Ebert's Best Films of 2004

Rog has posted his annual list. It includes a few big surprises. Kill Bill 2 at #2! That's gotta be the highest ranking I've seen it given yet. And Spider-Man 2 at #4? Really, Roger? That much better than Sideways or Before Sunset? Seems odd to me.

Anyway, I'll try to get my list up as soon as possible. I'm seeing Finding Neverland a little later, and The Aviator this week. I'll still have missed House of Flying Daggers and Very Long Engagement, but what can you do? I have more than enough films already to fill the list up as is, so I'll go ahead shortly. Don't want to shortchange Marty, though, so I'll wait at least until Friday.

Stop Turge Babonet

You remember Turge Babonet, of course...He's the possibly fictional film producer whose advertisement in Craig's List I brought to your attention in this post.

As you'll recall, I couldn't find this man, who purported to be a big-time film producer, on either Google or IMDB, leading me to believe that it was a false identity, and the whole post was a joke. But now, we have an Anonymous post on that article directing me to a site campaigning against the scourge of Turge Babonet, whom they claim is widely considered "the Flemish Orson Welles."

Am I the victim of some mass Internet prank? Is this all a publicity campaign for Christopher Guest's new mockumentary, chronicling the life of one Mr. Turge Babonet? Or is Turge for real, an artistic genius unfortunately directing films in a language spoken only by 6 million people worldwide? I'll do my best to find out for you, Inertia-ites, if you define "my best" as "nothing except wait for more clues in my comments section."

Bob & Carol & Ted & Amanitas & Friends

Caught an all-acoustic set from up-and-coming Los Angeles legends Amanitas and Friends last night at the world-famous Westwood Brewing Company.

No, seriously, these guys are a kickass local ska/funk/comedy/rock/hip-hop (seriously!) band whom I happen to know personally, granting them an additional aura of indie coolness.

Their #1 smash hit "Looks Like Bukkake" has already been featured on "The Howard Stern Show," known far and wide for outstanding excellence in broadcasting, and they will be playing more shows in and around Los Angeles, I guarantee. Plus, half of their songs are about smoking goo. How can you go wrong with a winning formula like that?

So, why not check out www.mushroomstamp.com and give 'em a listen? Eh? You're here, so you obviously have nothing better to do.

Don't Drink and...that's it...just don't drink

The University of Oklahoma has banned drinking in residence halls and fraternities after a student died from alcohol poisoning. Here's the quote from the Yahoo story:

University President David L. Boren called underage drinking a "national epidemic" and handed down a strict alcohol policy.

In a 15-point plan announced Dec. 1 and approved five days later by the university's Board of Regents, Boren banned alcohol in residence halls and fraternity houses. Some campus-affiliated organizations will be allowed to serve drinks, but only on weekends.

This is totally not going to work. The article goes on to quote community leaders who agree with me, but I can make the case as well as any of them. Kids of collegiate age want to get drunk. I did when I was that age. It's a combination of curiosity and availability. Most kids begin to experiment with alcohol (and drugs, particularly weed) in high school, so by the time they get to college, it's less the curiostiy and more the availability. Limit one, and watch the other go up.

Seriously, the more strongly you forbid alcohol, the more kids want to drink it. Not that they wouldn't already, but I've found that in environments where alcohol is readily available, people soon learn to moderate their drinking, except alcoholics or those with alcoholic tendences. And those people are going to either deal with their problem or not, regardless of school policy.

These sort of laws come from a very simple, basic impulse. Kids are drinking too much? Make sure they can't get booze! But it just doesn't work. Better to advise kids against excessive drinking, punish places that serve alcohol to minors or serve alcohol without a license, and hope for the best.

When I was a senior at UCLA, the people who lived in the Westwood community pressured the college to forbid a practice called the Midnight Yell, when students relieve the stress of studying for finals by screaming out the windows and in the streets at midnight. It was a silly little ritual, but students had been doing it for years, and felt somewhat protective of it, I suppose. So, when it was forbidden, students overreacted, pouring into the streets to yell (and occasionally light a sofa on fire).

Unfortunately, instead of letting this extremely minor uprising go without reaction, the Westwood police responded the next night by showing up in droves, clad in riot gear, arresting anyone out on the streets who seemed suspect. And what do you suppose the reaction was? Full-on rioting for an entire week. I knew students who were arrested, I saw furniture lit on fire and tossed from balconies. I witnessed chaos of a controlled but unsettling nature. And all because the response to perceived misbehavior was overly extreme.

And that's what will happen at the University of Oklahoma. Call it needlessly rebellious, call it junveile, but college kids want to drink, feel it is their right as college students to drink, and are going to drink no matter what you lame adults have to say about it. The more you force it underground, the worse it's going to get.

Merry Holidays!

I've been talking a bunch on this blog about Bill O'Reilly and his outrageous accusations that "secular America" is trying to destroy the holiday of Christmas. All you need to do is look around to see that isn't true. "Jingle Bell Rock" is getting more play this week than Kanye West and Beyonce put together, and that song is unlistenably bad. Seriously, I know you guys love you some Christmas songs, and it can't always be "Silver Bells" and that one about Good King Wencelas, but "Jingle Bell Rock" is a travesty. It's not even rock! It's barely country!

But I digress. My point was that Billy O has made up all these lies about secularists trying to steal Christmas, and he mainly bases the case on this idea that department stores are instructing their employees to say "Happy Holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas."

This is not only incredibly stupid (as retail stores should be allowed to instruct their employees however they wish, so long as the instructed behavior is not illegal or immoral), but old news. I worked at Barnes & Noble four Christmases ago, and we always said "Happy Holidays" to customers rather than "Merry Christmas."

So, this is a dumb argument. Granted, no dumber than other arguments Bill McO'Reilly makes, but dumb all the same.

But Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly takes the question a step further. To wit:

No, what I want to know is this: how do they spread these memes so damn fast? I mean, liberals are just barely starting to get a smidgen of attention for the proposition that Social Security isn't really in serious trouble — a meme that has the advantage of actually being true — while the "Happy Holidays" vs. "Merry Christmas" meme has exploded onto front pages around the country (and the world!) in a matter of days.

And he's right! I can think of all kinds of sound liberal arguments that get lost in the white noise of political discourse, but these kind of dumb Republican non-issue issues always become big news.

Atrios offers the theory that Republicans have an organized system in place for dispersing information quickly to the masses. In essence, it goes like this:

Local News --> Free Republic --> Drudge --> Talk Radio --> Some Wingnut Congressperson/State Legislator --> Fox News --> Lou Dobbs/Scarborough/etc... --> Another round on local news --> CNN --> mainstream print media

That does seem to be the route these stories take, but I'm not sure that liberals couldn't make use of a similar system.

I think the more serious problem is that, more often than not, these right-wing memes are so stupid, liberals like myself can't help but retell them to other people in order to mock them. (For example, this blog entry, or the many others I've done debunking stupid crap Bill O'Reilly says).

So, you get the enemy helping you to spread your latest dish around as well as your media friends, and your information gets out to the people that much faster. So, what can be done? Shut down liberal blogs in the hope that we won't shoot ourselves in the foot trying to dispel stupid, pointless rumors? Rant about the growing right-wing control of the major media in this country? I honestly have no idea.

TIME's Functionally Illiterate Person of the Year Is...

George W. Bush!

Oh, of course! Because, remember, Man (erm...Person) of the Year is based on who was most important that year, not who was most worthy of commendation. I'd have gone with guys getting married, myself, or Jesus, or something gay like that.

What does the man himself have to say?

"I've had a lot going on, so I haven't been in a very reflective mood."

George Bush, not in a reflective mood? Hard to believe, I know...Usually, he's such a deep thinker!

But what was TIME's reasoning? According to the article:

As he says this, George W. Bush is about to set a political record. The first TIME poll since the election has his approval rating at 49%. Gallup has it at 53%, which doesn't sound bad unless you consider that it's the lowest December rating for a re-elected President in Gallup's history.

Sounds like Person of the Year material to me.

I mean, even if you want to give it to the Republicans, I would have picked Karl Rove. The success of the Republicans in Election 2004 had a lot more to do with his strategizing than anything Mumbly McMalaprop said or did. Hell, the guy can barely go out in public without giving his critics some fodder to use against him (see picture immediately below this article).

The Man in the White Cowboy Hat

Yahoo is running this picture of our President today along with a story about security plans for his upcoming 2nd Inauguration.



Apparently, the Secret Service has decided to keep Bush safe by disguising him as a gay Bond villain. You can't tell me those two dudes standing behind him aren't laughing to themselves, just a little bit.

Tucker Everlasting

Media Bistro reports today that Tucker Carlson is getting his own primetime show on MSNBC. Oh, joy.

I hate this bowtied freak, and not just because Jon Stewart had the grapes to call him out on national television, either. Because he's a spineless wonk, a tool of the extreme right wing who makes their ridiculous ideas about government more palatable to ill-informed voters. And as if this weren't enough, he then pretends to be an impartial, journalistic observer, merely reporting what he sees. Disgraceful.

For example, here's a quote from a Salon interview with Carlson in September of 2003:

I'm not a Bush defender, particularly. I defend him when his actions intersect with my beliefs, but I'm not a partisan at all. I'm not interested in parties, in fact I'm opposed to party loyalty in principle. It sort of makes me sick, actually.

Partisan politics make him physically ill? The guy who represents the Right every week on "Crossfire"? Huh?

Anyway, I can't wait to not watch this guy every day on MSNBC. Maybe he'll join Billy O in our Inertia Hall of Shame. Although, I'd have to watch him in order to pull out funny quotes, and I'm not sure I'm ready to devote myself to this pursuit all that fully.

The Spirit of Christmas

My thanks to Political Site of the Day for grabbing this article out of the Houston Chronicle.

It records a conversation between a Chronicle reporter and Jon Lilletun, leader of the Norwegian Christian Democratic Party.

Here's the portion of the article that caught my attention:

Lilletun also couldn't grasp how the United States could be so rich — just as Norway itself is — yet not feel an obligation to share with those less well resource endowed. Norway, as it happens, gives the highest portion — almost 1 percent — of its GNP to foreign aid of any country in the world.

"Since America views itself as a Christian country, why does it give so little to help poor countries?"

Someone really ought to tell the people in poor countries that Christmas comes from inside their hearts, and if they only looked to the little boy or girl within, they would find true happiness without taking money we otherwise could spend on a new iPod. (Come on! Why do they need us anyway? Don't they have Santa in the Third World?)

No, what Lilletun has grasped here is the essential hypocracy of most (I said most!) religious Americans. Sure, some religious people in this country genuinely follow the tenets of their religion: they donate to the poor with both money and time, they're kind to their nieghbors and the elderly and the sick, and all they want is to live in peace and harmony with their surroundings.

But that's not most religious Americans. Or, at least, not the vocal ones or the voters. For them, religion is about restricting the rights of people you perceive as "evil" or "sinful," like gays or Muslims. It's about making sure everyone believes what you believe, and behaves accordingly. But it's not about caring for the concerns of others, particularly the less fortunate. It's the Jerry Falwell School of Christianity, that religion is about giving you the right to judge others, not the responsibility of helping those who can't help themselves.

I think people in this country (and I include myself here, as I'm not the most charitable, helpful guy in the world) could learn a lot from a country like Norway. Sure, they have a different, less fanatical breed of Christianity than we have in this country, and that's fine, but they seem to have retained more of the true meaning of spirituality than we have, and that is cause for concern.

Nearly Half of U.S. Made Up of Dumb Racists

Yes, I'm afraid that's according to a nationwide poll out of Cornell University.

No, actually, here's what the report really says:

Nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, according to a nationwide poll.

I mean, that makes sense, right? The guys who flew planes into the World Trade Center were dirty Arabs. So why shouldn't we just throw all Arabs in jail? Then, no one will be out and about and ready to fly a plane into a building. Brilliant!

And you get three guesses as to which Americans overwhelmingly favored the "kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out" approach to domestic policy...Was it the blue staters who "hate America" and worship Michael Moore and drink mysterious beverages known only as "lattes," or was it the good all-American red staters who love Jesus' philosophy and respect his teachings and just want to raise their kids in a nice, safe, traditional community?

The survey conducted by Cornell University also found that Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were more apt to support curtailing Muslims' civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.

Oh. Oops. I guess they skipped over the "Love thy neighbor" part of the Bible and went straight for The Book of Revelations.

But, hey, let's look on the bright side. Maybe all these people who responded to the survey didn't really mean they wanted to seriously restrict Muslim-Americans civil rights. Maybe they misunderstood the question...

The survey showed that 27 percent of respondents supported requiring all Muslim Americans to register where they lived with the federal government. Twenty-two percent favored racial profiling to identify potential terrorist threats. And 29 percent thought undercover agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations to keep tabs on their activities and fund-raising.

Oh. Dang.

Paris Hilton Watch

If you're like me, you wake up in the morning with the burning desire to know what Paris Hilton is up to. That's why, each and every morning, I check out Paris Hilton Watch online. It keeps me posted on what Paris is doing that day, whether it's picking out a new Louis Vuitton handbag for her chihuahua Tinkerbell or making out with some scuzzy producer at the Chateau Marmont.

Here's the site's Mission Statement:

Paris Hilton Watch is a web log giving mostly daily updates on the universe that is Paris Hilton with info written by a loser who a) would like to bone Paris and b) is both fascinated and appalled with this human headline.

I'm so ashamed. I wanted to spell Louis Vuitton right above, so I don't look like the completely non-couture goober that I am, so I had to check for the spelling online. But failing to even know where to begin, I simply typed in "Paris Hilton" and "handbag" into Google.

If my computer is ever investigated by the FBI, and they go through and find every search I've ever done on the Internet, that's going to come up, and they'll think I'm totally interested in Paris Hilton's handbags. Now, who's the loser?

And it's still not nearly as interesting to check up on as the Artie Lange Death Watch.

With Probably More Depth

Brilliant interview with Pastor Joe Simpson, father of Jessica and Ashlee, over at Pop Culture Junkies.

Apparently, our very own Ashlee was going to play a lesbian in an upcoming film called Wannabe. (How appropriate!) But Dad 86'ed this idea (he was, after all, a preacher).

I changed it. It doesn't work for her to be gay the first thing out. "It's cool for a woman to be a lesbian," and I'm like, "That's true, but not her first role." She's going to be a huge movie star, like Meg Ryan or Cameron Diaz, with probably more depth.

Probably.

Fans of the "Ashlee Simpson Show" will remember that Ashlee was already on the path to stardom before giving it all up to pursue her dreams of a singing career. You'll recall her tantrum on the way to the recording studio?

Yes, that's right, she had a supporting role in the Rob Schneider smash The Hot Chick, which obviously has more depth than anything Meg Ryan or Cameron Diaz have ever done.

Here's another tantalizing quote from the same interview:

Jessica never tries to be sexy. She just is sexy. If you put her in a T-shirt or you put her in a bustier, she's sexy in both. She's got Double D's! You can't cover those suckers up!

Why, Pastor Joe, I never expected to hear such talk out of you! And so close on the heels of "Nick and Jessica's Family Christmas Special." Maybe a little too much eggnog this week.

Young Dorkocrats

Great suggestion today by Kos on the future of the organization the Young Democrats:

I would love to see the YDs taken over by innovators. First order of business -- eliminate Roberts Rules of Order. No person should ever have to suffer through a Point of Order. Parliamentary procedures have no place in a meeting of hipsters. Second bit of business -- vacate those leaky party HQ basements for the local hip coffee shop.

Two simple changes, a huge cultural transformation.

I totally agree. I never got involved in organized politics during my undergraduate years, not because I didn't have the interest that I do know (I totally did!), but because the major political clubs and organizations at UCLA (in this case, the College Democrats) were filled with, well, dorks. Or, at least, I perceived the organizations as being dorky, debate-team-style affairs where everyone got off on playing dress up and having conventions where they could make out in small hotel rooms with their UC Davis counterparts. Maybe I was wrong...I don't know.

But I do know that making these sorts of organizations more casual and inviting can only be a positive change. We've seen that young people can be energized by the democratic process, and that was with John Kerry running, a man who competes for charisma points with the corpse of Fred Gwynn. Imagine if Howard Dean takes control of the DNC and the Young Democrats suddenly become really active...We might take control of West Virginia!

Super-Meal Me

Check out this Yahoo story telling everyone to eat something called Polymeals, or Supermeals. It's basically a meal that you eat every day that includes all the various foods known to prevent or delay heart disease. Here's the money graph:

The Polymeal includes ingredients that research has consistently shown can decrease the risk of cardiovascular disease. The menu includes wine, fish, dark chocolate, fruits, vegetables, garlic and almonds. All ingredients must be consumed daily in the recommended amounts, except for fish, which research suggests should be eaten four times per week.

So, they want you, every day, to eat wine, dark chocolate, fruits, vegetables, garlic and almonds. Hmmm...sounds like that could get old pretty fast. I mean, my roommate makes a mean garlic and rutabega chocolate souffle with a white wine sauce and almonds sprinkled on top, but I don't know if I could eat it every day.

This is just another example of why nutritionists are dumb. They're always coming out with bizarre new experimental ideas that contradict one another. Other scientists aren't always doing this, like saying things like "Don't eat carbs!" and then coming back two days later with "If you don't eat any carbs, you'll die!" and then changing it to "Eat carbs but only the kind contained in dark chocolate!" They have one consistant opinion: the world if round, for example.

You don't see front page stories on Yahoo every other week saying things like "Scientists advance new 'world is cylindrical' theory." They came up with a theory, tested it, and made a conclusion. Basic stuff.

Also, what could possibly be the ingredient in dark chocolate, but not other kinds of chocolate with almost all the same ingredients, that makes it so good for your heart? And, if we know what it is, why can't we take it out of the dark chocolate, or replicate it in a laboratory, and inject it right into people's hearts? This is the kind of radical thinking we need in the scientific community. Too bad I didn't understand anything in chemistry beyond Boyle's Law.

Flux Capacitor

Apparently, this has been on the Web for a while, but I hadn't seen it yet.



It's Charlize Theron all done up in her Aeon Flux outfit. I know Harry Knowles from Aint It Cool visited the set in Berlin where they're shooting this right now. I'm a big fan of the old MTV cartoon, not to mention of Charlize Theron in skin-tight black spandex, so I'll definitely go check this out in the theater, but I don't know.

I'm thinking that, as a mainstream movie, the weirdness and complexity that made the show fun will be watered down, and it'll just be more post-Matrix effects-heavy quick-cut nonsense. It's from the director who did the independent Girlfight a few years ago, which I haven't seen, so I'll refrain from any further criticism and just wait to see the movie.

Petism?

Okay, if you are under the age of 18, or suffering from heart problems, or a pregnant woman, don't click this link. In fact, just don't click that link. It's gross.

Like Turge Babonet, I have a feeling that BeastMatch, the (hopefully) world's first Beastiality Dating Service, is some kind of weird Internet joke. But just in case it's not...we should hook these guys up with the Furries.

Seriously, let them have sex with a big guy in a pink panda suit, and leave all these poor dogs, cats, horses and (dare I even say it?) gerbils alone.

Oh, and thanks to my good friend Cory for the link. I don't know how he found that site...and I kind of don't want to know. I have to hang out with this guy.

The No Truth Zone

So, host of "The Factor" Mr. William Jefferson O'Reilly III made yet another boneheaded, ridiculous comment the other day, which Media Matters has thankfully brought to my attention. Here's the O'Reilly quote:

In response to reports that actor and comedian Chevy Chase called President Bush a "dumb f---" while co-hosting a December 14 People For the American Way awards ceremony in Washington, DC, FOX News host Bill O'Reilly asserted on the December 16 O'Reilly Factor that "you don't see this kind of thing on the right." He added: "You don’t see prominent conservatives cursing out Democratic members of Congress, for example."

Except you totally freaking do?

Or does everyone forget Dick Cheney telling Patrick Leahy to "go fuck himself"? And Bush calling a reporter from the New York Times an "asshole" during the 2000 campaign. The fact of the matter is, everyone swears, and we should stop making a big deal about it on either side.

So, once again, shut the hell up, O'Reilly!

You would think that, with the guy running his mouth for hours every day on television and the radio, he'd eventually stumble upon a rational, well-reasoned argument purely by chance. But, thus far, it hasn't happened. I'll keep you posted.

Collaboration Ruling the Nation

I've been working with a small team of writers/producers on creating this cartoon for about two years now. No, I'm not going to tell you what it's all about, just so you can steal the idea and make your own cartoon. You really think I'm falling for that one?

But, anyway, we've all found it very difficult to focus, to get all on the same page so we can do any actual work on getting this thing out there into the world, where all of you can see and enjoy it, and then pay us millions of dollars. Basically, I feel like every time we all meet, we have a different idea, a different direction, and we get off-track very very easily.

To me, this is the problem every time I've tried collaborating with other people on creative projects. Not like I'm so motivated and can get all this done on my own or anything. Just that, when a large group of people interact, everyone has their own ideas. No matter what role we usually play in life, when a creative enterprise gets going, everyone wants to be the leader, everyone wants their vision to get through, and this has become entirely frustrating.

So, now it looks like the new plan will be to get this thing up on the Internet, so we can start building a fan base (if a potential one exists). I'm excited about this plan, if only because I love Homestar Runner so much that I want to emulate some of its success. Seriously, if you guys aren't watching Strong Bad e-mails every Monday on that site, you are missing out.

So, I'll certainly keep you all posted out there in Inertia-ville should anything come of this project. (Don't hold your breath). Bear in mind, this is the same creative team that thought, about a year ago, that we were going to write a script for Snoop Dogg in which he plays a time-traveling pimp who saves Beyonce Knowles from the evil executives at Capitol Records. So, you know, it's a highly professional operation.

The Geek Hierarchy

Once again, thanks to Kaz for this link. He's a good kid.

And he informs me that everyone in San Francisco already knows about Furries, which is a shame, because there's really no sexual fetish imaginable that's more amusing than a guy bragging about his sexy pink panda outfit. Who is left to make fun of that will seem fresh to the jaded folks in the Bay Area?

Perhaps the Geek Hierarchy?

I've always more self-identified as a dork than a geek, and accordingly, most of my sick dorky fetishes (like owning every Terry Gilliam movie on DVD, or having a complete set of Tom Robbins books) don't appear on this list, but it still hits pretty close to home.

Super Furry Animals

Big ups to my good buddy Kaz for sending me this hi-larious Craig's List link.

First, a word about Furries. Furries are sick weirdos who like to dress up in animal costumes and have sex with each other. Seriously. They have conventions where they all get together and compare costumes and stuff. Plus, they say things like this:

Yes, my panda suit is crotchless, please make sure your suit is too! In costume, I'm a 5'6" slender pink panda. I had my suit custom-made...I'm sure you will not find another in DC like it!

Please, folks out there in Blogger-land...If you ever find yourself typing the phrase "Yes, my panda suit is crotchless," just use a moment to look around and take some stock of your life. You're a grown man, my friend, running around having sex in a panda outfit. That makes me a very sad panda.

It gets worse, sadly:

Are there any parks or recreation areas around here with lots of trees? I'd really like to dress up and run around in the woods...that's something I never got to do in Phoenix. ;)

Please note the emoticon wink at the end of that phrase ;) This is supposed to let you know that this is a "normal, okay guy" who likes to dress up as a panda and have sex around a lot of trees in a public park or recreation area. Not some wacko.