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Movie Talk Amongst Myself

Published on March 3, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Would you vote for this man?

Some recent flick observations from the mind of your all knowing blogger.

I saw Shutter Island last week. I watched it. I have looked into all the theoretical possibilities of time travel, as well as many present psychological practices in helping to repress memories. Despite all these efforts it appears the technology isn’t there yet to allow me to unwatch it.

So there it is. Look, i like Scorsese. Always have. Always will. But this film school 101 obsession and fetishistic need to pay homage to the past through present isn’t necessarily a good recipe for making interesting movies. Shutter Island is an example of this. MS goes all out on the theatrically ominous island approach music evocative of the kind of over the top camp of bygone eras, throws in camera angles that are psychologically manifesting the characters mental states, and generally goes with the character study with a twist and all that old fashioned quaint artsy stuff. Problem is the story sucks, the twist is spottable within a half hour, and the character study unoriginal. And dude, the story was boring. That’s your unforgivable sin here. Movies are supposed to not be boring more than they need to evoke, pay homage, or be presentable artifacts in future UCLA film school classes.

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It has been recently posited by someone else who saw Up In The Air that the romantic part of the movie ruined it. While I see where this is coming from I can’t totally agree. If I’d change anything I’d keep Clooney unapologetic about his lifestyle. I liked that he did speaking engagements about the burdens of relationships. He’s a man on the move. A modern hunter gatherer and there’s no room for sentiment in a world without community. Tigers care nothing for family. And gathering is sooo much cooler with a company credit card.

He does perhaps go too head over heels for this one woman and the sense of family at his nieces wedding. But he’s also not 28. He’s a guy who may be losing his connection to the road and the life of the real man. His job description may be changing. Getting modernized. No more traveling across the savannah. He’s going to have to start firing people (that’s what he does) by teleconference. So naturally he may start thinking of forming new relationships to replace the old. As short term as they may be. And the thing is, they’re not. He values loyalty as much as the next guy. He stays at the same places, flies the same airlines. He’s trying to reach a frequent flier mileage goal. This is noble stuff if you’re asking me. And it has its rewards. Real tangible hunter gatherer stuff. Like discounts and guest baskets. There’s almost an exotic nature to the way he keeps pulling various cards out and slides them through various contraptions permitting entry to wonderful levels of distinction.

I’d have just liked to see him question his life with a little less sentiment.

But you’d still need a romantic interest to establish the changes in his lifestyle, his age, and the consequences of his choices. I can also understand his backtracking. at a certain age and with your peripatetic lifestyle being grounded I think it would make you wonder about grounding your libido and conscious disconnect from others as well.

The thing is, without spoiling much, you had to have him run into the female him and face the consequences of his past decisions as we all do. Especially if you want to drive home a point against his disconnected lifestyle. But all lifestyle decisions have consequences so i’d rather this have not come off as moralizing about Clooney’s. Problem for me is not that relationship, it’s Reitman’s moral judgment that there may be anything wrong with the lifestyle.

Relationship resistance just makes too much sense to dismiss. I’m not sure he was doing that here. But I’d have liked a clearer sense of that and to come away feeling less like Clooney lost something. Sure he loses some things over a life lived out of hotels. But the settled person has made choices and given up valuable human desires and needs as well.

Whatever, I liked the movie. I related to the character and even envied his hotel room, frequent flyer lifestyle. I only wish I had the opportunity and the charisma to pull it off. But it’s nice to dream. And even though i don’t think Jason Reitman was necessarily going for that it had the effect on me and I’m grateful. But I think Reitman achieves what Scorsese did not. He creates a movie with roots in those ye olden times character studies. Just a simple, engrossing movie about a guy, his lifestyle, his choices and their consequences. Good stuff if done right. And without boring me. And he accomplished those things here.

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A Serious Man was serious about something though i’m not entirely sure what it was. I liked the movie. Coen movies are almost always watchable. But I have a feeling part of the point here was not having a point. The search for meaning in a mostly meaningless world.

I did really like A Serious Man though I disagree somewhat with a lot of critical takes on it. I don’t think the Job comparisons work because the lead character really isn’t that burdened. Come on, what happened to him that was that unusual or a direct assault on him? Worse things happened to his brother, his wife’s new fiance, etc. He’s burdened by extension and like many people suffers from some kind of martyr syndrome.

But I felt that was part of the point. There’s sort of this hapless search for meaning that I think mirrors some of that search the film goer is supposed to be conducting looking for meaning in the film. Like that search and the main character the film is serious about something. It’s just not meant to be obvious what it was. Part of the point felt like things don’t have a point apart from perspective. There’s a scene with a young Rabbi who gives a speech about just that. Perspective. It was too glaring to not mean more than most viewers have acknowledged after seeing this movie. Our lead is not Job, he’s one of the guys feeling the elephant in Roshomon and like most humans he thinks what he  feels is all about him.

There’s a debated opening scene that takes place about a hundred years before and has no clear relationship to the rest of the film. Many have offered this as part of a family curse leading to the protaganists burdens. Again, I think this is an amazingly bad reading of the scene and the movie that follows. I think I even remember hearing one of the Coen’s say it was meant just as a throw in like an old time film short to set the tone but had nothing to do with the characters. Maybe they’re being coy, but I think it fits with that fruitless search for meaning in both life and the movie. Apart from perspective that is. The tragedy is we spend so much time worrying about things we can control and taking ourselves far too seriously until eventually something comes along that truly is tragic and changes everything.

And I think that’s what the final and ending shot signifies.

See it and determine for yourself.

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Watched 500 Days Of Summer the other night. It was ok. I love Zooey Dechanel. Her character isn’t too likable in this movie though. But that’s ok. The movie is more about the dude which I didn’t see coming. Not a lot to analyze here. Had some nice moments. I wouldn’t knock people down in video store to get the last copy. If it comes to that for you.

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Really found The Hurt Locker to be overrated. Actually I must admit I didn’t even finish watching it. I think it’s going to win the Academy Award. Not Avatar. Personally I don’t want either to win. But THL has become a sentimental, thinking persons choice. And usually I love those. But I didn’t find anything all that original here. It seemed like a mix of Iraq war movies I’d seen. Katharyn Bigelo is getting lots of hype. I’m not saying this is a bad movie. But I think it’s support comes from the fact that it’s a war movie. And as much as right wingers love war, lefties love war movies. Especially the modern versions that show what hell war is.

I think it makes many people feel less guilty about whining about stuff while not being in the line of fire. If one loves movies like this and Three Kings, Redacted etc, I think you feel you’re making a statement. It’s like, so yeah I’m against war, but it’s because I get how rough it is on the soldiers, so I’m going to support movies with pretty people pretending to be soldiers going through hell as a way of supporting real soldiers going through hell. Or something like that.

Long as it’s not too long. That’s be, like hell, to sit through.

Before you scoff, I’m not saying it’s not a good movie for the type of movie it is. I’m not saying only liberals like it or they can’t think for themselves. (Though I would posit that anyone who aligns with a preexisting label such as conservative or liberal has made a choice to do less thinking for themselves from jump street). But not everyone does that. And some that do do so as a matter of convenience. A shorthand for a philosophical touchstone with it’s own offshoots. Whatever. We’re not all unique snowflakes. And mostly THL is a bunch of people standing around waiting for stuff to happen and it happening with cool special effect shots. That may be war. But war is mostly boring. I want to watch it as much as I want to see Shutter Island again.

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As for rest of Oscar choices, personally I’d like to see Up win. It won’t of course though it will take animated best. Up In The Air would be ok, as would A Serious Man. But I’m not sure I feel any of these 10 choices are all that fantastic. I certainly hope Avatar loses. but it would seem to be Cameron vs his ex wife and if it comes to that I’m going with the wife. Because that’s what a good liberal is supposed to do right?

I would also be ok with District 9 winning. More than ok though it ripped off Alien Nation. Not likely though. Inglorious Basterds may have best choice of upset. But though i liked it it was kind of tedious at points;. And ultimately what was the point? I guess if you like alternative history stories you’d like this. But since the events take place fairly close to wars end as I remember it it would seem even with the Basterds on the scene the damage is done and all you get is a more satisfying termination to war. Not a whole lot less dead Jews.

Precious I didn’t see. Don’t have to. It’s basically my life story. I lived it. I am a large incestuously raped inner city black woman in a middle class white man’s body. Everyone gets that about me. Don’t need to see it on the big screen.

And I hope Bridges wins. Didn’t see Crazy Heart. Don’t want to see it. Looks like cliched old broken down drunk finds late chance at love and redemption shlock I’ve seen dozens of times. But the Bridge man is awesome. he deserves to win for Jeff Lebowski. One of the underrated performances ever. He’s done other very good work. But he embodied the iconic Dude man. I mean, in the parlance of the times.  But hey well, that just, like, my opinion man.

Opening Day (And My Predictions)

Published on April 6, 2009 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

 The New York Mets play the Boston Red Sox at Citi Field.

It’s here. The unofficial end of Winter and welcoming of hope for so many Americans for so many decades arrives and I for one am happy to see the old ball game.

 Sure Baseball is not what it once was. The world has changed and so has the game. But it remains a national treasure even though it’s gone global. In fact when you look at the higher percentages of non American players in the league and the intensity foreign fans had in the just completed World Baseball Classic, it might not be far off from truth to say Baseball is held in higher regard in Asia and Latin America than it is here.

  But for those of us who grew up in and around the game it’s return is refulgent with wonderfully nostalgic sights, smells, and sounds. It’s aromatic with hope and a boys grand ideas and iconic images. It’s memories that are attended with not only the game as played on the big league level of course. These feelings are nourished and imprinted by the accoutrements of the Baseball milieu. It’s flipping cards, trading them and trying to get a steal like a big league GM. It’s the smell of that pink sheet of bubble gum that comes with the cards and seems to stay on them for months like new car smell. It’s breaking in your new mitt. Or getting the old one out after a Winter of dissuse and getting it into game shape. It’s the smell of the leather of that mitt, the feel of it’s strings as you tie them to your specifications.

 Opening Day and the season in general offer us the game from afar. Or it does so at least  for those of us for whom opportunity and or viablity on the playing field has faded away. But despite that distance, a distance that grows ever more frustratingly with each season further from our own opening day’s and one season closer to our final Winter, the game goes on. And in it’s ritualistic return each April those of us who grew up on the game, who know it as a fan and have at least some echo of what a ball popping in the glove and cracking against the bat sound and feel like from countless hours of play, can find solace in a long seasons ups and downs.

  Whether we played in backyards, front streets or nearby parks, and whether it was hardball, stickball, or tennis ball wiffle, playing Baseball was the soundtrack, movie, and lifeblood of most of our Spring and Summer days. And nights. There were far too many evenings to remember playing until it got so dark it was getting dangerous. We wanted to get every ounce of the pure joy of the game. And the game means more than the score, the innings, the rules or any of the strictly proscribed aspects of Baseball. It was the chatter, the fellowship, the aforementioned sounds and smells. It was the identification with certain players and teams. The memorizations of stats, uniform numbers, and batting stances. Adults my age are probably the first generation of adults to still play video games into their 30′s and 40′s and I think part of the reason for this is that we can’t go out and play games on the streets, fields, and yards anymore. Video games offer a taste of play, it’s innocence and benign intensity. But it does so without all those glorious elements to attend to it. There are no smells, no real sounds, or organically valid results. There is no cameraderie.

There is no dusk till dawn as I used to call it: “You want to do dusk till dawn?” THis was a common question of mine towards friends on Summer mornings or Spring and Fall weekends. Sure you can play video games all day and night. I’ve done that too. But I doubt the days used to that end will be recalled with wistful nostalgia decades later.

 But Baseball season brings much of this back. The plays I made in Little League, the plays I watched both at Shea and Yankee Stadium which no longer exist as of this year and those I watched on tv from black and white 12 inch screen with 13 channels, to 25 inch color tv with cable, to 50 inch hi def with too many channels to care about and access to every game. There are secrets the game possesses that only true fans can understand. Many a book and a poem has been written waxing literary on baseball from every angle including historical, tragic, human, and fiction. Much has been made of Baseball holding a mirror to America as it has grown up the past century or so. Some of it is hype, but most of it is true. I’ve connected to those parallels and symetries since I was in my teens. I got it and it got me.

 Now a Baseball season is another opportunity to feel connected to that greater picture that offered some of the truest, best, and perhaps little connection to community I’ve known. Baseball season is much of this for many fans with their own particular additions and subtractions that have made the game mean more than the lines of a boxscore. From it’s initial hopes, to dawning reality, to attempts to alter course midway through with trades or promotions, to it’s end that sometimes goes with a whimper, sometimes a bang, the game offers not only nostalgia, but controversy, rumor, discussion, insider perspective, outsider recognition, the exalted, the mundane, bright colors, charming new parks, social parallels, and a sense of things in microcosm within the tidy confines of a season.

  And the fact that the season has it’s life in Winter and the Hot Stove League enhances the anticipation. For good or bad the game still holds a mirror and the mirror doesn’t stop reflecting even after one story is told. Part of the bad the game now reflects is the growing disparity between the haves and have nots. It’s hurt out country and I think it hurst the game. We need to cut some fat and so does MLB. Unfortunately they will continue to field too many teams, with watered down talent, in too many cities that can not mantain competitive balance with the New Yorks and Bostons year in and out. But things have always changed in the game. Some as prelude to change in America. sometimes following. Often in lockstep. Just look at the history of race relations in the game and the country. Or labor-management. Now america outsources and so does the game. Arguably this hurts both though none would deny the growing passion for the game outside our borders or the influx of talent from abroad. I could say and relate so much more. perhaps in other posts. But I want to get into the game.

So enough waxing. Here are my picks on the record so I can gloat if I get some of these right, because I haven’t seen asy picks quite like these.

 National League

East                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Florida Marlins                                                                                                                                                                                                         Atlanta Braves                                                                                                                                                                                                          New York Mets                                                                                                                                                                                                     Philadelphia Phillies                                                                                                                                                                                    Washington Nationals

Central

Chicago Cubs                                                                                                                                                                                                      Cincinnatti Reds                                                                                                                                                                                                            St Louis Cardinals                                                                                                                                                                                          Pittsburgh Pirates                                                                                                                                                                                       Milwaukee Brewers                                                                                                                                                                                        Houston Astros

West                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Los Angelas Dodgers                                                                                                                                                                                       Arizona Diamondbacks                                                                                                                                                                                           San Francisco Giants                                                                                                                                                                                            Colorado Rockies                                                                                                                                                                                                        San Diego Padres

American League

East                                                                                                                                                                                                                                New York Yankees                                                                                                                                                                                             Tampa Bay Devil Rays                                                                                                                                                                                        Boston Red Sox                                                                                                                                                                                            Baltimore Orioles                                                                                                                                                                                            Toronto Bluejays

Central                                                                                                                                                                                                              Cleveland Indians                                                                                                                                                                                                Kansas City Royals                                                                                                                                                                                     Minnesota Twins                                                                                                                                                                                               Chicago White Sox                                                                                                                                                                                             Detroit Tigers              

 West                                                                                                                                                                                                                           Texas Rangers                                                                                                                                                                                                  Anaheim Angels                                                                                                                                                                                                        Oakland A’s                                                                                                                                                                                                            Seattle Mariners

  Now I’m not much for playoff predictions in April. So much of October Baseball these days is who’s hot and not and who’s healthy and not at that time of the year. But in an effort towards comprehensive coverage I’ll thow a few things out including some award picks.

 NL Championship Series I see coming down to who I see as the two best teams in the NL. Two teams not a lot have, one of whom no one has. The Los Angelas Dodgers and Florida Marlins respectively.

ALCS I’ll whittle down to Yankees vs Texas Rangers. Yes the Texas Rangers. What am I nuts? I’m gambling on some things though. They have a couple of good minor league arms I’m betting play a role and I think they are in a good position to make a deal trading away their signature excess of young hitting talent for some pitching that will surely be available on the trade market by the end of July. I think the INdians fall into this category as well though certainly Boston, the Yanks, and Cubs are also in good position to make deals happen if needed.

  I hope I’m wrong on the Mets but I don’t think the starting pitching is any good after Santana. I don’t get why poeple continue to insist it is or not see the role they had in the fames bullpen meltdowns the past 2 years. Lots of David Wright for MVP picks out there but I think Wright goes the other way, especially in Citifield and has his worst season.

  NL MVP I’d lean towards Ramirez.

   Ok that’s a cop out since I can’t decide which Ramirez. Manny or Hanley. I’l lean towards the latter in Florida. I’m giving the Marlins ROY also in Cameron Maybin. They may get Cy Young too with one of their youngins but it’s hard to pick against Lincecum in SF again.

   I’ll go Josh Hamilton for AL MVP. AJ Burnett rather than Sabbathia in NY for Cy Young, and I’ve got no clue on ROY. I’ll throw Feliz in Texas in there though he’s not even on the team right now.

   Let the games begin!

A Curious Case

Published on December 30, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

I saw The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button the other night. And when I say night I mean night. I went to an 11pm show at the Galleria in Poughkeepsie. Mind you this is a 3 hour movie. But I was due for a surprise overnight visit at work by the end of the month and wanted to get one in later than usual. I have to send an e mail with a time signature when I do these things and I knew it would look impressive having one stamped after 2 a.m. With the movie length and the drive back I knew I was good. Ended up being there at 2:40.

Of course I could have just gotten up from my recliner at home and been there in under 10 minutes. But it’s always more preferable to do these things when already out. Especially if I’m doing it later than 1 which is when I usually do them.

Anyway, there I am wondering what kind of audience you get at 11pm for a movie in Poughkeepsie. Turned out to be a pretty large one. And there were even later times for other movies. I was impressed. Until I noticed that the majority of the crowd were at least 20 years younger than me. Once you observe the fact that I was alone you can see why I might have felt like a creepy old pervert. In fact I felt so bad I almost turned around and went right back home. That’s about a 45 minute drive each way to go in the lobby and leave. The idea of wasting that gas for nothing but a late ride bothered me so I wander over to the automated ticket booth and start pushing buttons still not committed but wanting to see how it worked and how much a ticket was. About a quarter short of $10. So by not spending that I could justify heading home right there. Cut my losses. By not going in I’d be saving money even with the gas expenditure.

Perhaps purposefully, perhaps not, I hit the curious buy ticket to Benjamin Button button along the side. Still not sure, I could have walked away since I hadn’t slid my card in. Then an older couple turn the corner just after I saw a middle age couple with a baby, the woman wearing some kind of backwards culture headdress denoting her inferiority to her man. They all seemed to be heading into the same show so i decided I really wanted to see the movie and that I wasn’t the only freak there so i pulled out my card and got my ticket.

I got a coffee that tasted more like a milkshake, found a seat in one of their many spacious and comfortable theaters and settled in. Some middle age guy with 3 older people eventually sit right next to me and I realize this makes me look like I’m with them to everyone but them. So the creepy loner stigma is removed until the end of the movie. Except to the people next to me who know the truth. But I’m willing to make that trade off. I’m buying their judgment in return for becoming invisible to the rest of the room. Plus they were my age and up and could presumably understand the vicissitudes like takes and learned not to jump to hasty judgments.

I looked clean and did my best to send telepathic signals to them that I was doing this to facilitate my managerial job as well as possible. So I sniffed broadly and tried to look important as I settled in for the trailers keeping an eye on the peripheral lights which were dimmed but which i couldn’t wait to go out completely so i could disappear further.

So most people know the premise of the movie. Brad Pitt ages backwards. The movie is a slow meditation on many things and youth and aging seemed to be one of them. Or two of them. Anyway, feeling the way I was in the situation I was in, I could certainly feel the sting of not only age but a feeling of having lived life wrongly. ::::::::::::Slight Spoiler in next sentence:::::::::::Because whatever TCCOBB is about, and I wasn’t always sure just what the movie was on about, I think most are left with an impression of the wrongness of living and dying the way he lives and dies.

I think David Fincher was also trying to say something about being what you want to be and reinventing yourself. And how any life relies heavily on waiting for those few precious periods where things come together, the timing is right, and it all falls into place. That doesn’t happen much. And I got to thinking how it never really has for me. That and that feeling of having lived life wrongly, gotten the timing all wrong, and passively watched it happen with a growing sense of inevitability and irreconcilable despair. Being there amongst all these kids while I sat alone waiting to check in on my middle management job brought those timing issues and wrongness home a bit louder than usual.

Because they’re always there. It’s certainly not the first time I’ve gone to the movies alone the past couple of years. It always stings but somehow less so at the Hudson Valley Mall or Upstate Theater in Rhinebeck during late afternoon or earlier evening shows. I remember seeing Good NIght, And Good Luck at HVM at a 10pm showing. i was the only one in the theater and I felt pretty bad for keeping people there and forcing them to show a movie to one person. That felt wrong. It’s felt wrong and accompanied by a growing sense of heading inexorably into an unavoidably horrible future since then. But Friday night at the Galleria with the curious Ben Button mocking my growing obsolescence on a huge screen it felt like that future was more manifest than ever and I didn’t even get my chance to meet in the middle for whatever short time things could be perfect like Button does with Daisy.

And that kind of sucks because it doesn’t get any likelier as you get older. And I got that aspect of the movie because it’s something I had came into it with. It’s been a long time since I wanted to live a happy life full of decades of bliss, companionship, and happiness. Somewhere in the past decade or two I decided my case was too curiously wrong for that. But I did hang on the hope that a few years of semi-bliss could be squeezed out of the old boy. And I was more than willing to cooperate fully in accepting and creating one good decade of life where it came together. The right girl, in the right place, with the right job, and with enough health, youth, looks, and mental acuity left to embrace it to its fullest.

And I realized that the past decade may have been that time and was as good as it got. Or will get. And that felt so terribly wrong. And fuck Benjamin Button for doing so little with his old man’s wisdom in a young man’s body. Or fuck the idea that being out of time and living backwards make it impossible to do more. Fuck whatever it was it was all supposed to mean. I didn’t hate the movie. I didn’t love the movie. Sure like many critics I thought they should have done more with the big conceit of a man aging backwards. But I also thought those critics missed some things they did do and that the idea did matter to the film. I like David Fincher (especially Fight Club) and think he made a good movie. But it wasn’t great and fuck his main character for being such an abomination of nature and for reminding me how much of a gift a chance at a brief and fleeting joy can be and how curious my own life spent walking out of time with much of the world has been.

So i give The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button 3 Fuck You’s.

The A word.

Published on November 3, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

  Atheist is the nigger of the world.  Well ok not of the world. Mainly America. The rest of the world is actually fairly enlightened in this area. But as a title this works better as it references John Lennon’s song, “Women Is The Nigger Of The World.” That song always felt a bit insulting since I don’t think being a woman has ever been as hard as being a black person in America. But he was making a point somewhat poetically. At least I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on that just as I would ask for the same treatment here since I am not really suggesting my experience or those of fellow non-believers is truly equatable to that of slaves or their direct descendants.But I will say that racism is not the issue it used to be even though I still think it could cost Obama Tuesday. But in general you have a shot at anything if you’re black and it actually favors you in some areas. That can not be said of atheists. Not unless they go halfway and call themselves agnostics. Which I often do. But for all intents and purposes a lack of belief in any organizing intelligent “god,” of the famed repute of any of the existing worlds belief systems (even if you add the so called modern enlightened take of “I don’t know that there is absolutely no spiritual or universal type power-consciousness-energy etc), at all, you’re pretty much an atheist. An atheist with aspirations. And I often am myself. But where it matters for the sake of public debate and meaningful statement I think it’s still basically atheism and the reason people don’t cop to it is in large part due to the fact that it is held to be such a reprehensible failing of ones character and person to be an “atheist.” The word itself has become a slur to a large extent. One that automatically turns people off to you if you classify yourself or someone thinks you be classified as one.

We’re living in a country where polling indicates almost any previously downtrodden group be they women, blacks, or even gays have a shot at being President or pretty much anything without being denied off the bat due to that classification. The approval numbers on all groups have risen demonstrably the past few decades. But not atheists. They still poll at very low numbers and admitting to being one is considered the only thing other than pedophile you can not recover from if you’re running for anything in this country. There are indications it could even keep you from getting a job if interviewers got wind of it though of course it’s not legally permissible to ask ones religious beliefs in a job interview.

But statistical polling indicates that upwards of 20% of people are without religious or spiritual belief. Playing the percentages some politicians must be atheists especially when you consider that with higher education comes an increased likelihood of atheistic type beliefs. Sure that sounds arrogant but it’s a fact. And if you look at the historical records of founding fathers and many subsequent presidents it is most likely a disproportionate amount of them were atheists and at the very least agnostics. Virtually all had contempt for religion, particularly Christianity, the religion whose adherents in this country insist we were built on.

But no politicians can admit this openly. It’d be like saying they like to fondle little kids. Even this Elizabeth Dole thing works as an example even though polling indicates that her putting adds out calling Hagan an atheist is working against Dole. Hagan rebounded because she’s contradicting the statement and pulling scripture out to defend herself against “bearing false witness.” It’s not backfiring on Dole because Hagan said “so what? What’s wrong with being an atheist?” If she had taken that intellectual approach which she may well actually believe, she’d probably be done. But like so many people in this country she doesn’t have the guts to go there. It’s the one place people are afraid to go though those polls indicate there are far more than you would guess by public statements. Not to mention those that are afraid to use that label even to themselves.

Of course we could get into semantics and argue definitions about what an atheist really means as opposed to those that call themselves agnostic. That gets a lot of people off the hook with themselves as well as the world. I was one of them for most of my adult life and sometimes still qualify myself that way. But I realized a while ago that doing this was a bit cowardly and playing into the public psychosis and discrimination on this issue. So even though I could in good spirit qualify myself as an agnostic at times, I find more and more I choose to go the A word route. This is in large part because I think for the sake of a more rational society not in thrall to the kinds of forces of ignorance and irrationality that have destroyed kazillions of lives for thousands of years and helped in large part dig this country a huge hole in recent years, we need to swing the pendulum away from religious forces. Important changes have never happened without a minority of people that weren’t so minor after all speaking up and taking their hits until so many others did so. And it appears this requires more and more people of good standing and social acceptability removing the stigma by admitting they are an atheist. Saying they are an agnostic won’t get the job done anymore than Thomas Jefferson calling himself a Deist turned this country away from the kind of disease he saw religion as in his time.

So I think more people need to go the full monty here and reveal themselves to themselves and others as atheists. Even if they hold out that human hope, traceable in the brain I might add, that there is a spiritual element of something “else.”

But it appears they wont because they know they will be judged harshly. Some wont because they themselves see that designation as too horrible and final even though I don’t think the designation itself has to wipe out all possibilities. I’ve been there in that new-agey existential place. People ignorantly think classifying yourself as such is some kind of statement on your unhappiness or negativity and don’t want to hear about the journey from there to here. As if their own belief isn’t a statement of their own issues.

But I spent many years long before anybody in this intellectually dismissive area knew me, years going through all the various levels of quasi religious and spiritual belief. The designation Atheist is not one come to lightly. It is not a personality trait. It is hard won. And earned. I read religious texts quite voluminously. Explored all avenues. It was through Joseph Campbell that I came across Thomas Mann’s notion that though mythological representations of the world were characteristic of the early and primitive stages of collective humanity, their symbolic expression and understanding is mature and advanced in the later life of the individual. I took that to heart for a long time. Even when I was beyond any literal acceptance of scriptures of any religious denomination I was all on board for a more metaphorical understanding and the pedagogical value of all that past wisdom and what it can tell us.

I did copious tomes relating to the subjects that were going to answer the big questions that a degree and a good job could never do because I was interested in, “higher truths.” From the modern scholars in the fields of religion and symbol such as Houston Smith and Joseph Campbell to the ancient fathers of divine reckoning such as Augustine, Maimonides, and Averroes, to the Upanishads and the philosophers from the Ionians to the transcendentalists, I made sure I was covered spiritually and rationally and finding a blend of the two. Looking for an educated, syncretistic and non-biased consensus of religious and philosophical thought that tries to be as secular and devoid of prejudice as any modern sentient being should be I got my “higher energy,” groove on.

I naturally gravitated towards Buddhism for seeming the best extant belief system representing these ideals. I saw myself wanting to become a transcendent Buddha-like being rising above my surroundings and keeping my place in perspective while staying connected with a protective collective consciousness.

I rationalized this East/West contradiction between the meaninglessness and the importance of the individual even though it sort of made me feel somewhat like a bloated insect or Superman in the second movie when he is stripped of his powers and gets beat up in a diner. I was not a believer but ok with religion. Joseph Campbell was my favorite philosopher and if you doubt what this means check out his books or just watch the PBS miniseries with Bill Moyer. But what this meant to me was an appreciation of religious thought from a literary point of view as well as an avenue towards a greater psychological understanding of the human experience.

But what I’ve since evolved into believing is that like many things I once romanticized, religion wasn’t deserving of even that kind of academic respect and that the psychological truths it revealed were mainly of a negative kind that should be understood in order to rise above and vanquish rather than wallow in or pay homage to them. I believe the absolute destruction of minds and bodies that religion, and this means the idea of god itself because any attempt to divorce one from the other is dishonest and not recognizing gods roots, has been responsible for is so far beyond being balanced by whatever force for good its been as to have reached its point of diminishing returns centuries ago if not earlier.

Now some “spiritual,” people always argue that god and or spiritual belief is not the same as religion. Ancient people’s entertained spiritual beliefs before organized religion co-opted the ideas. But just because they didn’t have the resources, intellectual foundations, or leisure time to create a society where those achievements could be realized doesn’t mean there wasn’t a primitive institutionalization of god and spirit. Or nature. Or whatever it was though of a the time. Modern psychological and brain studies reveal much of the inherent sameness of all beliefs throughout human history. Any lack of the seemingly more hateful and guileful practices of what we call religion likely wasn’t because they were any more enlightened and it’s sort of galling when people carry on as if these were simple virtuous creatures who had some higher communion with god or the spiritual element. You need look no further than those same earlier humans careless disregard of life, savagery, and primitivism to see how virtuous or innocent they really were. But many so called spiritual people go through that same process of romantacization almost fetishistically in their regard for a people they would kill to get away from if transported back to live amongst their ignorance, savagery, immorality, and careless disregard for life, especially the life of those not of their tribe.

But somehow these creatures were more enlightened?

Really?

Actually you have to give religion and its organizing the whole god-spirit idea for helping to create more morality. Not less. As humanity got more civilized it probably needed a kind of law that religion could provide. Problem is we’ve outgrown it intellectually and have better supports in place. And we also have the kind of technology in place that can turn all those negative religious ideas like apocalypse and judgment days into a self fulfilling prophecy. The ability for unsophisticated peoples to make sophisticated destruction has far outpaced their ability to understand how unsophisticated they are.

And it’s also responsible for many smaller apocalypses every day. The litany and list of wrongs, hate, death, bloodshed, mutilation, savagery, slavery, war, vandalism, theft etc etc etc tied to human ideas of god has filled up thousands of books. There is no end to the indictments. And an insistence on a greater spirituality is at all of its roots. It’s not just religion divorced of a truer more innocent transcendent spirit. Again, there is no record of any humans ever living under this kind of bliss. It’s like the romanticizing of the Native Americans we do. Most of it comes from our guilt. And we should feel some as the beneficiaries of genocide. But Native Americans were pretty damn savage themselves and were brutally killing each other and making silly wars of territory and tribal differences on themselves long before we showed up.

An innocent spiritual state of man has never existed and much of the idea of it is connected to the Eden myth and the myths it itself descended from. Once again tying god, spirituality, and religion together. Call it a utopian metaphor at its best but the truth is that the idea has not had a utopian effect on humanity and we are intellectually advanced enough now to live moral and upright lives without fear of hell and hoped for reward of some kind of heavenly realm or well placed reincarnation. Saying god isn’t responsible for the sins of religion is like saying guns shouldn’t be blamed for what bullets do.

But being the long winded fucker that I am I’ve long since gotten away from my point. That is that we live in a culture where you are judged and convicted in one way or another if you don’t have any belief in something invisible or lack that all important mark of distinction called faith. This idea that faith is a virtue just fills me with so much sadness it’s almost incomprehensible. The people that say this are just lucky that men of invention and progress didn’t feel that way or they’d be pulling carts to market, pissing outdoors, and staring at a very empty place where their TV’s are. Not to mention dying a lot quicker and easier. Which I guess I did just mention. But it’s kind of a biggie.

Belief in nothing simply because it’s unbelievable is not a virtue. It’s a weakness. A flaw. A glitch in rational processing networks. I continue to hear people defend this by saying “that’s why its faith, because it doesn’t have to make sense and wouldn’t require faith if it did.” Or something very much like that. This is the kind of circular self-justifying thinking I think that religion has perpetuated as part of their self defense mechanisms. Just like they’ve brainwashed people into thinking an atheist is a potentially dangerous outlaw from moral goodness and unworthy of trust they have spun myths like those of the tree of knowledge into this self perpetuating idea that questioning the madness and attempting to know too much is evil.

Scripture and holy writings are filled with allusions to this idea that has flat out basically said that its not supposed to make sense because its lack of sense is a test of your faith and worthiness. Questioning it beyond that makes you unworthy and some sort of infidel. It’s the same principle the GOP has been using in this country both in creating the idea that questioning America makes you unpatriotic at best or a terrorist at worst and the propaganda that the media hates them so when they call attention to any lies and inconsistencies in their stories it should be overshadowed by the messenger itself who are made up of godless liberals who have no faith.

And there are so many more connections. Too many to list or for me to begin remembering right here and now. But all point to how religion and its roots have poisoned us and continue to poison. And because decent people wont admit to where they stand on all this they help perpetuate the irrationality. If no one takes a stand for reason will never make a stand.

Or stand a chance.

Instead we continue catering to irrational prejudices and ridiculous ideas like being a person of faith somehow correlates with an earned respect or being hard working true Americans and other such preposterous fictions that don’t hold up to any level of scrutiny operating at a higher level than Sarah Palin.

But they are still axiomatic in America.

Of course I’m not implying that my occasional stands on this issue are influencing anyone. I know very well no one cares what I believe and that I am no paragon of success and standing in society that could make people say “hmm, if he’s an atheist maybe I need to reconsider.” I’m small potatoes and do what I can on my level. The best I can claim for the cause is that when I tell people at work they refuse to believe I’m a complete atheist because they think I’m too trustworthy, nice, hard working or whatever, to be without some faith. Of course I take this as more of a sad commentary on their ignorance than my own good standing in their minds. But I guess it’s a small something in my favor.

But I kid myself not that if I started telling some of these people what I thought of their work attitudes, never mind their beliefs, or pushing them harder on job related issues, they’d suddenly find me less a nice guy and start wondering about that whole atheist thing.

And it’s not just with the types of religiously minded people at work. I see the attitudes from those that are in that more synergetic, synergistic spiritual place I used to be in. Granted they are not all going to draw horrible moral implications but they do form judgments and minimilizations of my beliefs and attitudes simply because they come from an atheist or the type of personality conducive to atheism.

I’ve seen that attitude at play towards me. I’ve heard the stories of others. I’ve seen the statistics. The A word conjures up an immediate bias whether distrust, hate, or just dismissal. It’s not very romantic. I don’t know one woman who would be entirely ok with dating an atheist. Tolerant of one maybe. Spending ones life with one? Nope. And I do have to look back at my earlier religious tolerance and amorphous and Buddhist spiritual periods and se how the expectations of the culture played into them. Let’s face it: modern girls dig a guy who expresses those kinds of thought out and tolerant yet evolved and non dogmatic beliefs. It’s the best of both of worlds satisfying modern desires for a poetic soul and ancient longings for a trustworthy rigidity playing into nesting instincts. And it’s just plain cooler and sexier to express ones self in that way and it has been for a few decades now. Post hippie spirituality or whatever it is, it’s real. and I think like many men drifting almost unconsciously towards the accepted belief system of the desired female in centuries past many of us drift towards this sexier modern variation on god and spirit.

And I could do it. As I’ve said I’ve been there, read the stuff, talked the talk, walked the walk and yes even regaled a few women with my take much to their satisfaction and respect. But I would be dishonest to continue as if I hadn’t learned and experienced so much more since then. And likewise many are out there having experienced and learned so much more that fills them with ideas contrary to the establishment of not only religion but pop culture spirituality. Many of these people are actually in positions of influence and could make a difference by their example and intellectual honesty.

They could push the envelope.

But it’s still the A word.

I love what guys like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and even Bill Maher have been doing. Their challenges and the popular responses are positive moves in the direction of more openness and acceptability. But at this point they can still be dismissed as scientists, humorists, or provocateurs. Without politicians, musicians, actors, athletes and other prominent and accepted figures getting in on it we’ll never have completely honest political discourses during campaigns, we’ll have these lowest common denominator dirty tricks, and many will forever walk around feeling intellectually repressed and alone rather than physical in bondage.

And I’ll take that over physical slavery. Believe me. I am a rationalist after all. But if the stats are on to something there are quite a decent amount of us and most will never find another accept in the blighted nothingness of cyberspace. And people shouldn’t have to live their better lives on the internet. IF irrational forces continue to win the day we may see more of that congresswoman calling for an investigation of un-American elements in Congress and the Senate. She of course means liberal. And to many being godless is part of that description. And though they can’t admit it many of those politicians are almost certainly closer to being an atheist than a Christian. This is part of right-wing code. It’s not a stretch to project this towards a day not too far off where a McCarthyism of faith goes on and not only politicians lose their positions but it costs anybody willing to speak out their jobs.

Or worse.

And if the many who are nowhere near being on the same page with these people don’t come out of the closet they’ll only empower this ideological class-cism. Or at the least if they stop being dismissive of those that are out a counterbalancing force for reason and tolerance can be created. And that will permeate multifold levels of society from politics on down. Because I think some of that dismissive attitude that even some agnostics or undefined spiritualist have is because those that choose the A word label have gone farther than they themselves are going and need to engage in their own private god’s elitism however amorphous he-she-it may be just as much as the religionists do.

Again, humans have similar brain makeups and motivations however differently expressed. I really think if people accepted these facts of anatomy, biochemistry and other disciplines they could see the value of not letting their personal needs color their public choices and instead making external decisions based on the rational. That appreciation can come of further discussion an openness on this issue even if people continued privately to engage their particular religious practices. But only a rational turn brought on by the kinds of disclosures I’ve been talking about are going to get us there.

Granted I wish they’d turn from religion altogether. But the right to not do so is as fundamental as the right to not have religion mixing with public and government in this country. But the latter hasn’t been honored in a long time. And it never will be until more people speak up. That’s the message at the crux of Maher’s Religulous and the efforts of people like Dawkins. I just saw the former and I guess that’s why I’m more moved to go on about this despite the movie not telling me anything I didn’t know. Still well worth seeing and very funny in my opinion. But until more in the public sphere break with our notions of god they will always be as minimilized as most media have still made them despite the success of the movie and the books.

And so will I. Expecting anything else of you requires too great a leap of faith. And as lonely as this world is I won’t take the lure of the apple religion has literally and figuratively offered to draw me into its easy acceptance. At least not yet. And the fact that I have to qualify that statement scares me and proves just how easy it is to fall prey to the bliss of ignorance and the charms of automatic community and companionship. And how much I want things to change before I feel the need to play make believe along with most of them.

 

 

 

Dead Diary

Published on October 29, 2008 in ..The Dude, Life and Uncategorized. 1 Comment

Ahh more stupid human titles.

Might be my autobiography title. Or more likely a gravestone epitaph. Stupid Human Titles. Or Dead Diary for that matter. But that too falls under the heading of stupid human titles. Truly tragic. Truly Tragic: A Life Not LIved! With the exclamation point. SO many possibilities. All of them stupid. On to business.

______

I’m just going to come right out and say this and damn what society may say about me. I like Vanilla Sky. Sure it’s a flawed film and it goes a bit crazy at the end but the thing is damn watchable to me. THis is possibly due to some of the very superficiality and gloss of the film that the movie itself is partly about.  I want the LE alternative. Fill my head with the imagery most evocative of happiness from my past, a missed opportunity girl recast in a form fitted psuedo reality playing to my needs, and frakking immortality to make up for a lot of lost time. Instead of starting from that rainy street pop me back in the 80′s somewhere and let’s do this thing again with all those tools at my disposal but in an imaginary virtual Dudescape meant to make with the happy and content.

I’d probably opt for a cloudy and rainy horizon overlaying my “lucid dream,” instead of Cruise’s Vanilla Sky. I always found those types of days more vivid and some of my best memories are from the types of days where the sky feels closer, the concrete cleaner, and the atmosphere charged with not only ions but the presence of fellow travelers who you know really want or need to be out wherever you are. It’s like all our actions are more shared for having braved the weather to execute them. There’s someting cozy about those types of days. Something safe and singular and slightly off skew like the view from a window pleasantly blurred and softened by rainwater running in streaks and odalisques. A malleable geometry cushioning the hard edges of a bleak the rain can’t make any bleaker.

I would probably keep much of the iconic pop cultural imagery and NY grandeur even recognizing how it all was conveying a sense of mass consumerism. One of images as well as goods. Since WWII we have been more consumer oriented, government and industry rebuilding our economy and laying the foundations for who we are and what we’ve become through driven propoganda campaigns to equate purchasing power with equality and happiness. It is not only our stuff but out favorites whether they be our music choices, TV, books, cell phones, entertainment systems or the paintings and posters we hang in our homes that define us and that we choose to alter our reality with. The LE experience takes that altering to the nth degree. But it is no less honest and just as much a product of our ego’s and psychological makeups.

I would enter readily. Hell I’d plug into the Matrix at this point. Just as long as I can change history a bit and be more than I was or am. I stand upon a giant skyscraper a disfigured outcast but instead of jumping I stand between the elements: either a noxious gas drifting out and upwards or if fiction can help me a virtual solid with metaphorical wings flying away from the bitter wellspring of all that toxicity.

Speaking of those things that define us I was reading that studies indicate our favorite things can really tell people about our personality. To an extent. Not a surprise but now there’s clinical evidence that we choose stuff we think makes a statement about us and or gravitate to stuff that does so. With that in mind as well as with a mind towards eliminating some time wasters in life i’ve discarded some tv shows. I’m watching stuff that rivets my attention and no less. So Heroes and Chuck are gone. So is Fringe. Pushing Daisies is getting close. Still on board are the shows I can’t tear my eyes away from and that are infinitely absorbing.

They are: Mad Men, Lost, 24, BSG, South Park, The Office, and on DVD The Wire and Six Feet Under which I’m a season through on DVD in both cases. Some other shows that are more of a newsy oriented type remain in rotation such as The Daily Show, Colbert Report, and some occasional CNBC watching and assorted sports, movies and specials. These are all the shows you need for a happy life. They will have a place within the LE experience along with that missed opportunity, let’s go with Jennifer for the moment, the two of us walking through the cover of Master Of Puppets instead of Freewheelin Dylan. Ok maybe MOP is too far and surreal even for lucid dreaming. How about Jen and I driving through the highway cover of P.J.’s Yield? Yeah I like it. Feels right.

_______

One week to election day. Polls are good. I don’t trust them yet. I don’t want think it before it’s real. The latest desperation campaign from McCain-Palin is throwing out all this Socialist nonsense. And clearly that’s to be read as Communist. Can you frakking imagine that they are resorting to Cold War paranoia now? A little touch of McCarthyism in 2008. Wow. Absolutely wow. And to borrow from the era and the hearings instigated by that legendary piece of shit, have you no shame Senator, have you no shame?

Never mind that this country has always been a little socialist and just enacted major socialist policies to bail out the economy. McCain’s not talking to anyone who really pays attention anyway. Republicans know full well who their audience is. Oh the irony of that support and loyalty they show them when every strategy is predicated on those people’s stupidity, hatred, and ignorance. Historians are going to get such a kick out of us I tell you.

__________

George RR MArtin’s Songs Of FIre And Ice series is kind of cool 500 pages into it. Pure escapsist stuff of a Tolkien mixed with T.H. White type stuff. I’m not ready to start Neal Stephenson’s new book Anathem yet. I’m not worthy at this timeand need to get my house in order. Or quite possibly I’m trying to keep something to look forward to since there’s precious little of that going around.

_________

I’m a New York Giants fan.

I just wanted to say that because it’s rare I feel proud of a team of mine.

But something needs to be done about Plax.

__________

It’s time to start writing something bigger. Too many ideas are scrambled up in my head with too little time to sort them out and apply them. I’m on vacation another 5 days but it’s not enough time. I’m only just starting to decompress and think on a higher level after the first 5 days. I know when I go back the distractions, pressures, obligations, responsibilities, and agitations will commence. And stuff like that dumbs me down. Noggin’s only so big and I can’t seem to focus enough attention in multiple areas. I got to try and get a system. Yeah a system! Otherwise, poof! I completely disappear in my Faded Glory underwear.

___________

I hope this half hour multiple network Obama commercial tomorrow night doesn’t rub people the wrong way. Seems kind, you know, uppity.

To some people it might. Although they’ll say elitist. If he’s really ahead now why take the chance people will get turned off by wall to wall station to station Obamaness? It’s like Big Brother or that English dude in V For Vendetta. You know someone’s going to spin it like that. Like it shows how big his ego is and he’s all about the grandeur of Barack.

Hoepfully it’ll be no worse than a benign moment though it’s hard to imagine how it’s really going to make things any better for him at the moment.

________________

But when you look at the list of Presidential first names and all the George’s, William’s, and John’s, how cool would it be to suddenly chuck a Barack onto that list?

Because if we’re seriously ever going to get right with the actual world and not the repressed and ignorant one large pockets of this country live in, we’re going to need more names and faces better representative of it. I like that Obama can do that both for this country and abroad.

__________

I have a new cell phone. IT can do lots of things. Navigate the internet tubes, mobile tv and e mail, core an apple and all the normal futuristic cell phone stuff none of us really needs. It’s the LG Voyager though I have 30 days to take it back and exchange if for the Dare which I’m considering doing since the latter is a bit thinner and lighter but virtual keyboard instead of the flip open Qwerty.

Qwerty is fun to type by the way. I just found that out. I guess that’s why they’re called Qwerty what with all those letters right next to each other at the beginning. In honor of Jimmy Qwerty who invented typing. He’s actually a cousin of Steve Internet who invented tubing.

__________

i’m going to bet on it this time. Chinese Democracy is supposed to be out on November 23rd. I think it’s real. Of course November 23rd is also a Sunday and new stuff never comes out on a Sunday. But supposedly it’s some Best Buy thing where they will have some kind of exclusive rights to sell the album. I don’t get how it helps an artist to limit himself to one retailer. i know it’s been happening with others at places like Wal-Mart. I guess it’s not surprising in this corporate sponsored society. Soon whole lives will be brought to us by Kool-Aid the official sponsor of Joe Sixpack’s life 2012-2101.

Oh Yeah!

Sarah Palin Really Is A Maverick Even If Her Constituency Believes That Means She’s From Dallas.

Published on October 4, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Seriously, she’s redefined the political debating forum. Apparently I’ve been wrong about the whole debating procedure all these years. And it seems people are ok with it. So what do I know? I thought when you agreed to debate someone in a moderated forum you were agreeing to, you know, debate someone. And answer the questions the moderator asks.

But Palin, maverick that she is, pushed the envelope on weak and tired ideas like agreements and actually answering the questions asked of you. No not Sarah who again proved that curiosity and intellect are not requirements to being viable Presidential candidates. Instead of playing by the rules she at least ostensibly agreed to play by, Palin announces early on that she’s not there to really debate Biden or answer the moderators questions but instead talk about what she’s there to talk about.

THis of course meant that she only wanted to talk about what she was carefully trained to talk about and rehearsed for weeks leading up to the debate.

As Gordon Gordo Cooper said when he pushed the envelop of space flight, “Oh Lord what a heavenly light.” And America has seen Palin’s light because even the pundits who didn’t think she did a good job or lost the debate haven’t raised an issue with this strategy. What the fuck, Reagan did it. I may be remembering wrong but wasn’t that was he did with Carter basically? All that “well, there you go again,” crap that has become immortalized as what passes for genius in Republican circles. Wasn’t Carter basically just, you know, answering questions and raising real issues?

Again?

But the bar is raised so fucking low in this country all she had to do was not stand there staring at the camera like Cindy Brady on that quiz show.

She didn’t answer questions, she squeezed in her prepared information where it wasn’t appropriate like a 5th grader who doesn’t understand the work but memorizes it and uses those childish rhetorical tools to stall and stretch out the little they know.

And she was a success because she didn’t piss herself? She helped the party at the least. Didn’t hurt it at worst.

THis is your Republican Party America. When not drooling and moaning “Uhh duh,” during a debate or coming off as some random passersby pulled off the street furthers the cause.

Like that mediocre student cramming for a test or oral presentation I wonder how much of this stuff she’ll retain given what appears to be a Bushian lack of curiosity. But I guess he’s proven you don’t have to be informed, curious, interested, or bogged down by facts to be President. But hey she can play act folksy like he did; A lifelong millionaire who convinced people he’d sit and chat with them in a bar and have stuff in common.

Yeah a fuckin’ Palin Presidency should be a real hoot!

Have we truly reached the point where America is just one big reality show and people want to vote for themselves to assuage their particular combination of ego and inferiority? Is her hanging out with Witch hunting pastors and participating in ceremonies with him going to make her more eccentric and interesting instead of scary? Does a complete lack of interest in the world to the point where you can’t name a Supreme Court decision not biblically related, or name one lousy political periodical make you more appealing because it’s relatable to the “Joe Sixpacks,” who want to look in their mirrors and see Presidential timbre there rather than ignorant white trash with a mediocre mind and increasingly hopeless life?

Sweet dancing Moses she thinks Dick Cheney’s biggest mistake was shooting someone in the face! And that the press treated him unfairly even in that regard by making a joke out of it.

Sarah baby, making a caricature of him over that was the best thing they could do for him because it destigmitized it with laughter and cartoon despictions rather than concentrating on the very real world fact that he SHOT A MAN IN THE FACE, and ducked town for a day afterwards before talking to police quite possibly because he was drunk when he did it.

You ever hear about that part of it Sarah you SUV exhaust pipe fucking zealot?

If not thank the media don’t damn them.

But of course that’s part of the strategy. From the convention on up the Republicans have pulled out the whole “the liberal media hates us,” so don’t listen to them in the weeks ahead when and if they call attention to our blatant lies, past hypocrisy, and general incompetence. They know their shit stinks so to combat the smell reaching the voters they brainwash them to believe that the hounds noses are too upturned to know what real shit smells like.

I know I’m knocking my head against a wall. I raged against this kind of shit going into the 2000 campaign, 2004 and through 8 years of through the looking glass political madness with this outrageous administration. No one cares. I get that. America is stupid and proud of it. I get that too. It’s just that a person needs to vent and every once in a while I allow a glimmer of hope to crawl to the surface of the turgid swamp that is my “soul.” I want to still hang on to some belief that the Bush years was a blip on the radar screen of a mostly forward ascent into greater enlightenment in our history. That we’re not heading towards becoming a comic book country with increasingly more cartoonish leaders who make outlandish story lines turn real. I want to believe the forces of darkness and irrationality are diminishing and just having a last gasp (as well as being better organized) rather than growing.

Ahh maybe I just need more sex.

Something the Palin family is actually qualified to perform and talk about.

So fuck you everyone. I don’t want to get hurt by you again America, I’m just going to give in right here. Fuck you and your stupid mentality. You win. A Palin presidency is in the offing after MCCain drops dead or is incapacitated by a stroke. Good for you you fucking idiots. You deserve every miserable thing happening to you and she won’t change that. Take your simple minded god shit and flag waving impotence and ride yourselves and your reality show candidates right down the shitter you stupid twits. Put it on your credit cards. It’s all free that way and you deserve it all and now! Don’t you you dumbasses? I guess I deserve them too because I’ll be right here with you. No where to run or hide. But at least I’m not going to be disappointed. Or in debt.

Ahh fuck I just saw CNN talking sensibly about Palin’s shortcomings and that polls are looking decent at the moment. And it allowed me to hope again. Fuck you, even those I respect and who would respect me. Fuck you for making me hope Obama might win and Palin disappear into wacky political footnote like McGovern or Quale.

Not that Obama is all that special. But comparatively and all. All this back and forth is bullshit. On both sides. Neither can admit they ever made a bad decision or congressional vote. No one can admit to changing their minds about a topic. No one can admit the other side was right on anything. They’er all full of shit of course. What it comes down to is wanting the most intelligent person who can look and analyze the facts at hand without squeezing them into a preconceived ideology and then make rational decisions influenced by advisors appointed based on merit. A pragmatist. THis is all I ask. And when looked at that way there is no doubt Obama is the guy in play here most likely to do these things. He even used the word pragmatist! I almost came in my pants. I can’t remember the last time a candidate used that word. THis is my holy grail of political characterizations. It was a word that fundamentally describes Lincoln. It was a foundational principle of the founding fathers and those that built are judicial and legislative systems.

But now you have to believe in something and never waver. Like a country of post high school losers who run from any bit of information that reveals they maybe stopped learning and changing a bit too fast. And yeah I blame religion in part. Belief is such a necessary thing here. And belief, or faith, is all about the status quo and acceptance. It’s about being proud of what you learned when you were a child and adolescent. We are in a country that treats a politician learning new things and supplementing what you know like a bad thing. They should have an ideology that helps organize their chaotic minds like everyone else and stick to it. Or else all is chaos if you have to revise and think through things a bit. So we have a political forum where terms like waffling have become the political equivalent of pedophilia.

So fuck you. Again and again. With Bristol’s baby daddy’s hockey stick. Fuck you and your ignorance and your collosal egos that need to see your own stupidity in not only your entertainment but now in your leaders. Me I want an elitist as a leader. I thought the point was having your best in those positions. I don’t want someone just like me. I want someone more competent. The American presidency is not middle management at 7-11. I want a president who reflects that. But what the fuck it’s been such a great 8 years for the economy, invention, environment, and foreign relations why not do it all over again.

There’s a comfort in that.

You stupid fuckers.

My Sarah Palin Story

Published on September 27, 2008 in Uncategorized. 4 Comments

So about a year ago I’m in an Alaskan hotel room and I’m snorting blow off Sarah Palin’s ass.

 I finish by licking off that powdery residue which is left behind when the last of the flaky goodness has been fully absorbed by your nasal cavity. You know the stuff I mean. Hell, we’ve all been there. High fives.

In this case that residue had turned to a slightly sticky paste due to the moisture of her ass which is a bit sweaty from my tapping it so hard and so long prior to snorting blow off of it. Now about the time I’m giving her my signature, ”snorting blow off hot ass final bite,” on her lower left ass cheek area, which as most of Alaska knows is where she has a tiny birthmark shaped like a barcode, her cell phone rings.

She’s got her ringtone set to, “Hopelessly Devoted To You,” from Grease. It’s her and her husbands favorite song. Their wedding song she said. He proposed to her with that song playing on a boombox held over his head she said. like a Great Northern Loyd Dobler. She didn’t say that part. I did. She didn’t know what I was talking about she said.

“Peter Gabriel?” I asked.

She shrugged.

“In Your Eyes?” I suggested.

“You want to skull fuck eh?” she asked.

That was my Sarah.

Sarah said we didn’t need condoms. It was god’s will she said. Sarah said a lot of things. THings that made me want to be with her less but skull fuck her more.

It was a confusing time.

So anyway, her cell rings and she reaches over to the nightstand, almost knocking over my open bottle of Peppermint Schnapps, grabs the cell, says, “Uh it’s my secretary doncha know?” I nodded, not knowing if this was a real question or part of that folksy way of talking she had. Like Francis McDormand in Fargo crossed with an hysterical Kindergarten teacher who thinks kids are retarded.

It was that hysterical school teacher part that made me think I loved her.

She knew that too. She understood my needs. Never having had the good fortune to be illegally sexualized by a teacher during my school years she knew what I saw in her. What I wanted. And she gave it to me. That night in particular had started with her writing sentences on a blackboard with her hair tied straight back, her glasses hung low on her nose so she could peer at me over them with a saucy mix of imperious disdain and vixenish naughtiness. She was my schoolmarm of the North and her bosom had warmed the igloo that was my heart.

Sometimes she brought a world map and a 3 foot pointer. She’d point to areas and make me name them. When I got one wrong she’d tell me I was a bad boy and make me bend over for lashings from her pointer. When I got one right she’d bend over and get likewise from mine. The give and take during those times was truly awesome. That’s what illicit hotel affairs with coke and schnapps were all about. Reciprocity. It mattered little to me that she didn’t know what that word meant.

But on this night she’s using the blackboard to make sentences.  I tried not to notice that she mispelled words like flagrant, transgression, fornication, pound, quiver, moist, and throbbing. I didn’t want her for her mind during times like that.  I wanted her for her appearance of having one. And oh my god could she pull off that librarian/teacher/Soccer MILF thing in spades. And with enough Peppermint Schnapps and Cocaine in me I could usually dismiss the nagging feeling that her baby talk wasn’t designed to turn me on and that her pointing to the wrong hemisphere altogether when identifying Iraq on the map wasn’t just a coquettish way to get sodomized.

THe strange thing about this night was a sentence she wrote towards the bottom of the board. “Bridge to nowhere,” it said. How existential I thought. Maybe she was going to branch out into philosophy lessons before we screwed. It turned out this phrase was foreshadowing and revealing something that had been on her mind.

She hangs up the phone, flipping her pink clamshell phone and sighs. “Trouble?” I ask.

“You betcha.” She turns around, puts her glasses back on, and hands me the Schnapps bottle I gesture for. “I’m getting some heat on this bridge to nowhere ting dontcha know?”

“No.”

“They want to give us money then they don’t. They give it to me and then they say it’ll look bad building a bridge to a tiny little nowheresville out in the middle of nowhere dontcha you know? And my people are sooo resistant to having my pastor do his anti witchcraft incantations to make the problem go away.”

“No.”

“Ken I have yeer support here Mister. My aids r sayin’ it could be a black eye on my adminstration.”

“It’s not existential? No imaginary bridge?” She looked at me quizically. I jumped off the bed with the Schnapps still in my hand and paraded around naked with one hand on my head. I felt like my world was spinning. Unlike Peach Schnapps and Cocaine, which as those who have heard my Elliot Spitzer story know makes me paranoid over stuff like 80′s music and want to slap the bitch hoes silly; Peppermint and Coke makes me pretty morose. It makes me want to fall in love but doubt I’m good enough. But I’ve never written better stories or poetry than doped up on Peppermint Schnapps and my sweet, sweet nose candy. Once I wrote a 96 page epic ballad about the nape of Keira Knightley’s neck. All Peppermint and Cocaine that one was.

“Fuck!” I yell. “I’m so fucking alone!”

“Oh why don’t you getcha self togeether theere Mr Fancy Penis.” She called me that. “I got myself a real problem here and all you can do is keery on like it’s the furth of Juu-ly.”

“Wait, what? The fourth of fucking what?”

“Juu-ly.”

“Jesus christ what the fuck are we doing here? You’re not making sense.”

“Now dontcha you go taking the Lord’s name in vain you hear me Sir Lance-A- Lot of Cummalot.” She called me that too. I drank some more Peppermint Schnapps and started to love her again.

“So where’s the bridge?” I thought it was a legitimate question. But she just looked at me like I was Charles Darwin or something.

“There’s no bridge you silly Bust-her Clit-on.” Another pet name. God she was clever. I started hoping she was really talking about uniting people or linking history to a better future through more sound policies. MAybe she thought the Bush administration’s selfish ideology was leading us down a road that ended in the oblivion of a bankrupt moral ocean of despair.

Then she gave me some more info about Gravina Island and Ketchikan. She started writing names on the blackboard as a little history lesson ensued. We of course used the opportunity for her to get dressed again, tie back her hair, and go into history teacher mode up at the blackboard. It was when she started mixing in math with dollar totals and expenditures that I cut her off by throwing my bottle across the room.

“You dishonor our love with all this, this, addition. And subtraction. Lie to me you voluptuous piece of the body politic! Why can’t you tell me the bridge is a metaphor for the real world constraints that keep us apart? Damn you!”

“Metapheer’s are elitist dontcha know.”

“Aaargh! So you’re stealing money with typical Congressional pork barreling projects. Is that what you’re telling me?”

“Ted Stevens and the former governor stole it dontcha know. I’m inheriting their headache.”

“You did ultimately veto it and request reduced earmarks?” I said hopefully.

“You betcha.”

“You are brilliant!” I cried.

“And you are a very special student.”

“With special needs.”

“Come show Mrs Palin where the subject is in this sentence,” she said as she ripped her blouse open and waved her breasts at me. Then she pointed at each breast with the pointer. Being a dutiful student I poured some fruity Schnapps on those breasts and started licking it off as she backed against the blackboard.

“Wait a minute,” I say.”Witchcraft? Your pastor believes in witches? ”

“Drove them right out of our parish dontcha know.”

“Holy shit.”

“Oooh yeer a bad boy huh?”

“Witches? Really?”

“Sure ting. We sent em right along like that uppity librarian who wanted to keep those elitist books in the library.”

“Uh oh. Sarah we gotta talk,”

“Talkin’s fer teachers. Not fer students. Now sit back and be a good boy Mr Smarty Pants.” At that she lifted her skirt and flashed some thigh. Then pressed her bosom up against the blackboard and stuck her Alaskan ass up so that just a hint of her bottom and barcode were visible.

Just then I knew what I had to do.

God how i wished I had a bottle of Peach Schnapps handy. Instead all I could do was start humming “Don’t Stand So Close To Me,” as I went into my luggage and pulled out a bottle of Blackberry Schnapps. I swigged it down my gullet, coating my throat and my  mind with the particular warmth and bracing intensity Blackberry always filled me with.

I looked up at the blackboard, her ass and the sentences on the board starting to mingle together. The brandy started mixing with the cocaine already suffusing my system and I was able to start finding order in the chaos of her scribblings. “Tell me you put it into infrastructure at least?”

“What?”

“The earmarked funds.”

“Of curse Mr Einstein.  What dooya take me fur? A money whore?”

“No.” I said softly. Worse I thought. “A politician,” I said.

“Oooh,” she took her glasses off and let down her hair. “Talk deerty to me sumore.”

I grabbed her and shoved her up against the blackboard. “Republican!”

“Liberal,” she called me back.

“Zeolot.”

“Idealist.”

I thrust up against her and she started grinding her booty against my growing left-wing media conspiracy. I turned her neck and we kissed violently. “Witch!”

She pulled her skirt down farther. “Expel the demon from me!” She screamed.

I was feeling a lot better. As I knew it would, the combination of blackberry schnapps and blow made me want to sodomize puritans.

Always.

And finally, here was my chance. I started moving down her face to her neck while I added, “Creationist.”

“Community organizer.” This made her laugh for some reason.

“Jesus freak.”

She turned and slapped me. Then she slapped me again. I slapped her back. “Can I have some more guv’nor,” I said and walked over to the nightstand and grabbed the pvc piping, handcuffs, and bandana sitting there. “Let’s do this GOP style.”

She reached for a piece of chalk and wrote “Boondoggle,” on the chalkboard. ”That’ll be our safety word for today dontcha know.”

It was one of the few things she said I truly did understand.

__________

Postscript.

I didn’t hear from Sarah again until a few months later when she called me for professional advice. My baby girl’s got a special needs child and I thoughtcha coold help us. But ya can’t tell anyone it’s her baby.”

I hadn’t had any Peppermint Schnapps so i was kind of out of love and feeling pretty normal thanks to the coke I had just snorted off the ass of Lindsay Lohan’s lesbian lover. “You’re the fucking governor. Isn’t someone gonna notice you weren’t pregnant or that she disappeared for the last few months of yours/her pregnancy?”

“Alaskans have bigger tinks to concernemselves wit Mister.”

“So she and the hockey player made a retarded kid.”

“Special needs.”

“And Bristol doesn’t know how to use a condom? Is she special too?”

“We don’t believe in contraception. Abstinence programs are all that works and that Jesus approves.”

“Yeah obviously. So what can I do.”

“You work with special needs populations. What can we do besides pray to make his life normal till Jesus cures him?”

“I’d start with the praying. Stop that. God hates retarded kids. That’s why he made them that way. You need to keep the kid away from other special needs kids or he’ll become institutionalized and weak. Fuck the Special Olympics.”

“I already cut their funding.”

“Bitch. Excellent”

“Will that cure him faster?”

“Uhhh no. But it’ll help him live a better and more independent life.”

“I know. Only Jesus can cure him. We pray on that everyday and pray that the Pastor can exercise the demons from his soul.”

“Yeah forget it. The kid is doomed.”

“You want to fuck ya silly goose?”

“I’m in New York and I haven’t drank Peppermint Schanpps since the last time I saw you. It’s over baby. I’m sticking with high class hookers.”

“Well fuck you then Mr Grumpy Balls.”

“Sorry Sarah.”

“Nobody dumps me. When I’m President I will make your life miserable Mr.”

“Right. You as President? Not even the Republicans are that messed up to put you anywhere near the White House. Stick to governing in the ice age”

“Jesus has blessed my political career. He put me on the fast track for a reason.”

“Why’d he make your kid’s kid retarded?”

“So he could better excise the cancer of original sin.”

“You using the Augustinian defense?”

“Caesar was a pagan.”

“Uhhh not Caesar Augustus. Augustine of Hippo.”

“Now you’re just being silly Mr. Animals don’t make theology.”

“Not Augustine the Hippo. Of Hippo.”

She paused then said, “In what respect Markie.”

“Perhaps you’d be better off arguing the hidden harmony defense and attribute Bristol’s kid to a greater plan lost from the vantage point of those in the flood rather than the position of knowing held by Noah. Sure it still calls into question the justice of god and the ontological implications of the evil being punished but at least it represents a sort of occult sublimation of the implied theodicy.”

“I want to fuck you now Mr Talkity Mcchatter.”

“Talk dirty to me you electoral slut.”

“You’re a throbbing elitist!”

“You’re a vapid fuckstick.”

“Engorged terrorist appeaser!”

“Wet and dripping cultural neanderthal!”

“Oh god I’m so hot fo ya Mr New Yerk manlovin’ art fecker!”

“Fillisbuster my hard-on you ideological cumbag!”

“Pork barrel my vj ya cut and runner!”

THis went on for a few more minutes before we said our goodbyes and hung up. I didn’t think of  Sarah much again until McCain pulled her out of his ass for his V.P. nomination. She said she’d be President and damn it she and her special needs family might just occupy the White House after all. She may come for me. She may not. I guess if this is out there I’ll have some record of why I might suddenly be disappeared under a Palin regime. Maybe I’ll just visit the oval office and stick cigars up her vj. Either way we had some times. But Peppermint Schnapps gives me heartburn and fundementalist zealots give me the creeps so it’s probably over.

 But at least if she’s President I can say I fucked the President instead of the other way around.

Hard Harry Is In

Published on September 1, 2008 in ..The Dude, Comics and Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: .

Hello my Kantian Kitties, come and let me stroke the soft fur of your moral absolutism as you snuggle on my lap and wait for me to Vito up by telling you all the things I can not do. Oh Kittie don’t be afraid. I know it’s a mess in here, a tragic wasteland where a good Kittie could get lost in the rubbish. But I’ve been too busy to clean. Busy keep my friends close but my enemies closer so don’t disrespect me Kitties, Buena Serra, Buena Serra why do you disrespect me like this?  You come here wanting me to do murder but you can’t fix all the holes in my mind so run along undertaker, go and bury me softly in this world.

I wonder if Vito’s boy abhorred what he had become even as he embraced it’s imperatives? I wonder this as I too walk my monkey strut across my driveway after I’ve had a brother in law named Hope strangled by a henchman I call Regret. And still you purr sweet pretty Kantian Kitty because you don’t believe in their god. You still believe in your Kitty god because he’s yours and everybody loves to stroke a good kitties sweet spot and call it god.

Oh listen Kitty there’s a storm brewing outside my window and it’s not just in my head anymore. Clouds are amassing, thunder rattling the horizon, the only thing rattling my horizon Kitty, bad kitty don’t get your hackles up, you’re safe inside and there’s a big bowl of comfort in the corner and it’s made of the atoms between you and I so take comfort in being you and not I and if I talk too hard I know you’ll claw your way to freedom ’cause you’re a good kitty and the excavation has begun. See I have the claw marks on me fresh and vivid, unlike the past, which is blurry and faint giving way to this meandering wait for an ignored obituary I won’t read either.

Good Kantian Kitty, good for you for all the right reasons, not fear or hope which keeps you from scratching each others eyes out is it? You’ve been given your shots full of Categorical Imperative; only for some reason I don’t trust all you good kitties and wonder if you’re still rabid with survival, kept tame by an idea as fragile as the law.

But shhhh, shhh I shouldn’t talk too hard: I’m obtuse like a crazy prophet, obdurate like a bad idea grown big with time. My Cultural Revolution has begun and you’re a Maoist pig Kittie, a Kittie contradiction since you’re also a bourgeois son of a bitch landlord. But if I stay homeless long enough you’ll have nothing on me. My head is naked and cold, Winter’s coming and the warmth of flesh is denied; but one gets used to being cold and alone. There are places to hide in the dark which has no morality except for what we bring into it so there’s always our human confort in our ideas even if my ideas and yours go separate ways. THere’s no Kittie god in the darkness of the hollow tree so I’m leaving my light saber outside to rot away in the storm with all the other Kittie god keepsakes. Maybe that’s just because we need two to joust and the hollow tree admits but one just as the hollow man admits but none.

Oooh I see judgment in you eyes again Kitties; that’s not fair, you’ve been indocrintaed and don’t even know it. We’re all so immune to this disease as long as we don’t eat the apples hanging from the hollow tree. But I have Kittie. I had to and even if it was my loneliness which brought me to the tree it doesn’t make the tree any less real. THe apple still gleams red and apples can get harder to eat the older you get. An old man’s teeth are no weapon for the truth. And perhaps I’d have been better fiding the tree later and take in its fruit in bits and pieces with a carving knife to assist the slow deliberation of the wasteland behind me. But even good Kitties have to find a place to be snug and warm and that was mine even before I knew the tree was hollow and I could go inside and play Space Invaders on a radio tuned to 1983.

THat doesn’t make sense but neither do all good kitties hanging idols on their collars and calling it home. A good tree can still come with cable and as long as we have that we’ll always have each other because in the end we’re both good kitties. Your shots are just obscured because you didn’t get them in the head and a cold and naked head reveals all. But the Dr’s don’t tell us the truth: the shots don’t last forever kitties. Disease will claim us yet and at best all we can really hope for is to become someone elses hollow tree, one grown out of our scattered seed, one in which a memory will pour like water onto the future and a molecule of matter or a meme of idea will speed branches towards the empty sky.

Just don’t go inside your own tree yet kittie. It’s dark in here. Now run along. Go play with the other kitties. I have a wasteland to contemplate before it gets too dark.

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.