Archive for the '..The Dude' Category

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The Dude Posts Random Thoughts In A Particular Order And Continues Referring To Himself In The Third Person, A Phenomenon For Which He May Be Blaming The Boondocks

Published on August 16, 2008 in ..The Dude, Films, Humor, Television and Uncategorized. 2 Comments Tags: .

In order of most important? Alphabetical? Funniest?

No.

The following thoughts are listed in the order most likely to save the world.

Begin:

Two fairly hyped comedies have come out the past week. Both were pretty well reviewed as these things go. I speak of Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder. I’ve seen them both. And I have to say if, as has been put forth by writers of greater acclaim than I (meaning they were acclaimed at all), these are the funniest movies of the past year, I think it is no wonder I don’t laugh much anymore.

THis should probably make me feel good. I was worried my life had stripped me of whatever receptivity to humor as well as ability to engender laughter I had. But maybe it’s not me. Maybe there just really isn’t anything all that funny out there. If this is the apex than Sweet Bloody Christ-Stick we’re an unfunny people.

I guess it’s possible the worried about decaying of my own sense of humor and wit could be responsible for not thinking these movies are brilliant comedies. But I still think I have some review chops and good instincts left over even if I lack the hope, meaning, and purpose that used to drive them. And these aren’t great movies. And judging by the crowds I saw them with I wasn’t the only one not prostrate with guffaws.

And if you’ve ever been prostrated by a case of the guffaws you know what a bittersweet affliction this can be.

Now neither of these flicks was horrid. Pineapple Express is a stoner comedy from the Freaks And Geeks alumni associated with Judd Apatow. It’s in that vain. Apatow’s movie’s themselves have been acclaimed as the great comedies of our time. THis generation’s John Hughes.

If so I weep for the future.

That’s a line from a Hughes movie by the way. If 10 people read this maybe 3 will have known that. If they are under 30 probably none of them will.

But who cares? Life moves on. Moves pretty fast even. Fine. But still if these movies are someday looked at as the Breakfast Clubs or Ferris Bueller’s of their time I gotta think we’re missing something and great comedy may now only be found on You Tube and Fox News.

And perhaps at the Country Music Awards.

Seriously, just the idea it. Awards for the best Country music!

Shit that’s funny stuff.

Anyhow, Apatow’s Superbad was very well thought of last year along with Knocked Up. Both were ok. Really, really ok. But Knocked Up was pretty boring upon a second viewing on cable recently and Superbad rarely prostrated me. It was a mostly guffawless experience even if a modestly pleasant one. It’s pleasantness I suspect was mostly due to Michael Cera who kicks all kinds of ass and who deserves to fuck every starlet in Hollywood starting with Megan Fox who he should impregnate and then force to give the baby up to Angelina Jolie in return for Cera letting Jolie fuck him too.

Speaking of him, Juno even got an Oscar bid. Solid movie. Labeled a comedy. But again, not especially a prostrating experience. Same goes of those I watched it with in a theater in Rheinbeck. And if anyone knows comedy it’s the 6 figure salaried folks of Rhinebeck god damn it! I mean their Hannaford is so freaking clean and stately it’s got to be some kind wry ironic joke. These are a gifted people. And yet there was just appreciative chuckles.

Chuckles i say.

But I heard Juno talked of as a Say Anything for this generation. And I could kind of see that. But I still couldn’t help thinking this is sad. Say Anything wasn’t hilarious but it’s eternally quotable. Will youngsters today be quoting Juno 20 years from now? Probably not. They’ll have their work cut out for them just keeping track of all Michael Cera’s love children as they start coming of age and impregnating starlets at an exponential rate that future mathematicians will have to come up with a formula to track. This formula will feature the critical equation MC= S x F squared where MC is Michael Cera and S and F starlets and fucking that Cera has done.

Squared.

And at a velocity to be determined by his mass at the time.

If you know what I mean.

Anyway, back to recent well received comedies. I saw the first Harold And Kumar movie recently. Netflixed it.

With all these recent comedy viewings of mine you can probably tell by now that I have been pretty desperate to find something to laugh about here. And laugh I did. Occasionally. And decidedly without prostration.

When the fuck is someone going to do something to my prostrating needs!?

But the White Castle movie was still pretty damn formulaic and the humor nothing all that special. And yet it, along with the aforementioned comedies are highly thought of. At least for their time. So that’s why I wonder if we’re in unfunny times and if that’s contributing to my inability to form a smile.

______________________

Anyway I will touch on the Tropic Thunder controversy and say that protesters, and this includes my old agency UG-ARC (as I found out tonight from a friend who works there), are really a bunch of whiny ass liberals without any sense of humor.

Now this may sound hypocritical in light of the previous passages of this post as well as my own ill formed attempts at humor in said post. But these people haven’t even seen the movie. It’s really not taking shots at retarded people. It’s making fun of Tom Hanks, Dustin Hoffman, and all the other pretty boy actors who turn in sugar coated version of the mentally retarded that have little to do with reality. But of course ours is a culture that deals in reality the way a cat deals with a mouse: pounce on it, kill it, consume the evidence and call it a meal.

Or something more analogous.

People don’t want truth and Hollywood is glad to not give it to them.

But some of these self involved do gooders want to sway people from seeing a movie because they’re more liberal about retarded people now than about free speech. The Simple Jack and whole “full retard,” segment was one of the few truly funny and observant aspects of the movie and these idiots want it removed!

So is all me or are we dispossessing ourselves of real humor? Did Carlin take it with him? Fuck even he wasn’t always that funny. But he prostrated me at times and damn it what more can a man ask of another?

Back to retarded people: I frakking work with these people. Manage a program of 10 of them. I truly care for some of these guys. Have affection for them even. And the “full retard,” segment with Robert Downey Jr and Ben Stiller rang true and was damn straight on funny. Also echoed things I’ve said about Hollywood depictions of the mentally disabled.

And let me just say this now that I bring him up: Robert Downey Jr is the most watchable actor in film. Bar none. He rocks. Without him this movie would have been a total waste of time. The other great moment came with his “For 400 hundred years,” speech to the other black actor, an actor probably destined to be known as that other black actor despite being the only black actor. This in itself is a bit of genius that redeems a movie that needed more funny and less blowing things up.

Speaking of good parts. Pineapple Express’s crucifixion joint was pretty funny. So was “Fuck Jeff Goldblum.” A few other things as well, but this still wasn’t as good as an episode of Freaks And Geeks of which this could have been a mini reunion of with just the two freaks Rogen and Franco getting together and possibly not remembering that they hung out together in school and had a band before one became a seller of weed and the other a process server who smokes a lot of it.

But is was ok. And that seems to be good enough today. I’m ok, you’re ok, we’re all ok. But I don’t feel ok and though I’m not prepared to blame this on Seth Rogen or Ben Stiller, or even that Kumar fellow who was a terrorist on 24, I am serving notice.

___________

Journey taught us how to love. Indeed how to believe. And what have we given them? Nothing.

I think this is wrong and I intend to do something about it. Sometime in the future you’ll be hearing more from me about the Journey Fund. It’s a non profit set up I’m creating to give back.

To Journey.

I’m hoping to pass out donation baskets at concerts and then move on to movie theaters. Hopefully we’ll even get a big advertising spot somewhere in Fenway Park.

Because it’s about time.

For god’s sake they had to regroup, make another album with new material, and go on tour. Without Steve Perry!

And the new guy sounds just like him!

This a tantamount to the pagan worship of other gods and false idols. Thou shalt not worship other Steve Perry’s. It has been written. Or should have been. At least on a bathroom stall somewhere or something. The movie can’t go on and on and on without Perry. He wrote the fucking movie!

Clearly these are musicians in need for they have resorted to desperate measures that may doom us all.

So when the collection basket comes around won’t you please welcome it with open arms before we go our separate ways?

_______________

Been watching 2nd season Boondocks and it’s seriously fucking with my mind. I’m walking around talking about stacking my paper, my hoes, and having to fight very big urges to greet people at work with, “what up my nigger?” I don’t want to be one of these appropriators of black culture that the show itself as well as RDJ sort of make fun of in Tropic Thunder. But god damn it’s cool like a motherfucker up in here!

________________

Speaking of tv there are some new shows I’ve discovered a bit late in the game but have caught up on or am catching up on. One is Mad Men. Pretty heavy look at the world of the early 60′s to this point and the insides of a Madison Ave advertising agency and the people who work there. THe show is that kind of show where you may not want to watch because it sounds boring but when you start watching you can’t stop. It’s riveting the way a peep hole is riveting. It’s like listening in on the lives of real people you sort of wish you were but who wish they weren’t.

Entourage. About to start it’s 5th season next month I’ve been catching up. After initially watching most of season 1 a year or so back and not getting into it all that much I’ve become a bit addicted to it during the run of watching seasons 2-4. Really fun show with a nice whiff of realism. And Jeremy Piven is the man as Ari. Ari should be Michael Cera’s agent and help sign him to lucrative deals to fuck and impregnate starlets. Because that’s what Michael Cera needs to do and Ari would understand this and get it done.

The Wire. Still on the first season. Really well written as far as realistic dialog and situations. It does seem a bit pretentious in its disdain for conventional drama at times. I mean, I want a little entertainment value. if I didn’t I’d go try and become a Baltimore cop.

I do see why it got such critical acclaim though and appreciate it for those reasons. But I can also see why no one watched it and it didn’t get nominated for any Emmys. But I’m still early in to it and if there is one person out there who reads this and decides to wait to get into it until after The Dude has passed final judgement, i will try to not let you down.

____________________–

And back to the greatness of Robert Downey Jr. In a recent interview he had the following to say about The Dark Knight:

“My whole thing is that that I saw ‘The Dark Knight’. I feel like I’m dumb because I feel like I don’t get how many things that are so smart. It’s like a Ferrari engine of storytelling and script writing and I’m like, ‘That’s not my idea of what I want to see in a movie.’ I loved ‘The Prestige’ but didn’t understand ‘The Dark Knight’. Didn’t get it, still can’t tell you what happened in the movie, what happened to the character and in the end they need him to be a bad guy. I’m like, ‘I get it. This is so high brow and so f–king smart, I clearly need a college education to understand this movie.’ You know what? F-ck DC comics. That’s all I have to say and that’s where I’m really coming from.”

Agree or disagree this guy is awesome and should have lots of babies. IF he were a woman he would be a perfect genetic incubator for Michael Cera DNA. But he, at the last, is a man. And a magnificent one who must merely stand side by side with Cera as sexual avatars of our humorless age.

The Dude Sees The Dark Knight Again And It Makes Him Feel Less Funny Inside But Still Makes Him Wonder If People Will Be Ultimately Disappointed With The Movie Even THough He Is Less So.

Published on August 2, 2008 in ..The Dude, Films and Reviews. 1 Comment

So I had a hot lesbian-less screening of the top grossing opening weekend film of all time. And I liked it better. Sure hot lesbians are great. But I didn’t spend my $9 to be teased by them. I spent it to see Chistopher Nolan follow up my favorite Batman movie ever. One that washed clean the dirt put onto my soul by the stupid and evil Tim Burton and his successors as well as the ego fest that was Jack Nicholson being Jack Nicholson while playing The Joker.

Mmmm hot lesbians……

I digress.

Upon a second viewing I was able to appreciate some plot points and follow the crime story angle more fully. And it worked better; for the most part. I think a lot of people are going to find this part of the film too crime procedural and if so they’re not going to love the movie or return for further viewing as I did. Lesbians or no lesbians. I’ve already heard some discontent regarding that aspect of the film. I understand it and felt some of it myself. More so the first time I saw it than the next. I can’t blame that all on the lesbians. The movie is more complex than your average superhero movie and…..

Mmm I wonder where they are now……the lesbians I mean.

Concentrate!!!

I think many people are like me in that comics and the movies they spawn have become a more satisfying mythology for a more secular age. We want gods and heroes and the old time symbols really don’t cut it anymore. For all the criticism of the last Superman I liked it because Supes had that aura of the exemplar. He still felt like he was a selfless and benevolent power who was greater than us despite his unexplainable and ongoing Lois Lane fetish. Maybe his mom was a bitchy, selfish and dismissive whore. I don’t know. Just think Superman could do better. So could Clark for that matter considering he’s the same guy except for a pair of glasses.

Digressing again.

Ok, so I think most people go to superhero movies to be wowed and for a sense of wonder. They want that uplifting Superman score of old as our hero does something we can’t do and elevates the human condition. Let’s face it, comic books are to a large extent a replacement for religious mythology. Much of that old time myth making and hero making was about creating an image of man to aspire to and to lay the groundwork towards finding the greatness in us; or at least imagine it’s in us for that time we invest in the characters or in the case of religion the church of choice and its chief tenets.

Superman can leave me feeling awed in the presence of something greater than myself. Religion doesn’t do that for me so I turn to the new myths like comics, tv and movies. Now Batman has never been that archetype of total goodness and selflessness. And The Dark Knight makes him darker and less heroic that usual. In doing so the movie didn’t have that sense of wonder. The dark side of it is ok with me. I was always attracted more to Batman than Supes growing up because of that dark and more human side. But in a movie which is a rare event you kind of want some spectacle and magic and TDK is in many ways more of a crime procedural and exploration of character.

The Dark Knight really isn’t going to offer much in the way of the kind of uplift your average audience person is expecting when they step into a hyped superhero movie. Not in an obvious heavy handed way that modern audiences seem to need to feel like they’re getting it. Besides being a crime procedural it’s also playing with some ideas regarding the nature of heroism that are a bit obtuse. It’s debatable how much value there is in this exploration since ultimately this is still based on a comic book. Despite some comparisons it’s not The Godfather II. There are limitations in the comic universe. As good as Christopher Nolan has been at grounding this series in something approaching reality you’re steal dealing with characters and basic themes forged in 2 dimensions with its origins in black and white comic book subtext.

Now I should warn Bob or anyone who has not seen this movie that the rest of this post will probably have plenty of spoilers. So stop reading now.

Modern comics have advanced a lot on the depth of storytelling though. Hell, Time called The Watchmen one of the 100 greatest novels of all time. And The Dark Knight is a modern Batman by way of the Frank Miller inspired tales that offer more depth and substance along with more darkness. But it’s still based on a guy who runs around in a bat suit chasing after a guy with clown paint and another who flips coins to decide things because his face is split in two.

Nolan does a great job in making all these characters feel as 3 dimensional and plausible as possible. But there are still times when I feel like I’m stretching my credulity a bit. Harvey Dent’s coin feels most definitely like a comic book contrivance. His transformation into a villain felt far too sudden and rushed. And the payoff with Batman’s decision to become the villain so Gotham could keep its heroic symbol just feels a bit arch and unmerited. I like the idea, I really do. I think it was a dramatic turn and that it offers nice possibilities for part 3. But to buy it as a real necessity within his world I think you have to buy into the premise that Gotham is full of fragile drones that would fall apart without a symbol, even a dead one.

I’m coolish with allowing Batman to become a truer hero by taking the fall and letting everyone think he’s a villain. That endgame is all good. But getting there and feeling good about that destination would have required a little more convincing that Gotham’s citizens are an emotionally fragile and needy bunch of pussies.

Personally I’m not one for the idea of modern major metropolitan cities being that uniformly unstable. I might buy it more if you kept the comic-y Gotham of the first movie or even the evil Tim Burton’s. But in the Gotham of Dark Knight which is actually Chicago with that sense of real City expansiveness and depth, it’s somehow harder to buy.

On the other hand it’s easier in TDK’s Chicago-Gotham to buy people not being on to Bruce Wayne as well as the Joker being impossible to find without Bruce violating civil rights. In the Burton or Batman Begins Gotham there’s sense of claustrophobia and surreality to the city that feels like it could conceptualize some fragility and cloistered myopia of its citizenry. Those Gotham’s had a more otherworldly feel and so it would be easier for me to buy into the populace having abnormal responses and dependencies like the isolated and abused wife or child that is still emotionally dependent on the abuser they live with and the methods of abuse.

But those other Gotham’s also felt small and lent themselves towards feeling like everyone, including its media and law enforcement would have to be a bit retarded to not figure out that Bruce Wayne is Batman. But in a real metropolis like NY or Chicago which is the city of TDK’s Gotham, even a billionaire can get a little lost and have room to maneuver. People would occasionally figure it out, and someone does in TDK, but it’s not the can of corn it felt like it should have been in the other Batman incarnations.

Plus with Gordon on his side the police were never going to look that hard. Until now at least.

And even if the method used by Batman to violate Gotham’s privacy seemed a bit dubious, it makes sense that he’d have to resort to it to find a madman like The Joker amongst a city of such vastness. And finding him, along with that crime procedural in which he hid himself and his intent was well done and had a legitimate mounting tension really heightened by a good score. Hopefully in time that score will become even more associated with TDK’s building crescendo of tragedy and less with a mounting interest in how far two hot lesbians are willing to go right in front of me.

Mmmm mounting lesbian tension…..

Be strong Dude.

Ledger was great if debatably a tad self-indulgent. But he definitely steals his scenes and brings a contradictory sense of chaotic purpose to the role and to the movies themes. I felt a little unresolved as far as he went. Wanting closure.

Not unlike with the lesbians.

And I think closure may have come later. With The Joker. Not the lesbians. Nolan said Burton made a mistake in killing his Joker inferring that he wasn’t going to kill him for a reason. And Ledger was supposedly signed for a third movie. So I think they were going someplace else with him. Unfortunately his storyline will never get full closure now.

And in honor of him I end this review without any either.

The Dark Knight Makes The Dude Feel Funny Inside

Published on July 19, 2008 in ..The Dude. 0 Comments

Just wanted to let people know that The Dark Knight is out.

In theaters that play the motion pictures that is.

For those who haven’t heard about this yet, this is a sequel to Batman Begins. It stars Christian Bale. Most of you may remember him from The Machinist. Heath Ledger is in it too. He plays the Joker. In the interest of you not being disappointed when you inevitably want to find out more about this fine actor after seeing the film, the actor died a few months ago. THere may be some extra attention focused on his role and the film because of this. Now you know why.

I’ve seen the film. Golly it’s good. People tell me it’s great. Best of the year. Equatable to The Godfather II, or at least The Empire Strikes Back. Gee whiz do I feel funny inside after seeing it. Hate to not feel the way i should because of course everyone is right and not just falling prey to some kind of collective hypnosis or delusion.

That never happens outside of Phillip K Dick novels right? I mean George Bush really was a uniter and warrior and John Kerry a coward for going to Nam.

So The Dark Knight really is a tremendous slice of greatness! It’s flawless! It’s full of wonder, twists, turns, tight pacing, and a crystal clear script! I mean it must be. THis funny feeling inside must be something wrong with me. It’s a wrongness. Like maybe I was touched in a special place when i was a kid and just remembered. i should put those kinds of thoughts down. Repress them like this feeling I’ve had since seeing the awesomeness of The Dark Knight. Maybe it’s the same feeling and I’m bad and dirty for feeling this way. I did something wrong and made the movie not please me like everyone claims it pleased them.

I’m a shameful sinner!

Or maybe it was the bad thoughts I had watching the two girls in front of me at the theater. You see they were both very attractive. Gorgeous long hair, one blonde, one brunette. Beautiful faces. Lovely bodies with more than enough well placed protuberances as well as short pants revealing sweet legs which the brunette rested on the chair to her left so that part of her leg was always apperent to me. And occasionally she would lift her whole leg to the side revealing the whole smooth contour silhoutted in the movies glow. And as if this wouldn’t be hard enough to ignore, these two lovely young creatures were very good friends.

Very

Good

Friends.

You see, they spent much of the movie with their amazing manes of hair cuddled together, hands on each others laps, and possibly stealing an occasional kiss. I definitely saw the blonde kiss the brunette’s leg. They put their heads very close together on many occasions but due to the length of both of their hair it wasn’t possible for me to tell if they were just whispering or kissing. But considering the leg and the resting of heads on each others I got to think there may have been some lip contact. I sure wanted to believe that and the interest this desire created sure did it make it hard to fully invest myself in the best movie ever!

Did these girls do this to torment me?

I doubt it. They didn’t turn back to me at all or seem to take any notice until we were out in the parking lot afterwards. They got into a huge red pickup. Together. That part kind of made sense.

Were they sent by some kind of god of titillation as an offering to me?

Again, i don’t think so. Unless that god is also the god of useless distraction.

Were they Sprites, fairies, angels, or hookers?

Well I doubt that too since I don’t even believe in 3 of those things and at least 2 of them would have wanted to take me home and let me watch.

But like the movie they made me feel funny inside. Not in the same way. It wasn’t the touched in a bad place way but more of a kind of opposite feeling. Needless to say I haven’t forgotten these two young ladies and I never will. They will live on in my heart and mind forever. So maybe it’s partly their fault that I have that other feeling that the movie we saw won’t. I don’t know; it’s all very confusing. I’ll probably see this movie again at some point and then be able to offer a more substantial review for no one to read on the internets. But until then I’m left with this weird feeling. A couple of them.

And it doesn’t help that I think a cartoon is still the best movie I’ve seen this year. Damn you Pixar! Damn you and your insidiously captivating kiddie films! Have I not suffered enough emotional unpleasantness?!

Oh yeah The Watchmen trailer debuted. Looked like it has potential. Zach Snyder is doing it. He did 300. Alan Moore isn’t sure this is a good idea. he thought Frank Miller’s 300 was stupid, homophobic, and racist. The movie based on Miller’s graphic novel also made me feel funny. So now Moore’s feelings about this movei make me feel feel funny. The movie could be a huge hit or miss. It wasn’t possible to tell from the trailer what tone they take. But it looked cinematic. It in itself didn’t make me feel funny. Nor does the graphic novel which I’m just finishing after years of meaning to read it. It’s nice to have something that doesn’t make me feel funny.

George Carlin Is Dead

Published on June 23, 2008 in ..The Dude, Comics, Humor and Life. 4 Comments

We’ve lost a few notables lately but this one hit me harder than the rest. Harder then even I would have guessed. Tim Russert’s death bothered me, Sydney Pollack’s was regrettable, but in Carlin I’ve lost a kindred spirit with all apologies to George for even bringing spirit into any discussion about him.

But as he would have pointed out himself, who cares, he’s dead. He’ll never know.

I remember getting HBO as a kid and stumbling onto Carlin’s concerts. It was like finding verbal porn without the scrambling. Not just because he cursed either but because there was a guy who spoke in ways I could understand. I got him. Even when I was young I had the sense of hearing someone speaking honestly for one of the few times in my life to that point. I was always sensitive to the bullshit around me right there in my own family and I looked forward to every new Carlin HBO concert like an old friend passing through town who was one of the few people I could really talk to and understand.

I remember having this idea as a teen that golf courses and cemeteries were a stupid waste of space and that they should be torn up for the homeless. Then shortly thereafter a new Carlin HBO special came along and he did a routine about both and of doing just that. It solidified whatever specious link to the guy I thought I had. He probably wouldn’t have suffered my stupidity more than anybody else but in my mind there were a lot of parallels in our thought and a mutual understanding. And as he would have probably agreed, all we probably really have is what’s in our head.

When I was an altar boy I stood on the alter of a mostly empty church but for a few other altar boys and less than holy malingerers and actually used the mic to do a couple of Carlin lines. As well as some show tunes. I think George would have appreciated that.

Now we live in a comedic world that embraces Cable Guys named Larry and Jeff Foxworthy. Just one more reason I wish I were young again. And George Carlin was still here.

Carlin got a little mean the past few years, still had the edge but lost a bit of the smoothness and humor. Can’t say as I blame him. Besides the state of the world he had suffered longer than I, he had lost his wife about a decade ago.

Got to wonder why he didn’t look harder for her though.

See that’s the kind of thing he’d say if someone mentioned losing a loved one. He was a died in the wool atheist. He went on about the platitudes people throw out there when someone dies. I agreed though I sometimes give in due to societal pressure and use some of those banal death tropes myself. He said that after someone said, “Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” after a death he’d say, “Sure, you want to come on over and paint the garage?”

And his views on god have been irrefutably proven the past week. When Russert and Carlin go and Bill O’Reilly and Amy Winehouse live on any intelligent god either doesn’t exist or sucks so much it isn’t worth my notice.

He loved language and used it in his comedy artfully. He loved truth and hated bullshit and he cut right through the latter to try and mine the former for whatever humor and relevance it contained. He’s gone now and he himself wouldn’t want anyone saying silly shit like he’s looking down on us or he’ll always be in our hearts. Probably the best testimony I can give is that I feel like running out and buying a bunch of his comedy albums. That’s the only immortality he thought possible and unlike most of us, he achieved it.

From classics like the 7 Words, the Baseball-Football comparison, and our accumulation of stuff, to his more esoteric and harder to handle material, I will continue to listen.

My Conversations With Thomas Jefferson: Part II

Published on June 19, 2008 in ..The Dude. 2 Comments

My historic discussion with out nation’s third President continue.

After getting Jefferson some more Chamomile to calm his nerves after again getting all riled up over the Brits, he settled down and I resumed in my attempt to get his thoughts about the recent Democratic party struggle and the upcoming election.

Me: Ok, let me take another approach. How did you feel about a woman and a black man running for President and knowing one will fight it out in the national election in November? Their British stances aside.

T.J.: You ask me to put aside gravest matters as if some other healthy topic and idea can grow of such poisoned soil. It is an affrontery to all we hold sacred….and self evident, to ask any man not deranged in his senses to put aside that most likely to destroy him. You may sooner ask me to put aside the wolf that howls at the door in order to concentrate on a rain gutter than to ask me to put aside the British issue. You say you seek to move on in the service of conversational novelty, an idea quite ironic and singular coming from such a trope filled and scandalous muckraker as yourself, but you do not ask me to move on scribe. Nay, it is not a new topic you ask me to jump to. Instead you ask me to countenance. You ask me to abide. You ask me to stand by and watch my descendants immolate themselves. Oh putrid and rank scrivener of fatuous and bankrupt words what you ask me to do is to suffer the Devil himself into my own backyard!

I guess the tea wasn’t working as well as I thought.

Me: Dude I know you’re like an ex President, and one of the better ones at that, but pardon the affrontery to your great dignity and all but you really need to get over this British thing. If we can’t move off it I’m out of here and you can rage against the Anglo machine back where you came from.

He must have seen how annoyed I was and how much attention we had started getting. That and knowing I was his only medium back to the world caused him to throw me a bone. Or maybe it was the hot barrista who was back and smiling at his stockings. He cleared his throat, sipped some tea, and starting bringing the answers.

T.J.: Yes it is historic. Truly the Father’s efforts and mine to bring about a more democratic land that recognized all humanities equality, though slow in it’s growth, has found ripe fruition in the past two centuries.

Me: Would you vote for either?

T.J.: Oh hell no.

Me: Understood. You can take the inequality and oppression out of the era but you can’t take the era out of the man.

T.J: You are an idiot. Do not attempt to be other than that. Idiot.

Me: I’m just saying.

T.J.: Stop, saying. You have nothing to say.

Well he was sort of bringing the answers.

Me: But you get how important and positive this is right?

T.J.: Indubitably.

Me: But you wouldn’t be able to bring yourself to serve under a woman or black man am I right?

T.J.: Not even if she hadn’t devolved into such a bitch. Not a chance.

Me: Indubitably. And Obama?

T.J.: He would make a fine assistant. An advisor even. But he owns no land.

Me: Dude, I’m sure he owns a house.

T.J.: Bah. One must own a plantation to truly understand how to manage a large plot of land and what larger plot than this country.

Me: You’re old stomping grounds, Virginia, particularly West Virginia just stomped all over Obama. Polls and interviews indicated pretty clearly it was due to racism. How do you feel about that?

T.J.: We who framed the constitution took it as self evident that changing mens minds were not like climbing a mountain but building one. Just as the creator took his time building the landscape of this world, a fact all science subsequent to my death has verified, building ramparts in mens minds from which they can gain a better view of the world consisting of their own minds and the minds of others, is a lengthy and epic struggle.

Me: It’s been 200 hundred years dude. They don’t even accept the science yet. They think those mountains were put there a few hundred years ago when time and the bible began. Even you guys knew that was bullshit.

T.J.: All men are not only entitled to the pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness, but many to ignorance as well.

Me: But you wouldn’t even vote for either.

T.J.: Not ready dude.

Me: Shouldn’t 200 years be enough. For you and them?

T.J.: Mountains, dude.

Me: But there’s so much more science the past century. It’s not opinion anymore. It’s being awake.

T.J.: Let it go, dude.

Me: You got a problem with the way I talk?

He just laughed kind of snobbishly at that point as if it was, you know, self evident.

Me: Give me something here Mr President?

I said that real snide like again. Touche founding father.Touche.

Me: People in Virginia were all like, “I can’t vote for a Muslim,” and “His name is Hussein. We don’t need another Hussein to worry about.” Another one actually said “we’ve had problems with them black people.” They really said this. And in that annoying banjo twang accent.

T.J.: And it angers you?

Me: Indubitably motherfucker!

T.J.: And you blame me because I lived there?

He saw I was pissed and let me get away with calling him a motherfucker. I think he sensed the malleability and utility of this great word and took no offense. He was a wordsmith. A cunning, cunning linguist. He understood masterful verbiage when he heard it. He did the Presidency like a motherfucker and he knew it. But I was still angry and kept at him. I was gonna nail this guy Colbert style.

Me: No man I blame you because if you pansy asses had had the gumption to tackle the slavery issue a lot earlier and discuss your religious views openly maybe it would have raised the bar on the discourse and snapped us out of this Puritan ignorance.

T.J.: And how many countries have you united?

I didn’t answer. Not because I wasn’t sure of how many but out of principle.

T.J.: How many?

Me: None….

I said grudgingly.

Me: ….That I know of.

I rimshotted the edge of the coffee table.

T.J.: And how many constitutions have you framed?

Me: More than your mother.

T.J.: I see.

Me: Ok I get your point. You did what you thought you could. I get that. Let me ask you this. Was Betsy Ross hot?

T.J.: Compared to your mother.

Me: Touche Mr President. On a different note do you think a more thorough approach to the slavery issue on the part of the founding fathers could’ve done anything to avoid the Civil War?

T.J.: That was a battle for another generation.

Me: But you still used blacks as cannon fodder. And the poor, although they stood to gain little from your revolution. It seems that kind of inequality or hypocrisy wasn’t a battle for another generation.

T.J.: You use too many contractions sir.

Me: We don’t have the kind of time you all had back before cable and dvr.

T.J.: No, indeed we had to give up weeks and months of our lives just to travel from state to state or country to country. It was clearly a fault for which we are truly chastened. May you and your fluidly peripatetic generation forgive us our improper dalliances will you not?

Me: Will we not? See that’s what I’m talking about. “Won’t we,” would’ve saved us all kinds of time. But you gotta make a horse drawn carriage ride from Virginia to Philadelphia out of it.

T.J.: Again, speaking for all gentlemen of leisure of my time, I beg the pardon of such a proud era’s temporally challenged, I believe the term once in vogue not not long ago was, jet set.

Me: Yeah, like maybe in the 70′s.

T.J.: Again I stand dutifully corrected and in awe of your great knowledge and accomplishment?

Me: You’re being sarcastic right?

T.J.: However did you guess? My god but you are surely as to innuendo and conversational nuance as Ben Franklin was to invention and diplomacy.

Me: You kind of suck.

He just kind of shrugged and looked pretty damn content with himself. I continued, having had enough of his evasions, I cornered him thusly:

Me: Enough of your evasions! Mr President, back to my point. Wasn’t it, your revolution I mean, just a revolution for the aristocracy sir?

At this point the 3rd President of these Untied States imitated what I said in baby talk.

T.J.: Iminit ust a wuhvulooshin or da awistocwasy. Wah wah wah.

Me: Pointed rebuttal indeed sir.

I was proud of myself for sounding more like him. And having reduced him to acting more like me. I felt like I could be President. And not just compared to Bush.

Me: What do you think of Bush by the way?

T.J.: My good friend John Adams once wrote that he and his brethren had given so very much to create a democratic country and that if you who we left it to did not do right with it he should turn his back on you in Heaven. I will just say that I have it from the utmost authority on john Adamas, that is the man himself, that he will not be doing any interviews with you or your contemporaries anytime soon.

Me: Bummer. But I feel that. I really do. You know Bush is a Republican. Even though that party wasn’t around in your time Lincoln’s era’s creation of it came out of many of the ideals of your own party. So Bush is sort of politically related to you.

T.J.: THis interview is over.

Me: Sorry man. Really. That was uncalled for. But it shows how marked a change there has been. That’s what I’m saying.

T.J.: Though somethings require much time to change, apparently some do not.

Me: Not you father’s Republican Party you mean? Or at least Lincioln’s.

T.J.: Bush and his ilk are as far from the brand of thinking we believed right for this country and representative of what we considered Republican ideals as Battlestar Galactica is from the original series.

Me: Oh you watch?

T.J.: Indeed.

Me: Who’s the 5th Cylon. I think it’s Hera. I’m like the only person in the entire world saying this. Can’t find a one on the internet even.

T.J.: Well you have found another.

Me: Get out!

I put my hand up and over the table for him to hit me up top but he kind of just looked at me over the bifocals and went back to perusing History For Dummies.

Me: Not familiar with the high five huh?

T.J.: I know what it is.

Me: Oh…..I see.

I cleared my throat and looked around a bit embarrasedly.

Me: Well as long as we’re on pop culture: favorite band?

Jefferson straightened, took a sip of tea, then rubbed his hands together as if warming them by the fire of my question.

T.J.: Well it all depends on what era we are talking now does it not? If we are talking of modernity I will say Schubert. If we are talking the classics I will say Mozart.

Me: Schubert’s been dead for almost as long as you. Can’t you give me something from my lifetime?

T.J.: Van halen.

Me: Van Halen? Really?

T.J.: No but it’s what you want to hear is it not scribe?

Me: Okay but you guys know a lot where you come from. On eternal terms you have to admit Eddy was a master shredder.

T.J.: When his time comes he will take his rightful throne beside the Guitar Gods.

Me: Cool. Beatles or Stones?

T.J.: In matters such as these when one is comparing and contrasting levels unpareil so little of what we choose to distinguish between them can or should be counted germaine outside of the subjectivity of the contemplate himself. But it is also self evident that just because a reputation has been established does not mean is has been earned and in this matter we have good example of this. The Rolling Stones, while iconic, and even important in their era, have long since lost all traces of those characteristics while the Beatles imprint their brand on one new generation after another.

Me: Right on.

T.J.: I am not finished.

Me: Alrighty then.

T.J.: While I recognize the aforementioned qualities of Mick Jagger and his musical hooligans, I must also staunchly aver that much of their reputation as such had to do with timing more than the quality of the music. Even more pointedly must I declare that said music, while having it’s moments and illustrations of memorable, even enjoyable interludes, most of their musical output can be said from any viewpoint not jaundiced by closeness and kinship in their period of greatest output and iconoclastic frame of mind-a mind that would put them in position of alignment with what that band came to mean in their heyday-I put before you and thusly all present Americans that the greater mass of the works of that band, and let me be quite clear about this, I mean the band known as the Rolling Stones; the greater output of said band including most of their singles even when taken apart from the even more declaratively included album output; the vast majority of what that venerated and well spun band issued throughout the decades that include their youth and apex, the majority of it all can be said to give itself charitably to major suckage of the largest possible posterior area known to your generation.

Me: Far out.

T.J.: Indubitably.

Me: Yeah man. Indubitably. The stones suck ass.

I was relieved to hear his opinion on this matter even though I kind of passed out half way through his answer.

Me: Yankees-Red Sox rivalry; your position?

T.J.: I am not finished sir!

Me: K.

T.J.: Now while I must go on to admit the greater and indeed opposite qualities of the Beatles I must do so with the caveat that their influence and popularity was not a boon but rather a blight. ONe only slightly less insidious than that of the Stones so that what is everred is that though they be the clearly better players thyer were, in large part due to this, the worst band!

Me: Wow dude. Because of the drugs? Sex?

T.J.: No! These are of no matter. What was ushered into the consciousness of mankind through the Beatles music, delivered so much more effectively than the Rolling Stones could ever do was dressed in sheeps clothing so as to better fool us from letting leave of barring our gates against tyranny and opression.

Me: Oh shit man. You mean because they were British don’t you?

T.J.: Oh course!

Me: Seriously? So were the Stones.

T.J.: Were you not listening? Due to the more pervasive, and undoubtedly better music made by the so dubbed fab four, a greater and softer route for British ideas and influence than the stones would ever have was created.

Me: Ideas like love and peace?

T.J.: The British know of no such things but only mean to make us into slithering house pets keening for more of their silken laced poison which tries to ready us for invasion by lulling us into pacifistic and lovelorn simpletons!

Me: We’ll have to revisit this. The Yankee Red Sox thing. I need your thoughts on this.

T.J.: While of course always dubious to the Yankee cause herein neither of these organizations, great in their own right and way, can divorce themselves of that geographic designation. But being human I find the constant reminder within the former teams very nickname an obnoxious and unnecessary reminder. It is indeed self evident to me and so to all learned men that it not be as insulting a in its designation in memory to refer playfully and appropriately to the color of the socks a team wears. THis is both charming and aprapos; a far more benign and fitting tribute in light of the nature of the game.

Me: Yankees fucking suck man.

T.J.: You know that sir.

No sarcasm in his tone with the use of sir. It seemed as if me and the president were bonding.

Me: Favorite writer all time? I’m gonna guess it’s not Dickens.

T.J.: You sir are an idiot! A knave. A scoundrel. All these things and more reflected beyond question in your abhorrent taste.

Me: Yeah I like Dickens. What’s wrong with Dickens? His stuff is masterful if a little soap opera-ish. He’s a great writer. I can understand if he’s not your all time favorite but don’t dismiss him because he’s British.

T.J.: What else is there?

Me: Dude. Did you red any of his stuff after your death?

T.J.: We are aware of all things.

Me: And you see no value in his work beyond them being British in origin and for the most part in setting?

T.J.: They are oppressive, trite, juvenile apologia’s for monarchy!

Me: No they’re not.

T.J.: They are!

Me: They’re not.

T.J.: They are!

He pounded the table and I thought it best I let this one go.

Me: But you like the Beatles?

T.J.: Compared to the Stones. Do not compare them to an American band or let them stand of themselves or I shall have to lash out at them as well.

Me: And Lennon was no Royalist.

T.J.: Indeed. His self imposed exile to this country redeemed much of their music in my mind and ears.

Me: Ok, speaking of which, being here got him killed due to the gun issues England doesn’t have. Good question for you. Do you and the rest of the Founding Fathers still think the 2nd Amendment germane?

T.J.: They are all germane scribe.

Me: Germane is a perfectly respectable word dude. But was the amendment meant to encompass machine guns, ak 47′s, and other instruments of easy and mass destruction?

T.J.: Not on this continent certainly. But I would not want to keep my fellow citizens from arming themselves for greater external threats that can only be defended against with whatever means the times allow.

Me: Meaning the British?

T.J.: Damn right!

Me: We should keep rapid fire machine guns around this country to defend ourselves from invasions of the British?

T.J.: I would keep a nuclear bomb in my basement for such occurrences.

Me: Because they might want to take their country back?

T.J.: They still believe it theirs.

Me : I don’t think they do.

T.J.: You are not unused to being wrong are you not scrivener?

Me: About some kinds of things sure.

T.J.: And you have never suffered through a British attack upon your home soil.

Me: Wasn’t even alive for the British music invasion.

T.J.: Then who are you to speak?

Me: Lennon sang about revolution. You said a nation needs one every 15 years or so. Should Americans revolt against this government?

At this Jefferson leaned back, made thinking noises, sipped some tea, smacked a barrista’s ass and resumed.

In a different coffee shop. We got kicked out. T.J. had a lot to learn about modern women. FOr now I will let this enforced break mark and end to part II of these discussions. The final part will be forthcoming shortly.

My Conversations With Thomas Jefferson Part 1

Published on May 30, 2008 in ..The Dude and Politics. 0 Comments

As some may know I featured my groundbreaking talks with Jesus on this site in the past. If you missed them, verily I say unto thee they are in the archives, probably under religion. If you love Jesus it’s must reading because the guy doesn’t do interviews. In fact he’s been oddly quiet publicly, reclusive even, since his death a couple of millennium ago. Go figure.

But I have the feeling we’ll be speaking again soon so I’m sure all good Christians will want to stay tuned as he takes the pulse of the laity and the country they say he created.

But what I didn’t know when J-Dog started speaking unto me was that his path of communication opened some sort of telecommunication anomaly in space/time that would allow other notable personages to have access to my bedroom, living room, or table at B&N, the three places I tend to recount events in text. Thusly, the following discussion with our 3rd President Thomas Jefferson. We did this one exclusively at Barnes & Noble. He was dressed in a smart breeches, stockings, waistcoat ensemble that clearly marked him as not only an aristocrat, slave owner, and man of leisure, but of one who had been dead for 200 years. He also sported a tannish periwig, the great power source of all men of import before the 19th century. We took tea together in the B&N’s coffee shop, the former President, answering my questions in a slightly distracted and annoyed tone as he looked up from the copy of History For Dummies he was looking at. He did this not to look at me but rather to divide his focus between his book and the backsides of numerous women whose figures seemed to both appall and affix him.
The following is a transcript of out historic consultation.

Me: So T.J. great to see you dude. How do you feel?

The former President takes a sip of his Chamomile and looks up over his bifocals to peer at me dubiously.

T.J.: Feel?

He made an expression of distaste, his lip curling at the side, his nose wrinkling ever subtly.

Me: Something wrong with the Tea?

He smiled, took another sip, returned it to the table and said:

T.J.: No.

Me: Okay then. How about getting back to the question then? If it’s not too distasteful to you?

T.J.: It is.

He paused, smiled again, peered at me over the bifocals again and answered me anyway because he knew why he was there. It wasn’t Robert Frost that opened up a portal for dead people to come through and get face time. It was me. The Dude. On some level Jefferson had to respect that. Or at least bow to that reality as harsh as it appeared for him to accept.

T.J.: How do I feel you ask after telling me how great it is to have me here. Perspective is much and here is more proof for I hold this truth to be self evident that while the term great, as you ascribe it to the emotional detritus you most assuredly bring to your discussions with such notable personages as myself mayhap be fitting within a mind so normally addressed to mediocrity as your own, it is with less than that such grand measures of emotional calculation that I address thee. …

His words trailed off as a female Barrista of decidedly appealing proportions to all generations of real Americans and patriots bent over to clear the table next to us. His head peered down and he peered upwards over the bifocals, now having more of a stern schoolmaster-ish air as he scrutinized her tight and flattering pants. One eyebrow slowly lifted as he resumed speaking…

T.J.:….But upon further consideration and seeing as this is my first, shall we say, corporeal, communication in 200 odd years perhaps I am putting too fine a point on my objection.

Me: Yeah well, it has been an odd 200 years has it not?

T.J.:Indubitably sir.

I was definitely sensing an attitude. Beyond his tone he looked at me like I was wearing a Redcoat or something. Jesus had been in a decidedly better mood during our sessions. But then Jesus probably had more to set right than this man of such archived historicity.

Me: Have you been keeping up on things?

T.J.: Apparently you do not hold these truths to be self evident that the dead have access to all your world though they are not in their day to day interests usually given to putting the affairs of the living amongst their priorities. But being a man given to not only self awareness, but also to a careful observation of Earthly matters I am of course aware of the broad wash of ebbings and flowings within the tide of histories grand sweep. Let it not be said of Thomas Jefferson that death alone was enough of an excuse to let himself become obsolete.

Me: Ok, so that’s a yes?

He didn’t answer.

Me: A No?

Me: Anyway then, you’re biggest surprise of the past 200 years?

He peered at the Barrista’s backside with what I can only describe, coming from him, as revolutionary ardor.

T.J.: I think perhaps the serving wenches. Such attire, and demonstrative lack of humility at one time would have found such a person not only banned from the establishment of any decent congregation but quite likely smoldering at a stake.

Me: Thank goodness for the enlightenment huh?

T.J.: Indeed, though I am left to wonder if the causes taken up in the name of humanism and rationality would have quite blanched if vouchsafed a glimmer into a future of such wanton carnality. Do not get me wrong scribe, I am the first to celebrate the graduation of mankind’s repression from the sacred corridors of superstition, but there was something to be said for discretion and the imagination. To put it to you otherly I have already, in just a passing moment of voyeurism managed to encapsulate many of the traditional results a man would have hoped to accrue to himself from a more lengthy courtship with such a creature.

Me: Yeah it’s great. I don’t understand that last part though.

T.J.: Let me put it to you in terms one such as yourself is likely to understand then shall I. Indeed I shall. In short order and without provision my able seamen have declared their independence far before the rest of the military could act on its orders from the chief of staff.

Me: Ahhh. Just so I understand you correctly you’re saying you fired a warning shot across the bough of your breeches?

T.J.: I knew I could count on your coarse and indecent nature scrivener.

Me: Yeah we’re on the same page here. Let me ask you this: Was “otherly,” really an accepted word in your day?

T.J.: You seek to put me to task for grammar? The freedom that allows you to sit here writing whatever defecations of thought that proceed in backward fashion from out of your mouth and into your pen, why that very freedoms letters were spilled in large part from my lifeblood. You have phrases to spasmodically turn and sentences to bloodily butcher because I was able to express myself succinctly and eloquently in times that most stressed a bodies calm and lucid expression. That I did so well and properly would seem to be implied by not only the success of the nation I did help conceive but by the fact that someone of such lowly birth as yourself can sit here insulting my intelligence.

Me: So you made otherly up didn’t you?

T.J. It is self evident.

Me: Cool. So back to women. Black or white? Let’s settle the debate once and for all.

T.J.: All women, not unlike men, are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Though they not be granted official qualification in the legislative legerdemain of our particular epoch, they are and were created equal in the eyes of the sacred and blessed.

Me: And..?

He looked at me challengingly for a moment and then finally let a softening smile play about his mouth before adding:

T.J.: Yes, whether a woman be white or black there should be no marginalization in the eyes of man based on the varying shades and hues god colored us all with, and that all women though they be equal in all categories of judgment are spared that balanced measure in but the one area that marks them; that is to say a distinguishing mark can be placed upon woman, as it has assuredly been from their creator, by a quality of excess; such surplus being measured in warmth and it’s varying degrees steeped in a judgment of such not born of atmospheric measures or gradations of wetness in the air but of a warmth taken more of the observers lack or possession of a dry heat.

Me: How hot they are you mean?

T.J.: Indubitably.

Me: But which did you mark more often Tommy? Which moved you more to a warmer climate with a wet heat? Black or white?

T.J. Though I take your meaning sir I must preface my response with a warning. If perchance you happen to call me Tommy again in place of my given name which I am quite sure you understand to be Thomas, a fact that is not only written of historically, but one which should be assumed of anyone with said given name before truncating it in an overly familiar effort of familiarization that in it’s truest sense can indeed find outlet with ones friends and comrades, who in my case have been known to address me as one Tom in lighthearted moments and in informal surroundings; but if you, who I do not count as friend or equal should address me in such fashion again, even with the shortened sobriquet of more accepted method, indeed if you call me anything but Thomas, itself a concession to the unusual nature of our interview since it would be not inappropriate to expect you to refer to me as nothing but Mr President; but if you should refer to me in any of the aforementioned familiar ways I will be forced to do things to you that will make many of the more notable revolutionary battles seem tame when the results are viewed by others.

Me: You’re saying you will go all Bunker Hill on my ass?

T.J.: It is self evident.

Me: Sure. Anyway, Black or white? Which was more alluring to a noble and esteemed fucking President such as yourself?

T.J.: Neither.

Me: Ahhh, Milato then?

T.J.: Indubitably.

Me: Well that does explain a lot. So were you really hooked up with Sally?

T.J.: Hooked up?

Me: Did you declare the independence of your sovereign nation in her pants and then keep doing so as a united nation?

T.J.: We were a confederacy of sorts.

Me: Nothing wrong with that. You know Weezy Jefferson was one of the first T.V. Women I hoisted my own flag to if you know what I’m saying.

T.J. A charming image.

Me: You know sometimes I think The Jefferson’s did more for race relations in this country than the founding fathers. Come on, you know you would have tapped Weezy if she were, you know, working the plantation as they say.

T.J.: They didn’t.

Me: Didn’t what?

T.J.: Say that.

Me: Wise ass

T.J.: Yes, a fitting term, even accolade from one such yourself for attributes said to reside in ones posterior, while arresting in a carnal way would be of no wonder if they’re mental parallel did not find at least it’s equal in your mind. Why indeed it would be no wonder at all if over the course of my lifetime I hadn’t shat more wisdom and eloquence than you have spoken.

Me: You’re a funny fucking dead president aren’t you?

T.J.: You’re fancy and comical Jesus was surely not my equal?

Me: He’s not my Jesus. The guy who played him in the 1st Century just talks to me sometimes. But no, in the humor area, he’s not your fucking equal Mr President. Let’s get back to politics shall we.

T.J.: I hadn’t realized we had ever been diverted from lofty discussions; rather it seems as if I have come through the dark portals of hereafter merely to suffer your insipid and banal attempts at titillation.

Me: You said tit.

Silence.

Me: Before illation. Tit-illation. Heh heh. Heh heh…….Ok then Thomas.

I said his name real slow and archly. He had no response. I really nailed him there. I continued.

Me: The current Presidential race? What do you think of the campaigns?

T.J.: While I am not without my partisan emotions tugging from different sides I am awaiting one side to finally address the issue that seems to be an unspoken and indeed unspeakable white elephant in the debating room.

Me: Race relations?

Nothing.

Me: American hypocrisy in foreign policy? Campaign finance? Destructive capitalism? What?

T.J.: These are trifling issues. Mere ephemeralities of the age. I speak of a far more dangerous and long standing threat to our national well being and safety. One of such a dire and malevolent nature that even to speak of it in this age has apparently become the most poisoned of taboos.

Me: Hillary’s face lift?

Jefferson pounded the table at that point getting us even more attention than a man in a big horsehair whig, breeches, and uncountable layers of shirts and jackets would normally get in a Starbucks, and then he actually yelled the following:

T.J.: I speak of course of the damned British!!

He made damned sound like two words. Like Dam-ned. Like Homer going off on Flanders.

Me: The fucking British?

T.J: Aye. You have finally put something in a way I could not have surpassed myself. The fucking British indeed. Fuck them!

He was pretty worked up at this point. He adjusted his wig, straightened his waistcoat, cleared his throat and resumed.

T.J.: Will not your Clinton dynasty, your man of hope, or my old friend John McCain, ever address this matter of most egregious harm and dire threat to the foundations of this country that I laid down along with such learned and stalwart gentlemen as Adams, Washington, and Hamilton?

Me: And all the poor and black men who died fighting the British right?

T.J.: The what now?

Me: The dead guys. Mostly poor and uneducated you sacrificed for lower taxes.

T.J.: And for what! So that you now fight beside them in your wars both of global and local impact, read their books full of quaint and studied verbiage and dub them classics as if written in other ink than the blood of the oppressed, borrow their television ideas in wretched attempt to emulate calumny and perfidy, laugh at their ironic juvenalia as if the dryness of their humor were not born of the dryness of their souls, honor them with best acting awards on our own soil for skills assuredly hereditary to a breed of scoundrels who have spent centuries acting as if they were human, and fawn over their accent which was long ago affected by the diabolical insertion of a cripples walking stick up through their progenitors arses until it traveled the length of their bodies and cleft their palette so that they must speak upward and haughtily as if to keep from seeing their empty words drop to the ground and back to the devil who spawned them?!!!!!

Me: Uhh, wow dude. We’re kind of over all that taxation without representation stuff now. These aren’t your father’s Brits anymore you know?

T.J: NONSENSE!

On this note I told him I would get a beverage while he calmed himself. I’ll use that break to end part 1 of these historic conversations with Thomas Jefferson. Part 2 of what should probably be a 3 part interview based on that nights material will be up shortly.

The Fireball Of Epiphany

Published on May 13, 2008 in ..The Dude, Life and Science/Nature. 0 Comments

So I’m talking to Pedro on my cell phone last Thursday shortly before leaving work and with my free hand I’m using one of those stick lighters to ignite the monster barbeque grill we have in the backyard there. It didn’t light normally so you know how you’re supposed to turn off all burner sections for 5 minutes before relighting? Well I knew that too. But what with the talking and all I didn’t really pay much attention and I didn’t do that. I also didn’t pay attention to the quadrant of the grill i was sticking the lighter in.

It wasn’t the right part.

POOF!

Big red fireball rushes up my arm, my chest, and into my face.

Within a matter of seconds I’m thinking that life as I have known it has come to an end. I will be rolling on the grass or running towards the hose in an attempt to save my life momentarily. But surely either way I have suffered major burns and permanent scarring. Including on my face.

Now some who know me may feel this couldn’t make things any worse.

Fuck these people.

Fuck them in the ass with Neptune’s Trident.

But though they might be right, I don’t want to be any more self conscious than i already am. But this big old fireball whose poof was audible to people inside the house who came running, surely had to do some damage.

So I’m thinking this as I calmly tell Pedro that I should go now. He was inviting me as a special guest at Hillside Manor for a free meal Wednesday at 10:30 a.m. It’s for an event having to do with people like him who have made their homes into a place for mentally disabled people to live and prosper. I occasionally help him out so I was eligible for the meal. But as I’m lighting myself on fire I’m thinking I don’t want to eat at 10:30 a.m. I don’t want to do anything at 10:30 in the morning.

By the time I was thinking life had been irrevocably altered I’m thinking I’m certainly not going to any more parties with major burn scars all over my face.

Just a bit earlier, before a memorial service we were hosting where I work our head honcho, or rather honchess for our region, asked me why I hadn’t RSVP’d back regarding the Everyday Heroes ceremony being catered by the Culinary Institute somewhere in Poughkeepsie. Which was today by the way.

All the big wigs were going to be there. Indeed they were as I just heard from the other manager where I work, Jarmar, who was there. Our program got lots of accolades. I was even mentioned. I wasn’t there. Not a fan of these things or hobnobbing. Gladhanding sure. I loves me the gladhanding. But not the hobnobbing. Hobnobbing killed my uncle. For that I will never forgive the hobbers and their endless nobbing.

But at the moment I was peering into the void of the fireball I was glad I told Head Honchess that I didn’t want to play all the reindeer games (I think I actually just made a face and said “I don’t know”) and didn’t even see the e mail about the RSVP because I’m not showing there with major scars and at least a good portion of the hair burned from my upper body.

I had already entered into the thought mode that the days of functions, dinners, get togethers, etc, were over for me. For I was already burned by 3rd degree burn damage of another kind. I was a freak before the fireball. Never mind this now. It was on my mind as the fireball was making it an even more palpable reality.

Only it didn’t.

I smelled burning flesh but found nothing wrong. My clothes were not on fire. I patted myself down after ending my phone call, not mentioning that the reason I had to go was because I thought I was on fire and about to begin life as Mel Gibson in The Man Without A Face. MIraculously even the eyebrows were there. I though for sure they were gone. I asked a couple of my guys who were standing nearby if they saw any burns. I certainly felt hot. Nothing. Eventually I found the source of the stench. THe hair on my right hand on up my arm to the elbow where my rolled up sleeve began had been singed off.

I now have two matchless hands and arms, the one smelling of burning embers for a day or so. And a bit of a burn scar on the wrist which is already fading after 5 days. Due to these arms, one with a fairly normal hand-arm hair pattern, the other with nothing on one side of it, I am of course still a freak.

A monster even.

But not quite the monster I thought I would surely be.

And therein lies the issue.

I am Superman.

That’s right. I’m indestructable. I’m never going to die.

Fuck you all and you’re happiness. To hell with you’re accomplishments, your families, your girlfriends or wives, your children, your basic human normalcy.

I am compensated with eternal life.

I am 40 and have never been close to being destroyed. I should have been before. I should never have survived childhood. Yet I did.

Now I know why.

I’m a Superhero.

Of course I have that poetic downside to counterbalance my gifts. I must walk the Earth forever alone, unsatisfied, freakishly deformed, aghast at your stupidity, rooting for the Mets, and using my cell phone mainly for work purposes.

But I shall outlive you all.

I shall bury you.

And the memories of you and all you have done.

All that is left will be me. You will exist only as far as I acknowledge you. And for some, perhaps I will. This too is part of my power.

Perhaps I will pursue a life of crime fighting. After I settled down from the Fireball Of Epiphany I got quite the adrenaline rush. “Danger good,” said I. I felt alive. After I settled down I wanted to jump into traffic. Not only to test my invulnerability but also and mainly to get another rush of the adrenaline. I can see why some people lie to put themselves in harms way. When you have nothing that inspires you or to live for you can get a real artificial but real sense of living and purpose by living on the edge and thwarting death.

But adventure and excitement? A Jedi craves not these things right?

What does Lucas know? He’s a lousy writer.

The artificial meaning the life endangering creates is as real an anything. It’s manufactured sure. I’ve never been one to manufacture drama. But that was before I knew I was immortal. Fake drama for mere mortals is folly. This is true. And even a Jedi is mortal. I am not. I am a fucking Highlander motherfuckers. I do what I want. Also I have that whole meaningless and insignificant thing going on that probably is one of the root causes for those that create drama in their lives. Being a superhero though I would not be silly white trash for catering to it. I would be saving the world or something.

Now excuse me, I have a cheerleader to save.

The Best Things Ever

Published on March 29, 2008 in ..The Dude, Films, Literature and Television. 0 Comments

There’s some stuff I’ve liked a lot lately and think others should like a lot too.

On TV
The HBO series John Adams.

It’s a 7 parter. 3 have aired. I’ve seen 2 so far with the 3rd waiting for me on the greatest invention since electricity was harnessed. The show looks great. It does a great job of feeling like a real 18th Century colonial/revolutionary America. You can really just slip into the time period surrounded by vivid architectural imagery, clothing, and an overall sense of newness, growth, and quaintness that must have been such an intoxicating mix to those who were part of the grand venture that was this burgeoning English colony as it erupted into an independent country and power.

That venture brings to mind what many still think of as the American experiment. And the idea of that, or rather maybe even the Idea of America in the Platonic sense is something I feel vibrating through the shows words, images, and music. Already it has had its moments to stir the emotions and make one proud, or at least feel lucky to be connected to such a project. You can feel the import of the decisions made at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia. The ethical principle Adams defends during the trial of the soldiers accused in the so called Boston Massacre is brought to life and in some moments vividly captures the best of what we would like to believe we are.

There are moments during the first 2 parts when i wish I was a politician so i could fight more closely for some of these principles that were amongst the strongest and noblest of our foundations. This gets stirring enough that a higher principle is evoked, a brighter passion stoked, and a desire to see the great experiment to a worthy future awakened. Surely I’d want to also kick out those weakest hypocrisies also so much a part of the experiment. Because of course there those dark elements in the American soul and character. Some are touched on here and some are not. Even in some of the nobler and most complete portraits of the period I don’t get that sense of yet another war or revolution that is more about the middle to upper classes clamoring for even more rather than the lowest classes. And yet it’s often those lower classes paying the price as far as blood shed and lives lost.

While men like Adams seem to have a real concern for the less fortunate lives they are inevitably sending to their deaths for this fight I’m not sure there was ever that practical awareness of the aristocratic divide that continues to widen in this country. But there was a balance in that there was a George Washington on the front lines even if he wasn’t put in positions of most danger and there were generally agreements regarding the shooting of officers. But there was still a much higher ethic and nobility to a man like him and a sense of being much more deserving to preside over a nation. Those ideals he possessed and that people around him in positions of power recognized and rewarded are that much more accentuated and blown up in the face of the chickenhawk pieces of shit sending others to die for them in this country now.

There were noble elements to the revolution and noble men with grand ideas and evolved sensibilities even if they weren’t aware of some of their own hypocrisy. Not that all of them weren’t though. For instance the slave hypocrisy was something they were aware of. There’s a scene in part 2 when Jefferson shows Ben Franklin and Adams his first draft of the Declaration and though it is apparent all 3 men want this eloquent document to stand as a voice for humanity rather than just the free colonies they know it is not an argument that can be won in that time and place. Basically it came down to one battle at a time. Whether they could have fought harder and still presided over independence from Britain and a successful growth of the American economy and helped avoid the Civil War a century later is debatable.

We also get a good look at Ben Franklin. At least in part 2. Hopefully more to come. He figures in something else I’m going to recommend in this post. To me he’s a quintessential American figure. I love his sense of humor, his pragmatism, his skepticism, and many other qualities that made him who he was and helped shape America more than the religion he scoffed at and which so many today try to fool people into thinking this country was founded upon.

There’s a scene in part 2 where Adams is trying to get his vote on declaring independence and he asks Franklin if he ever says what’s on his mind. BF says something to the effect that he’s very much against doing that and that people thinking out loud is a habit much responsible for most of mankind’s misery.

I really get and relate to that. BF was a guy who could read things including his own powerlessness to effect some of those things. But he knew how to maneuver within the framework of the way things were or were going. This doesn’t mean he went with the prevailing winds. He was a rationalist who clearly believed in the scientific approach and derided the ignorance and superstition around him but he knew change came in stages and he made practical and considered decisions. He was the kind of man who looked at the evidence and made a decision based on those circumstances rather than wedding himself to any school of thought, political faction, religion, or group.

I kind of see him and Mark Twain as the best of pre 20th Century America and though I see them as quintessentially American I take liberties in doing so since unfortunately their way of seeing the world and examining it is not exactly the norm in this country. But their inspiration and influence is still there. Despite everything we still may be the funniest, most satirically advanced, and maybe even the most practical country in history. The Ben Franklin’s are the foundation of that even as they battled against some of those other scarier traits instilled in us by racists and the Puritans.

And watching this series combined with other historical pieces I’ve seen and things I’ve read I’m starting to believe the key to these generations, the qualities that separate them from ourselves and our own leaders, was the wigs.

I always wondered why everyone wore them and I think I know. They conferred super mental powers. What if they equalized everyone physically so that the mental could operate unencumbered worrying about how they looked. Let’s face it, most of us are almost always aware of how we look and at least a little conscious of how we are being perceived physically by others around us at any given moment. It takes a lot of mental energy and focus away from us. But those generation from our Founding Fathers going back to England and France of the Baroque fixed it so everyone in a non physical job category had the same hair. No one had to sit there in a meeting thinking “how does my hair look.” It looked like the guy next to him with the bad wig. And since everyone looks kind of bad with a bad wig who cared? They could concentrate on founding democratic systems and cool stuff like that.

Brilliant deduction on my part?

Or brilliant observation on my part?

You make the call.

Anyway, John Adams. Watch it. First 3 are on On Demand so those with cable have no excuse.

Jericho.
It’s over now. The final show ever though there are rumors of a possible sci fi channel pick up. Pretty satisfying ending though certainly with room for more if they have an opportunity. Basically the next segment would detail the next American Civil War as a new history is carved out with guys like Hawkins and Jake being our Adams and Washington’s.

I stand by the shows realism even there are many who feel it was silly and preposterous at times. THis show was so much a reality I can see this country facing someday. They had to rush somethings at the end that could have stood a more reasonable and lengthy set up like the way they got that nuke to the Texas faction. And though the involvement of Ravenwood, a Blackwater type private fighting force wreaks of reality to me, I think the person they ultimately gave responsibility to for the original country wide attacks doing it as an anti Ravenwood/corporate government move was a stretch. But that was part of what felt rushed. I’m not sure they would have gone there in such a tidy way if they had a certain future.

The frightening thing is that he was right in that a Ravenwood and their Government lackies don’t have to effect such drastic changes to remake America in their image. They’re already doing it slowly but surely. And while blowing it all up from within didn’t stop them it might be all that’s left if things keep going the way they are and if there’s anyone left in such a position who wants to change things.

But I thought it was kind of stupid of this nuclear scientist guy to think Ravenwood and their political faction would be weakened by such chaos. They would and did thrive. IF you really think about it and the Blackwater’s and Halliburton’s continue to become a private DOD, FEMA, police force, etc what happens when opportunity overseas dries up?

American Idol:
I’m not so much talking about the show itself as far as something I’m high on right now or recommending. Rather there’s one guy on it who actually kicks some solid ass. David Cook. He’s done 2 or 4 covers I’d actually put on a disc and listen to again. His “Hello,” “Eleonor Rigby,” and “Billie Jean,” were really frakking good. Very unique and original. And he plays some guitar which is always nice to see with someone trying to pass themselves off as a musician as most of these Idol mariah Carey/Whitney Houston want to be losers try and do.

Books
The Last Withfinder by James Morrow.

I love James Morrow.

Few know who he is even within the sci fi community even though what he does has been mostly categorized as satirical sci fi. Copies of his books are hard to find in book stores. But he kicks ass. He has a new book called The Philosopher’s Apprentice out which i did see at Barnes & Noble the other day. But I’m here to talk about his previous book which I just read after it his paperback.

Morrow has always been great at satire and thoughtful philosophic/theological humor but shows in TLW that he can do historical fiction just as well. Even with my expectations for a Morrow book being dashed as I read on and realized I wasn’t meant to laugh as much as in previous works, by about 100 pages in I started to revel in the book’s prose and purpose just as thoroughly as I’ve reveled in Morrow’s previous works of satire.

The story takes place in late 17th and early 18th century England and America with a stopover on a Carribean island and includes a heavy presence of the aforementioned Ben Franklin. Morrow does a nice job mixing Franklin in a major way that could actually coincide with known real events in the mans younger years though obviously don’t really represent real events. The main character is Jennet and we follow her throughout her life as she goes on a licaraesque journey through a time that represents a sort of nexus from superstition to rationality and enlightenment. Her fight to end witchtrials and the killing of mostly women accused of witches is the crux of the book. Morrow makes an interesting choice to have the story narrated by another book. It is Newton’s Principia Mathematica that takes us on Jennet’s journey and the device leads to some nice interludes dealing with the importance of books and the evolution of thought.

A great thing about Morrow is that he has a clear purpose in writing his books. While you might suggest that every author has one as well, I can’t say that they link a greater purpose with an interesting narrative in a syncretic fashion very often or very well. And with TLW I felt a clear a sense of meaning. This is a book with a purpose. And for a book with the conceit of being written by another book and making much of the evolutionary growth and connection of books, much like blocks of DNA in a sort of natural selection of thought, saying this one is worthy progeny of the best qualities and purposes of earlier works is probably the best compliment I can give it.

But i must also add that besides its themes Morrow deserves a lot of credit for utilizing a writing style that was a departure for him. Not only does he get away with it but he created a flowing narrative that was not only readable and more epic and rollicking than past works, he did so in what I found to be an addictive manner. The language and style he uses was compulsively readable in its ability to be direct, to invoke the era, and to find a poetic groove that was neither too arch, nor too trite for the subject matter.

One of the best books I’ve read in years.

For anyone interested in his more satirical works check out Only Begotten Daughter about Jesus sister, the daughter of god living in Atlantic City in the modern era.

The Godhead Trilogy starting with Towing Jehovah.

And, This Is The Way The World Ends.

I need to reread all of them and check out the couple of his books I haven’t read plus the new one though I want to spread out new Morrow since it’s rare. So i may wait on The Philosopher’s Apprentice for a bit.

Movies
Into The Wild

First off, though most know the basic story this is based on and there might be some who don’t. For those this is a spoiler. i will tell you how it ends.

I was skeptical heading into this. I wanted to see it when it was out in theaters but didn’t go out of my way because I thought Sean Penn, who directed it, and Eddie Vedder, as much as I love him, who did the music, to take part in a version of the Chris McCandless story I figured to be too one sided and sanctimonius. Sure If I knew anyone who was willing to do see it I would still have gone but though going to movies alone has become a regular staple in my dotage I generally avoid it unless it’s something i really want to see.
So I Netflixed it. And I’m here to say I was wrong. Not only was I wrong but some of the media and internet opinions I’d come across indicating it was indeed too biased were wrong. I had read much of the book written about Chris and found him naive, arrogant, a bit stupid, and frankly full of shit. I sympathized with aspects of his character but I thought he went too far and took himself too seriously.
But to my surprise Penn made an even handed movie that mixed youthful passion and idealism with it’s attendent arrogance and naivete. I don’t think it accounted for its leads lack of preparedness quite enough and an opportunity for a wonderfully symbolic paen to it was neglected at the end in a final shot that could have given us a piece of information Penn left out. That info being that Chris died pretty close to a waystation that he’d have known was there if he bothered to bring a map.
But not only is this the best looking movie I’ve seen in a while, but I think overall Penn did a good job creating a sympathetic character many of us can relate to at one time in our lives but one that has a mental journey as well as a physical one and in so traveling discovers some truths about life and society. And they’re not always the truths I expected. They may not even have been the truths Chris himself found before his end. There were writings of his found but Penn does take some liberties in interpreting some things and imagining exactly where Chris was at at the end. But as a movie character traveling within a narrative with begenning, middle and end, he takes a satisfying journey even though it winds up where anyone with a little information going in knew it was going to end up.

The Assasination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford.
I think i’m the only person who thinks Casey Affleck should have won best supporting actor over Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men. But I really do. Bardem’s performance was good but overated. I’ve seen similar portraits of stoic evil before. But Ben’s little brother creates a portrait of cloying opportunism, jealousy, cowardice, and false humility that was really unique and masterly portrayed.

And the move, though maybe a little overlong was generally riveting and interesting. Like Into The Wild it was also a great looking movie. There Will Be Blood and No Country For old Men got a lot of hype for how epic in scope they were with portraits of large and grand vistas. Indeed they were cinematically good looking movies though neither stood out in that regard to me. Into The Wild and TAOJJBTCRF did stand out. These are both beautiful lookoing movies that had much more more breadth of viual scope to them.

While NCFOM may have been the most interesting movie overall last year the 2 mentioned above may have been better. I thought they were certainly better than the other movies nominated for best film.

Mr Brooks.
Not getting into too much. But a good little film noir flick with Kevin Costner playing a stalwart community icon who likes to watch couples have sex and then kill them. not a great movie but a much better one than i expected.

Baseball:
It’s back. Mets open Monday.
Yes they will ost probably be dissapointing. I think Willie is fired by mid season. Probably before the end of June.
But it’s comforting to know there will be meaningful Baseball games going on almost every day until the end of OCtober.

Obama:
I’ve been over the reasons in prior posts so i’m not going into all that makes him one of the Best Things Ever. But he just keeps on rising above and having a great response to whatever Hillary throws his way. Meanwhile Team Entitlement, which is what I call Hillary’s campaign now, continues to look pathetic and desparate. Last week Hillary got exposed in her embellishing of that Bosnia visit even though the contradictory evidence was right there on tape. Then she tried to play it off as sleep deprivation. Which brought to mind her 3 a.m. phone call campaign that took voted from Obama in Texas. If she starts getting facts wrong and losing her mind when she’s sleepy is she the person we want getting up for that late night call with the fate of the world hanging in the balance?

And then there was her constant contradictions as she continues to tear her opponent down, even to the point of praising McCain over him and then when she’s asked about polls indicating these tactics would hurt whoever wins an is sending some democrats to McCain she begs people not to make that mistake. Then the next day her and Bill are right back out there putting her and McCain on a different playing field than Obama.

She sucks and Obama keeps rocking. Relative to her suckage Barack Obama just becomes so much more The Best Thing Ever.

Manhattan:
Spent a day there Tuesday at and around MSG. even though i was working and seriously stressed out I am in awe of that City. Being thee at night is like being in the middle of an epic production. It’s almost unreal.
And girls in hockey jerseys and baseball caps are The Best Thing Ever.

It is unfortunate that I can’t live there or date any of these girls.
But I can still appreciate their BTE-ness.

Best—–Speech——Ever?

Published on March 19, 2008 in ..The Dude and Politics. 0 Comments

Barack Obama came to give a speech about race and his wacky Pastor, he kicked that speech’s ass, and in doing so irrevocably solidified his place in my heart.

If you haven’t heard it you can read and or watch it here

Now in and of itself the speech was not genius. It was not uber-profound or a display of remarkable intelligence, execution, or depth. It rocked, it kicked ass, and it was one of the greatest political speeches of my lifetime. It’s his words presence in such a desolate political landscape that year after year, election after election is a barren waste of empty words, condescending rhetoric, and demogoguery, that Obama seems like Abraham Lincoln talking about the better angels of our nature.

Obama was indeed eloquent and profound, but those qualities are so much more magnified due to never hearing politicians get up there and speak to us like we’re adults that can handle being talked to like complex individuals that can hold a myriad of ideas and thoughts about our world in our minds at one time.

The grandmother piece was brilliant. We all have some friends and or relatives who say or do embarrassing things at times. We don’t disown them. This put the Pastor thing into perspective. I don’t even necessarily disagree with all the pastor’s words. I don’t think much of him just because he’s a pastor. Therefore he’s a hypocrite. he’s railing about America and it’s repression of black people and he’s part of a religion that has always been used as a tool to aid in that repression. But putting that into a context everyone can relate to was a great.

And as I said, the whole thing was really great, it’s just not anything I or many people I know couldn’t have written. It sounded like something produced by a smart person who doesn’t care about political biases. Which gets at a quality I was attracted to in Obama from early on in this thing. Sure there was some hedging in there but I think it was coming from a legitimate and honest place. I don’t see throwing his silly Pastor under a bus as honest. That would have been political opportunism. This was far more brave and honest. Just as choosing black over white or vice versa as he talked about some of the latent anger in our country would have been myopic.

And it took some serious guts to get into that whole segment about black people in their barber shops or around the kitchen table letting off some of the steam and saying some of the things they don’t say around us whites at work. This plays on a lot of white America’s latent fears about the black community as some kind of large gang secretly hating all of us waiting for a chance to strike. But he took a chance that people will see this for what it was. An honest accounting of the private lives we all have and the private selves we hold back from public consumption because some part of us knows it’s either stupid or irrational.

And his refusal to take any particular side in the racial divide, or to at least paint a fuller picture even as he speaks more from the black vantage point, gets at something else he said. He talked about how we can continue to mire the process in the same old nastiness and divisions and speculate that white men will only vote for McCain, women with Hillary, and black’s with him. But these are, or at least should be, notions that are beneath intelligent and evolved beings.

Yesterday for one of the first times I can remember a politician running for a major office took for granted that there may be enough of those intelligent, evolved beings out there.

May his and his silly pastor’s Zombie Jesus have mercy on his soul because I’m afraid there just aren’t.

I Call Shenanigan’s On Lost

Published on March 18, 2008 in ..The Dude and Television. 0 Comments

Lost cheated last week.

I caught on to the Jin flashback within the Sun forward pretty early on. At least I was pretty sure of it. But I also thought to myself, “self, if this is a flashback and nothing really relevant happens to Jin within it, nothing that pertains to the island or Jin’s character in a major way and it turns out they’re doing this merely to play with our head and divert us to make the episode better and more surprising than it really was, than damn it self that’ll be a case of shenannigans and I’m going to have to call them on it.”

So here we are.

There was just no reason to show a Jin flashback there. He’s getting a Panda for Mr Paik’s client? Who cares. It’s not relevant. It’s a cheat to hide Jin’s death or stranding from us until the end of the episode. I think you have to maintain an internal logic and consistency within this whole flashback/ flash-forward thing in order for it to work. And they violated that internal consistency. They broke the rules. They sort of did it with a dead Naomi flashback earlier this season but that was minor and some part of her might have been alive and aware (and by the way where was her body when the copter landed), but they went too far this time. For one we don’t gracefully fwooop into his flashbacks. He’s not even on screen before and after some of them. THis violates the established rule of Lost’s version of the dissolve or wipe that leads into a back or forward flash.

There were even times they went directly from a Sun flash forward into a Jin flashback.

THis is perhaps one of the 10 most heinous wrongs committed in the history of civilization. It’s real wrong. I’d rank it somewhere between the Holocaust and Pam Ewing’s dream.

George Herbert and Barbara Bush having sex and procreating is number 1.

Now I get that Lost is playing with time and our perception of it. Within that context lies the only way to rationalize the atrocity they committed last Thursday. THere are many pasts. futures, and now even presents existing in a very real and vivid way to us the audience and probably to the characters as well.

And it was a sad reveal at the end. I had that “No not Chewy,” moment and issued salty discharge as they probably wanted me to. It’s that damn sad piano thing they play at those moments. Of course upon reflection a few minutes after the show I realized this didn’t mean Jin was dead. Just dead to her and the rest of the world. He could be back on the island. The grave said 9-22-04 for a date of death. So his death is part of the official story encompassing everyone else on that plane’s “death.”

I do have to say that if he is alive Sun’s kind of a bitch going along with things and not actively raising a ruckus to get him back. And actually having a commemorative grave to visit and talk to him seems more likely a scenario if he’s dead. But there just wasn’t enough info to be sure one way or the other.

Unfortunately we are all too aware that someone dies next week. This could be Jin. But I think killing him 2 weeks in a row is just engaging in too many shenanigans and I trust them not to do that. I’d say Claire and Desmond are the 2 most likely to go. I think I wrote about my reasons on des after the The Constant episode. And he appears to be featured in this weeks episode which will be centered around the freighter and Michael/Kevin.

If this happens it may be too much to bear. I’m far more ready to let Claire go. Have Kurtz take her out because she doesn’t want to drink anymore of the Kool-Aid served up in Camp Lockedown, Hurley scream “You suck dude,” grab Aaron and take him to KAte’s to be psychotically raised by Princess Headgames herself. I’ll be ok with that. I’ll mourn Claire in my own way. And I will move on.

If it’s Desmond I will have to reevaluate a lot of things about myself. And Lost.

I suppose I can’t rule out a Bernard, Rose, or Sawyer death. Sawyer being the least likely though he may be primed since he’s in his Han Solo in Return Of The Jedi neutered stage that’s just so wonderful to watch.

And I’m guessing Michael will be a flashback. Guess it could go either way. But we really need to know where he’s been lately, not where he’s going just yet.

Back to last week.

I’m guessing Jin lives.

The show still wasn’t bad. It just felt like they cheated and went for the emotion a bit dishonestly. And they didn’t even pull it off that well because it was pretty apparent something was up in his flashbacks between the old cell phone and the over the top contrivance of him suposedly trying to get to Sun in time even as we see of no contact between the two.

Now if they pulled this off while staying consistent to the back/forward conceit and finding a way to do jin’s fb’s separate from Sun’s FF’s and while haveing them both in the same place at all times so we could look back and see that the dissolve/wipe fwoop device could have been from either perspective, we would have been on our way to greatness. If they then could have had a major reveal that’s true to itself in Jin’s fb then we would be at greatness. But the only reveal was that he’s in the past just 2 months married. It’s only import is to the viewer as a sort of “gotcha,” rather than having an import to the story as well. Not sure what they could have done. Not saying we have to see Jin meeting with Dharma agents in 2000 and finding out he’s in on things. But maybe having Charles Widmore involved with Paik and having Jin stumble onto something he doesn’t get the import of but we do knowing who Widmore is.

Something like that would have sealed the deal.

As it was it was a cheat.

Still a decent episode that wrought some nice emotion and caused me to feel some of the pathos and emotion I was supposed to feel. So kudos there.

They just cheated to get it.

Don’t do it again. It reeks of desperation getting too caught up in the largesse and novely of the new bac/forward flash dynamic.