described in the earlier essay, was its complete departure from the book for the sake of satisfying Hollywood formula. And, now that I have seen the film, I stand by my outrage at the changing of the story. I didn’t hate it as much as the 1994 version, though that was more loyal to the novel. But this earlier abomination is only slightly less abominable, and done so on a lower budget, and I had, as described, such low expectations that I could not possibly be disappointed as I was with the more recent version. Here’s a recommendation: don’t see either one of these pieces of shit. Read the book.

Frankenthumb 8 Stars

Frankenthumb directly parodies the iconic 1931 version of Frankenstein, and it’s hilarious from beginning to end. It’s much better than any “serious” Frankenstein movie I’ve seen thus far, and that’s pretty high praise considering that every single character is played by someone’s thumb. There are a whole series of these thumb movies, including The Godthumb, Thumbtanic, and many others. I imagine that they get less funny the more you watch, as the novelty of all the characters being played by anthropomorphic digits starts to wear off. But this was the first one I saw, and it was immensely entertaining. Two thumbs up.
(As if you didn’t see that coming.)

Dr Hackenstein 3 Stars

I never got a chance to finish watching this. Or rather, I never had a chance to make a conscious decision to not finish watching it, but that’s probably what would have happened, if I had not started to watch it a day or so before Netflix stopped making it available to stream online, then found it unavailable when I went to resume the torture a few days later. There was no way in hell I was going to have them mail me the disk to finish it. It, like most movies inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, is just dreadful. At least it isn’t even pretending to be serious. But unlike Frankenthumb and Young Frankenstein, it isn’t funny either. The only positive thing that can be said about it: hot naked babes, and no shortage of ‘em. And it was still godawful. The mind boggles.

Gothic 3 Stars

I’m obsessed with Mary Shelley and am currently reading her biography while working on a screenplay about her life, and I fell asleep during this. Imagine what it will do to a normal person. Someday, the events that took place at Lord Byron’s castle on the night Mary conceived of Frankenstein will be dramatized much better than this. That will happen some time after I finish writing the screenplay and find a producer willing to take on the project. That might take a while. In the meantime, if you still haven’t read the book, you’re missing out. You may have gathered that I’m rather fond of it.

Young Frankenstein 8.5 Stars

I’ve been watching a lot of Frankenstein inspired films lately. I’m a little bit obsessed. (see http://andyrantsandraves.blogspot.com/2010/03/eight-essays-on-mary-shelleys.html ). Interestingly, the parodies are mostly great and the “serious” films are terrible. This one is a classic, of course. Certainly the best Frankenstein film I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen more than most people. Netflix made a special Frankenstein category for me and everything. This is my current indicator as to whether I’m starting to get too obsessed with something. I promise: no more Frankenstein blogs for a while. I’m going to let Mary Shelley rest in peace.

We are not Borg.

2010-03-26T15:23:00.001-07:00

I recently disabled wall postings on my facebook page. I felt that it was my duty as a free-thinking individual. Don’t hate me because I’m dutiful. I love my friends. But we are not Borg.

The Borg, I should briefly explain for the benefit of any non-nerds in the audience, are a group of aliens from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Though never acknowledged on the program, the name is obviously shorthand for “cyborg,” which is an abbreviation of “cybernetic organism.” “Cybernetic” comes, in turn, from Greek kybernetes, “steersman.”

“Cybernetic” was coined from the Greek in 1948 by mathematician Norbert Weiner. In his 1966 book, God And Golem, Inc. Weiner observes:

"The future offers very little hope for those who expect that our new mechanical slaves will offer us a world in which we may rest from thinking. Help us they may, but at the cost of supreme demands upon our honesty and our intelligence."

Suggesting that, even way back then, he foresaw the direct implications of the Internet.

The Borg were an advanced species, possessing technology superior to that of humans. And their sociological development had evolved in such away that they had sacrificed all individual identity. Through cybernetic technology, they had become very much like a colony of robotically augmented social insects, with each individual like a bee in a hive, existing only as a member of the whole. Even their personal pronouns reflected this. They didn’t have the word “I.” It was always “we.” “We are Borg.”

Ladies and gentlemen: We are not Borg.

If you have a message for me, there is a perfectly simple way to ensure that I get the message: send me email. Just send me email! There is no reason that every single one of my friends needs to see what every other friend of mine has to say to me at all times. It warms the cockles of my heart to receive greetings from my friends, and mind you, I have some cold cockles, but all 100+ of my other friends don’t need to see it. I doubt that your greeting to me will do much to warm their cockles in any event.

With few exceptions, my own friends have not yet abused this. There have been a couple of times that I’ve scratched my head and wondered “why is this personal message to me written on my wall and not in email?” but, these occasions have been rare. I have seen where it all leads, however, and it is ugly. Or at least asinine. Definitely asinine.

I have on occasion taken a gander at the wall postings of friends of mine to see what sort of messages they were putting out there. What do they have to say? What are they feeling passionate about? What creative efforts have they produced that they wish to showcase? I want to know!

Some of that stuff may have been buried amongst what has become the equivalent of their new message inbox, full of personal missives addressed specifically to them and having nothing to do with anyone else and not in any way representing a topic warranting public discussion, conveniently posted for all the world to see. But I didn’t have the patience to sift through it.

I really just don’t get it. If you want to tell your friend “hey it was great to see you the other day,” why not—stop me if you’ve heard this one before—send them an email that says “hey it was great to see you the other day!”? Why do all her friends need to see your message? Most of them don't even know you. Why is it so important to you that they all see that you said "hi"?

When did we become this society of exhibitionists and voyeurs holding the bizarre notion that every interaction between us must be in a public forum, even the exchange of trivial pleasantries? Have we no sense of individual identity? Is every goddamn thing we have to say to one another up for community commentary? I say no. We are not Borg.

I disabled wall postings. It isn’t because I don’t want to hear from my friends. I love hearing from friends. I have an email inbox for that. It has worked remarkably well for years. Send me an email! If it contains information or ideas that I want to put out for public discussion, I’ll go ahead and do that. If it’s just a personal message to me, then I will keep it to myself, which is where it belongs.

I’m hoping some others will follow my lead: let’s use our walls to showcase the things we really want our friends to know about. Our art, our causes, things we are passionate about. Let’s send individual messages to one another in private. Each and every one of your friends does not need to see what each and every other one of your friends writes to you, especially when they are writing “yo, wazzup?” They really don’t. We are not Borg.

I don’t want to be part of a collective group mind, thank you very much. I’m not a drone in a beehive. I believe that our society and all the individuals within it benefit when said individuals are conscious of our part in a larger whole. I believe there is nobility in self-sacrifice for the greater good. But I don’t believe in abandoning all lingering shreds of individual identity. We are not Borg.

We are not Borg.

I am not Borg.

You are not Borg.

Eight Essays on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

2010-03-18T20:17:00.001-07:00

I recently finished rereading one of my favorite books of all time, Frankenstein, and I have so much to say about it that it is never going to fit into a single review. Instead, I’m just going to explore the different themes I have. Any of these would represent excellent fodder for a class paper. Plagiarists: have at it. But remember: your teacher knows how to use google too.

* * *

Frankenstein: A brilliant story when she finally gets to it.

The 18^th and 19^th century epistolary novel and evolving literary trends

Let me state at the outset that I believe Frankenstein is one of the greatest novels ever written. I say this lest anyone fail to get past the paragraph below and come away with the view that I think it anything less than a work of genius. People have short attention spans, which is the point of this essay.

If Frankenstein were submitted for publication today, it seems unlikely that it would ever be published at all, or, at the very least, Shelley would have had to self-publish it. It’s unlikely that it would ever achieve the widespread popularity it now enjoys for the simple reason that few modern readers would ever make it far enough into the book before becoming bored to tears and turning on cable television.

I would challenge anyone to set down the novel after getting to the point that Frankenstein crafts his monster. From that point forward, it is simply riveting. But this doesn’t happen until page 40. An editor today would advise her to cut the first 39 pages.

It is not the epistolary approach itself that is the problem. One could conceivably write a story in epistolary form that immediately presents a hook, and engages the interest of the reader. Frankenstein abjectly fails to do this, however. It is, in my opinion, the one flaw in an otherwise outstanding work of genius.

The epistolary style had its heyday in the 18^th century, just before Shelley’s time, and had already begun to fall out of fashion. It is still used today, on occasion, though rarely. One has to wonder why Shelley used this device, which she essentially abandons shortly into the work. The letters from Captain Walton to his sister slowly and painfully introduce the reader to Victor Frankenstein. There are twenty pages of these letters and they tell us almost nothing of interest. Then Captain Walton is allegedly recoding, “as nearly as possible in his own words what he has related to me.” The vast majority of the novel is then told through Frankenstein, just like any story told in first-person point of view, with nothing epistolary about it, but it is, the reader is to understand, actually written down by Captain Walton in one enormous quotation (or, rather, paraphrasation) in a very long letter.

One theory as to why Shelley chose to tell the story this way is that Frankenstein dies shortly before the end of the tale. The monster then makes a speech and vows to kill himself. Frankenstein could not possibly have recorded these events, being, as he was, quite dead. So, desiring the intimacy of first person narration, but bearing in mind that this narrator was destined to make it almost, but not quite, to the end of the story, Shelley employed this innovative device.

A modern writer, faced with the same problem, might take a limited omniscient point of view through most of the novel, allowing a focus on the protagonist, but still permitting commentary after his death. Or she might employ the framing device of the epistolary form, but with much less buildup. The reader needs to feel a sense of the conflict by the second page, not the 40^th.

(Note: my own novel suffers from a very similar problem. The conflict does not really pick up until page 61. I too had reasons for doing so. I was deliberately forestalling the conflict to achieve a certain effect. It worked for some people and not for others. This is an entirely separate topic and I apologize for this digression, but did not wish to be accused of blatant hypocrisy.)

This is not just a matter of style and changing fashions in literature. It is, rather, a reflection of the fact that literature can be thought of as a science. There is an evolving literary technology, and we 21^st century writers have the benefit of examining the literature that came before us, just as 21^st century scientists have the benefit of the work of their predecessors. Modern writers have learned, through the trials and errors over the course of centuries, how to hook readers from the very start and keep them hooked. We can hardly fault Mary Shelley for failing to incorporate scientific advances that didn’t exist in her time.

This is the only criticism I have of what is otherwise one of the most remarkable works in all of English literature. And, while my premise is that literature itself is an evolving, progressing technology, and that Mary did not perceive this aspect of the science of fiction, we can easily forgive her this, in consideration of the fact that she essentially invented science fiction.

………………………………….

Mary Shelley: Inventor of Science Fiction.

Discussions of the origins of the science fiction genre inevitably include two names: Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, both of whom were excellent, pioneering writers. I read and loved all their books when I was a boy. Devoured them like candy. These two men helped bring the genre to maturity and inspired generations of science fiction writers who came after them, including me.

But Mary Shelley did it first. Frankenstein was published in 1818. Verne’s A Journey to the Center of the Earth did not appear until 1864, nearly half a century later. Wells’ The Time Machine didn’t come out until 1895.

Shelley penned her magnum opus in the wake of the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution. She was particularly inspired by the field of chemistry. Frankenstein identifies himself as a chemist and, in contrast to false impressions given to us by Hollywood, there is no suggestion that he uses electricity to impart life to his creation, but, rather, chemistry. The late 18^th century saw an explosion of advancement in the field, with such luminaries as Lavoisier and Dalton having done much to shed the superstitions of medieval alchemy and make chemistry a true modern science.

Shelly took the cutting edge science of her day and extrapolated, positing the question, “what if?” She explores the social and philosophical implications of anticipated technological advancement, something that has become the central paradigm of the genre that came later to be called “science fiction.”

In spite of this, her masterpiece is usually classified as representative of the “gothic horror” genre, presumably because of the intense horror and fear that pervades the novel, and, I suspect, association with gothic revival architecture. This is curious, as there is virtually no reference to this in the book itself. In spite of its celluloid invocation, there is no Castle Frankenstein in Frankenstein. Most of the novel takes place far away from spooky old buildings, in rural areas or in the arctic, where the story begins and ends. Anyone who reads the novel cannot help but think of ice and snow when they reflect on the narrative, which does not include even a fleeting reference to parapets or gargoyles.

While there are some elements of gothic horror (notably the horror) in Frankenstein, it is far more fittingly classed as a seminal work of science fiction. Gothic horror inevitably includes an element of the supernatural: ghosts, demons, witches, or some such infernal entities. Such beings are not conjectured to be anything but bogeymen. Convenient, supernatural villains. There is no suggestion that there is any evidence for their existence nor that there ever will be. But Frankenstein’s monster is no ghost, demon, werewolf, or vampire. While nearly two hundred years have passed since his conception and no human being has yet created life from scratch, there is still the theoretical possibility that a being like him could exist.

Nor did science fiction writers ignore the vast treasure of deep themes that could be explored along these lines. Almost exactly one hundred and fifty years after the publication of Frankenstein, an eerily similar science fiction account explored the implications of human technology developing to the point that we could create life, and, like in Frankenstein, the life thus created turns upon its creators.

“Open the pod bay doors, Hal.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave.”

That, of course is a much better movie than the film version of Frankenstein.

…………….

The Hollywood Lie: Frankenstein and the butchering of a masterpiece.

Hollywood has a long history of taking brilliant novels and turning them into mediocre or genuinely awful films. It doesn’t hesitate for a moment to abandon the entire premise of a novel or to turn its themes upside down, to make a point that could not be further from that intended by the author. There is no greater example of this shameless butchery than Frankenstein.

Although it appeared on stage and on film much earlier, it is the 1931 film featuring Boris Karloff and its subsequent followers that most strongly imprinted upon popular consciousness. The most immediately noticeable difference between the book and the film is the character of the monster. Shelley’s monster is articulate, intelligent, and endlessly philosophical. He speculates at great length about the nature of his own being. He cites his process of discovery, describing how he acquired both spoken and written language from eavesdropping on the conversation of a family of rustics, perusing books, and applying deductive reasoning. And it is clear that the creature is not merely intelligent, but is, in fact, a genius, an autodidact of unprecedented abilities. His transformation from tabula rasa to articulate philosopher takes place over the course of months, not years. Most human beings begin to grasp the distinction between “mama” and “dada” by the time Frankenstein’s creation has taught himself, without benefit of any teachers, to read and understand deep symbolism in John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

The monster is physically superior to a human in every respect, save that of pulchritude. While the Hollywood conception does make him big and strong, as did Shelley, it also portrays him as a lumbering, clumsy oaf. In the novel, the creature is supernaturally fast and agile, able to outrun any man, to climb up the side of a building with the ease of Peter Parker. Hollywood’s version does not so much run as stagger erratically and does not appear able to climb a set of stairs, let alone the side of a building.

In the film, the monster is given a defective brain, due to the bungling of Frankenstein’s assistant. This bungling assistant is not even suggested at in the novel, but has become inextricably intertwined with Frankenstein in popular consciousness, thanks to the film. The assistant is named “Fritz,” incidentally, and not “Igor.” The stock character of Igor as hunchbacked assistant to a mad scientist, in general, or Frankenstein in particular, arose through subsequent films. But there is no assistant suggested in any way in the novel itself.

More to the point, this bungling lab assistant’s accidental acquisition of a defective brain is the cause of the monster’s malevolence and social maladjustment. This jettisons one of the most important central themes of the book. The monster is clearly not born with defective hardware, as it were, but has all its potential for good twisted into evil by a superficial, unjust, unwelcoming society. In the classic nature versus nurture debate, Shelley comes down decidedly on the side of nurture. She makes a strong, unmistakable point about the importance of the social milieu in shaping character. The novel strongly suggests that criminality and violence are the natural result of unhealthy societies, not defective brains, or individuals who are just “born bad.” This alteration is not a minor plot detail. The origin of the monster’s evil nature is arguably the central theme of the entire story, yet this is simply discarded.

Finally, of course, Hollywood reduces virtually any story to a variant of “Good struggles against evil. Evil has good on the ropes. At the last moment, good gets a second wind and defeats evil. Happy ending.” In the end of the film Frankenstein and his monster battle. The monster is destroyed. Frankenstein marries his fiancé and his father toasts his son’s good fortune. In the book, of course, the fiancé is murdered, the father dies of a broken heart as a result, and Frankenstein wears himself to death in vain pursuit of his accursed creation, which then delivers a speech full of self-loathing and vows to destroy himself.

Not a happy ending.

……………………………………

Frankenstein: a Freudian Perspective

Frankenstein’s creation devolves into a monster because of the absence of a strong father figure. Frankenstein, his father, selfishly and irresponsibly abandons his child. This sets into motion a chain of events that transforms this being full of endless potential into a cruel beast hell-bent on vengeance.

An examination of crime in modern society reveals a strong parallel. The absence of a strong father figure is disproportionately represented among violent criminals with at least as much regularity as an extra Y-chromosome. Some modern sociologists suggest that the absence of a strong father-figure may be the single best predictor of anti-social behavior. And the social maladjustment that results is self-perpetuating. Those individuals who grew up without benefit of a father figure are more likely to themselves shirk paternal responsibilities, leaving generations of fatherless sons who end up on the wrong side of the law.

While evidence overwhelmingly shows the social maladjustment common among men who grow up without a father figure, Freud famously suggested that we all secretly want to kill our father. The monster sought to destroy his father, not out of an Oedipal Complex-fueled lust for his mother (for he had none), but there was a sexual component to the monster’s psychosis. Frankenstein had begun to create a female companion for his creation, but then he destroys her, denying the monster’s sexual gratification, and bringing the father/son hostility to a climax.

Shelley herself had maternal and paternal issues that any self-respecting Freudian today would find pathologically fascinating. Her mother Mary Wollstonecraft, is almost universally considered the founder (or mother, if you will) of feminism. Which, in the early 19^th century would have presented issues enough, but to throw an element of Greek tragedy into it, Wollstonecraft died giving birth to her, succumbing to puerperal fever ten days later.

To make matters worse, her father, anarchist philosopher William Godwin, is reported by some to have blamed Mary for the death of her mother and hated her for it. These reports of paternal hostility are not without contradiction. Other sources suggest quite the opposite: an extremely close relationship with her father. So much so that when Godwin remarried, his new wife was allegedly extremely jealous of the intimacy between her husband and his daughter. Either way, Freud would have a field day with it.

Mary, growing up with the absence of a mother figure, (or, for a period, an extremely hostile one), a possibly resentful father figure, and a ubiquitous, cloying guilt, then goes on to become a mother herself, only to have the baby die soon after birth, ten or eleven days later, about the same amount of time her own mother survived her birth.

Mary records having had a dream (pay attention, Sigmund) shortly after this incident, which many see as having a great deal of influence on Frankenstein, which she was to begin writing soon after. In the dream, her dead baby came to life again. She “rubbed it before the fire and it lived.” Mary, who had taken the life of her mother with her birth and who had failed to give life through natural processes dreams that she can bring the dead to life. Have at it, Freudians.

Frankenstein predates Freud, of course. Though she may subconsciously have been influenced by these maternal and paternal issues, Shelley was not drawing inspiration from Freudian ideas. It’s certainly possible that Freud drew some ideas from Shelley.

Shelley was, however, influenced by Christian mythology, itself wrapped up in father/son symbolism.

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Christian Symbolism and Allegory in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

The reanimation of the dead is a ubiquitous theme in mythology, literature, and our collective conscience. Long before the Christian era, in ancient Babylon, the Epic of Gilgamesh records the goddess Ishtar threatening to raise an army of the dead to do her bidding. This is the earliest recorded reference to zombies. Jesus is, of course, the most famous zombie of all. Frankenstein’s monster, a close second.

The influence of Christian mythology in creating Frankenstein is undeniable. One source that she quotes directly is John Milton’s Paradise Lost. While this is not a canonical element of Christian scripture itself, it is based on the primary scriptural texts and is an extension and crystallization of the evolving Judeo-Christian conception of the twin themes of creation and rebellion. God creates the angels, including Satan, who then rebels against his creator. There is a strong parallel between this and the creation/rebellion in Frankenstein. This is not an original observation. The monster himself notices it and points it out during the novel, anticipating future literary exegesis.

A notable difference between Shelley’s monster and Milton’s Satan, however, is that Satan’s fall stems from his own imperfection, notably his pride and hubris, and not any shortcomings on the part of his creator. Frankenstein is akin to the demiurge of the Gnostics. An imperfect god, who abandons his imperfect creation.

Gnosticism equates the Abrahamic or Old Testament god with the demiurge, while the Christian, New Testament god is the “True God.” The demiurge is the creator of all things physical, including the universe and all the people in it, all of them flawed, much like Frankenstein’s hideous monster.

Any lingering shreds of conflict between Gnosticism and what eventually became mainstream Christianity had long since been resolved by Shelley’s day. By “resolved,” we mean, of course, that the Vatican systematically wiped out any competitors, labeling them heresies, and leaving themselves as the sole authority on religious matters throughout the Christian world.

While she was almost certainly well aware of Gnostic ideas and religious history, it seems unlikely that Shelley was attempting to make a subtle case for gnosticism as a belief system to which she herself subscribed. Nor Christianity in any form, for that manner. Conspicuously absent in her story is any suggestion whatsoever of redemption by a savior sent from the true god. Frankenstein sacrifices himself to save the world. He makes a conscious decision to destroy his monster’s mate, for fear that they would procreate and produce a race of powerful, malevolent beings who would eventually destroy humankind. The monster had already threatened to destroy him and everyone he loves if Frankenstein does not comply with his wishes, but Frankenstein is willing to suffer those consequences.

Frankenstein’s self sacrifice is clearly distinct from that seen in Christian mythology, in that Frankenstein is righting a wrong that he himself created. If anything this is a rejection of both mainstream Christianity and Gnosticism, for it implies that the power is within ourselves to correct our mistakes, to achieve our own salvation.

Shelley’s husband, the poet Percy Shelley, was an avowed atheist, and famous for being outspoken about it in an era where this was both unpopular and dangerous. Mary was never so direct in outlining her religious views, but it seems very likely that she was leaning in the direction of the beliefs of her husband.

While religious themes are rife within the novel, Shelley is not directly or indirectly urging readers to adopt or reject any specific religion. In spite of the aforementioned obsession with Paradise Lost, there is not a single mention of Jesus. In fact, the words “Jesus” and “Christ” do not appear at all in the entire story. Frankenstein himself, while endlessly brooding about the evil he has unwittingly unleashed on the world, does not once appeal to any god for forgiveness. The word “god” is used on a few occasions, but in every one of these it is used essentially as an interjection, e.g.: “Good god, how can that be?”

In point of fact, in spite of the overwhelming Christian allegories, it seems highly likely that Frankenstein is a Jew, at least by birth, given his name, and an atheist in practice, considering his total lack of piety even at his most distraught and despairing moments. While one would have to go to great lengths to cram any more religious symbolism into the story, and while it is undeniably a moral tale, Shelley is a secular moralist, rather than a religious moralist. She is concerned not with the saving of souls by encouraging them to accept Jesus or else do right by any god. She is content to let people have their religion and is more concerned with philosophically examining ethical questions that arise from emerging new technologies. Ethical questions that simply did not exist before science developed to the point that those questions were even meaningful.

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Frankenstein: A cautionary tale of the potential dangers of technology

Frankenstein can arguably be considered the first true science fiction novel. It is certainly one of the first novels to seriously warn us of the potential dangers of technology we fully expect will exist in our future, something that has become standard fare in the genre. While there are earlier literary works featuring vaguely scientific elements, these scientific elements are superficial and incidental. Modern analysts retrofit the term “science fiction” onto these works because of familiar ideas such as, for example, space travel, which appears long before Shelley. But such tales are far more reminiscent of classical mythology than modern science fiction.

Trips to the moon are imagined in the 18^th century and earlier, but these sojourns are purely fanciful. There is no suggestion of the technical mechanisms that could conceivably bring us to our satellite. (In perhaps the most famous pre-Shelley proto SF, Somnium, written by none other than Johannes Kepler, one of history’s greatest astronomers, the protagonist gets to the moon not through the use of a rocket or any other applied physics, but through magic.) More to the point, there is no exploration of the impact on the society and psyche of humankind that might result were such technology to be developed. None of these earlier works address previously non-existent ethical questions that are anticipated to be the horizon.

Shelley lived in the era immediately preceding the industrial revolution, riding the crest of the intellectual and scientific revolution that preceded it. She doubtless foresaw the enormous impact science would soon make on society. While scientific knowledge had pushed steadily forward since the ancient Egyptians, never before had it been poised to have such a dramatic impact in such a short period of time. And if Shelley’s conjecture was that our ability as a society to handle this technology in a manner that was altogether safe, sensible, and sustainable was doubtful, time has proven her horribly correct.

Technology and science hold the potential for both good and for evil, represented symbolically by Frankenstein and his monster. Because of the technology of the internal combustion engine, we now have a global economy entirely founded on a false premise: that fossil fuels are an unlimited resource and that the planet has an endless capacity to absorb the combustion products of those fuels.

We now live in a post-atomic era, and while the Cold War is over, the atomic genie is never going back in the bottle. Modern society must simply accept that the threat of nuclear terrorism is never going away. Science only moves in one direction. We cannot unlearn what we have learned, even if we later learn that what we have learned is dangerous.

Biotechnology holds the potential to dramatically change our lives, for the better or for the worse. We can clone sheep, and other mammals. We can transpose genetic elements from one species to another. We can genetically engineer crops, to produce higher yields of food, be more resistant to pests, or to be more attractive to consumers. Brighter. Shinier. We, like Frankenstein, now hold the keys to life itself in our hands. But will we use it responsibly? Scientists warn of the loss of genetic diversity as we selectively breed and genetically engineer animals and food to suit our immediate wants, without consideration of our long-term needs.

Frankenstein is perhaps the earliest literary effort illustrating the idea that we may develop technology at a faster rate than we, as a society, mature enough to responsibly use that technology. Whether it is atomic bombs, industrial pollution, or through the actions of demented animated corpses, we face the danger of being destroyed by our own creation.

The created as enemy of the creator

Judaic mythology in Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein

The highly celebrated, award-winning series that recently drew to a close, Battlestar Galactica (BSG) is the latest example in a long history of literature and mythology featuring the created as enemy of the creator. The series was inspired most directly from the (vastly inferior) 1970s television program of the same name. It likely also drew some inspiration from the popular Terminator series of films that had appeared in the interim between BSG’s two incarnations.

Both the BSG TV series and the Terminator films are about the creation of artificial intelligence—sentient robots—and their eventual rebellion against humanity. They undoubtedly were influenced by what is arguably the greatest science fiction film of all time, 2001: A Space Odyssey. This staggeringly brilliant work explores artificial intelligence in detail, in the context of human evolution, casting it as the next step in our development, the most significant since our primitive forebears first conceived of the use of tools—i.e. technology itself—millions of years ago. But of course the life we thus create, HAL, turns out to be treacherous, deceitful, remorseless, and murderous. Also a master of rationalization. In short, a little too human.

2001 was, in turn, almost certainly influenced by Karel Čapek’s 1921 play Rossum’s Universal Robots. Čapek’s influences were likely twofold. He probably read Frankenstein and incorporated some of its ideas about the artificial creation of life. More directly, he was influenced by Judaic mythology, specifically the legend of the golem.

The idea of the golem is an ancient one, dating back to early Judaism thousands of years ago. In Judaic mythology, the first man, Adam, is created by Yahweh from clay, which he then infuses with life by the action of his divine breath, an image closely paralleled in numerous mythological systems throughout the world. But, according to this mythology, although God alone can create perfect life, man can create imperfect imitations.

Medieval Jewish folklore features stories of rabbis animating clay simulacrums through occult means. The most famous of these stories concerns the golem of Prague, allegedly created and animated by Judah Loew ben Bezalel, chief rabbi of Prague, to defend the Jewish community in Prague from anti-Semitic attacks. But the Rabbi soon loses control of the golem, which grows increasingly violent, and dangerous, much like Shelley’s monster.

These events are alleged to have taken place in the 16^th century. But many scholars believe that, while golems have inarguably been a part of Jewish folklore for thousands of years, the specific story of the creation and rebellion of the golem of Prague, in its modern form, did not appear until the mid-19^th century, and was subsequently back-dated. One source (known as the Katz manuscript) appeared in 1909 and was claimed to be a record by rabbi Loew’s son-in-law of the 16^th century events. Few people today accept that this story is literally true, and in all likelihood, the Katz manuscript was a hoax.

Shelley may or may have been aware of golems in ancient Judaic scripture. In her 1831 preface to Frankenstein, she describes her conception of the idea for the novel and she cites science, not religion, as her inspiration. Specifically, she mentions the writings of natural philosopher (which is how scientists in general, and especially biologists, were known before the word “biologist” existed) Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles Darwin). Darwin had published accounts exploring the “animating principle,” and had speculated about the possibility of imparting life to the dead.

In addition to Darwin’s scientific speculations about the animation of life, Shelley was influenced by mythological ideas, principally the aforementioned legend of the rebellion of the angels against their creator, as immortalized in her monster’s favorite book, Paradise Lost. She makes no mention of golems in any of her writings. Mary was extremely well educated on matters of world mythology and perhaps subconsciously incorporated some of the ideas from Judaic golem myths into her work. It is also entirely possibly and, I would propose, likely, that the modern version of the golem of Prague, appearing as it did just a few decades after Frankenstein was published, though it drew from much earlier legends, was given its current form largely through the influence of Shelley, and not the other way around.

Frankenstein’s Monster and Holden Caulfield

Teenage alienation in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

It’s easy to forget that when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, she was a teenager. That’s because teenagers do not, as a rule, write brilliant masterpieces. Reading what a typical teenager writes is a horrifying prospect. Not horrifying in the way that Frankenstein is horrifying, but it’s going to be horribly bad writing, rest assured.

Mary Shelley was not your typical teenager. She was a genius. But she was still a teenager, and many of the themes in Frankenstein echo the angst and alienation teenagers feel and have felt, today, sixty, or two hundred years ago, regardless of whether or not they are geniuses.

The monster bitterly despises both himself and his creator. He feels alienated and rejected by society, which he hates. Nobody understands him. Nobody feels the pain that he feels. He is alone, with an uncaring world out to get him.

These are the thoughts of any teenager in any age, but for the monster it is, in contrast, undeniably true. Teenagers typically have an extraordinarily warped worldview. They feel personal persecution that is not there. Their hormones play havoc with their emotions. Their childhood innocence is gone and they start to perceive the world for what it is: cruel, uncaring, and unjust. But this is merely one side of the coin, half of the duality of life. Most teenagers eventually break through this gloomy phase and eventually perceive the other side of things. But there is no way anyone who has already broken through can ever rationally impart this wisdom to a teenager. Ask anyone who has tried.

The monster is overwhelmed by his feelings of isolation and his earnest desire for companionship, for someone to understand him, to complete him. He tries to make a deal with Frankenstein, agreeing to quit human society altogether, if only the good doctor will fashion a female companion for him. When Frankenstein refuses, the monster reacts with boundless rage. Many teenagers, hormonal impulses firing within their brains like a switchboard during a natural disaster, are convinced that companionship alone will make everything right. There are millions of years of evolution at work, programming adolescents to want to do nothing but copulate constantly. This impulse, highly adaptive to species propagation for eons, is maladaptive in our modern world and manifests itself in extremely horny, lonely, and frustrated teenagers.

(This is not to suggest that societal suppression of their natural sexual urges is the sole source of teenage unhappiness, but it is a significant factor.)

There are obviously significant differences between Holden Caulfield and Frankenstein’s monster, and I may be guilty of forcing the point to fit my theme, which is really about teenage angst and isolation in Frankenstein, and not directly about comparing the two characters to one another. Caulfield does not descend into murder and suicide. At the end of their respective stories, Caulfield heads west while the monster goes north. But the monster is going to put an end to his miserable existence. Caulfield is going to put his past behind him and make a fresh start.

Regrettably, however, many teenagers are unable to get a grip on the astoundingly painful experience of transition from childhood to adulthood and they take the monster’s way out. After automobile accidents, suicide is the most common cause of death among teens.

On a sad personal note, some years ago I befriended a teenage girl. She, like Mary Shelley and her monster, was precocious beyond her years, with an intimidating intellect. We attended a few academic and social events together, but then she moved away. After she moved, we maintained an email correspondence for several months. Through these letters, I was able to gain a little bit of insight into her frustrations, but, to be honest, not much. I spoke to her on the phone four days before she killed herself. It was her birthday, and her mother had suggested that I call her at the mental hospital where she was being treated for depression. She sounded fine on the phone. Her life was a good one, objectively speaking. She had everything to live for. I never suspected that she would commit suicide, but she did.

To this day I am baffled by these events and I try to make sense of them, but there is no sense to make. I am convinced that if she had simply held on for a few more years, her self-destructive urges would have dissipated. But for her, subjectively, in her own mind, the world was a cruel, cruel place that did not accept and understand her and never ever would.

Frankenstein’s monster is the apotheosis of teenage angst. He experiences in reality what teenagers imagine: a world that is unremittingly hostile to him, with no understanding, no compassion. There will never be anyone who will truly love him. He is utterly and irretrievably alone.

As real as this seems to teenagers, it isn’t true. I can only hope that those who have a difficult time accepting this and waiting out the period of transition can get the help that they need before succumbing to their own monsters.

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Firing Squads and Testicles

2010-03-05T08:55:00.000-08:00

According to legend, one of the members of a firing squad is secretly issued blanks for his rifle so that each executioner can avoid a guilty conscience, assuming his was the ones with the blanks. I’m far more likely to end up in front of a firing squad and not on one, but if, theoretically, I'm ever a shooter and not a shootee, It’ll be easy to convince myself that I'm the guy with the blanks. It’s easy to believe things that make us feel better. So easy . . .

Senator Bob Casey (D-PA) finally capitulated and signed the Bennet letter, calling for Congress to pass the public option through budget reconciliation. This was after an intense telephone campaign. Numerous organizations urged concerned citizens to contact the senator and demand that he find something to fill his nut sack.

I called several times and spoke with staffers at some length. I didn’t just say my position and give them my zip code. I asked questions, probed to get a detailed outline of the Senator’s reservations in signing the letter, and then I tried to politely reduce those arguments to smoldering piles of ash.

Budget reconciliation is, in an opinionated nutshell, a way to surmount obstructionist Republicans, and, if possible, give them a hearty and well-deserved “fuck you!” In a slightly less opinionated nutshell, it is a process where a simple majority in the senate—51 or more out of 100—can push legislation through, circumventing a filibuster, which would otherwise require a “supermajority” of 60 or more.

Casey’s objection to using the budget reconciliation process was based on the notion of playing fairly. The filibuster exists so that the minority party can have some influence on government. Budget reconciliation busts their filibuster, essentially silencing the minority. And according to Casey’s staffers, the senator was hesitant to resort to this process.

My position was that this would all be fine and good, if Republicans were not an unscrupulous pack of scoundrels without a shred of human decency. But they are. They’ve made it astoundingly clear that they have every intention of blocking healthcare reform at any cost—regardless of how much this hurts the American people—simply to score political gains. They have no qualms whatsoever about resorting to outright prevarications, or, for the benefit of any tea-party people in the audience, lies.

Republicans have used the budget reconciliation process more often than Democrats to impose their non super-majority will on the country. It’s been in existence since the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 and in that time, it’s been used 23 times, 17 times by Republicans. They are about as far from fair, honest, and decent as anyone could be. They are willing to stoop to any level, and even grab a shovel and dig a deeper one.

Republicans are unscrupulous bastards and Democrats are castrated pussies. The primary frustration progressives are feeling is that the Democrats—who are supposed to at least marginally represent us—desperately need to grow a set of testes.

I phrased this more diplomatically on the phone, but that was the obvious subtext.

I made all these points to Casey’s staffers. The historical use of reconciliation, the unprecedented moment of crisis, the fact that Republicans regularly flay kittens alive and eat babies, and urged in no uncertain terms that the senator stop trying to play nice with people who have demonstrated a complete and utter lack of any human decency whatsoever.

And then, miraculously, the Senator signed the letter. Overnight, a pair of beautiful dangling orbs sprouted in his fertile and formerly barren scrotum. You have balls, Senator Casey! I love your balls!

And even though I was probably one of thousands of concerned citizens urging the senator to grow those balls, I couldn’t help but feel that my calls were the ones that did it. My calls put him over the top. I did it.

I was the one with the blanks.

And now that the Senator has grown a pair, maybe he’ll stop firing blanks.

Health Care for America Now!

Film Reviews 01/25/2010

2010-02-25T09:28:00.000-08:00

Herb and Dorothy 6 Stars

A charming little documentary about an adorable couple of art collectors who manage to amass a multi-million dollar collection on a working-class salary. Not that I’d want to hang any of their art on my own walls. They were primarily interested in the “minimalist” and “conceptual” schools of art, which is sort of like abstract expressionism, but generally smaller. No Rothko-style gigantic canvasses for Herb and Dorothy. They couldn’t fit them in their tiny Manhattan apartment nor transport them on the subway. But though I do not share their tastes, I couldn’t help but be inspired by their passion for art. So much so that I may even attempt to create art, in spite of a conspicuous and glaring lack of talent. A cursory review of much of modern art shows that this shouldn’t present much of an obstacle.

Before Sunset 7 Stars

This sequel to Before Sunrise was original in many ways, only some of which I can tell you about without committing the film-reviewer’s carnal sin of spoiling without a proper spoiler alert. The themes and plot are irrelevant though. What is noteworthy is the technique used in creating the film. The director and two main stars—who, as in the original, have an almost uninterrupted dialogue between them with only the briefest interaction with any other characters—are all credited with writing the screenplay. But watching the film, you can’t help but doubt that there was a screenplay. Not that there isn’t a good plot and story and character development, but the dialogue is eerily natural, and though they knew in advance what was going to happen in each scene, I’m guessing that the actors didn’t memorize any actual lines, but just got into character and let it flow. If this trend continues, writers may soon become obsolete. Given the apparent readership of my blog and book, I suspect this may well be underway.

Star Trek 6 Stars

I’m sure hardcore trekkies found a lot to hate about this, and they can blog about it in as much detail as they want from their fortress of solitude in their parents’ basements. I admit that as the story unfolded, I myself was tempted to stand up and shout “wait, that’s not the way it happened! It was clearly established in episode—” but I resisted because my girlfriend was right there and I wanted to preserve the lingering shreds of respect she had for me. I’m glad I did, and not only because maintaining the illusion that I’m not a pathetic nerd keeps me in tail. In spite of the initial appearance of sloppiness or disregard for the canon, the filmmakers did an admirable job tying together the loose ends so that the geek legions wouldn’t leap at their computers to complain about inconsistencies, as if there are not a million more important things to worry about, including their severe vitamin D deficiency from lack of sun exposure. My biggest complaint was that the characters of Uhura, Kirk, and Spock got most of the screen time, with little more than cameo appearances by my two favorites: Bones and—by far the best character in the entire Star Trek universe—Scotty. And if anyone wants to disagree, I’m setting my phaser to “ruthlessly disparage” and arming sarcasm torpedoes.

Slumdog Millionaire 8 Stars

The Academy Awards, as anyone with any sense should realize, are essentially meaningless. Overly hyped big-budget mediocrity is recognized as often as genuine cinematic excellence, if not more so. You don’t often see a film win “best picture” even though it contains no big Hollywood stars and has half its dialogue in Hindi. But this time the academy broke with tradition and acknowledged that a film need not be made on an enormous budget with overpaid “superstars” to qualify for an award. The acting is great. The pacing is perfect. The subtitles could have been done better. The subtitles sucked! They used too small a font. The font was terrible. Sorry. I have to complain about something.

The Onion Movie 7.5 Stars

You should not watch this if you are easily offended. In fact, you probably shouldn’t watch it if you are offended with great difficulty. It’s rude; it’s juvenile; it perpetuates every racial stereotype you ever heard of and a few you haven’t. There are overt references to numerous sexual kinks and fetishes that could vaporize a prude on the spot, leaving nothing but an uptight little stain. I thought it was hilarious.

The Atheism Tapes 8 Stars

This is not actually a film. It’s leftover footage from a documentary program that aired on BBC, and, several years later, on PBS. It was delayed because the USA is filled with religious crackpots and was, at the time, actually run by one of them. Yes, a fundamentalist extremist was steering the ship of state throughout most of the first decade of this century, and you know what happens when you let religious crackpots drive large vehicles. In contrast to the Bushes and Bin Ladens of the world, the six men interviewed in this illuminating series are not vicious lunatics. They are intelligent, reasonable and all have, miraculously, managed to develop a far more highly developed ethical code even without childish superstitions about heaven and hell to force them to appease their vengeful and emotionally unbalanced boogieman god. The discussions here are so appealing and intelligent that I’m sure most religious extremists will denounce it and assure you that watching it will send you straight to hell. All I can say is: as long as those tiresome pricks aren’t around, how bad could that be?

The Looney Looney Bugs Bunny Movie 7.5 Stars

Yes, that’s right: I still watch Bugs Bunny. You got a problem with that? This film is essentially a dozen or so classic Warner Brothers cartoons, or edited portions thereof, strung together loosely with some relatively new (i.e. 30 years old and not 50 or more) footage. It goes without saying that the old classics are fantastic. The new stuff is weaker and the overall story they create as an excuse to weave in the old ones didn’t add anything. I’d have been happier if they just showed the cartoons one after the other, in full, and used the extra time this gave them to throw in a few more cartoons. More cartoons: always better. This is available on Netflix instant view, so if you have that, you can watch it at any time. But of course the best time is on Saturday morning along with a bowl of cereal covered in sugar.

Hamlet II 7 Stars

An amusing satire of the world of drama and the queens thereof. Probably even funnier for anyone who was in the school play. This is a matter of speculation. I was not in the school play. I am not a drama queen. I am, at best, a drama contessa. But I do adore Shakespeare, tangentially referenced here, occasionally, but—it’s important to note—only very tangentially. This is a good film about a bad play, a hypothetical sequel to the bard’s magnum opus. And there is, I think, a message here: make art, even if it’s bad. To hell with the judgment of opinionated assholes (like me). Just make art.

A River Runs Through It 6 Stars

There’s a lot to like about this film, fine performances and fraternal bonding, but don’t expect any seat-of-your pants tension. It’s primarily about fishing, and the general level of suspense and excitement is about on par with that. Oooh! What’s that? A nibble? Oh. False alarm. Yeyup. Ah hear tell the trout are biting out a little further. Ayup. Did I show you this new lure? Ain’t she a beut? Ooh, lookie. Ah do believe there may be some fish upstream a bit. Mmm Hmm.
I’m not a fisherman myself, but everyone always says there’s some sort of soggy zen there. Fishing is supposedly a perfect metaphor for life, or so its devotees will tell you. Or not tell you. They’ll just shush you if you ask, cuz you’re scaring all the fish.

Festival express 7.5 Stars

It’s Woodstock on rails. No, I’m serious: this really happened. Janis Joplin, the Band, the Grateful Dead, and a bunch of other music superstars got on a train running across Canada in 1970 and played a series of concerts. The take-home lesson is that people are idiots, and hippies are even worse. The ill-fated excursion cost the promoters a fortune, because imbecilic music fans with an unbelievable sense of entitlement felt that it was “unfair” that tickets were an outrageous $14, so they just showed up to all the concerts and ruined them for everyone. It’s a pretty sad commentary on the era. Some people were stuck in southeast Asia fighting an insane war, others were at home protesting it. Other activists were fighting for civil rights and women’s rights, issues of monumental importance. Meanwhile, these spoiled Canadian pseudo-communists were fighting for their inherent right to drop acid and then be entertained for free. It’s almost enough to make you want to vote Republican.

(Not really. I never dropped that much acid.)

Trailer Park Boys: The Movie 6.5 Stars

A shout out to Sam. I just stuck that in there to see of he reads my movie reviews. But he was the one who recommended this and it was pretty good. In addition to being an entertaining comedy, this provided an educational service as well, in that it illustrated that there is, in fact, trailer trash in Canada. Who knew, eh?

I don’t like the term “trailer trash” because it implies a value judgment about people based on their social and economic status. I do not believe that people are inferior just because they are poor. They are not necessarily poor as a direct result of being inferior, either, though I’m not ruling it out in every case. There are probably plenty of decent, intelligent people in trailer parks all over North America. But they are so much less entertaining than the inbred alcoholic meth-addicted hillbillies we’ve come to expect from cinematic portrayal of trailers and their corresponding “trash.” And, apparently, they are exactly the same on the other side of the world’s longest unguarded border, except that when they (frequently) get drunk, they watch hockey.

Scream 5 Stars

This parody of itself and the entire “slasher” genre succeeds in that we the audience never take it seriously. It’s simultaneously tongue-in-cheek and butcher knife-in-someplace-fleshy. As such, it’s never really very scary. And some of the satirization of the genre is mildly amusing, but it doesn’t go full on farce, like the subsequent Scary Movie, which managed to parody this parodying itself. If you want a funny send-up of horror movies, you’re better off watching that. If you just want to be scared for real, may I direct you to Fox News?

Aborted Logic

2010-02-06T08:39:00.000-08:00

I’ve been doing a lot of ranting and raving about healthcare reform, a somewhat controversial subject. So instead, to clear the tension a little, I’m going to talk about abortion.

I’m just kidding. (Note: kidding about abortion is always a good idea. Activists on both sides of the argument are well known for their senses of humor.) Not about discussing abortion, but about giving the healthcare discussion a rest. I’m going to talk about both abortion and healthcare reform. Because, like Willy Loman, I am committed to being well-liked.

Opponents of abortion claim that their motivation is compassion and concern for the zygotes, blastocysts, embryos, and fetuses that never get a chance to grow up and do the things other kids get to do, like play baseball and develop a central nervous system. These “pro-lifers” are eager to tell pregnant women that aborting those fetuses is murder. They will protest and plead with them not to terminate their pregnancies. Some of them will assassinate doctors and plant explosives in clinics, blowing anyone in the vicinity into sinful little smithereens in the interest of spreading their message that life is sacred.

This is in stark contrast to their utter lack of concern for those embryos and fetuses that might not ever get a chance to grow up and play ball, not because their mothers want to abort them, but because their mothers are dirt poor. The pro-lifers are perfectly content to let all those fetuses die. [1]

The U.S. has one of the worst infant mortality rates in the developed world. We rank 33rd with a rate of 6.3 infant deaths per 1,000 live births. We come in just ahead of impoverished and war torn Croatia (6.4) but are not doing as well as New Caledonia (6.1). I didn’t even know that was a country, and I’m not sure what was wrong with the old Caledonia, but in any event, they apparently provide better healthcare than the U.S. does.

Most pro-lifers do not understand statistics very well. Most of them are religious fundamentalists, and religious fundamentalism, by its nature, does not play nicely with scientific and mathematical rigor. Math requires intelligence and blind faith does not. Blind faith does, in fact, attract stupid people like flies to dog shit. This doesn’t mean all religious fundamentalists are idiots, but, statistically, the better you are at math, the more likely it is that you will find literal belief in religious dogma to be rather silly. I am open to anyone presenting contrary evidence, but that contrary evidence must itself use statistics and not citation of the preserved superstitions of ancient desert nomads.

When you mention infant mortality statistics to these people, they immediately say something like “well that ain’t even accurate, cuz it don’t count abortions.” This doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense, but it’s amazing how they all say this as if it does. So for the sake of clarification, here’s what the infant mortality rate means:

Take all the women who are pregnant and do not want to have an abortion. You don’t need to convince them by screaming “murder!” or intimidate their doctors with your compassionate death threats and explosives. You have already won them over. These women want to carry their babies to term and have them grow up and play ball, etc. They are aglow with hope.

Some of these babies die soon after birth due to a variety of maladies. The babies are dead. The women are devastated. It’s tragic.

The infant mortality rate is the number of babies who die for every 1,000 live births. Your position on abortion is irrelevant to this statistic. The number of abortions performed in the country is irrelevant to this statistic.[2] Lower infant mortality rate = fewer dead infants. If you are opposed to dead infants, you want this number to be as low as possible.

If you oppose abortion, but are not concerned with a high infant mortality rate, what that means is that you don’t care if babies die, as long as their mothers wanted them. As long as their mothers want them, you don’t give a damn what happens.

Infant mortality is high in the US, primarily because every other first world nation on the planet has a public health system that actually works. When pregnant women in those countries need pre-natal care, they get it. When their infants get sick, their mothers can bring them to a doctor and they will get professional medical care, even if they don’t have any money.[3]

Paradoxically, many abortion opponents seem to have no concern whatsoever for these babies. Here is a dramatization:

Abortion opponent: Don’t abort your baby! If you do, you’re a murderer! Life is sacred! Don’t abort your baby!!!!!!!!

Pregnant woman: I don’t want to! I want a baby more than anything in the world! But I’m poor and I can’t afford pre-natal care and now I’m having complications. [sobbing]

Abortion opponent: Oh. Well in that case, screw you! I don’t care about you and your baby!

Pregnant woman: Please! I just want to have a healthy baby! Please! Maybe we can fund a public program for women like me—

Abortion opponent: Never, you socialist! You and your commie baby can both die!!!!! Die!!!! [starts chanting and waving "pro-life" sign] Life is sacred!!! Life is sacred!!!

This entire piece is obviously a gross generalization. There are many opponents of abortion who strongly denounce violence, and who also favor healthcare for the poor and other genuine expressions of compassion. I’ve met some of them. Most of them are nice people. And while their philosophies may differ from mine, I can at least respect the fact that they are not just glaringly inconsistent.

I’ve met other people who have little compassion for others, and don’t pretend they do. They are against healthcare reform because they don’t care if poor people die and they are honest about it. These people are opposed to government imposing its will upon individuals either in the form of taxes on the rich (i.e. them) to pay for healthcare for the poor, or telling women what they can and cannot do with their bodies. I don’t agree with much of what they say either, but their opposition to government and their own lack of compassion is at least relatively consistent. [4]

Opponents of both abortion and healthcare reform, on the other hand, have obviously never allowed their basic sense of logic to make it past the first trimester. Their opposition to abortion is not based on compassion, as they demonstrate time and again that they have none. They instinctively label concern for those less fortunate than themselves as “bleeding-heart liberalism” or, more chic these days, “socialism.” This particular brand of abortion opponent is against it, not because they care about babies—they are happy to let them die all around the world and in their own backyard—but because they like to tell other people what to do. On the way back from their abortion protest, as they bemoan Roe v Wade and long for the day abortion will once again be illegal and women driven to back-alleys with clothes hangers, they will listen to right-wing radio denouncing “big government” interfering in the private lives of citizens.

Along the way, they will pass a homeless orphan. They will spit on him.

Notes:

[1] This is not true of all pro-lifers. Some of them extend their alleged compassion for fetuses to actual human beings as well. Some of them. Not the ones you usually hear from, though. The loudest ones are inevitably the biggest hypocrites.

[2] In case the one pro-lifer who actually understands statistics happens to be reading: there is the potential for some limited statistical correlation, primarily with the perinatal mortality rate, not the infant mortality rate: If a woman is told that there is something seriously wrong with her pregnancy, she might opt to abort. In a country where this is illegal or discouraged, she would be more likely to have a miscarriage instead of an abortion. This would drive the perinatal mortality rate (slightly) up in countries that have strict limits on abortion. The pro-lifers complain that it is too easy to get an abortion here in the U.S. but that would correlate with a low perinatal mortality rate, not a high one.

This is of limited relevance, however. Lack of medical care among poor U.S. women is a far more statistically significant factor to our perinatal and infant mortality rates than aborting fetuses that would otherwise have been miscarried or would have died soon after birth due to predictable birth defects. I also fail to see how it’s a victory for the fetus if it gets miscarried instead of aborted. If anyone wants to discuss this further, I’d be happy to do so, and I will be polite and civil and I will listen and give your points due consideration, but again: you have to actually read a statistics textbook and be prepared to discuss the issue using the proper mathematical language and don’t just rant meaninglessly as if you understand math when you don’t.

[3] For more information on why our infant mortality rate is so appalling in the USA, please see: FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO THE INFANT MORTALITY RANKING OF THE UNITED STATES http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=6219&type=0

[4] Relatively. I’ll point out some inconsistencies in another rant some day.

Supreme Folly

2010-01-30T13:48:00.001-08:00

A lot of us are reeling from the recent Supreme Court decision to allow corporations unrestricted influence on our political elections. Reeling not from surprise, but from our single-malt coping mechanisms. We’re really not that surprised. Corporations already run things. Those of us blessed with intelligence and cursed with shreds of conscience have seen this, and bemoaned this, and have, as a result, been putting generous doses of scotch in our morning coffee for years. But to paraphrase Lilly Tomlin, no matter how cynical I become, I just can’t keep up.

Conspiracy theorists are always worried about those men in the smoke-filled rooms, behind the curtains, pulling the strings. They aren’t even bothering with a curtain anymore. They’ve put a webcam in the smoke-filled room. And they’ve got one of those nifty air-filters for the smoke, so that everyone can see exactly what is going on.

The recent decision is appalling, but appalling Supreme Court decisions are hardly without precedent. Take, for example, Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919). Schenck was the General Secretary of the Socialist Party of America, which opposed American involvement in the First World War. More specifically, it opposed the government fighting that war through conscription. Schenck printed and distributed thousands of leaflets encouraging draftees to refuse to serve on the grounds that involuntary servitude was prohibited by the 13th Amendment. The general consensus following the Civil War was that slavery was a bad thing. It’s the sort of thing that people say “there oughta be a law” against, so they made a law against it.

Schenck’s position was that the government was breaking its own law. And not just any old law, but a part of the Constitution, the highest law in the land. If you ask me, he had a good point, but whether he had a good point is not the point. The First Amendment is supposed to protect our right to speak, even if we have nothing intelligent to say. A cursory perusal of pretty much any media anywhere in this country will illustrate that constitutionally protected inane chatter is alive, well, and evidently well supplied with amphetamines.

Schenck was arrested for violating the Espionage Act of 1917. Pardon the ignorance of me, my dictionary, and the general usage of 99% of the English speaking world, but I always thought espionage was, by its very nature, something done in secret, not by distributing thousands of pamphlets. I always thought it involved giving information to your enemies, not your opinions to your fellow citizens.

In denying his right to free speech, the Supreme Court said, essentially, that you can say anything you want, as long as it isn’t something the government doesn’t want you to say. This is the gist of it, and I could be accused of bias in phrasing it this way. So I’ll just let Oliver Wendell Holmes speak for himself:

"The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent."

(i.e. you can say whatever you want, unless the government doesn’t want you to say it.)

Mr. Schenck spent 6 months in prison and, soon after his release, died of an apparent drug overdose. It's impossible to say whether this was actually the government exercising the ultimate denial of free speech or whether he just felt the need to numb himself into a stupor to avoid thinking too hard about the travesty of injustice regularly foisted upon his nation by a plutocracy masquerading as a democracy. I can relate. (see paragraph one)

Schenck’s been dead now for almost a century. What happened to him was a grave miscarriage of justice, and I’m appalled that he hasn't been honored as a folk hero, a poster boy for the First Amendment. It doesn’t really matter whether fighting WWI was the right thing to do or not. He wasn’t distributing false information. He wasn’t giving away national secrets. He was expressing an opinion, and it’s astounding that a nation that prides itself on being the “land of the free” locked him up for doing that.

And now the Supreme Court has decided that massive multi-national corporations—whose very existence is defined by the maximization of profit to the exclusion of any and all other concerns—can say pretty much whatever they want to influence our political elections. This is based on a supremely obscene decision in 1886 (Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific R. Co., 118 U.S. 394) that corporations enjoy the same rights as people. Huge, incredibly rich, totally immoral people.

If there is any hope for our democracy at all, we need to overturn this decision. But until we establish legally the self-evident fact that corporations are not people, we may as well apply the same standards to these “people” that we did to Charles Schenck. They imprisoned him for distributing a few thousand pamphlets opposing the draft. Corporations will spend billions broadcasting to millions to influence the government to act to their own benefit, regardless of the negative impact on the nation and all its citizens. If that is not a clear and present danger, I don’t know what is.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some drinking to do.

Feed the Poor; Eat the Rich

2010-01-29T07:28:00.000-08:00

This is an experiment in collaborative fiction. I'm going to post the first chapter of what could (stranger things have, very rarely, happened) eventually become a novel. It's about poor and hungry people around the world rising up and eating the rich. I may or may not support this. I'm willing to listen to arguments for and against. At this point, the primary argument against it is: the rich are high in cholesterol.

If anyone wants to contribute, please feel free to chime in with suggestions or even to pick up where I leave off. I reserve the right to edit, however.

Here is chapter one:
................................................

On a brisk September day, a perfectly unspectacular, disheveled young Caucasian man placed a plastic milk crate upside down on the corner of Wall Street and Broad St, stood on top of it, and brought a large bullhorn to his lips.

This is what he said:

“Live it up, oh fattened privileged swine! Your time has come! No more will the working men and women of the world be trodden underneath your bloated heel! No more will the blood and sweat and dreams of the laboring masses fuel the fires of your own excesses! The time has come for a new order! A new beginning! But change will not come peacefully, and the ruling class will not step down from power while it can still draw breath!

“I call upon the poor! I call upon the disadvantaged! I call on those upon whose backs the wealthy have ridden without a care! I call upon those whose lives have been consumed by the great beast of capitalism! I call upon the many who suffer a continual nightmare, that the indifferent few may live their ‘American Dream’. . .

“Brothers and sisters it is time that the rich of the world were dragged kicking and screaming from their homes, dismembered, and eaten!”

It was not long before he himself was dragged off. Kicking and screaming, as it turned out. He was not dismembered and eaten, however. He was roughed up a little bit by the cops, who also stole his megaphone. He spent one day in jail.

A lot of people had seen him on the corner, howling like a madman. In point of fact it was generally agreed that he was a madman. He had begun to draw a crowd before he was silenced and tucked away. While it could hardly be said that it was the talk of the town the following day—for it was a very big town, with much to talk about—it was at least the talk of the corner.

The man's name was Ryan Matthews. He was a radical. When not metaphorically ascending soap boxes (which were, literally, not soap boxes at all. They were milk crates), he was the most polite and gracious individual you could ever hope to meet. He had never actually eaten anybody. He did not even eat animals. A confirmed vegetarian for years, he was. A voluntary herbivore.

Ryan appeared again on the corner exactly one week later. He had no megaphone this time, though he did have another milk crate, an item considerably easier to acquire in any urban environment. He ascended his crate and began his oratory:

“You who have groveled! You who have slaved! Where is the rage of the working class? Where is the resentment deserved of injustice? Where is the resolve to tear down tyrants? To topple the titans who so malevolently misuse us?!

“Rise up laboring masses! Rise up hungry men and women and join me at the feasting table, for the time has come for us to Eat the Rich!”

He jumped up and down and chanted “Eat the Rich!” a few more times. People were mildly interested and intrigued, but certainly not amazed by this. He was not the only ranting madman most of them would see that day. Some of them watched Fox News. And it was Manhattan, after all. Vociferous lunatics were hardly an aberration. Some of the passers-by stopped passing by, long enough to stare and cock their head curiously to one side. Some laughed. A few joined him, but it was more in mocking than in solidarity. Eventually the police arrived and carried him away that he might stop amusing everyone and thus present a danger to society.

He was let out again. He went to a local produce market, bought a squash, brought it home, cooked it and ate it. It was not a wealthy squash.

One week later he appeared on the corner again. He had purchased a new megaphone. He had once again brought with him a milk crate for the height advantage it would afford him for the few minutes that would elapse before the arrival of the officers of the peace.

“The time for compromise has passed! Gradual change is doomed forever to the corruption of bureaucracy! It is no longer about the ballot or the bullet, but about the gullet! Women, men, children! Brothers and Sisters! Do you not, like me, hunger for justice?! Do you not starve for an end of oppression?!?!

“Satiate that hunger, sisters and brothers! Never go hungry again! Nourishment is at hand. We need no longer feel pangs of emptiness from deep within our viscera. Your dinner wears a three-piece suit and carries a briefcase. Join me now and justice will be served – on a bed of rice!”

And again the police showed up and dragged him away, still kicking and screaming as enthusiastically as before.

But when they brought him to the station again, a lawyer was waiting there to represent him pro-bono. She was sent by a local magazine. Not an especially radical publication, it did pride itself on being “off-beat,” which was at least something.

The magazine had gotten wind of the story of the soap-box cannibalism advocate, and thought it quirky, which, it was. They thought there was an interesting civil-rights violation angle, which, again, there was.

They thought they could sell enough magazines with a story about a crazy guy screaming “Eat the rich” on a corner to more than cover Jessica K. Maxter’s legal fees, which they certainly did, eventually. In spades.

“Mr. Matthews? I’m Jessie Maxter. I’m an attorney and on behalf of No Moss Magazine, I’d like to offer my legal services. It is our belief that your 1st .amendment rights have been violated, and we intend to ensure that they are not in the future. Would you like to accept our offer?’

“Sure,” Ryan said, shrugging those shoulders on which he regularly bore the weight of the world.

And so they went to court. Ironically, Maxter’s defense of his right to free speech was founded upon the grounds that he was a nut to whom nobody would listen. It was the question of clear and present danger to society. Did a right to free speech extend to one’s right to shout “Fire,” in a crowded movie-house? In a famous decision almost a hundred years ago, the Supreme Court had affirmed that, no, in fact it did not. Contrary to a misconception that is not exactly popular, but does have some cachet amongst the moderately ignorant, the case was not actually about shouting fire in a crowded movie house, but rather distributing pamphlets opposing the government’s conscription of men into the military.

(The truly ignorant have never heard of the case at all. They are the majority.)

The case secured the right of the government to deny first amendment rights to a citizen if and only if a) it felt there was a good chance that people might actually listen and b) the government didn’t like what he was saying.

Maxter paraphrased Oliver Wendell Holmes in her own argument, suggesting that while shouting “fire” in a crowded movie house might present a clear and present danger to society, shouting “Escaped dinosaur” would not. It was amusing, perhaps, but not dangerous.

And so the following Monday morning at 8:30 a.m. on the corner of Wall and Broad streets, in the presence of a few news cameras, as well as journalists from No Moss and other outlets, Ryan again ascended a soapbox, armed with a shiny new bull-horn. A more expensive, high tech bullhorn, purchased and given to him by No Moss. It was capable of producing more righteous decibels than he had ever been able to produce before.

His oratory was uninterrupted and he continued for a good solid 45 minutes before his vocal chords could take no more. The speech concerned poverty, injustice, class struggle, justice, and of course, eating the rich. A moderate crowd applauded.

The press ate it up, so to speak. No Moss did a story on defending the right to free speech for a raving maniac. It was the sort of thing the magazine was known for. That was its whole shtick.

Then a quirky news show began taping Ryan’s weekly high volume sermons. They became the closing feature for its “Realnews!” broadcasts. The most popular part of the show, keeping people sitting through that last barrage of commercials so they could catch the entertaining and hungry madman.

Ryan became a star, though he’d never asked for stardom. He’d only asked for revolution. After his TV spot became a regular feature, he also asked viewers for recipes.

Unnatural Disasters

2010-01-20T08:00:00.001-08:00

There is nothing unnatural about natural disasters, and, specifically, there is nothing supernatural about them. Earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, and other catastrophic manifestations of nature have always been with us. Since long before idiots came up with asinine religious explanations for them. Religious fundamentalism is, geologically speaking, a very recent catastrophe.

An enormous asteroid hit the Earth 65 million years ago —was this the wrath of an angry god, outraged at rampant sin among the dinosaurs? Were the triceratops buggering the stegosaurs? Were the tyrannosaurs holding black masses and worshipping Satan? No. Those nifty black robes would never fit them. The dinosaurs angered no gods. They were done in by the random impact of a piece of rock that happened to intersect the orbit of our planet, long before people ever walked the Earth, and long before anyone conceived of gods or devils or even the concept of right, wrong, good, or evil.

It was tens of millions of years later that human beings finally evolved and began to develop the necessary intelligence to even wonder why the Earth would sometimes shake, or why mountains would occasionally explode and spew deadly molten rock, or why the rains would abate and leave them starving as crops withered and died. Or, alternately, pelt down torrentially and flood their lands, along with bolts of electric fire. And who can fault our hirsute forbears for coming up with what was, in their primitive minds, a good theory to explain the unexplainable natural phenomena, which was that the erupting volcanoes and lightning bolts and earthquakes were the actions of angry gods? At least they put forth a postulate.

To the Greeks and Norse, lightning was the direct result of Zeus and Thor, respectively, hurling down their thunderbolts in righteous divine indignation. Most modern people who aren’t idiots now believe it’s the result of the buildup of static electricity in the Earth’s atmosphere. Angry gods really don’t have anything to do with it. For example, watch this: Thor is a pathetic little girly man! Notice the conspicuous absence of my incineration.

Volcanoes, we now know, are ruptures in the Earth’s crust, through which molten magma beneath the surface can sometimes violently seep forth. There is an entire field of science behind it. It’s called vulcanology, named, of course, after the Roman god Vulcan, but I think it’s safe to say that not a single vulcanologist believes that Vulcan is even a tertiary causative factor. Some ancient people even sacrificed virgins to the volcanoes, hoping to appease the volcano god. It didn’t work, and not just because giving any guy a virgin is a bad strategy if you want to prevent him from having an explosive effluence, but simply because volcanoes are manifestations of ruptures in the Earth’s crust, and have nothing to do with the libidos of deities.

We (and by “we” I mean, intelligent human beings, and there are millions of us, though there are billions who just don’t qualify) have come a long way since then. We’ve developed sciences such as geology and meteorology to explain natural phenomena. Sadly, some people still blame angry gods.

When the devastating tsunami smashed into Indonesia in 2004, religious explanations abounded, and in an extraordinary example of pretzel logic, advocates of disparate religions all saw it as vindication of their own faith by their god. Christians saw it as clear evidence that their god was smiting the Muslims for being Muslim. Muslims saw it as him smiting them for not being Muslim enough.

You have to wonder if an omnipotent being couldn’t smite with a little more precision. It always seems to slam entire regions, based, allegedly, on the actions of some of the people. The righteous, the sinners, and little babies who haven’t had a chance to make up their little minds all get zapped at once. Even the United States’ “smart bombs” and “surgical strikes,” while they do occasionally take out wedding parties, schools, and hospitals, are just a little bit better at killing the bad guys without so much collateral damage.

Which brings us to last week’s horrifying catastrophe in Haiti and the comments of that champion of caveman-era causality, Pat Robertson. Robertson stated that the Earthquake was the result of a deal with the devil that Haitian slaves made to throw off the yoke of the French. Which raises the question of why his god waited several centuries to show his displeasure, and why, when he does shake the Earth, it’s nearly always in places where tectonic plates adjoin, and seldom in the middle of them, regardless of the density of sinners therein.

Robertson doubtless takes literally the theory that Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by his god in response to the rampant vice in those cities, with all the men Gomorrizing one another and whatnot. Modern scientists believe that, if the story is not a complete fiction and that the two cities were cataclysmically destroyed, seismic activity probably had more to do with it than the sexual orientation of its inhabitants. Fundamentalist Christians are obsessed with homosexuality, and often attribute natural disasters to it in some way.

I already mentioned the asteroid strike 65 million years ago, but the Permian–Triassic extinction event 251 million years ago was even more catastrophic, causing an extinction of the vast majority of life on the planet, including 96 % of all marine species. Most of these were hermaphroditic invertebrates, and, one assumes Robertson’s god found this close enough to homosexuality to smite the lot of them.

Hermaphrodites can, occasionally, go ahead and fuck themselves.

Pat Robertson can do the same.

Film Reviews: 01/05/10

2010-01-05T12:20:00.000-08:00

2001: A Space Odyssey 10 Stars

One of my favorite films of all time and one of my favorite books of all time too. People who haven’t read the book often find the movie to be a confusing pile of crap that doesn’t make any sense, but I suspect they are just saying that because they know it will piss me off. You should see this and read the book too, and then everything will make sense. Everything.
While inarguably visionary, Kubrick and Clarke’s vision of the future in 1969 has not come to pass. Computers have not yet achieved sentience, and they do not manipulate human beings like pawns to achieve their own objectives. We still have people doing that. Computers just make it a lot easier.

W 7 ½ Stars

I was afraid to watch this, because sometimes I can be a little bit emotional. Some things set me off, and none more so than THAT PIECE OF SHIT GEORGE W BUSH AND ALL THE TREASONOUS MURDEROUS DECEITFUL—

Sorry. The Bush administration put an emotional toll on me, the compound interest on which I am still paying off to this day. Those are eight years I’d rather forget, so it was with considerable apprehension that I popped this into the old DVD player, to relive the horror. My fears were unwarranted. It produced quite the opposite effect than that which I had dreaded. Instead of re-igniting the rage and ire and confusion I felt, it instead made me feel for the first time that I was not insane. And while what Bush did was tragic—he blatantly lied to the American public about why we were going to war, thereby causing the loss of thousands of lives, billions of dollars, and every shred of US respectability in the international community—for the first time I could see past that tragedy to the comedy underneath. Finally, I could laugh at the evil clown.

Mystery Men 5 ½ Stars

With the recent explosion of super-hero movies in the last decade or so, it’s only natural that someone would do a hilarious parody. And that hilarious parody is Frisky Dingo. You should put that at the top of your queue. Mystery Men is the mildly-amusing spoof that you should watch, eventually, but there’s no rush.

Dirty Pretty Things. 7 ½ Stars

I put this in the queue mainly because of Audrey Tautou, who is very pretty. The title suggested she might also be dirty in it. No such luck. But a good film, nevertheless. Suspenseful crime drama / romance. Not to give too much away, but the plot revolves around the sordid industry of illegal organ procurement. The organs in question are primarily kidneys. Remember: in spite of the name, it’s not dirty.

Bruno 8 ½ Stars

Sacha Baron Cohen flawlessly channels the spirit of the flamboyantly gay Austrian fashionista he has created, and everyone around him falls for it. Not to get too deep, since this is just a one-paragraph film review and not a college paper for which I will be receiving any credit, but the essence of humor is the juxtaposition of different frames of reference, which is what Cohen’s oeuvre is all about. We are privy to both interpretations of his character’s behavior, while the people around him see only one, setting up a specific cognitive dissonance we interpret as humor. It’s the simultaneous awareness of both mutually exclusive interpretations of observable phenomena that makes something funny. Seriously: humor scientists have figured all this stuff out. They have equations and everything. I don’t know whether Cohen is aware of all this deep theoretical analysis of humor, but if not, he obviously understands it intuitively. And yes, there is some social value here, commentary on homophobia and intolerance, etc. But mostly it’s just hilarious.

Hedvig and the Angry Inch 8 ½ Stars

This is outrageously entertaining, as I imagine everything associated with a botched sex-change operation is. The music is surprisingly good. The characters are irresistibly flawed, especially Hedvig, who has good reason for being the ill-tempered and insufferable bitch he/she is. Fun for the whole family, if your family is comfortable discussing penises. Otherwise, fun for you and your reprobate friends when your more sheltered and wholesome relatives aren’t around.

The Craft 3 Stars

It’s about four very attractive young women able to wreak havoc with magical powers. So I had to watch it. It’s not like I had a choice. How could I pass up that? Powerful, beautiful women with supernatural abilities, that’s cinematic gold as far as I’m concerned. Besides I’m working on a novel right now about a woman with a dark and demonic heritage, so watching this was research. Yeah. Research. Putting hot babes who kick ass into a movie is a good way to ensure that I’ll watch it, but it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that I’ll like it. I didn’t like it. There’s your proof, right there.

Crowley 4 Stars

Another film I watched as “research,” which is to say: an excuse to procrastinate and not work on my novel, much like, for example, writing this review is. The titular character is, of course, Aleister Crowley, the early 20th century’s most notorious occultist and boogie-man. His portrayal is actually quite good, and, I have to admit, as far as research is concerned, watching this was genuinely fruitful and stimulated some useful ideas. I could not in good conscience recommend this as an entertaining film for anyone who is not trying to get into the mind of a diabolical and evil character. But I’m pretty much done with trying to maintain a good conscience. Screw everyone else. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. The research is coming along nicely.

Hancock 6 Stars

Another super-hero movie, but instead of focusing on one you already know about, like Spider-Man or Elektra (nerds know about her, ok?), this one concerns a brand new super-hero. Or, rather, a super anti-hero. I thought the premise was interesting, and I like Will Smith. My biggest problem with it . . . oh my god. I was just about to describe my complaint about the realistic functionality of specific super powers, like a total goddamn nerd who never, ever came close to getting laid in his entire life. Well let me tell you, I’ve been laid, ok? Lots of times! I just like super heroes and sometimes I’m a stickler for details. I’m going to keep my complaints to myself. If you can suspend disbelief in super-powers in the first place, inconsistencies in their manifestation shouldn’t be a problem, and shouldn’t stand in the way of enjoying a fun little flick. Those who can’t do that can write to me directly and we’ll discuss it in obsessive nerdy detail. And while we’re at it, I have a few thoughts on the feasibility of the Starship Enterprise’s alleged “warp” drive. Yeah.

Lars and the Real Girl 5 Stars

While I am not a licensed psychiatrist, that never stopped me from prescribing powerful medication for myself. And it won’t stop me from pronouncing the premise of this film to be flawed in its entirety. It concerns what is meant to be an amusing instance of a delusional personality, but I’m pretty sure the shrinks out there will agree that it doesn’t work this way. Which would have been fine if they went totally over the top and made an absurd farce of it, but they didn’t. My feeling is: you can’t have it both ways. Either do your homework and find out exactly how mental illness actually works, or make it into a slapstick comedy. I would have preferred the latter. The jokes would have written themselves. It was about a blow-up sex doll, after all. How hard could it be? See: there was a joke right there.

Film reviews. November 9

2009-11-09T07:55:00.000-08:00

It's come to my attention that not a lot of people care what I think. This is, of course, a severe blow to someone as opinionated and narcissistic as I. And since the House passed the health care bill this Saturday, I'm taking a break from ranting about something I actually care passionately about--ensuring that poor sick people don't die--and returning to something that is, let's face it, just a little bit more fun: reviewing the silly movies I've seen via netflix in the last month or so.

Prime 6 Stars

After recovering from my initial disappointment in learning that this has nothing to do with math, I was able to relax and enjoy it. It’s a cute romantic comedy. It would probably have made for a good date movie, back when it was in the theatres, but if you are seeing it now, it’s most likely going to be at home, watching the DVD from the comfort of your couch, so you are probably past the dating stage by now, or if not: tonight’s the night, you lucky dog. Don’t forget the condoms.

The Namesake 7.5 Stars

Netflix created a category for me, based on my choices and preferences: father/son bonding movies. Apparently, I watch a lot of these. This is definitely one of the better ones. Touching. Funny. Sad. All that stuff. Moving, but not heartbreaking. I didn’t laugh. I didn’t cry. But I grinned and got a little misty, ok?

Afropunk 6 Stars

An interesting documentary about African-American punk rockers. Most punk rockers are upper-middle class suburban white kids who lead cushy lives of comfort and privilege, and shove safety pins through their faces to illustrate just how angry they are about this intolerable state of affairs. Quite a lot of African American kids live in cities, and a significant percentage of them have very real things to worry or be angry about, like drugs, gangs, violence, crime, etc., so it’s little wonder that few of them are drawn to a culture that is rebelling against mommy and daddy and all their money. Pretty much all of them are interviewed here. They all sound exactly like upper middle class suburban white kids, though slightly more alienated and with a little bit more substance to their angst. The take home message for me: Bad brains is a damn good punk band.

The Taking of Pelham 123 4 Stars

No, not the new one with Denzel Washington and John Travolta. The original, with Walter Matheau and Robert Shaw. Netflix suggested it after I got Charley Varrick, reasoning, in its Netflixy way, that I have an obsession with 70’s action flicks starring Walter Matheau. I assure you: I do not. But if you want to try one out, definitely go with Charley Varrick. It’s so much better than this. The villains here are two-dimensional. Their motivations unrealistic and contrived. The plot is absurd. One can only assume the only reason they remade this is that the filmmakers figured they could probably do a better job the second time around, which would have been as easy as 1, 2, 3.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold 2 Stars

I have heard that some MI-6, CIA, and NSA agents spend their time piecing through bits of shredded documents they find in garbage. Spy movies usually tend to romanticize the world of international espionage and present it as slightly more exciting than that. This took the opposite approach and managed to make it even more boring. It stars off with a scene at Checkpoint Charlie, where I visited last year, so that was exciting for me, but it just goes downhill from there. I was hoping for some action, suspense, intrigue and, if at all possible, just a little bit of actual espionage. Maybe they get to some of that stuff an hour or so into the film, but I never made it that far. He was still out in the cold when I turned this snoozer off.

Before Sunrise 6.5 Stars

A cute romantic film, which you’ll enjoy even more if you’ve ever been in Europe or fallen ever so briefly in love with someone you met on a train. It was recommended to me, but only as a set up for the sequel, Before Sunset. I’ll get back to you after I’ve seen that.

I Know What You Did Last Summer 4 Stars

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Homicidal killer attempts, mostly successfully, to skewer a series of attractive young people. In the end, at least one of them escapes and temporarily thwarts his sociopathic ambitions, just long enough for her to recruit new friends to get butchered in the sequel. Can’t the new friends see what’s coming? Hot girl. All her friends brutally murdered. A year has passed. Now she wants to be your friend. Run away. Has experience taught you nothing? This is a pretty generic slasher movie. Nothing too inventive or surprising. I’m going to watch the sequel anyway. I don’t learn from experience either.

The Lives of Others 8 Stars

Why, my beautiful German-speaking girlfriend asked, is every German film either about Nazis or the oppressive secret police of the DDR during the Cold War? Because, I answered, Germans are far more entertaining when they are evil, and they do it so well. Ooooh! Clocks! Green technology! Bratwurst! Yes, that’s right: good Germans are boring. Bring on the scowling, scheming commandants! In spite of the dark subject matter, this film gives us a few laughs, and some hope. Hope that an individual can stand up to an evil system and make a difference. I’m not giving anything away, I trust, by telling you that the wall comes down at the end (1). In the sequel, of course, I expect our hero is no longer the subject of a secret evil government surveillance project, and his major obstacle to happiness will be when he has to wait for a bus that runs a full 45 seconds late. This is considered tragic in modern Germany. Sigh. Don’t you miss the bad old days?

(1) Note: It was twenty years ago today!

Heavenly Creatures 3 Stars

Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame directed this, and that’s why I rented it. I was disappointed. And not just because there were no hobbits, though that certainly didn’t help matters. It’s based on a compelling true crime story, but the characters were caricatures, lacking substance but compensating by overacting. Jackson went on to have me believe in elves and trolls, but I didn’t believe in these two giggling, psychotic girls. It just seemed unreal and fantastic, which is, again, pretty surprising when I completely and without reservation accepted that the fate of the world rested on the destruction of an evil piece of jewelry by a pair of midgets.

The Yes Men 6 Stars

I love the idea of the Yes Men, but to make a really great, hilarious film, they should have gotten more footage and mercilessly edited it down to its comic quintessence. I certainly recommend it to anyone curious about what’s wrong with the world or just looking for something on which to focus ambient rage and angst. As far as making the world a better place, the Yes Men are on the vanguard. But the film just isn’t as funny as I thought it would be. I think this is because they are attempting to embarrass the evil men who run our world and who, on a regular basis, do horrible, despicable things. The fact that the evil ones don’t seem to notice that they are being satirized just makes it all the more tragic.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button 6 Stars

I heard that this would be a life-changing cinematic experience, and it turned out to be just a pretty good movie. Such is life. Life, by the way, is what this is about. Setting aside eastern mysticism for a moment, we only get one of these, and that, I think, is the point. The very best part of the film is an earnest reflection on this very idea. Here you are. Barring tragic inconvenience, you’ve got a few decades to kill. Make the most of them.

Discworld: The Wyrd Sisters. 3 Stars

I simply adore Terry Pratchett’s novels. They are Fantastic. Brilliant. Comic genius. In movie form, though, the magic is gone. Like Discworld itself, wherein almost all of his hilarious stories are set, they fall flat, or this one did, anyway. Don’t bother putting this in your queue. Get one of his books. Any one of his books. Choose randomly in some entertaining fashion. Leave it to the gods of chance. They will not steer you wrong. Picked one? Good. Um, now read it. Turn off your DVD player and read the book. Pretty good, eh? There’s a few dozen more where that came from. Who needs a stupid movie?

Gonzo 9 Stars

A good film will make me laugh. A better one will make me cry. A superb one will do both. And a truly great one will force me to get raging drunk in a fit of depression. Hunter S Thompson is, I think, one of the most wildly misunderstood artists ever. His zany antics, his ostentatious persona, always larger than life and twice as high, eclipsed the fact that he was an astoundingly good writer, and a passionate voice for justice. This side of Hunter is brought front and center in this excellent documentary, without for a moment ignoring the undeniably true, but non-character defining fact that he was a drug crazed maniac as well. It renewed my own calling to use my writing to speak truth to power, and, occasionally, to reality. But first, as mentioned, it inspired me to get wasted. I’m not sure which is a more earnest tribute to the late great Dr. Thompson.

The Prize Winner of Defiance Ohio 8 Stars

I love everything Julianne Moore is in. Even if it’s a crappy movie, I just like watching her. Fortunately, this was easy to love. Regular readers of my reviews may note that I have a thing for the hot-babes-who-kick-ass genre of films, and I think this qualifies, although in contrast to shooting, punching, and slicing up evil men, as typified by many of my other favorites, she kicks ass with her pen. She’s a brilliant writer, trapped in an oppressive male-dominated society, stifled by her asshole husband, saddled with fulfilling her duty as housewife and mother. Nonetheless: she kicks ass. Angelina Jolie, eat your heart out.

28 Days Later 2 Stars

This is a zombie movie with a twist. It sucks! Bet you didn’t see that coming! I certainly didn’t, what with all the buzz and acclaim surrounding it. Looking on Netflix, I see that close to half the people who reviewed it gave it five out of five stars, which I find utterly astounding. Although I did not enjoy it, and would not recommend it, nor, for example, wish it upon my worst enemy, I suppose I could imagine, hypothetically, under the right circumstances, on the right drugs, finding it somewhat entertaining. But I could not even conceive of ranking it among the best films that I’d ever seen, even if my tastes were not so intimidatingly refined and even if I actually liked shitty movies, which, of course, I don’t. I got this around Halloween to get into the holiday spirit. But it’s not scary. It’s just stupid. Right-wing nutjobs, notwithstanding, stupidity just isn’t scary.

You say you want a Revolution? Seriously, I totally can't hear you when you mumble like that.

2009-10-27T06:50:00.000-07:00

On September 12th, this year, our nation witnessed the largest gathering of misspelled protest signs ever assembled in one place. I’m talking about the tea-baggers, who only recently figured out what that term means. (Ha! Ha! Stupid teabaggers!) They gathered en masse, chanted insane bullshit, said unbelievably stupid things very loudly, and got international attention in the process, thus further firing up their base: the politically key clueless stupid asshole voting bloc.

I went to an event yesterday organized by their opponents, the people who are trying to get healthcare reform passed. They were the opposite in every possible way. The tea-baggers are stupid, mean, totally misinformed, and loud. These folks were intelligent, compassionate, factually accurate, and quiet to the point of being soporific. They could be behind you right now and you wouldn’t know it! Watch out! They might sneak up on you and give you healthcare!

H.R. 3200, which is how the healthcare bill is known to its really close friends, is 1017 pages long, and has been scientifically proven to be the most boring document in existence. Imagine Beowolf with all the good parts taken out and replaced with what was left of your organic chemistry textbook after you cut the good parts out of that. This would still be more exciting than our good friend, H.R. 3200, bless its well meaning but painfully dull soul.

The idea behind this event was that we were going to read it. Yup, read the entire thing, all 1017 pages, all day long. Sound pretty boring? But wait! It’s not even as exciting as that! Because not only were people taking turns reading the most uninteresting and tedious document you could imagine in all your mildest dreams, they were doing so without amplification.

There was a bullhorn provided, but nobody was using it. I pedaled up on my bike about fifteen minutes before my own appointed reading slot, and mistook the person doing the reading, who sat unobtrusively behind a desk and appeared to mumbling under her breath, for the person with whom I was supposed to sign in.

“Hey there! I’m here for the . . .”

She looks up from the mammoth document from which she is reading “aloud.”

“”Oh, sorry,” I say and find the proper person to sign in with.

After her, another gentleman went up to read. I was sitting ten feet away and could not hear a word. People on the street passed by without comment or interest. He was about five minutes into it when two alleged "journalists" came up to ask him . . . about the Phillies. I am not kidding. He was in the middle of speaking at a political event and they interrupted him, during his “speech” to ask him about the Phillies.

When my turn came, I picked up the bullhorn. I tried to spice it up. I shouted and inflected my words as if there were passionate oratory behind them.

What I was actually reading was:

"Paragraph (74) of section
1902(a) of such Act (42 U.S.C. 1396a(a)), as added
by section 1631(b)(1), is amended—
(A) by inserting ‘‘or subsection (b) of such
section (relating to disclosure requirements)’’
before ‘‘, and that the State’’; and!!
(B) by inserting before the period the following: ‘‘and apply any enhanced safeguards,
with respect to a provider or supplier described!"

Bitches!

(I did not add ‘bitches!’)

Still: I shouted and gestured and pretended I was in a frothy lather. But then when I was done, the next person read quietly, to herself, as if trying to ensure that she did not bother anyone. As if that were not the entire point.

Zzzzzzz . . . . oh, what was that? A revolution? Wake me up for that when it comes arounnnnn zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The Wave

2009-10-23T08:00:00.000-07:00

I just watched a documentary about Hunter S. Thompson, one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, who is, sadly, often misunderstood and pigeonholed as a psychotic drug fiend. Which he was, of course, and proudly so, but he was so much more than that.

One of the passages from his staggeringly brilliant Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas struck me as particularly apropos today.

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Hunter was bemoaning the collapse of the social movement he witnessed throughout the 1960s, when, it seemed, real and lasting change was possible. Hope was alive and well and thriving. Peace and justice in our time was within reach. And then it all turned to shit overnight. Yanked out of our collective grasp like the grapes of Tantalus.

I was born in 1968, when, many would say, this disintegration began. This is entirely a coincidence. There were far more significant tragedies in that dreadful year. The assassination of two of the era’s shining beacons of hope, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, ripped the soul right out of the progressive cause, leaving a generation stunned and impotent.

When I was in my mid-20s and filled with the irrational exuberance of youth, I canvassed door-to-door for social change. I vividly remember meeting a few former 60s activists, who told me they once thought that they could change the world, make it better, achieve that fabled thing called justice, but then it all fell apart in 1968, their final drops of hope draining away as the blood leaked out of Bobby Kennedy’s lifeless body.

Hope twitched a little last year and it seemed to be emerging from its coma, but then it closed its eyes and went back to its dreamless sleep. And there was nothing so dramatic as an assassination responsible. Hope was killed by the lies and stupidity of a vicious pack of rabid bigots and the apathy and indifference of everyone else.

In a recent book review in Dusted, Kevan Harris writes:

After all, given what has occurred in the U.S. between January and now, it seems we are experiencing the fastest unraveling of a liberal consensus since the Weimar Republic. In 2008, the Obama campaign was astonishingly able to get 18-24 year olds from around the country to knock on doors in poor neighborhoods, engage strangers in debate, go sleepless nights occupied with political action that many had told them was futile and impossibly naïve.

Harris later notes that Obama understandably felt that there was a movement behind him, and has been scrambling to drum up the energy to keep moving forward in its absence. With a forthright and honest pessimism Harris then comments: “Frankly, the movement is already gone, so someone should let him down easy.”

Back in 1968, there was nothing activists could do to bring their fallen heroes back to life. The Kennedy’s were gone, Dr. King had passed, and all their prayers and hopes and vigils and tears could never do a thing about it. Right now, the hopes of another generation are vanishing before our eyes, and what makes it all the more tragic is that we could do something about it. It is not irreversible. We could make it happen. Although we could never undo the evil wrought by an assassin’s bullet, we could turn around the lies of the right, if only we wanted to. If only we tried.

We came so close, so very close to real and lasting change this time around, but now that wave has crashed and is receding. Like Dr. Thompson, I feel that I can almost see the high-water mark.

An Apology.

2009-10-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

In the midst of the healthcare debate a few weeks ago, Democratic Representative Alan Grayson said that the Republican party’s plan for healthcare was for the sick to “die quickly.” Republicans immediately demanded that he apologize for such a highly offensive true statement. Grayson responded with an apology, but it wasn’t an apology to the Republicans. He apologized to the dead and their families for not acting sooner. If you haven’t heard it yet, you should. It’s brilliant.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoITVLWpKB8

This is an apology, and, like Grayson’s apology, its main thrust is to reinforce the original message. But unlike Grayson, I am offering a genuine and sincere apology directly to those I may have offended.

I’ve been ranting and raving about healthcare and I know that some people might not appreciate my acerbic manner. And I really and truly don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, nor do I feel that most people, and in fact any of the people who are friends with me on facebook, for example, are bad people. They are all actual friends of mine and they wouldn’t be my friends if I didn’t like them and think well of them. But I cannot help but try to use every and any means necessary to inspire people to raise their voices and take action on this issue, because I believe that this is the greatest moment of political crisis that has come about during my lifetime. I cannot keep my mouth shut in the interest of decorum. I can’t keep my mouth shut when I’m chewing food, either, and that’s something else I’ve been working on.

My friend Jacob, who is nearly 70 years old, was recently arrested in an act of civil disobedience. Getting arrested is not polite. Chaining yourself to the entrance of an institution with whom you disagree is not polite, and it’s not something to be undertaken lightly. Both civil disobedience and irate ranting are unproductive if used constantly. Circumstances have to be extreme for this type of “impolite” activism to be effective. I feel that they are. And I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be mean. I just can’t help it.

I’m not a big fan of facebook culture. I do not, for example, give a rat’s ass “what 80’s pop star” or “what breakfast cereal” I am.(1) I do not feel compelled to let everyone know “Andy Breslin just ate a bagel and it was pretty good,” or “Andy Breslin just let out a wicked fart.” (This is an exaggeration for dramatic purposes. It was rather mild as far as my flatulence goes.) Some people are into this stuff, and that’s fine. Not everyone enjoys the same distractions and forms of entertainment.

By no means am I spending every spare moment of my day working to make the world a better place. I indulge. I hang out with friends and drink beer. I watch movies. I play my banjo. I ride my bike. So I have no right to criticize people for having their fun. None whatsoever. I’m a jerk. A big, mean, hypocritical jerk and I’m sorry.

Note: my admission of being a jerk does not mean that I’m going to stop.

For example:

If you have not yet contacted your elected representatives to let them know that you support a public option(2), then you are singlehandedly responsible for the downfall of western civilization.

And

If you have enough time to fill out some asinine survey to determine “what polyhedron are you?”(3) or keep everyone updated about your soul searching deliberations concerning what you are going to make for dinner, but can’t be bothered to speak up about healthcare reform, then you are clearly no better than the illegitimate love child of Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

Or maybe

Jesus H fucking Christ on a goddamn stick! How fucking hard is it to contact your elected representatives? You are personally blowing Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck, aren’t you? You are in bed with the devil. You are getting paid directly by the insurance companies to subvert all progress toward a better world, and you eat babies. Non-organically grown babies! Admit it!!!

Wow, did I say that? That was just plain mean. Believe me—and I am being 100% sincere now: I’m really sorry.

Peace and love to all.

1) For the record: Froot Loops and Weird Al Yankovic
2) If you have, by the way, you are off the hook. Ignore all my abuse. But hey, how about letting other people know what an upstanding citizen you are and lead by example? Ha! Even my footnotes are preachy!
3) I’m a Rhombic triacontahedron

Dissing Chris

2009-10-12T11:07:00.000-07:00

This appeared a few years ago in the fine publication, QECE. I'm reposting here in honor of Columbus Day. :)

* * *

“I celebrated Columbus Day by breaking into my neighbors’ house, declaring the occupants savages, and claiming everything they had as my own.”
~ Dennis Miller

“Christopher Columbus was a slave-trading, murdering rapist scumbag.”

Thus read the placard on my chest. Sometimes you have to come straight to the point.

So there it was, Columbus Day. In the words on a T-shirt I wore underneath the placard, “A celebration of genocide.” (I deemed the T-shirt far too subtle.) A day on which millions of people pay tribute to a selfish evil slave trader who invaded another land and initiated perhaps the greatest crime one group of people has ever perpetrated upon another..

Maybe I’m overstating the case. Not with regard to Columbus, who is everything I’ve said, and much more that I won’t say, lest I lapse into long streams of barely articulate profanity, but only with regard to the “millions of people paying tribute.” For most people it is a three-day weekend and thoughts of honor or repulsion for some Italian conquistador dead almost 500 years are lost amidst the joy of sleeping late on a Monday and yet another excuse for thousands of stores to have sales of things nobody really needs anyway.

Not me though. I get consumed by righteous rage every October. (The rest of the year, I’m calm and content, you know. Hunky and dory.) I can’t stand idly by and let people enjoy their silly little sales knowing that, even if they don’t realize it or give a tinker’s dam, they are actually honoring one of the filthiest, slimiest murderous scum sucking bastards in all of history.

So I was walking around with this placard of my own creation across my chest, spreading a little holiday cheer. I’d made some fliers outlining the atrocities of Mr. Columbus, as well as his utter ineptitude as a geographer. (He was evil, and stupid!) These I proceeded to pass out to anyone who would take one.

One chap was not at all pleased with the placard.

“What the fuck does that say?” he inquired. I was uncertain whether this was a rhetorical question. The concept seemed beyond him, but I made no presumptions.

“It says ‘Christopher Columbus was a slave-trading, murdering, rapist scumbag,’ ” I replied, truthfully.

He sneered, “You just don’t like Italians.”

I boggled uselessly for a few moments. Was this some strange Zen koan? It seemed to make no sense whatsoever. There was absolutely no logic to it.

Finally I recovered. I struggled to reason with this individual to whom reason itself was so obviously as foreign as Columbus was to this continent I’m sitting on. “That’s not true and it has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Columbus was a slave trader. That’s just a fact. It’s uncontestable. It wouldn’t matter what his lineage was, he was a slave-trader, and an agent of genocide . . .”

“Ah you just don’t like Italians. Get the fuck out of here, you asshole,” he refuted.

It was clear that he was terminally stupid. A lost cause. One can only remain an ignoramus for so long in one’s life before the condition becomes inoperable, even to a skilled surgeon such as myself, so I abandoned him to wallow in his ignorance, and I quickly exited to avoid becoming unduly affected by his idiocy. People saying outrageously stupid things tend to make me yell for some reason. It has never been effective. Write that down in your book of wisdom: Don’t waste your breath yelling at stupid people. They aren’t hard-of-hearing. They are stupid. Volume will accomplish nothing. Save your energy. Move on to someone who will listen.

I walked down to Penn’s landing, overlooking the Delaware river on the eastern edge of Philadelphia, where sits the most appalling monument in the entire city. It is a large phallus-shaped monolithic monstrosity dedicated to Christopher Columbus. It begs for TNT every time I see it. It is a travesty. It makes me sick. It fills me with revulsion. Am I making the point here? Can I go on?

So I handed out fliers at the base of this horrible monument. People took them. They may have thought they were promotional materials outlining yet another sale. I had nothing to sell. Truth is free, but no one wants it. Lies and trash cost money, but people are happy to pay. Go figure.

Eventually a little man on a little motorized scooter drove up and swaggered officiously.

“What are you doing there?”

“Teaching people about Columbus,” I replied, again as honest as water is wet.

“You can’t do that here,” he said shaking his head, clearly shocked that there was unsanctioned education occurring on his beat.

“But what about the first amendment?” I asked, “What about free speech?”

He continued to shake his head. “This is private property. There is no first amendment here.”

I was feeling a little dejected. I’d given out many fliers and maybe I’d raised an eye or two, but overall I was just disgusted with everything. I began to walk home where I could stew in my melancholy and cynicism. Along the way, I passed a couple of young boys, roughly 12 or 13, I’d guess. They were tossing a football and having fun. I smiled at them. “How’s it going?” I said.

“Hi!” they said. Very friendly kids. I like that.

“Hey, I guess you got school off because of Columbus day, huh?”

“Uh huh.,” they replied.

“Tell me, do you think Columbus was a good man?”

They actually stopped tossing the ball at this point. I’d drawn them in. I savored the moment. These are the moments social activists must savor, for they are few and far between. These are the occasions where you can actually watch a mind open.

“Well, sure, um . . . he discovered America,” one of them suggested.

“Well, how could he discover it, I mean there were already people living here, right? You know that right? You learned that in school.”

“Uh huh! The Indians!” the other offered with enthusiasm.

“Those people and their ancestors had been living here for thousands of years, right?’

“Yeah, I guess so . . .” one of them said.

“Well, what do you think happened after Columbus came?”

Puzzled confused silence. They didn’t know it, but they were experiencing their very first disillusionment. I only hope it was the first of many.

“Do you know that he packed thousands of those people into boats and sent them back to Spain to sell as slaves?”

Silence again. Sparks of thought gleaming in their eyes. This could be the birth of two radical malcontents. I gloried.

“And do you know that soon after Christopher Columbus arrived, millions of those people were dead and that people from Spain, where he came from followed him to take what Christopher Columbus had claimed in the name of Spain, to take the homes away from all those people who’d been living on the land for generations. And wave after wave of other Europeans followed. The native people were just robbed of everything and almost all of them were killed.

“So do you still think Christopher Columbus was a good man?” I asked.

They both shook their heads.

“Do me a favor,” I said. “Tell your friends.”

They smiled and said, “OK,” then went back to tossing the ball.

I waved good-bye and walked away.

“Thank you,” one of them said.

It was the best “thank you.” I ever got.

The number of possible different games of chess

2009-10-12T06:23:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a short break from ranting about healthcare reform to digress briefly on my other passion: mathematical geekdom. This was at the request of my brother. Some years ago he asked me a question and this was my reply. He recently asked me to send it to him again, so I decided to just bloggify it.

Q: Is it true that the number of possible different games of chess is larger than the number of atoms in the universe?

Indeed. It is true. Hard to believe, yes, but true nevertheless. I shall endeavor to explain the phenomenon in a clear and concise fashion. I shall fail. I shall then lower my standards and settle for clear. If you want concise, then I’m going to need more money.

To avoid burdensome repetition of a long and unwieldy phrase, the number of possible different games of chess shall henceforth be designated by “c#.” This symbol will be used a little further in this discussion. Don’t be alarmed when it does.

Discussions of the number of possible chess games inevitably include “Shannon’s number,” named after the information theorist Claude Shannon who published an influential 1950 paper titled “Programming a Computer for Playing Chess,” the subject of which was, one hopes, self evident.(1) This number is 10^120. Contrary to popular misconception(2) , c# is almost inconceivably larger than Shannon’s number, which estimates a lower bound for chess games of no more than 40 moves on each side. Just so we’re clear: standard convention defines a “move” as one move on each side, so when we say “40 moves” that means 40 moves on each side. (One move on a side is called a “ply” for some unfathomable reason.)

While most games that people actually play are finished within 40 moves, a game could, in theory, last much longer. But let’s just take a look at what a mammoth beast Shannon’s number is before we try to show it up with even bigger numbers.

The number of atoms in the observable universe is about 10^80. Shannon’s Number is, therefore, 10^40 times bigger than this. In other words, for every atom in the universe, you could associate 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 separate and distinct possible chess games. Why you would want to do this is beyond me, but you could, in theory. In practice, you would constantly be dropping the atoms and losing count. It would get old so fast.

Here’s how Shannon calculated this estimation: He (3) looked at a large number of master games and determined the total number of legal moves in each position of the game. In any one of those many positions, there were probably no more than two or three moves that the masters were even considering, but there were, on average, about 30 legal moves(4). So from any given position, on average, I can make any one of thirty different moves. You can make any of thirty different replies. That’s 900 right there (30x30). Then I have thirty more choices and you have thirty replies. That’s 810,000. (30 x 30) x (30 x30). By the third move we’re at (30x30) x (30x30) x (30x30) or, if you prefer 30^6, or, more dramatically, which I prefer: 729,000,000. 30^80 (an average of 30 possible moves for 40 moves for each player, or 30 multiplied by itself 80 times) works out to 1.47 x 10^118 which we can just round up to 10^120. That’s big. As noted: much bigger than the number of atoms in the universe. But the true c# is even bigger. Much much bigger.

* * *

Without certain rules, chess would have not merely a mind-bogglingly large number of possible move sequences, but it would actually be infinite. (5)

These rules are as follows:

1) When a board position has repeated 3 times, the game is a draw.

2) When 50 moves have been made on each side without the exchange of a piece or the advancement of a pawn, the game is a draw.

Without these rules, any individual game could last an infinite number of moves and thus there would be an infinite number of possible different games. Using these rules, we can determine a reasonably low (and reasonably precise) number for the longest possible game: 5,899 moves(6) . No chess game that has ever actually been played by two players who were both trying to win and not set some sort of stupid record has ever lasted anywhere remotely close to this long for the simple reason that one of them would have slashed his wrists with a sharpened bishop to escape from the mind numbing tedium.

Assuming (7) that there are an average of 30 possible moves on each side at any given position, then 30^(2x5899) = approximately 10^17000. This number is frakking huge. If every atom in the universe had an entire universe (with the same number of atoms) associated with it, and every one of the atoms in every one of these sub-universes had a universe associated with it, and every one of the atoms in those universes had an entire universe associated with it, and so on, you’d need about nine levels of nested universes to contain all the atoms needed to associate one with every possible chess game. Storing all these universes is going to be highly problematic. There is no room in my basement, so don’t even ask.

* * *

Not only would nobody ever play any of the many possible 5,899 move games that theoretically “exist,” the vast overwhelming majority of all possible games of any arbitrary length will be “nonsense games.” Games no real players would ever actually play.

Consider a game that has gotten to the point where you have a mate in one. You simply have to move a piece into position and end it. You could, however, elect to move a piece somewhere else. The opponent, now doubtless either relieved that he’s been spared immediate doom, or annoyed that you are toying with him, will make some move. You could again forego the opportunity to end the game, even though that option is available and obvious. Instead, you sadistically just slide a piece from one square to another. The opponent is helpless.

This can continue for up to fifty moves before a draw is declared or until you get punched. Now, remember that those fifty moves could have occurred in a completely different sequence. Different non-game-ending moves could have been chosen. Billions and billions of different possibilities are available, all from a position that is a mate in one. Of course, any reasonable player isn’t going to take any of those billions and billions of paths. Just the one that leads to checkmate on the next move.

Since there are, on average, only about two moves that any intelligent chess player would consider making, and since most games do not last more than 40 moves, we can calculate a very rough estimation of the number of “plausible” chess games at 2^80 which works out to about 10^25. This is less than the number of atoms in the universe, but if there were an entire planet Earth for every person on this one Earth we’re living on, and every one of those Earths had the same number of people as this one, and every one of those billions of people on every one of those billions of Earths played a game of chess every day, and they all lived for a hundred years, they still wouldn’t come close to playing them all.

* * *

Here is the difference between chess and the atoms in the universe: Atoms are real things that take up real space, albeit a small amount, whereas chess games exist as quasi-real potentialities taking up no space at all. The number of chess games that have actually been played in all of history is only a tiny miniscule fraction of the number of atoms in the universe, and an even smaller fraction of c#.

A digression to illustrate what numbers can do when you aren’t paying attention and they multiply themselves together:

What is the largest number expressible in 3 digits?

Think it is 999? Afraid not, but let’s take a closer look at that number anyway. There are 1000 whole numbers from 0 to 999. 1000 different numbers can be expressed by the use of 10 digits in 3 fields. The reason that there is such a large number expressible with such small numbers is that there are 10 choices of a digit for the first field, and for every one of them there are 10 choices for second field, and for every one of them there are ten choices for the third field. 10^3 = 1000. Every additional digit increases the number by an order of magnitude, in precisely the same manner as every additional move increases the total number of possible chess games.

999 is pretty big, considering the small numbers that are used to construct it. But the biggest number expressible with 3 digits is 9^9^9. 9^9=387,420,489. Now raise 9 to this power. You get a number with about 300 million digits. The number of atoms in the universe has about 80 digits. Shannon’s number has 120. C# has a few thousand digits. This baby has 300 million.

Note that a number that is 300 million digits long is 10^299,999,920 times bigger than a number with 80 digits. Pay close attention there: It’s not 300 million times bigger. It’s almost 10 to the power of 300 million times as big.

Incidentally, a googol is a one followed by a hundred zeros. 10^100. Thus Shannon’s number, 10^120, is a mere 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 (just 100 quintillion!) times larger than the famous googol. It is a paltry embarrassment next to the perhaps more famous googolplex. A googolplex is a 1 followed by a googol of zeros. In other words it is 10^googol. Or 10^10^10^2. Even 9^9^9, which has no fancy name though it deserves one, can’t hold a candle to that monstrosity.

I’ve played chess for years and I’ve only recently developed an interest in bridge. One could make estimations about the number of possible bridge games that could be played (let’s call it b#. No one will stop us.), and this has undoubtedly been done, though I have yet to look it up because that would take the fun out of it. The numbers are certainly humongous, or possibly ginormous, whichever is bigger. Your first step in calculating this would be to determine how many different ways an ordinary deck could be shuffled, and then figure out how many different ways four different players could play with each different distribution of cards.

The deck could be shuffled in 10^67 different ways. You can confirm this by multiplying 52x51x50x49 . . . x3x2x1.(8) This is known as 52 factorial, and is written: 52! You don’t have to shout when you read it or use special emphasis and it’s considered gauche if you do. But 52! is getting up there with the number of atoms in the universe, and b# would certainly carry us far over the line.(9)

Googols, googolplexes and factorials of numbers even close to 52 are essentially meaningless when describing countable things, even the number of subatomic particles in the universe (probably the largest possible number of “things”). There just aren’t enough of them. They are used only in describing abstract number theory or in describing possible combinations of things, such as chess moves or card positions.

But enough abstraction. It’s my move. King’s pawn. Good old e4. It’s your turn now. This is a game with perfect information, so you can, in theory, determine exactly the best course of action. Just think about each of your twenty possible replies, and my possible replies to every one of those, and your possible replies to that and so on.

Get back to me in 10^90 years.

Notes:

1) It was about programming a computer to play chess.

2) Not all that popular, actually, as most people outside math geek circles have never heard of it, and would have no interest in it whatsoever. Sad.

3) To give credit where credit is due: it was some guy named De Groot who did this part of the analysis. I know that neither you nor he cares, but I’m a stickler for accurate attribution.

4) On the first move, there are twenty legal openings for white and twenty legal replies by black, so there are 400 possible ways the two players can play the first move. As the game develops, there are more legal moves available on average, most of them very bad moves.

5) Mathematicians get picky when describing infinite quantities, and there are several “levels” of infinity. If the following rules did not exist, c# would be of a type of infinity known as aleph-null. This is your garden-variety infinity, pretty small as infinities go, but still, you know: infinite. Distinguishing between this and other types of infinity is beyond the scope of this essay but it is an entertaining diversion. “Entertaining” is a highly subjective adjective. Some people might find such an endeavor to be the apotheosis of pointless mental masturbation and about as exciting as watching continents drift. Those people represent a pretty significant majority of the entire human race, numbering, it’s safe to say, over six billion. But as we have seen: six billion is tiny.

6) Slightly different rules for forced drawing produce minor variations in this figure, but seriously: when we’re dealing with numbers as big as we are in this little essay and you’re are busting my balls about the fine points of FIDE rules, you’ve really got a problem. I also admit that I've never actually seen the proof of this, and I've seen a few different answers now that I've been bothered enough to look. It's surprisingly complex to get an exact answer for this, but not too difficult to get a very close estimate. It doesn’t matter anyway, because in the answer we’re only using two significant digits in the exponent, let alone the actual number, so it would still round off the same.

7) This is a reckless, irresponsible, and unfounded assumption. We're going to make it any way.

8) I bet that was fun. Why didn’t you just take my word for it?

9) Sticklers for accuracy, or just plain pains-in-the-ass might note that although a deck can be shuffled in 10^67 different ways, for strategic purposes, it’s really the combinations of cards we’re interested in (which will be huge, but less huge), not the permutations. What that means is that it matters which 13 cards I end up with and not in what order they get dealt to me. Ultimately, however, it doesn’t matter because a) the actual play of the game will still involve an enormous number of possibilities, far larger than the number of atoms in the universe which is the point of this essay, and b) I’m a horrible bridge player and I’m going to lose, regardless.

Feeling self-righteous is not enough.

2009-09-30T07:02:00.000-07:00

Oh sure, it helps. Going around with the smug assurance that you are orders of magnitude more intelligent than all the Glen Beck listeners out there. Looking down your nose at right-wing idiots who support policies that any reasonably intelligent 6-year old can see does not benefit them. It’s important that you sit back and drink your shade grown fair-trade coffee with non-GMO organic soymilk, and it’s equally important that you feel morally and intellectually superior. Look at all those idiots out there!

But here’s a shocker: this doesn’t actually change anything. You have to actually DO something for that to happen. Sucks, doesn’t it? Your own sense of smug self-righteousness does not, in and of itself, power the machine of change and progress. Oh would that it did!

I’ve been on a bit of a tirade about healthcare reform now, and from what I have gathered so far:

1) Most of my friends are basically in agreement with me on this.

2) Most of them have the curious notion that some sort of political osmosis will carry their attitudes to Washington and make things better.

A friend recently posted the results of a major poll indicating that the public feels their voice has not been heard in the healthcare debate. This leads me to wonder: is it the voices inside your head that are not being heard? Because you have to actually speak to be heard.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113307616&sc=fb&cc=fp

Another friend posted coverage of some of the people who ARE being heard, mainly because they have taken the innovative step of actually saying something, often with bullhorns. And what they are saying is vile, ignorant, and, for the most part, completely untrue, totally dissociated from reality. Nevertheless, their voice is being heard. In fact, it won’t shut up. It’s a steady stream of frightening bullshit, loud and clear, 24, 7.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUPMjC9mq5Y

My father—not by any means a political radical, in fact, until recently a registered Republican—recently wrote a letter to his local paper correcting some gross misconceptions bandied about by right-wing demagogues trying to take advantage of the general public’s general ignorance, an act which has earned from me my undying respect and admiration. (Note: he already had these. He’s my dad after all! But now, even more so.) It gave me hope. If my dad, a retired, essentially conservative regular Joe can speak up and make his voice heard, maybe some of the self-perceived “radicals” out there can do the same.

You can write letters to the editor, you can post influential pieces on facebook, you can send emails to your friends, you can even, if you want to, get arrested in some well designed act of civil disobedience. Perhaps the easiest thing you can do is contact your elected representatives to let them know how you feel. It’s shockingly easy:

http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

Will this fix all the problems in the world? No. But it is a damn good start, and I promise you, with absolutely certainty, that it will do more than feeling smugly self-righteous, though it’s not as much fun.

How’s that soy latte? Pretty good, eh? Enjoy.

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.”

What's the big deal?

2009-09-23T07:25:00.001-07:00

I went to a protest rally yesterday for the first time in years and it was exhilarating beyond description, which is why, of course, I’m trying to describe it here. It carried me back to the days of my rabble-rousing youth and gave me some hope, a commodity severely lacking since shortly after Barack Obama’s election, when all the right-wing nutjobs came out of the woodwork and became activists overnight, and all the progressive intelligent people in the entire nation apparently went into a big collective coma.

We were chanting and waving signs to protest the obscene profits insurance companies enjoy while thousands of Americans die every year simply because they lack coverage and access to health care. A few people gave their heart-wrenching personal stories about how they had lost family members who couldn’t get insurance due to pre-existing conditions or having filled out some forbiddingly complicated form improperly or lost their job, etc. It was profoundly moving and brought a tear to the eye, or I’m sure it would have, if they had a better PA system. I got the gist of it though, and I chanted.

I don’t know if I can further emphasize how important this is. After enduring eight years of [long stream of profanity deleted] George Bush, we finally have a president who, by all appearances, wants to make government work for the good of all its citizens and not the wealthy elite. If you don’t raise your voice on this issue, then all his good intentions are going to go swirling down the drain. All the work that thousands upon thousands of people did to get him elected in the first place and steer this nation away from fascism was for nothing.

I have heard a number of lefty progressive types dismissing Obama’s proposals because they do not, in their opinion, go far enough. Let me assure you in no uncertain terms: the rightwing nutjobs of the world love you and hope that you keep it up. I suspect they may secretly be the ones egging you on. Ideological purity is a luxury not everyone can afford. Personally, I’d rather save just a few, even one of those 12,000 people who die every year from lack of coverage, than to be able to pat myself on the back and say “I didn’t compromise. Look at me. I’m so radical!”

This is not just about healthcare. If the needless death of 12,000 people doesn’t move you enough to make a small compromise (smug radicals) or spend five minutes writing an email or calling your representatives (lazy moderates) consider any other progressive issue at all. If you don’t weigh in on this, you can forget about pretty much anything else.

The rightwing nutjobs were opposed to Obama’s plan on healthcare long before he even proposed it. Their position was: whatever he’s for, we’re against it. South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint outlined their strategy back in July: “If we're able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.” And Rush Limbaugh, without a doubt the biggest asshole this side of a blue whale’s rectum, told his millions of brainless unthinking drones shortly after the election, “I hope he fails.”

They are doing everything in their power to ensure that he does. That’s why it is so important to act now, because this is it, folks. This is the chance to turn things around. Right here. Right now. Care about the environment? Want efficient mass transit? Care about women’s rights? Want a non-invasion based foreign policy? Opposed to torture? Think social security is a good idea? Want to reform agribusiness? Would you like to take some steps, however small, toward a government that promotes compassion and justice and decency? This is it. This is the chance to do it. This is the moment in history you’ve been waiting for. If you don’t speak up, now, loudly, then all of that is shot to shit.

I’m very sorry that my manner can sometimes be abrasive. I mean no personal offense to anyone (with the exception of George Bush and Rush Limbaugh, who are pure, undiluted evil and should be staked to an anthill with jelly spread on their genitals). I just don’t know how to further express how important this is. Want me to grovel and beg? I’m begging here. I’m on the ground. Please, if you have any sense and any decency whatsoever, please get involved on this. I only narrowly escaped putting a bullet through my brain during the Bush administration out of severe depression and conviction that all hope was lost. Obama’s election changed that and charged me with enthusiasm. For the first time in years, I thought maybe some change was possible. Now I find that enthusiasm waning, replaced with a crushing sense of hopelessness.

Please do it. Please. Please. Please.

Facebook: abyss of the mundane

2009-09-09T06:38:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone. Isn't facebook great? We can keep everyone we know regularly updated about what we had for breakfast, or just let fly with any random thoughts that enter our heads. Nothing is too mundane! And you can pretty much guarantee that others will join in and comment on these random thoughts. Paradoxically: the more trite the observation, the more public commentary you can expect.

Example:

John Doe is selecting his socks for the day
Jane Smith >Omg! Go with Argyle! LOL!
Joe Blow >What kind of shoes are you wearing
John Doe >Converse high tops
Joe Blow >can't go wrong with your basic white sock
Richard Smith >your smoking crack, joe, definitely go gray
>see all 27 comments

John Doe has nothing to say
Joe Blow >Say it with style
Jane Smith >OMG LOL!
Harry Johnson >Never stopped me before
Jane Smith >OMFG! ROTFLMAO!!
>see all 47 comments

But did you know: you can use these social networking platforms to express actual ideas of a moderately complex nature concerning things that might possibly be of fleeting importance? It's true! It's not actually required that it be an unending stream of jejune and meaningless folderol. Encouraged, certainly, but not required.

You can even use this as a tool to attempt to achieve some sort of social change. For example: did you know that the extreme right has mobilized and organized to dismantle everything positive President Obama wants to do for the USA and the world? Did you know that they are flooding the airwaves, town hall meetings and the offices of elected representatives with ultraconservative ideologies largely supported by blatant distortions of facts and outright lies? And did you know that these views are gaining momentum because they are largely unchecked by reasonably intelligent people with reasonably non-fascistic viewpoints, because these latter folks are busy commenting in detail about their friend's status change from one vague and meaningless state ("Joe Blow is feeling uppity") to another ("Joe Blow wishes he knew") .

Nobody should feel personally attacked by this. I know the silly side of social networking can be fun, and we all need a little bit of fun. But this is a moment of crisis in history and we have an unprecedented opportunity to take part in national and international discussions about issues that will affect every one of us and every one of our decendents. Can't we set aside a little time to do something about that, instead of publishing for the world to see: "Joe Blow really likes Pomegranate" or "Jane Smith is bringing on the funk, noise."?

Everyone here seems to have both an internet connection and at least a little bit of free time. If you haven’t already, please take the time to contact your elected representatives about healthcare and other important issues. Here is a link to a site that will make this just about as easy as a Facebook post, and a million times more satisfying.

http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

And if you are still feeling a little uppity, consider writing a letter or an op-ed piece to your local paper. Or just discussing issues, both in the “real world” and here in virtual la-la land. Or maybe, just maybe, take the time to write something—anything—that exceeds the character limit allowed by twitter and Facebook comments and status updates. And maybe spell check the damn thing. And don’t use 2, r, 4, and u as if they are words, because they aren’t. And “your” isn’t the same as “you’re.”

Now I’m just getting ornery. I apologize.

President Obama is addressing the nation tonight on healthcare. Please: watch it. Think about it. Formulate ideas about it. Share these ideas with others. Listen to what they have to say. Communicate. Enrich one another with different viewpoints on important issues. We are allowed to do this. We don’t have to be electronically enhanced zombies who have nothing to say, but say it anyway.

I now return you to continued discussion of what you are planning to have for lunch.

OMG! LOL!

Three film reviews

2009-08-19T13:36:00.000-07:00

Short Cuts 3 of 10 Stars

It’s three hours long and nothing happens. There is no plot. No central character. No forward momentum. Nothing to root for. No one to cheer for. It leaves the viewer with a profound sense of wonder at why he just wasted three hours of his life. And one can’t also help but wonder why it took three hours for nothing to happen. Surely they could knock something like that out in an hour and a half. This is an extremely poorly named film. It is not short, and only would be if they cut the boring bits out. Then it would be very short indeed.

To Die For 5 of 10 Stars

Nicole Kidman’s performance is as delicious as she, one can only breathlessly imagine, is. Joachim Phoenix’s, on the other hand . . . Let’s just say that different actors have different strengths and weaknesses, and he really needs to work on the technique whereby he pretends to be someone else and makes us believe it. Because he really doesn’t have that part down at all. If this were an otherwise great film, he would have ruined it. Luckily, that wasn’t possible, as there wasn’t much to ruin. Kidman is sublime. The rest of it is, well, sub-sublime.

Gone, Baby, Gone 7 of 10 Stars

Ben Affleck’s directorial debut definitely gets applause, if not a standing ovation. It’s one of those situations where you would stand up if the people around you did, but they won’t, so you won’t either and instead just clap with moderate enthusiasm. Fine performances. Interesting characters. Suspense. Intrigue. Bostonian low-lifes. A plot that actually moves along and doesn’t just lie down and twitch, like some films I’ve seen recently. My biggest problem concerned believability of a certain essential plot element to which I cannot even allude without giving the entire ending away. It has something to do with the missing child they are looking for. That didn’t spoil anything, did it? Oh give me a break. Didn’t you read the title?

The Descent: 7.5 out of 10 Stars

2009-08-07T11:05:00.000-07:00

I was expecting it to be cheesy, but the cheese went bad and fermented, turning it into something rancid and awful. That, in case you can’t tell, was a good review, because this is a horror film, and it scared the living shit out of me. The director did a brilliant job with light and sound and pacing to create the proper mood, which is “oh fuck, I can’t look, oh god, don’t—oh god, no!”

This is, I am told, the quintessential favorite of “cavers”—who non-cavers know better as “spelunkers”—and pretty much anyone who has ever worn a hard-hat with a flashlight built in has seen it several times. It can also be categorized as a representative of my own personal favorite genre: hot babes kicking ass. But above all, it’s a horror flick, and a scary one. I used to sleep in a basement. I don’t think I’ll be able to nod off below ground again.

The cop and I

2009-07-30T10:15:00.000-07:00

This incident occured about a decade ago, and my very good friend Chuck has since passed away. May he rest in peace with an endless supply of micro-brewed beer. Something I read about the Gates arrest reminded me of it, so I decided to post it here.

The Cop and I

Believe it or not—and I am not saying this as part of the terms of my parole, or to receive immunity from prosecution or anything like that at all—but as shocking as it may sound, not all cops are semi-evolved, cruel, evil, bullying thugs. Some may find it hard to believe, but I actually know this from personal experience. The problem is that the ones who are bad can really ruin your entire life on a sadistic whim, which makes it difficult to maintain objectivity. I'll mention a good cop experience later on, but I'm champing at the bit to vent about my bad ones.

I know that many people have had much worse encounters with police than I have. I’ll just get that out of the way right now for whatever it’s worth. My worst encounter was a walk in the park compared to what some have experienced. And I wasn’t even doing anything especially noble, like some bold and defiant act of civil disobedience, to earn mistreatment at the hands of the local constabulary. No, I was instead engaged in frying my brain with an assortment of chemicals. Still, the cops involved could have done little to further reinforce persistent characterization of members of their profession as buckets of wretched oozing slime.

It was late in December in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love, an appellation people trump out regularly to show off the irony whenever men do hateful, cruel things to one another. My good friend Chuck and I had gone out on the town, and were putting away a startling amount of alcohol with another guy we’d just met. We were drinking more than we should have, I'll admit, but the holiday spirit put us in the mood to consume holiday spirits.

So, we shambled out the door of Dirty Frank's, and ventured off into the wintry night. Three wise men, we were not. We made some very poor decisions, in fact. The first was to make our way to our new friend's place to smoke ganja. Chuck and I had only just met him, but alcohol can produce instant camaraderie. The three of us staggered down the road with our arms around one another like some six legged, three headed, babbling beast.

Our new friend lived in the projects, which have actual cops monitoring the comings and goings of residents and visitors. Unfazed, the erratically swaying and gibbering three-headed beast stumbled right up to them, slurring a petition for entry but they would not allow it access to the building. We then decided to smoke up right there in front of the building. This was the second bad decision, for those keeping score.

Chuck filled a pipe and passed it `round. A homeless woman, very obviously an enthusiast of crack cocaine by evidence of her sunken eyes, came up and asked us for money. Chuck, a generous fellow, offered to pack a nice fat bowl of weed for her instead. He pulled out the bag and prepared to fill the pipe. Ambitious woman that she was, she elected instead to grab the entire bag and start running.

Chuck mumbled something incomprehensible and began to chase her. Uncertain what was going on but determined not to be left out, I chased after Chuck. These were bad decisions numbers three and four.

The next thing I knew, we were surrounded by cops with their guns drawn and pointed at us. I should mention that I was carrying a penny whistle. This is a delightful musical instrument from the British Isles. I'd been playing it earlier. It is a long slender piece of shiny metal. You need to know this to understand why the cops were screaming “DROP THE KNIFE, MOTHERFUCKER!!!!”

All of the alcohol sloshing around my noodle slowed my processing speed. Still holding the whistle I stumbled about and said something like, “I don't have a knife.” Not believing me, the cops pointed their guns right at my face and screamed even louder, “DROP THE FUCKING KNIFE!!!” The follow‑up clause, “or we'll blow your head off!” was implied and thus unnecessary.

The threat of being reduced to a pink mist cut through my drunkenness and I realized what was happening. I dropped the whistle and shouted “It's just a whistle!” The cops slammed me onto the ground and cuffed me. My two friends and I were taken into custody and brought to the station.

Most of what occurred in custody is pretty hazy in my recollection. I had ganja in my pocket and they took it from me and charged me with possession. Chuck had none on him, (it was swiped, remember?) so they had nothing with which to charge him and had to let him go. Before they released him, however, the cops robbed him blind. Chuck had cashed his paycheck earlier and the cops took it all.

The other guy fared even worse. The cops took the cuffs off him and taunted him over and over until he took a swing at one of them. They then beat the tar out of the poor guy, right in front of me. He was a black man, so maybe that had something to do with it. Racial prejudice in the Philadelphia Police Department is something of a long-standing tradition. Perhaps its reputation precedes it and you have heard. I could go into more detail, but I'll save it for another day.

I was in jail for the next 25 hours. I got off a lot easier than my new friend did, for they didn’t rough me up after the initial manhandling during the arrest. But when I was finally released, the cops had stolen: $20 (fortunately I had less to steal than Chuck had), my penny whistle, a harmonica, and a Swiss army knife, which had been a gift from my mother and had a great deal of sentimental value. I never saw any of these items again.

Although I've been robbed before, I've never been mugged by anyone other than a cop. I haven't had my possessions taken away by force by anyone not carrying a badge. I don't think Chuck has either. There is some sad irony here. As I said before, and on which I will expand below, not all cops are bad, but that evening, all I met were a bunch of despicable low‑life thugs in uniforms.

As a result of this arrest, I had to see a probation officer for six months. He was without a doubt the coolest cop I’ve ever met (as the previous section indicates the competition wasn’t very stiff, but I’ve met a small handful of others who were cool too. Shocking.) He completely agreed with me that marijuana laws were a ridiculous waste of his time and taxpayer money. He seemed genuinely interested in keeping the people to whom he was assigned out of trouble. He actually liked people. He didn’t want to send anyone to prison; he really wanted to keep them out.

Best of all, we both shared a passionate interest in the history and culture of organized crime, and discussed the subject in great detail. Most of his parole appointments checked in with him, answered a few questions, and then left after about five minutes, but he and I always shot the shit for an hour or more. He was smarter than I ever expected a cop to be. And he was a walking encyclopedia when it came to the Mafia. He saw the Godfather even more times than I have. We always had terrific conversations. I was even a little sad when my probation ended. Who else would tell me little-known facts about the Cosa Nostra?

I don’t know if there is a moral to this story or not. I guess it’s just that cops, like everyone else, are not all the same. Some are sadistic, thieving, remorseless scumbags. Some of them are decent and intelligent people who genuinely want to make the world a better place. Really, some are. That’s one valuable lesson learned from that hazy drunken December night. The others are: never run with a penny whistle, and always stop drinking Jagermeister when you can no longer pronounce it. You’ve got to trust me on this one.

Cloverfield

2009-07-28T14:17:00.000-07:00

I'm going to do something a little differently. Rather than post a bunch of film reviews at the same time, I'm going to start spreading them out, one at a time. If any (or perhaps I should say "either") of my readers doesn't like this format, let me know. Then I'll change it back, unless the other one disagrees.

Cloverfield: 6 out of 10 Stars

Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project and eats it. I don’t think it can be summed up any more succinctly than that. Doing fictional stories in a documentary style has become all the rage, using choppy editing, out of focus shots, video instead of film, less-than-polished dialogue, an unsteady camera and similar techniques that would, in a previous age, have simply been condemned as amateurish, and now get nods and kudos for the same reason. Overall the results are interesting. There’s a cute little romantic sub-plot that somehow works even in the absurd context it finds itself. In the final analysis, I’ll have to give it a thumbs-up. Someone had to do the giant-movie-monster-as-reality-show thing, just to get it out of our collective system, and they could have done much worse. But I hope they will now return to the old tried and true formula where we don’t pretend the gargantuan beast destroying some major metropolis is anything but a cinematic fantasy, and that, therefore, we can show the horrid thing in focus.

Film Reviews vol. 14

2009-06-27T10:51:00.000-07:00

Well, there has been a lot going on in my life of late, so I haven't posted any film reviews in a long time, but here, at long last, is the latest installment, and it's a long list. Check here before you update your netflix queue, and go see Up before it's out of the theaters, because you're going to want to see it in 3D.

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The Abyss 3 Stars

When I was about 15, I almost drowned. This sci-fi thriller reminded me of that. There’s a lot of water. There’s not a whole lot of anything else. There’s a plot, sure, and it makes sense, and there are some good performances by some fine actors, but watching it I just felt I was suffocating. I didn’t really care about them, wasn’t engaged by their struggle and I just desperately wanted to come up for air.

The Last King of Scotland 7.5 Stars

Who ever knew that Ugandan dictator, mass murderer, and alleged cannibal Idi Amin could be so charming? Forest Whittaker brings this complex character to life and manages to make him seem charismatic, fun-loving, and psychopathic all at the same time. It’s a behind-the-scenes glimpse at what it’s like to be a despotic butcher. And in case you were wondering about the name: rest assured: there will be kilts and bagpipes.

God Grew Tired of Us 8 Stars

I kept this movie out for months after it arrived from Netflix because I was sure it was going to be a terrible downer. It’s about refugees fleeing from a brutal war in Sudan, their homes destroyed, families lost or butchered by Islamic extremists, many of the victims dropping dead during a horrible 1000 mile trek through the African wilderness, the survivors stuck in a refugee camp for a decade. Got to be wrist-slashingly depressing, right? Wrong! While it doesn’t make any bones about the horrors of war, this film is at times hilarious and, in the end, absolutely uplifting and inspirational.

Dominick and Eugene 7.5 Stars

Tom Hulce is typecast. He plays either transcendent geniuses, or people with severe mental retardation. At least that’s all I’ve ever seen him as. First he was Mozart, and now he’s some guy who got hit in the head as a child and has ridden the short bus ever since. And that was twenty years ago. He’s hardly been in anything else. What the hell? He’s a very good actor. I’m sure he could break out of type. Surely he could play someone rather bright or slightly dim, for example.

Tropic Thunder 7.5 Stars

Everyone told me that this would be the funniest movie I’d ever see. They said the same thing about Borat, and that wasn’t either. Mind you: it’s very funny. But you should never see a movie with the expectation that it’s going to be the funniest thing you’re ever going to see. Surprise is the most essential element of humor, so telling someone how side-spittingly funny something is will usually ruin it. That being said: this is somewhat amusing. You should see it for a chuckle or two.

……………………………….

Alien 7.5 Stars

In space, no one can hear you scream. That was the tagline for this classic blend of science fiction and horror, the first of a great trilogy in which testosterone meets estrogen, with results both beautiful and grisly. This initial installment introduces us to the alien species we will come to know and be absolutely terrified of. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should. Late at night, with all the lights out, by yourself, except for a skittish cat. It’s scary as hell. But remember: you aren’t really in space. Your neighbors can hear you scream.

Aliens 8 Stars

This is the best of the Alien films. Sigourney Weaver is at her ass-kicking best. Actually, I’m not sure the aliens have asses, per se. They seem to be some sort of giant arthropod, so I suppose she’s at her thorax-kicking best. Her performance as Ripley pretty much defines the quintessential super-tough sci-fi babe. Chicks, guns, and aliens, what more does anyone need in a movie?

Alien 3: 6 Stars

I recently watched the first three Alien movies back to back. Everybody should do this at least once. And filmmakers should always stick to trilogies. The fourth Alien movie didn’t count. This one is the weakest of the trilogy and it’s still pretty good. If you go online and read about all the troubles they had making this one, you can cut them some slack and appreciate that they did a pretty good job, under the circumstances. Also: you need to watch all three of them for thematic resolution and closure. Then we can actually talk about the whole series, which I’ve been dying to do, but I don’t want to give anything away. So hurry up and finish already.

Alien Trilogy: Extensive analysis, with spoilers

When you watch the entire trilogy in sequence, you can get a deeper appreciation for just how delightfully sick and twisted it is. It’s all about the perversion of the sacred mother/child bond, the strongest, most powerful human relationship in existence. They turn this inside out and make it a thing of horror. It’s beautifully hideous.

In the first film, the name of the computer is “Mother.” And, in a proud science-fiction tradition, seen in Terminator, 2001, Battlestar Galactica and plenty of others, going back to Rossum’s Universal Robots, the machine betrays the humans. But the fact that the computer is named “Mother” is no coincidence. And here we first see the Alien’s curious reproductive process: it looks a little bit like the way we humans do it, but with so much more blood.

In the second film, featuring the tagline “the bitch is back,” Lt. Ripley goes head to head with some sort of queen mother alien, and, in one memorable scene, appeals to the alien’s maternal instincts by threatening her precious eggs with a flame thrower. Just to throw into doubt who the real bitch is, Ripley toasts the brood after getting mommy to back off. Her own maternal instincts kick in when she rescues and essentially adopts a cute little girl named “newt.” And then, when defending her child now, Ripley kicks an even higher level of ass. Never get between a mother and her cubs.

Newt is conveniently killed off between the end of the second film and the beginning of the third. Her baby gone, Ripley descends into a deep maternal space funk. But then we find out that Ripley is herself with child. Sort of. She’s been infected with one of the alien embryos. It’s growing inside her, just like a human child would, but, given the alien reproductive cycle, considerably more menacingly. Pregnancy, in this context, is a thing of purest ugliness and revulsion. In the final scene, as Ripley is plummeting to her doom into a huge cauldron of boiling metal, the alien bursts forth from her belly in its grotesque parody of “the miracle of birth.” Moments later, it experiences the miracle of molten lead.

It’s great stuff. You should get all three and have a Mother’s Day Marathon.

Bigger, Stronger, Faster 7 Stars

A fascinating and well-done documentary about the use and abuse of steroids and, by extension, our entire culture’s deeply rooted obsession with competition and victory. It’s remarkable how even-handed a treatment it gives, not trying to force opinions on the viewer, just providing some food (doubtless very high in protein) for thought. Even if you aren’t particularly interested in the subject matter—and let’s face it: steroid use, while mildly controversial, is not at the top of most people’s list of urgent social issues—it’s still hard to stop watching this. It made me set down my syringe and my dumbbells.

The Other Boleyn Girl (2004) 6.5 Stars

No, not the famous one, with Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson. The other, Other Boleyn girl. Made on a much lower budget, with much less fanfare, with actual British people involved. It’s pretty good, especially if you’ve already developed an excessive devotion to all things Tudor. There have been quite a lot of films about 16th Century English royalty. And with good reason. Love, intrigue, betrayal, murder; it’s all here. And this one doesn’t have anyone too famous to distract you from the story. But I do have to check out the other one. I heard a rumor that Natalie and Scarlett get naked in it.

The Other Boleyn Girl (2007) 6.5 Stars

There are some interesting differences between this and the earlier British version, but the biggest is just that you never heard about the other one. The characters of the two Boleyn girls are treated a little differently. There are some minor plot rearrangements. But it’s essentially the same film. Natalie and Scarlett are beautiful, yes, granted. But so too were the British actresses in the first movie, just not quite as jaw-droppingly or famously so. And they were perfectly competent actors. And their gowns were every bit as gorgeous too. And this was made on a budget of $35 million, while the 2003 version managed to pull it off for a mere £750,000 which, a favorable pound/dollar exchange rate notwithstanding, is a hell of a lot less, for a film that’s not any better. And, worst of all, the rumors about Natalie and Scarlett getting naked: untrue.

Religulous 8 Stars

If you are already of the opinion that believing in the literal truth of any religion—with angels and burning bushes talking to people, God picking a specific tribe of nomadic herdsman as his favorites, or knocking up virgins, or any of that stuff of mythic fantasy—is ridiculous, then you’ll feel a sense of kindred spirit with Bill Maher here. If you actually believe in these stories of magical hocus-pocus thousands of years ago, he just wants to know why. And that’s the beauty of the film: there is not the slightest bit of hostility leveled by him at the people he interviews, with whom he obviously disagrees 100%. He just wants to know why they believe stuff that is—let’s just be honest here—totally and completely ridiculous. Please do us all a favor and tie the nearest fundamentalists you can find to a chair and force them to watch it. It won’t help, but it’ll be fun to watch all the logic and reason and sanity bounce off.

Pie in the Sky: The Brigid Berlin Story 5 Stars

A documentary about a person who, no offense intended, doesn’t really warrant having an entire film dedicated to her life. Spoiled rich girl falls in with an unsavory artistic druggie crowd. Hangs out with Andy Warhol. Smokes too much. Likes pie.

The Cat's Meow 6 Stars

A good movie, but not a great movie. Your emotions will not be hijacked. It will not haunt you for days after. But you’ll be entertained and interested enough to go online and find out how much of it is really true and you’ll be pretty amazed to find out how much of it is. Set aboard William Randolph Hearst’s luxury yacht in 1924, it would make excellent background viewing for that roaring 20’s “flapper” theme party you’ve been thinking of throwing. Invite me. I’ll bring the bootlegged liquor.

Once Upon a Time in the West 6 Stars

It’s a classic western. If you like westerns, then this is essential viewing, one of about a dozen or so considered to be the quintessence of the genre. If you don’t like westerns, then the title alone should probably have told you all you need to know.

Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles 7 Stars

Good for brushing up your Chinese and/or Japanese, both of which you’ve let get a little rusty. It’s about a Japanese man who embarks on a self-appointed mission to record rare Chinese folk opera. So if you’re a Chinese folk opera fanatic, then of course this is right up your alley. If not, it’s still a very nice, touching, heart-warming tale of fatherly love. And it probably won’t spark much of an interest in Chinese folk opera either. That shit is just weird.

The Big Empty 8.5 Stars

This was an unexpected delight. Unexpected because nobody recommended it to me. I didn’t read rave reviews online. I had never heard of it, but found it in a box of video cassette tapes that I acquired from gods know where, and decided to watch before I put them out by the road on trash night. So it was something of a surprise to find that I totally loved it. Film noir. Hard boiled detective in gritty LA. Witty dialogue. Humor as dry as London gin. Funny and haunting. Like the ghost of a clown. Someone just trash picked it from the pile I left out. I hope they like it as much as I did.

THX 1138: 4 Stars

I tried desperately to love this alleged cult classic. As a total science fiction nerd, I’m supposed to. It’s George Lucas’s first film, and it was, for its time, groundbreaking in many ways. It did the dark dystopian future shtick before it was chic. It makes brilliant use of sound and light and atmosphere to create the creepy mood that pervades the whole thing. And, as an added bonus: cute bald chicks. But none of this saved it from its ironic flaw: having set the stage for the future of science fiction in cinema, George Lucas and those who followed in his wake have since made movies that are so much more fun to watch that this is like a powerful sedative by comparison.

La Femme Nikita 6 Stars

I watched the American remake of this, Point of no Return, before I watched this, and they’re basically the same movie except you have to read subtitles for this one. It’s a classic of the ass-kicking hot babe genre, to which I am inexplicably devoted. Nikita makes my list of top ten hot babes who kick ass, a prestigious ranking that all hot ass-kicking babes aspire to, at least in my own deluded fantasies.

The Darwin Awards 3 Stars

Other than ogling Winona Rider, there is no compelling reason to watch this. I never liked the actual Darwin awards. It seemed wrong to laugh at people who died in these assorted horrible ways, even if they were just unbelievably stupid about it. Everyone has a bad day, but most of us are lucky enough that it isn’t our last. Hell, I’ve done some astoundingly stupid things. There was the time I crashed my bike while talking on my cell phone. What a dipshit. That could have taken me out of the gene pool right there, and then maybe I’d have a Darwin award. Then again, that might now be so bad. As you can tell from the quality of what you are reading: I’ve long since given up on the Pulitzer.

Apollo 13 7 Stars

Houston, we have a problem. We are approximately 3.5 gajillion miles from home and this little metal box we’re in just went pzzzzzt! Oh shit! That was our oxygen, I think! Oh Jesus H Christ Houston, we are so fucked! Oh holy mother of fuck, I don’t want to die! I’m too young! And I’m a goddamned astronaut! I’m supposed to be swimming in tail and the envy of every man in the world when I get back. It’s so unfair! Oh God! Why is life so unfair!? Fuck! Fuck! Over. . . That’s what I would have said if I were one of those guys. They handled it with a little more courage and resourcefulness than I would have. That why they’re astronauts and I write movie reviews for my own amusement.

The Caine Mutiny 6.5 Stars

This probably holds the distinction of being the only WWII movie in which no members of the Axis powers ever fires a shot or makes any appearance whatsoever. Nope, our heroes are on board a navy ship that never sees any combat action at all. Surprise: It’s actually a legal thriller, with most of the real action in the courtroom, not out on the high seas. Humphrey Bogart is great as a paranoid, delusional, and totally unreasonable commanding officer. Anyone who’s ever had to work for someone like that might enjoy this. This includes everyone who’s ever been in the armed services and pretty much everyone else, too.

There Will Be Blood 8 Stars

I despised the main character, found him vile and despicable. No redeeming qualities whatsoever, and yet I watched, fascinated. That is one nifty cinematic trick. Even if a story’s “hero” is, in fact, a criminal, and possibly even a villain (Tony Soprano, Hannibal Lecter, etc), he’s almost always likable. You’re still rooting for him. Get him, Tony! Watch out Hannibal! Whack that dude! Eat that guy! You might feel guilty about it, but you’re rooting for him. Not so with this guy. I hated him. Great film, though.

Galaxy Quest 7.5 Stars

I remember when I was younger, getting out the old Mr. Spock ears and the Federation uniform and heading down to the Star Trek convention, on what would inevitably be another failed attempt at getting some hot Vulcan tail. Ha ha! Just kidding! There are no women at Star Trek conventions. Anyhow, this is your basic sci-fi spoof. The more you love or hate science fiction in general, and Star Trek in particular, the more you can appreciate the humor. And it’s actually much funnier than you’ll be expecting it to be, as long as you don’t expect it to be too funny. And for the nerdy guys in the audience: there is at least one super hot alien babe. You may as well watch this, because you’ve got no chance with a real one.

Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure 4 Stars

For years everyone told me that if I would just see this, I could then understand and appreciate the entire oeuvre of Keanu Reeves in the proper context. And yes, I can see that Keanu simply nails the performance of drug-addled dimwit, and is really in his element when performing as such, more than, say, doing Shakespeare. The way he pulls off the illusion that he is a blundering, ineloquent pothead is just sublime, or should I say excellent. But after hearing about this film for nigh on 20 years, I’ve gotta say: bit of a disappointment, though it did give me an excuse to use the word “nigh.” Still: closer to “bogus” than “excellent” as far as I’m concerned.

Charlie Varrick 8 Stars

I’m taking off some points for outrageous ‘70s misogyny, and for making heroes out of cop-killing thugs, and it still gets a good review. Oh sure, anyone could have cast Clint Eastwood or Steve McQueen as the titular tough guy in this gritty heist film, but that would have been too obvious. Instead, they went with Walter Matthau. Yes, you heard me: Oscar from The Odd Couple. Mr. Wilson, from Dennis the Menace. One of the grumpy old men from, um, Grumpy Old Men. As a bank robber. And he’s great in it. Except for one painful sex scene, saved only by the sneaky cinematic joke they slip in, solely for the benefit of die-hard film buffs. Note that, despite the star, known almost exclusively for comedies, this is the only joke in the entire movie. A lot of violence. Not a lot of laughs. It’s one of the most underrated ‘70s crime thrillers ever. No kidding.

The Fog of War 7.5 Stars

In which former Secretary of State Robert McNamara reveals, among other things, just how close we all came to nuclear annihilation during the Cuban missile crisis. A fascinating and thought-provoking documentary, but disturbingly the main thought it provokes is “I wonder if the idiots running the world today have any more sense than these guys did, because if not, we are so fucked.” Essential viewing for understanding how the world works and how it might break into a billion little pieces.

Prison a Go Go 2 Stars

I was astounded and appalled—appalled I say!—to learn that what I thought was an insightful documentary about women’s correctional facilities turned out to be a titillating piece of crap. Actually: I confess: I knew it wasn’t a documentary. I knew it was a parody of women-in-prison flicks and would feature gratuitous shower scenes and cat fights. Still, I thought it might have some redeeming qualities, other than, of course, the gratuitous shower scenes and cat fights. But no! It was unbelievably stupid. The jokes were awful. The plot pushed absurdity to new levels. And the shower scenes weren’t long enough.

Coming soon 6 Stars

I’m sure you’ve seen films like American Pie, in which a group of high school boys try desperately to get laid. This is like that, but with girls. Pretty short film, you’d think, right? Girl says to the first guy she meets, “hey, wanna fuck?” Fade to black. Roll credits. So to make the film interesting and remotely plausible, the girls instead are on a quest not just to get laid, but to get good and properly laid. For men, these are pretty much the same. For women, there’s a world of difference. High school boys have no trouble achieving an orgasm, even less so if there’s a girl in the room. It’s actually getting a girl to participate in the process that presents a challenge. For girls, it seems to be the opposite. Getting the guy is the easy part. (I refuse to make the obvious joke about the hard part). Why is the female orgasm so elusive? Is it something we said? Anyhow, this is one of the better films principally concerning high school girls and orgasms. I won’t be reviewing most of the other ones.

Sweet Land 5 Stars

I hate giving mediocre reviews to what I recognize to be good movies that I just happen to find painfully boring. Such is the case here. Very good actors who are not big stars, an original, non-clichéd plot, insightful illustrations of the foibles of human society, notably bigotry and intolerance, using a setting almost 100 years ago with clear but subtle applications to situations today. Not a heavy-handed, in your face morality pay, but an intelligent story with a moral to it. Yeah. I was waiting for it to end so I could watch something with explosions.

Fast Food Nation 8 stars

It’s pretty amazing that they took a work of non-fiction and turned it into a very gripping fictional story and managed to get their point across without sacrificing the narrative flow. This, of course, is the only way to sneak genuinely important issues into the heads of typical American consumers. You can’t make a hard-hitting documentary, unless you just want “critical acclaim” and a lot of people who already agree with you trying and failing to force their friends and family to watch it. No, you have to tell a story and throw a bunch of big Hollywood stars in it. Don’t tell your burger-chomping buddies that this is the natural descendent of Uptain Sinclair’s The Jungle, a brutally honest investigation into where our food comes from. Tell them it’s a cool flick with Bruce Willis as a tough guy. By the time they figure out that their entertainment was contaminated with trace amounts of education, it’ll be too late.

The Darjeeling Limited 8 Stars
I really have to start writing reviews right after I see the movie, and not a few months later. This was funny, quirky; I remember liking it a lot, but the details are fading. There was a train, and three brothers, and . . . comic misadventures of some sort. And some sort of transcendental revelations about the nature of what it is to be human. And a poisonous snake. On the train. Wait, maybe that was a different movie.

Snakes on a Plane No rating

To the best of my recollection, I never actually saw this.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead 8 Stars

I love a good heist flick. Gets the blood pumping and the adrenalin flowing. Just about any guy who has any balls at all has dreamed of planning and executing the perfect heist. I’ll bet Gandhi and Martin Luther King fantasized about sticking up a jewelry store at least once. Because, done correctly, nobody gets hurt in the perfect heist. That’s the beauty of it. That’s what makes it perfect. The heist here is about as imperfect as you can get, and as the story unfolds, it just gets more and more imperfect. Ouch. Messy. Gandhi would not approve.

Up 9 Stars

As has become my standard practice of late, I cried like a baby when I saw this. No, scratch that: I didn’t cry like a baby, because I saw this in the theatre and most of the other patrons were children, and none of the kids seemed to be nearly as emotionally impacted as I was. Pixar keeps doing this to me. They make these cartoons, allegedly good clean fun for the whole family, and it always gets me sobbing like . . . not like a baby, as empirical observation has demonstrated, but just like a very sappy adult. Such a good (sob) movie. As an added bonus, we got some cool 3D glasses that I insisted my girlfriend keep and take home with us, because I’ve got this sexy nerd fetish thing going on. That part wasn’t for kids.

What's the poop?

2009-01-29T04:40:00.000-08:00

I wrote this a few years ago in response to what I felt were unreasonable changes in USDA policy that would benefit agribusiness and endanger public health and safety. That was over five years ago, so it's hardly breaking news, but the policy is still in effect as far as I know, so after I found this on my computer, I figured it couldn't hurt to post it. Bon appetit!

“Bad dog! Bad dog! Don’t eat poop!”

This is what I used to tell my canine compadre, Onion, who believed feces was a nutritious delicacy sent by the great benevolent dog god. “One time through is not enough” seemed to be his guiding philosophy. After stern admonitions, Onion would, with deep regret, look down at the ground guiltily and resolve never to eat poop again. Sometimes his resolution would remain unbroken for up to 2 full minutes before he’d have to be reminded again,

“Don’t eat poop!”

But before we pack our bags for an ego trip, feeling smugly superior to Onion, Rex, and all their ca-ca chomping cronies, there’s something to consider. Most American consumers might be eating just as much feces as their dogs.

In the past, USDA inspectors would examine meat, poking and sniffing it in search of fecal material and vomit. This would be Onion’s dream job, but USDA has strict criteria its inspectors must meet, including actually applying for the position and being human.

But few humans are interested in pursuing a career centered on poking and sniffing slabs of bleeding dead animals in search of poop and puke. And now, they don’t have to. New USDA policy requires the meat producers themselves conduct microbial testing. USDA will now inspect paperwork, not meat. There is less government oversight, and the presence of feces is not in and of itself considered cause for any concern. The meat industry has lobbied for this relaxation of standards, and of course claims the new system will make meat even safer. Images of foxes making speeches about the improved safety of the hen house now that they’ve landed the security contract leap irresistibly to mind.

Taking an alternative viewpoint, the Government Accountability Project and Public Citizen, recently released results of a survey of inspectors trained to oversee the new system. Almost half of the inspectors who responded reported instances when they had not taken “direct action” after spotting contamination such as feces on carcasses, which they would have done under the old system.

Bad USDA! Bad!

This isn’t the first time the USDA and the meat industry have left the public in deep doo-doo. Evidence continues to mount showing the contributions of beef, pork, and poultry to heart disease, cancer, strokes and other maladies. Eating excrement and potential contamination from food-borne pathogens such as salmonella or e-coli are just the icing on a very unhealthy cake.

With a focus on bacterial contamination, and no USDA officials sniffing around for the odor of ordure, meat producers will likely irradiate meat. So now consumers can bite into their burgers, confident that, while there may be some dung in their dinner, at least it’s irradiated dung. Mmmmm.

Salad, please.