Welcome To My Blog, Mark Cuban

So, I'm reading wealthy spaz Mark Cuban's blog tonight, because I have absolutely zero better things to do. Turns out, he's a major investor in Icerocket, a rather handy little blog search engine that I have actually used from time to time.

Cuban spends a lot of time on his blog hawking his own companies and the goods and services they provide. If he's not boasting about the Mavs, he's fondly recalling the time, during the Internet bubble, when his bullshit company went public, netting him millions of dollars. I love that there's no moral to Cuban's story, no point to his blog post. He just remembered it was the anniversary of the day he became really rich for designing that website that Yahoo bought and took apart, so he thought he'd remind everyone in Bloggerland that he's still really rich, and a spaz.

But that wasn't even the point of this blog post. I'm responding to this post, where Cuban talks about his investment in Icerocket and why it's a cool website. Basically, he points out (quite accurately) that people searching for blogs want information returned based on timeliness rather than popularity.

When you do a Google search, the top items are the ones that are guaranteed to give you the best overview of the topic. If you type "muffins," you'll get a encyclopedia entry and some Betty Crocker recipies. If you type in "Tom DeLay," you'll get his personal website and two or three articles from major publications about why he's a crooked lying asshole.

But when you search blogs, you want to find out what's being said about topics right now, as opposed to what most people are reading about the topics. So when I type in "Tom DeLay," I want to know why he's a crooked lying asshole this week, not just in general.

Anyway, Cuban refers in the article to his habit of, each morning, checking around the Web for anything said on blogs about his companies.

I like to do what I call my “daily searches”. I search for references to the Mavs, to HDNet , to Icerocket, to any of the films we are releasing or are in theaters and more. I want to know what is being said online about the businesses I am heavily invested in. If I know what is going on in the web, I can track any issues, and where necessary, respond.

So, this gives me an idea. You see, Crushed by Inertia is linked on Icerocket. In fact, if you type in "Ben Affleck" and "fruit basket," you'll notice that the VERY FIRST ENTRY is a blog post by yours truly.

So, if I were to write a long post about Mark Cuban and his various companies...there's a good chance Mark Cuban himself would read that blog post. Or at least skim it. To wit:

Mark Cuban owns the Dallas Mavericks, also called The Mavs. They are a team in the NBA, an organization in which I have little to no interest. He also apparently invests in something called HDNet, which I think has to do with HDTV, which I don't have. So I don't care about that either. Also, he references his film company, Magnolia Pictures. I wasn't actually aware of his affiliation with this company, but they released the incredible Muay Thai movie Ong Bak last year, as well as that Enron documentary, both of which seem fairly unassailably cool to me.

So, now that that's over with, welcome to my blog, Mark Cuban. Might I interest you in some movie reviews over there to your right. Or, if you prefer, astute political commentary. I'd like you to also note that, even though I gave up on your reality show about halfway through the season, I never wrote mean things about it on my blog, or implied in any way that it was a rip-off of any other show that may or may not have been hosted by a silly real estate tycoon with a ridiculous wig.

Anyway, long story short, I live in a very small apartment, and it's hot here and there are ants. Now, I don't really own any companies you could buy, but I'm sure we could work out some kind of deal. I could write your biography, maybe, like a Boswell kind of deal. Sound good? E-mail me...

Maimed by Myopia

Every time I go home and hang out with my family, they ask me if our current conversation will make it on to the blog. In a way, it's flattering - I'm glad they all read and enjoy the blog, and that they seem to find it entertaining.

But in another way, it's kind of weird. Whenever someone mentions it, I feel like I should really start paying attention to what happens. Because if it is blog-worthy and then I don't write about it, will they see it as a personal slight?

Or then there's the other side of the coin. Maybe people are bringing it up specifically because they don't want me to talk about them so much on the blog, and they're hoping they'll kind of queer the spontaneity of writing about something later if it has already been mentioned as a possible blog subject.

With my parents, there's always an added odd dimension to these conversations. They embarrass rather easily, and often ask me not to write about this or that thing in the blog. Usually, it's something uninteresting that I wouldn't mention on the blog anyway.

Like, "Oh, Lonnie, I talked to your grandmother today and she has a doctor's appointment tomorrow and I promised to go with her, and I'll probably stop at the market afterwards and get some grapes to snack on later after dinner. Please don't write about any of this on your blog."

So it has become quite a complex situation to navigate. They are often asking if I'm going to include certain things in the blog and also frequently telling me not to include certain things in the blog. Plus, my uncle tonight told me that by far his favorite blog content are the humorous autobiographical stories about my life.

But every time I want to write something like that, I have to watch out not to offend anyone or embarass anyone or upset anyone. It's pretty difficult. Add into that a desire to actually be funny, and a desire not to come off on here like too much of a whiny self-involved egomaniac, and you get a fairly limiting style of prose in which I can write.

Which kind of defeats the purpose of having a blog in the first place. Maybe I'll invent a new blog for my really deep, dark, personal thoughts, the kind I don't feel comfortable sharing here, and not tell anyone that it's mine. Like "Maimed by Myopia." Yeah, that's not bad.

On Republican Scumbags, Part 2

I don't know how many of you are following the special election in Ohio. Probably not many. I haven't been. I mean, who follows special elections in Ohio?

Anyway, the old Congressman is vacating his post to take up a position with the Trade Commission, so now there's a vote to decide who will take his place. Iraq War Veteran Paul Hackett is running for the Democrats and Cruel Harpy Jean Schmidt is running for the Republicans.

Now, District #2 of Southern Ohio is a very conservative district, so Schmidt ought to have a decided advantage in this election. But she happens to also be a brainless shrew who parrots GOP talking points and is quick to lose her temper.

Check out this interview Schmidt did with David Gregory on Hardball, courtesy of Crooks and Liars. In it, she makes the following arguments:

• Paul Hackett should not call the president a chickenhawk or an "S.O.B." (NOTE: Hackett has done both, although he actually said that, though he thinks the president is a son of a bitch, as a military man he would be willing to die for him.
• People in Ohio like the President
• The best defense is a good offense
• Paul Hackett sounds like Ted Kennedy and Nancy Pelosi
• People in Ohio hate the Death Tax
• She's more of an authority on Iraq than a veteran because she attended a military funeral
• People in Ohio like ethanol
• David Gregory should shut the hell up

Seriously. Check out the video. It's insane.

And it brings me back to my point from this earlier post. It's not that being a conservative makes you a scumbag. It's that all these conservatives just want to parrot the president and his cabal, and those guys are massive scumbags.

Alexander: Director's Cut

Oliver Stone makes epic historical films, but they are rarely satisfying as history. Take his greatest film, JFK, one of the best movies of the 90's. It's a stunning impressionistic work of paranoid imagination, a penetrating insight into the fevered fears that gripped America in the wake of the JFK assassination and the looming Vietnam War.

Platoon, as well, says more about the psyche of Oliver Stone when he was a soldier than it does about the realities of the Vietnam War. And The Doors deconstructs nearly everything about the 1960's better than it does the inner life of Jim Morrison.

These are great films not because they explore the past in an informative and accurate way than because they show us a perspective on history, and use recent events to examine the relationship between human weakness and the movement of civilizations.

Now he gives us Alexander, a large-scale retelling of the life of one of history's great conquerers, and again the film fails as education or historiography. Unfortunately, it's also one of Stone's least compelling personal narratives, a thinly-sketched portrait of an unknowable man, cluttered with incident but surprisingly short on insights.



The material would seem to suit Stone perfectly. Alexander's story calls into question traditional ideas about masculinity, about the will to power, about cultural domination and Manifest Destiny and about mythmaking, the transformation of verifiable reality into legend.

Yet, as he often does when taking on an ambitious, oversized project, Stone gets easily distracted. Rather than find a focal point for his story, he drifts around Alexander's life, cherry-picking specific moments without giving the film any sort of framework.

Take the film's opening. We start with an odd opening credits sequence, filled with animated hawks (used throughout the film to represent the pull of Alexander's destiny). Then we get an overlong monologue from Anthony Hopkins as Alexander's confidant and historian Ptolmey, explaining to us Alexander's family life and importance in history. Then we get young Alexander under the tutelage of Aristotle (Christopher Plummer), and playing with his mysterious and beautiful mother Olympia (Angelina Jolie).

This brings us to about 20 minutes into the movie, and we're provided with almost no context or narrative. We're told a lot of information about Alexander, but without seeing anything for ourselves or experiencing his world in any way, they remain disconnected factoids. Worse, Stone seems to want to push boundaries but without offending anyone.

He said that with this DVD Director's Cut, he wanted to make the film more accessible to American audiences. I did not watch the movie theatrically, so I have no point of comparison, but it's possible he has trimmed too much sensationalistic material, making the relationships vague and ambiguous.

Alexander appears to be gay, sharing his love only with his lifelong friend Hephaistion, and yet they don't seem to share any sort of real phsyical intimacy. It's as if Stone wants us to hold out some belief that these two may in fact just be close friends, even though he constantly refers back to Alexander's failure to impregnate the barbarian he took as a bride (Rosario Dawson).

Likewise, Stone implies that King Phillip (Val Kilmer) was prone to rape Olympia, which may have led to her telling Alexander he was fathered by Zeus, but he never makes any of this material explicit. Could this help explain Alexander's coldness towards his mother, even before he learns of her possible role in Phillip's assassination? Who knows?

For such a long and involved film, a movie with so many ideas floating around (and indeed, so much talking), there just isn't much to grab on to in Alexander. It's a few set pieces and basic themes in search of a movie.

That isn't to say it doesn't look spectacular. Like most Stone films, it's well-shot, a robust visual experience highlighted by the kind of expansive, elaborate sets and costumes that once were the norm in big Hollywood historical epics. The battle scenes wear far better than comparable sequences in Gladiator or Troy. There's none of the shaky, indistinct camerawork of Ridley Scott's bloated blockbuster, nor the cartoonish CGI of Wolfgang Peterson's comic book "Iliad" adaptation.

But still, the film doesn't feel very consequential, and it's a film about the overtaking of the entire known world. After nearly 3 hours, I couldn't tell you Stone's core theory about Alexander. Was he a noble conquerer, trying to unite the world under a just and fair central government, or a savage colonialist? Was he a neurotic gay man, threatened from outside and tormented within by his inability to produce an heir, or was he a brave bisexual unwilling to accept the roles placed on him by an uncaring world? Was he a sensitive ruler with the best interests of his people in mind or a crass opportunist after only plunder and his own glory?

I have my own theories, but I honestly don't know what Stone thinks. And shouldn't that be the point of a 3 hour Alexander the Great movie? It certainly isn't to give the audience a clear idea about Alexander's campaign, because none of that is made evident by the movie. In fact, after Persia has been conquered, Stone provides us no real reason at all for Alexander's continued ventures across the globe.

Part of the problem is Colin Farrell, who is woefully miscast in this role. Farrell's just a really boring actor. I know the girls like him because he's cute and kind of dangerous or something, I guess (although how anyone who appeared in Daredevil could be considered dangerous is beyond me). The guy can get by in films like Minority Report. It's an important but not too large role that relies on him being businesslike and a bit weasely. Okay, done.

But here, playing one of history's greatest icons, a larger-than-life figure capable of leading an army into uncharted territory and decimating several world empires, he's out of place. It doesn't help that he keeps his Irish accent intact for no good reason, that he's not believable for one moment as a blond, and that he seems embarrassed whenever he's called upon to share a tender moment with another man.

So he talks occsaionally about his oversized dreams of uniting the world, but there just isn't really any passion in his words. When Kevin Costner risks his family, his job and his reputation to put Clay Shaw on trial, we believe that he cares about the truth. When Tom Cruise gets behind that microphone to share his experiences, we believe that he needs his voice to be heard. But when Colin Farrell has his William Wallace moment in front of the troops, telling them to go kill a bunch of Persians, the moment has nothing behind it and the actor has no real presence.

Alexander is a flat movie and a dull movie, and though he's had some misfires before, I've never really thought those things about Oliver Stone's work before.

Leaving My Apartment

I hate it. Not like I love my apartment so much. For one thing, it's full of ants. We bought some bug spray, and so I'm capable of killing the ants whenever I see them, but even after you do that, you're still surrounded by dead ants that you have to scoop up with a paper towel. It's like taking part in a tiny little genocide, but what choice do I have? I'm already sharing this apartment with two other dudes, I can't handle millions of insects.

But despite these apartment drawbacks, I still prefer hanging out in myapartment to going anywhere. This point was driven home this afternoon, when I was supposed to go to a meeting-of-sorts over in Burbank.

I was all set to go, dressed in office-appropriate attire, walking to my car, when I got a call from the person whose office I was set to visit. A problem had developed there, everyone would be busy all afternoon, and the meeting would need to be pushed back to next week.

Now, this was not really a big deal, but I have to tell you, it felt like being granted a mini-vacation. The entire day suddenly opened up before me - I could do with it whatever I want! (It looks like it will be blogging and watching Superman, just so you know).

I hadn't even realized before that it bugged me having to go to someone else's office on my day off. I really hadn't even considered it consciously. But now, not having to do it, I felt so relieved, so glad to have the extra time to myself. So happy to not have to go anywhere or do anything.

I am a profoundly lazy guy. Quite possibly the second-laziest in Los Angeles County...which, as you know, would put me rather high in the running for laziest worldwide.

He is the Champion, My Friends...

Yes, Richard Santorum is the Worst Person Alive. So far, he hasn't responded to any of my e-mails or my letter, informing him of his win and asking him to please accept the trophy I'll be mailing out to him personally.

And, just so you know, I wasn't just going to take a dump in a box and mail it to him under the auspices of sending a "trophy." That's juvenile. I was going to use a dog turd.

Anyway, Santorum's on his book tour for his new treatise, "It Takes a Family." I haven't seen anyone comment as of yet on his book title's obvious reference to Hillary Clinton's book, "It Takes a Village." The sentiment she expressed, a shortened version of the African saying "It takes a village to raise a child," commented on the need for a strong infrastructure of social services to assist in the care of American children.

Rick of course wants to mock this sentiment, insisting that rather than a village, it takes a strong, Christian family organized and structured traditionally to raise a healthy child, and if this means alienating everyone else in your community, so be it.

It's very telling about Rick's psyche that there mere idea of community upsets him so. He has no respect for anyone's perspective or lifestyle other than his own. You know, psychiatrists have a word for people who are utterly incapable of empathizing with others or seeing things from different perspectives..Sociopaths.

Want proof? Here's a video of Santorum explaining that, though he has voted for measures which support contraception, he personally thinks it harms women and society. Thanks to the fantastic resource Santorum Exposed for the link.

So, okay, you see what I mean, right? The guy obviously hates sex and sexuality, probably stemming from some repressed childhood trauma. Now, I'm not saying the 2005 Braffy winner was definitely diddled by a priest or a dirty uncle growing up. I'm just saying it's really super-likely. I'd like to put on The Who's "Tommy" and hang out with him for an hour or so to scope his reaction...

But it's not enough that he hates sex and wishes it didn't exist...He has to go on television and say that sex before marriage leads to "problems in society." Well, you know what, Rick? That sounds like an interesting experiment. Why don't you go find a society where no one has sex with anyone outside of marriage, and even has sex within marriage purely for purposes of procreation, and then we can use that as a "control" group.

Oh, wait, that's never happened? You mean, even in the theocratic societies of the Middle East, where such laws are already firmly in place, people still cheat all the time and have sex outside of marriage? Why, it's almost like such things are human nature!

I also like how, in the video, he comments that he's against "artificial" birth control. He wants you to know he's fine with simply Pulling Out. Skeet skeet skeet.

Excessive Gore

Al Gore in '08? I've just been assuming it will be Big Hil in the Presidential finals myself, but Matthew Yglesias makes a pretty strong case for a Gore candidacy in 2008.

At the heart of his analysis is an astute observation about Gore - he could be the most convincing anti-war candidate imaginable. Gore voted for the First Gulf War under President Bush I when most Democrats did not, and he was more militaristic in nature than most of the other members of the Clinton Administration. So he has credentials as something of a "liberal hawk."

But he has also been staunchly against the Iraq War from the beginning, and has strongly made his case since before the conflict began.

So he's not a Howard Dean type candidate, who kind of seems like a Johnny-Come-Lately, using an anti-war stance to launch himself on to the national scene. Don't get me wrong...I like Howard Dean. But I recognize that he's vulnerable as a candidate in many ways that Gore is not.

I'm not sure Yglesias really deals with the fact that Gore never really successfully countered any of the Republican smears against him. If he were to run again, we'd get the same bullshit tropes that have been floating around forever - he's boring, he's a hippie environmentalist, he exaggerates and lies about stuff, um did we mention he's really boring.

Also, I have to say, I'm not terrifically thrilled with the idea of Democrats running a previously failed candidate in '08. I realize that Hillary is kind of a Blast from the Past candidate herself, and that troubles me, but at least she has won some recent elections. Gore hasn't been elected to shit on his own merits in well over a decade.

Still, I kind of like the guy, and he certainly seems to me a more patriotic, resolute and intelligent man than the mutant we have running the show right now. Seriously, if you are reading this thinking in your head that George Bush seems a better, more stable leader than Al Gore, I would highly recommend you make an appointment for a CAT Scan.

The Bad News Bears

The first thing you notice about the new remake of The Bad News Bears is that it looks cheap. There are no establishing shots. We're told the film takes place in the San Fernando Valley, but you never get a glimpse of anywhere but the local baseball field. The central cast is limited to the Bears team, plus Billy Bob Thronton, Marcia Gay Harden and Greg Kinnear. And the entire affair feels rushed and incomplete.

I can't say I know why the film comes off this way, whether it's a result of director Richard Linklater being denied a reasonable budget, a sped-up timeline necessitated by someone's schedule or last-minute changes. But it throws the film off from the first moment, giving it an awkward, perfunctory feel. That never helps with a comedy.



But the bigger problem is the film's schizophrenic sense of humor. Bad News Bears is truly a movie without an audience. The 1970's original, rated PG at a time when the ratings board was far more lax, is fondly remembered as a family movie despite some rather offensive language and content. The Matthau character was a drunk, many of the children were racially insensitive, and there are many jokes made at the expense of the team's lone female player (the charming Tatum O'Neal).

The new film admirably tries for the same balance, but fails to capture either the light entertainment of family fare or the edgy satirical humor that made the original film stand out. Instead, you get an odd mix of abrasive, crass humor and milquetoast "feel-good" blather.

Admittedly, the movie has some funny moments. Star Billy Bob Thornton, as a washout ex-minor league hero drafted to coach the world's worst Little League team, squeezes the most possible out of the premise. Though this film never reaches the inspired, crude heights of Terry Zweigoff's Bad Santa, this kind of character is perfectly designed for Thornton's weary, sly redneck persona.

In one scene, he's shocked when a black child (Kenneth Harris) cites Mark McGuire as his favorite player.

"But, he's a white," Thornton blurts out in surprise. It's a very funny little moment.

And Bad News Bears definitely has a few. But the funny bits are far outnumbered by the scenes that simply don't work. Kinnear plays the same smarmy character we've seen time and again in these sorts of films, the overzealous sports dad who coaches Little League with an intensity generally reserved for Space Shuttle launches. In fact, we've already seen Will Ferrell and Robert Duvall riffing on this very same lame caricature in this summer's even less successful (but decidedly more odd) Kicking and Screaming.

And Harden, too, is demeaned by a small, unfunny role as a stressed-out, overprotective mom who is won over by Thornton's greasy dirtbag charm.

This whole subplot is just totally flat, and feels false from the first moment. It's a problem with much of the Bears screenplay - things tend to happen out of plot convenience rather than the natural movement of a story. At first, Thornton is a miserable drunk, but he's able to magically sober up just when the team needs to start winning. Once he's grown as a father and coach, he must suddenly abandon his newfound love of children, so that he can later rediscover it during the big game.

I'm not saying a genre film like Bad News Bears should free itself from these cliches. Let's face it - these cliches are what make great sports movies great. Even the best movies in this genre - like the original Bad News Bears or Major League or Bull Durham or Hoosiers - follow the formula. It's how you integrate that formula into a setting and a story that matters.

I'm reminded of another film with a great Billy Bob Thornton performance, last year's wholly underrated Friday Night Lights. That movie was based on a real story about a football team's triumph over setbacks and conflict, and it followed every sports movie formula there is, but it felt unique, original and immensely satisfying.

Bad News Bears instead feels rote and somewhat tiresome. This is not the worst film from director Richard Linklater - that would be his atrocious Western The Newton Boys. But it's still pretty disappointing, a major step down from his last big studio comedy, the charming School of Rock.

Special Guest Blogger: Michael Bay

Hey, gang, what's up? Everyone's ADD-ravaged teenage neighbor's favorite director, Michael Bay, here. Lons is out watching a movie, so I thought I'd log on and rap at ya for a little while. I don't really know what he's seeing, but I hope it's my new film, The Island, cause it got beat last weekend by Fantastic Four and that Candy Factory bullshit from that goth weirdo, which just makes me look bad.

I mean, did you see The Thing in that Fantastic Four trailer? I've seen more realistic rock formations in a game of Rock Paper Scissors.

Anyway, you may have seen the article in yesterday's LA Times where I blame the marketing department for my movie's miserable disgusting box office failure. I figured that was the classiest movie, short of finding the highest-ranking black guy who worked on the set and blaming him.

Speaking of which, I told Ahmed 5 times that if he didn't start key-gripping better, the movie would wind up a flop, but did he listen? No!

I also, in that article, compared myself to Stanley Kubrick. Here's the exact quote:

"Everyone from [Steven] Spielberg to [Robert] Zemeckis to [Stanley] Kubrick — they've all had big flops," he said. "I was five for five. You know it's going to happen."

Now, yeah, I realize that comparing myself to Kubrick isn't really fair. I mean, that guy had almost no hits, and he directed movies for, like, 40 years. I mean, Barry Lyndon? Ryan O'Neal can't open a tentpole movie to save his life. Dr. Strangelove? They spend the whole movie talking about explosions, and then nothing blows up until the very end! And even then, you only get one perspective on it, it's in black and white, and I think it might have even been stock footage. Plus, they're playing that old stupid song over it so you can't even hear the thing go BOOM! What was that Kubrick fag thinking? The ball-rattling boom is the best part!

If it were me, I'd have Sterling Hayden start blowing shit up within the first 10 minutes of the movie. And instead of that cowboy guy, I'd have Will Smith pilot the plane. And he wouldn't just ride the bomb down to the target, he'd bring some fly honeys with him and do a little dance number set to a song he's recorded specifically for the movie. With a title like "The Doctor Is In (Theme from Doc Strangelove)". Cause that guy's got style.

Which brings me to my latest awesome idea for a movie. As you may have heard, next I'll be working on a small indie film called The Transformers. It's a sweet, personal movie about a group of robots staging an intergalactic battle for supremacy who hide out on Earth disguised as trucks and weapons. The kind of low-profile, rewarding project I've wanted to tackle for years.

But after I've got an art film like Transformers out of my sytstem, I'm all set to blow your ass out of your seat in 2007.

The idea occured to me while I was casting The Island. What are my movies missing that other popular movies have? I've got big movie stars, explosions, loud blaring nu-metal songs, explosions, 10-ton items being hurled from moving vehicles and explosions. I mean, what more does a movie need?

And then it occured to me...retards. People love movies about inspiring retards, like Radio or Forrest Gump or the dude from Shine or Paul Walker. And what goes better with a heartwarming story about triumph over adversity than 500,000 massive, fiery explosions?

So in 2007, I'll proudly bring you Tardpocalypse. Here's my latest treatment, along with some of my dream casting. It's a Crushed by Inertia exclusive:

TARDPOCALYPSE, 1ST DRAFT
By Michael Tiberius Bay IV, Esq.

We open in a peaceful grassy meadow. Some kid in a helmet rides around on a tricycle, giggling. He runs into a tree and falls over. After rubbing his head for a moment, the kid explodes, giving off a huge fireball that ignites all that surrounds him.

We get the title in huge flaming letters - "TARDPOCALYPSE!" Maybe two exclamation points, I haven't decided yet.

CUT TO

A research laboratory. Dr. Randolph Thackeray (Sean Bean) inspects a test tube. It has red liquid in it (we can use Kool Aid!).

"The formula is still unstable," he says. "We'll need more test subjects."

CUT TO

Pleasant Springs Hospital for Retards. Two happy retarded guys, Ben (Ben Affleck) and Josh (Josh Hartnett) are, I dunno, playing around like doofuses or something. Whatever those guys do. I'll have to do some research. But I bet they play handball, cause it's not that hard and you can't really get hurt doing it, plus it's super-fun.

Suddenly, about 500 agents swoop in on them in helicopters and squad cars. Oh, and I'll whizz the camera around them in slow motion to show that they're, um, surrounded and scared. Oh, man, this movie's gonna ROCK! YES! KICK ASS!

So Ben and Josh start kung fu fighting (we can set up that the retard school had a karate class!) and they do okay, but eventually they are captured by the big, tough, mean head agent guy (Djimon Hounsou, or Michael Clarke Duncan, or Ving Rhames or somebody...)

CUT TO

In the underground laboratory, Sean Bean has Ben and Josh all tied up and stuff. He's talking to another science nerdy guy (Steve Buscemi...duh...) We can totally see Ben and Josh's awesome pecs. The girls will love it. I wonder if it will be less sexy because they're acting like retards. Maybe they can sort of half act like retards, but still half be kind of cool, so girls will still dig them. No drooling, I gotta remember to tell them that.

Sean Bean injects Ben and Josh with the serum. He says it's supposed to, like, make them super-smart, but instead it has a horrible side effect - the same side effect it has had on all the other test subjects. It makes them highly explosive!

Okay, so after Ben and Josh have been injected, they get scared and decide to escape from the underground facility. So we get a huge action scene where tons of stuff blows up. Tons. But not Ben or Josh because we need them for the rest of the movie.

Then, they escape on a freeway, and when Djimon or Michael or Ving chases them, they throw something really big at them. Like a horse. Or maybe a whole herd of horses! Or old-timey 1960's computers! The kind that used to take up a whole room!

Oh, man, that's awesome, and it's totally never been done before. Old-timey 1960's computer parts flying towards the camera in slow motion? That's hot shit!

And those things would really explode if you threw them out the back of a van hauling ass at 90 mph on the LA Freeway! Holy shit, just describing this scene is giving me an explosion boner. Truly, this will be my greatest work.

So, in black-and-white flashbacks, we find out that before Ben was a retard, he was a normal cool guy with a hot stripper girlfriend (Ashley Olson). So he and Josh go to his girlfriend's place to hide out, and she's all "no way, you just left me to become a retard," and he's all, "I'm sorry, baby, but that was a long time ago, and I still care about you." And she's like, "well, you chose to be a retard, so now you have to live with the consequences." And he's all, "Look, if you don't help me out, I'm gonna explode, alright? So later on, I'll apologize the way you want to hear it, but for right now, you're gonna let me and my retard buddy in this apartment, and that's all there is to it." And then they totally start making out.

I don't know, maybe I can work in some animal crackers or something to make it more interesting.

Anyway, this all leads to the final chase, where Ashley Olson and Ben and Josh have to escape Sean Bean and his minions in a rocket ship en route to Jupiter, except that they get knocked off course and have to fly through the Asteroid Belt, until they finally emerge on the other side and set off a series of massive explosions that I can cut between really super fast to make it seem way more exciting than it actually is.

Then they crash land on the Las Vegas Strip and have a foot chase through the Mirage Hotel, narrowly evading being eaten by CGI white tigers before they get into an alien spacecraft and fly at four times the speed of light to a far-off universe identical to our own except that everything is constantly exploding all the time.

I haven't quite figured out how to wrap up that last act, but Jerry Bruckheimer always has good ideas for that sort of thing. I figure, I'll kill off either Ben or Josh, or maybe just the counselor back at the mental hospital who always gave them extra cookies on Wednesdays. You know, to tug at the heart strings. And I learned my lesson from The Island, guys, so don't worry...Ashley Olson is totally getting topless.

You're a Mean One, Mrs. Grouch

If you add up the amount of time I spent managing a Barnes & Noble and now working at Laser Blazer, you would get approximately 2 years. That's a lot of customer service, and I can honestly say that I have only exchanged harsh or angry words with 2 members of the public during all of my retail experience.

Today was the second time, and it was particularly intense. I have never before in my life had to kick someone out of a store where I was working, but I suppose these things happen.

Here's the background - a few days ago, an older woman came into the store and purchased a marked-down copy of His Divorce/Her Divorce, an old Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor drama, for $4.98. It's one of those random, cheaply-produced DVD's that come from a small distributor. As anyone who regularly buys DVD's that don't come from regular studios will tell you, the picture and sound quality vary greatly from title to title.

Apparently, this woman was not aware of this fact, and today she came in with (I presume) her daughter and two grandchildren to return the movie.

Now, it's store policy not to take back an opened movie for full price, unless of course it's defective.

And it'ds the definition of this term, defective, that caused all the problems. I was using the term properly - to indicate that the DVD was scratched, flawed or physically incapable of being played. This woman and her daughter took up the position that any DVD which does not meet an overall standard of quality - that is, DVD's with fuzzy pictures, poor transfers or muddy sound - is defective and should be returnable.

At first, I resisted. I offered $3 for a trade-in of the title, which would mean that the entire misadventure would cost a grand total of $2. This was insufficient. The woman and her daughter continued arguing, repeating the same two or three inane statements and getting increasingly agitated.

I was pretty proud of myself. I didn't get angry or visibly upset, and neither did the two guys with whom I was working. We all took a decent amount of verbal abuse from these woman before I conceded.

Yes, that's right, I gave in. I offered the woman store credit in the amount of $5, just to shut her up. But it didn't work. My concession only seemed to make her more angry. I think perhaps it was my choice of wording.

Here's what I said, as near as I can recall:

"Okay, I'll give you the full credit this time, but in the future, please bear in mind that we can't be held responsible for things like picture and sound quality. Those are up to the company authoring the disc."

And here's how the woman's daughter, who had by now taken the position of consumer advocate to heart, responded:

"What? No, that's ridiculous. This is the worst service I've ever had. I shop here all the time. You can't hear the movie. It doesn't work. That's defective. You shouldn't sell discs like that. I shop here all the time. This is ridiculous. I can't hear the movie, you can't hear what they're saying. Why would you sell something like that? This is ridiculous. It doesn't work. It's defective. I shop here all the time. IT'S DEFECTIVE AND IT DOESN'T WORK! I SHOP HERE ALL THE TIME!"

At around this time, I finished ringing up the transaction, giving her $5 credit that she immediately used towards the purchase of Season 1 of Paris Hilton's reality show "The Simple Life." This is staggeringly appropriate, as she and Paris Hilton seem to share a perspective and worldview.

So I bring the purchases to the end of the counter and think to myself that I'm finally done. At this point, the woman flips out once again, runs over to our bargain used section, and begins to verbally accost two perfectly innocent young girls who happen to be browsing for DVD's.

Seriously. She knocks discs away from them and loudly announces that they shouldn't buy discs from our used bin, that they are all defective and that we won't take them back. At this point, I finally raised my voice, announced to the woman that they and their children were no longer welcome in the store.

My co-worker joined me in telling them to "go home," and all three of us behind the counter made it quite clear that it was time to leave.

Thinking about it later, I wondered if this woman would have any pangs of regret later for her behavior. Maybe she was having a horrible day, suffering from some tragedy, and this incident was merely the final frustration that broke her spirit. I can't be sure.

If she has any sense at all, she'll later be embarrassed about how she acted. If it were me, I could never show me face in that store again. And all over a matter of $2! And in front of her young children!

Sometimes you come face to face with the truly ugly side of humanity. Usually, it makes me frustrated and angry, but tonight, I just feel sad and disconnected.

On Republican Scumbags

This morning, on this post, my friend Cory accused me of being unfairly prejudiced against conservatives. He noted that, whenever I'm discussing a conservative commentator or Republican Party member, I use adjectives like "odious." (One of my favorites). Also "assholes," "rejects," "fuckwads," "scumbags," fartknockers," "spacefegs" and "chode-lickers." I should really use that last one more often.

He's both correct and incorrect. He's correct in that I always describe conservatives as despicable monsters, greedy amoral villains abusing their powers for personal benefit and, occasionally, out of pure unadulterated misanthropic malice. He's incorrect in assuming that they don't all deserve it.

Now, I'm not saying that affiliation with the rightwardly side of American politics automatically makes you a scumbag. It doesn't help my overall opinion of you, but it's certainly possible to overcome this initial repulsion and win me over as an individual (as is the case with Cory, a good friend and solid dude who has chosen his political affiliation based on reasonable-enough ideological precepts).

What I am saying is that, for whatever reason, all notable conservatives in public life in America right now happen to be complete douchebags.

Bear in mind, I think a whole lot of notable liberals in public life in America right now happen to be complete douchebags. There are plenty of exceptions, but as a general rule, America is teeming with morons and fools who can't wait to speak whenever a microphone is placed in their immediate vicinity.

I'm not just saying this for comic effect, either. I've been sitting here for a few moments now, trying desperately to think of a famous, principled, honest conservative with the betterment of Americans at heart. Really. Haven't got one yet.

John McCain? He's certainly got a background that's admirable and deserving of praise. Honestly, this guy's about as close as you can come to a palatable conservative. I like how he's willing to challenge the authority of this administration, particularly through is recent support of legislation in Congress that would limit Rumsfeld's ability to beat the fuck out of Arabs in captivity for no good reason.

But he's chosen to prop up our current president, helping to get him re-elected for a disasterous second term. And he, in general, is kind of an asshole, calling out Michael Moore during the Republican Convention, railing against violent video games and movies when he knows damn well from personal experience that violence is the result of public policy and human psychology and not "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas." And, COME ON, how can he even still be in that party after that Swift Boat nonsense.

I think this gets to the heart of my problem with every Republican public figure in America. Their association with the present administration. It's true that one can simultaneously be conservative, have conservative political values, and be a good person. But I can't help but feel that vigorously and publicly supporting Bush's disasterous Iraq War, racist and homophobic domestic agenda, disgraceful lack of fiscal discipline, appointment of radical ideologues to major positions and embrace of the corrupt corporate elite kind of just makes you a scumbag.

As for conservative commentators, I'm hard-pressed to think of one who hasn't taken several positions without any reasonable or solid evidence that could withstand even basic scrutiny. The conservative in question, the one I called "odious" when Cory took offense, was Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post.

In fact, here's precisely what Cory said:

Krauthammer is (to me) a good writer and fairly balanced commentator on the political scene. Of course he has a conservative take on things, but does that inherently make him evil?

Having a conservative take on things of course doesn't make someone evil. There are a few "conservative" positions I even hold myself. (For example, I'm against hate crime legislation. I have never seen any indication that hate crime legislation prevents hate crimes, and I don't feel like your motive for beating someone up really has much to do with how you should be punished for beating that person up.)

But is that the truth about Krauthammer? Is he just a guy who leans conservative, who has a different take on things? Does he really think independantly before he writes every column, taking all perspectives into account?

Let's take a look at a column Krauthammer wrote for Time Magazine in March of this year. It's called "Three Cheers for the Bush Doctrine." And the sub-head reads "History has begun to speak, and it says that America made the right decision to invade Iraq."

I don't even have to get into the article to start explaining to you why this guy's a hack, do I? First of all, any reasonable person would know that it's too early to declare victory in Iraq. GWB learned that, as we all remember, the hard way.

Krauthammer was referring to the democratic votes which has just occured in Lebanon, and the January 31st "election" in Iraq. Based on these two events, which somewhat coincided time-wise but not necessarily in terms of importance, he declares that the Middle East problem is solved.

(He actually goes so far as to refer to 2005 as an "Arab spring." What a jackass. If by "spring" he means "their heads spring off when you shoot them from a way's away," then yeah, I could see the accuracy of that statement).

You see what I mean? Krauthammer's an asshole, and I didn't even need to get far past his sub-head to figure it out! I could keep mining this and other articles for more examples of his mindless, Bush-suckling idiocy. He spends the entire article acting like the trouble in the Middle East is now totally over, and that a glorious new day of democracy is here, all thanks to the heroic, sage and intensely studly GWB.

The Administration went ahead with this great project knowing it would be hostage to history. History has begun to speak. Elections in Afghanistan, a historic first. Elections in Iraq, a historic first. Free Palestinian elections producing a moderate leadership, two historic firsts. Municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, men only, but still a first. In Egypt, demonstrations for democracy--unheard of in decades--prompting the dictator to announce free contested presidential elections, a historic first.

Turns out, the critics, liberal and "realist," got the Arab street wrong. In Iraq and Lebanon, the Arab street finally got to speak, and mirabile dictu, it speaks of freedom and dignity. It does not bay for American blood. On the contrary, its leaders now openly point to the American example and American intervention as having provided the opening for this first tentative venture in freedom.

What really changed in the Middle East? The Iraqi elections vindicated the two central propositions of the Bush doctrine.

And, of course, we all know that, thanks to GWB, everything worked out great. Now, if we can just train a massive Iraqi Army and police force, broker a lasting peace between Palestine and Israel, get those 100,000 troops home, stave off that near-certain coming Civil War, and help stop the growing number of terrorist bombings not just in the Middle East but in Europe, we're totally done!

Is he insane? People are dying in the streets every day over there, the police are vanishing faster than we can recruit new ones, American kids are dying in far-off deserts every single day, and this guy's throwing a victory parade for Bush and proclaiming that Arabs don't want to kill Americans any more!

That's reasonable journalistic commentary, free from demagoguery and deception?

SUCK A FAT ONE, CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

Trimspa, Baby

Couldn't resist posting this picture, found over at Immoderation. If you're not yet clicking on that link and visiting Immoderation, you're a bigger fool than I thought. Funny, funny, rather brilliant stuff, nothing at all like the semi-coherent allusion-heavy rants you'll find here. And she knows how to use Photoshop!



This is Anna Nicole, um, enjoying herself during the Trimspa-sponsored party at the Passions Nightclub of Hollywood, Florida.

This picture is amazing. Not because Anna Nicole is obviously doped out of her gourd. Everyone knows Anna Nicole Smith is a drug addict. But because a company selling a product they want you to ingest daily thinks that this will be good marketing. So this supposed health product has chosen, as their public face, a burnout ex-stripper who looks as if she's spent the last 24 hours with a plastic bag over her head, huffing gasoline fumes in an apartment being fumigated for cockroaches.

The photo reminds me of that ad for Trimspa Anna Nicole did about a year ago. It ran all the time during "Howard Stern" re-runs on E!. You may remember the ad yourself, as it's the only ad running during that show not endorsing "Girls Gone Wild."

In the ad, Anna's newly-thin and we're getting a look at her fast-paced hip Hollywood lifestyle. She's driving fast cars, attending premieres, that sort of thing. During the commercial, she keeps offering you, the viewer, fabulous prizes. "Want a million dollars?" for example. Or "want a Humvee?"

I should note that Anna and the commercial rhetorically assume that the viewer's answer to all the questions will be "yes." However, the trouble one would encounter attempting to regularly park a Humvee on the streets of Palms and Culver City, California, would far far outweigh any potential status one would achieve by driving around an expensive modified former military vehicle. I would take this into account if, in real life, through some odd twist of fate, a former Playboy Playmate offered me a free Humvee.

[I was going to make a lame Humvee-Hummer-Playmate joke right there, but decided against it. Now I think that may have been a mistake, as it's a rather good set-up for such a joke. But alas, the moment has passed.]

Back to the commercial. In the end, Ms. Smith is dressed in some manner of skimpy outfit. She looks into the camera with bedroom eyes and asks "Like my body?"

Once again, the assumed answer is "of course!" And the commercial proceeds to inform you how, for the low low price of whatever the fuck Trimspa costs, you too can have an amazing body like Anna's.

Regrettably for Trimspa, the desired sensual effect doesn't really come through. Even though Anna's body does in fact look much better than the bloated form she featured on E's own "Anna Nicole Smith Show," she seems very disoriented during the commercial, so the result is not so much "sexiness" as, um, well, "pity."

When Anna leans into the camera and mewls "like my body," the effect is subtly terrifying, like that scene in The Shining when Jack starts making out with the hot ghost chick in the bathroom, only to discover she's really a rotting corpse.

Wow, reading over this description, the commercial sounds fairly tragic. When my roommate Chris and I first saw it, our immediate response was to laugh. Hysterically. And then to rewind the thing on the DVR to watch it a few more times. I suppose we're just cruel by nature.

The Taste of Cherry

I was just sitting here, sipping on a Cherry Coke, when a thought occured to me. No, it wasn't that I gave up on my pledge to stop drinking so much soda. This is the first can of soda I've had today, thank you very much, and it's after 8 pm.

I was thinking about how I don't really like eating actual cherries, but how I love eating stuff with chemical imitation cherry flavor. I mean, I don't hate cherries or anything. On the off chance I'm presented with an ice cream sundae, I would not necessarily remove the cherry from on top.

But I don't really have a passion for sitting down and eating a bowl of cherries. I doubt if, in my lifetime, I have eaten more than 50 individual cherries.

And yet I love Cherry Coke, Ben & Jerry Cherry Garcia ice cream, and I even prefer the cherry-flavored Mike & Ike's to all the other fruit flavors.

So why is it that the imitation cherry flavor is so universal, and yet it doesn't actually taste anything like real cherries? It's like some guy in 1950 or whatever invented "fake cherry flavoring" and it's still the same recipie used in everything today. A "Fake Cherry Standard," if you will. That would be pretty weird, but I can't think of any other explanation how Cherry Coke and Cherry Mike & Ike's manage to taste so much alike without tasting anything like their namesake fruit.

The New Nightmare

So, okay, I know you're probably all sick of bitching about my car, but it's really really really hard to function in this city without your own set of wheels.

I've been reflecting all week on the people I know who live in LA without cars. At my old job, my good friend Steve had to constantly get rides from other people or even (gasp!) take the bus all the way from his Silverlake home to our West Hollywood office.

No idea how he handled it. The entire ordeal would have driven me batshit insane within a week.

Take yesterday, for example. I went out early, to catch the bus, forgetting that bus schedules and routes change on Sundays and holidays. So, naturally, the bus didn't come. Or rather, it did come, but not to the stop I had positioned myself by, leading to a hilarious scene in which the bus pulled up across the street, I took off like a screaming maniac in a fruitless attempt to hold it there, the bus driver takes off, oblivious to my cries, and I wind up stranded, alone on Overland Blvd., with 15 minutes to get to work.

Now normally, this would not have been too horrible a situation, even when you factor in that it was approxmiately 500 degrees outside in the shade yesterday. You know that scene in Terminator 2 when Linda Hamilton has a vision of the end of the world, and then turns into a flaming skeleton? It was kind of like that, only hotter.

Thankfully, I had my cell phone on me. "No problem," I thought, trying to keep my mental state optimistic. "I'll just call a cab and they'll be here in 10 minutes."

So I dial 4-1-1 on the phone, which I realize is over-expensive but, hey, it's for situations like this one.

So I call. And I wait on hold for about six eternities. I used to have AT&T Wireless, and the few times I used their 4-1-1 service, it worked beautifully. But now AT&T has been sold to Cingular, also known as the Stupidest and Worst Company in the Entire World.

And being the Worst Company Ever, they naturally program their 4-1-1 directory to hang up on your after making you wait 15 minutes. Here's a transcript of your conversation:

CINGULAR: 411. What city please?
ME: West Los Angeles.
CINGULAR: Hold please.
ME: Okay.
[Cue musak versions of old Sting songs]
CINGULAR: What city please?
ME: Um...West Los Angeles.
CINGULAR: I'll put you on hold.
[Cue musak versions of old Cyndi Lauper songs]
CINGULAR: What listing?
ME: I just need a cab.
CINGULAR: Okay, thanks.
[They hang up]
[I redial]
CINGULAR: 411. What city please?
ME: West Los Angeles.
CINGULAR: Hang on.
[Cue musak versions of old Doobie Brothers songs]
CINGULAR: What listing?
ME: The Beverly Hills Cab Company.
CINGULAR: Thanks.
AUTOMATIC COMPUTER VOICE: Please hold while we connect you for no additional fee.
[They hang up]

I'm not sure what happened next. Between the heat, and my frustration, I'm pretty sure I did something rash like murder a transient, but I honestly don't remember.

All I know is, I came to and realized that the 7-11 right behind me had a pay phone! And some pay phones actually have phone books attached!

So I raced over there, and sure enough, dangling from the pay phone stall was the answer to my prayers, a West Los Angeles Yellow Pages.

Have you figured out the exciting twist ending to this anecdote? Well, here is comes.

THE PAGE OF THE YELLOW PAGES DEALING WITH TAXICAB COMPANIES HAD BEEN TORN OUT.

I guess this isn't that surprising. I'm guessing TAXIS is probably one of the first sections to get ripped out of a pay phone directory, at least in my neighborhood. Right after LIQUOR and before ESCORTS.

It was intensely annoying, though. Eventually, I had to make the trek to my apartment, look up a cab company on the Internet, call them and wait, and then take a taxi to work for about $10. Fortunately, I was only about 20 minutes late to work. Nice.

In a little under an hour, I'm heading out once more to a bus stop, although I have somewhat more confidence that the bus will actually show up where it's supposed to this time. Otherwise, I may just have to murder another transient...Only time will tell...

Interview with the Vampire...'s Fraud Victim

Hey, before you laugh at this Italian lady who believes in vampires, consider how many Americans believe in angels.

An Italian couple stole 50,000 euros (34,700 pounds) from a woman in the Sicilian city of Palermo after convincing her they were vampires who would impregnate her with the son of the Anti-Christ if she did not pay them.

I mean, yeah, that's reasonable. The odd part is, impregnating women with the anti-Christ's child isn't even part of vampire mythology. They're getting their horror movies mixed up. How can anyone impregnate you with the anti-Christ's child, by the way, if they're not the anti-Christ? Doesn't he have to do that himself, by definition?

What do vampires need with 50,000 euros anyway? Food? That's free, pumping through the veins of every passerby. And if anyone has anything you'd want to buy, can't you just kill them and take it? What's the point of being a vampire if you still have to live on a budget?

The man, a cabaret singer, and his girlfriend took the money from their victim over four years by selling her pills at 3,000 euros each that they said would abort the Anti-Christ's son.

Here's where the story gets confusing...

Why would she need pills to abort Satan's child, unless she thought she had already been impregnated by him? But how could you go about convincing some poor Italian lady that you have implanted demonseed in her womb. I mean, that's a tough story to sell.



"Hey, I know you didn't feel anything or anything, and you probably don't remember this, but last night, while you were sleeping, we came into your room, held a Satanic ritual, raised the Devil from the Underworld, and then you two had crazy Devil Sex, and now you're carrying around his baby. Seriously, I know how this sounds, but trust me. But if you take this 3000 euro pill, it'll totally abort the Devil's baby."

"Why would I be willing to abort my dark lord's only heir for a measly 3000 euros? Um...that's a good question...But I have to turn into a bat now, bye!"

The link, by the way, is courtesy of FARK.

Steamboy

Katsuhiro Otomo's first film, Akira, helped to introduce Americans to what was then regrettably called "Japanamation." Steamboy, the well-regarded latest film from Otomo (and his only other feature as a director), is not quite as good as Akira, and it suffers from some of the same problems that I have with almost all anime films.

It is far too long. It is hard to invest in as a story, as the characters are driven more by ideology than emotion. It adds in so much complex, unexplained backstory that the viewer becomes overwhelmed. It is talky and repetitive.

And yet, I found the movie absolutely gripping, a visual marvel with a brain and an eye for detail. This is one of those anime films that manages to overcome some of the inherent weaknesses of the genre through a combination of tremendous imagination and beautiful, expressive animation.



The first thing you notice about Steamboy, aside from its eye-popping combination of traditional 2D animation along with CG images, is that it's far more detailed and intelligent than any of its American animated counterparts. Even in clever, adult-friendly American toons like The Incredibles, you don't get this level of period detail, you don't get heady concepts involving alternate history and the interplay between huamnity and the technology it creates. This is an animated film that uses the technique not just to entertain kids and impress adults, but to truly create a fanciful scenario purely from scratch, to tell a story that wouldn't work in any other genre.

The film opens in the year 1866. Steamboy relates the story of the appropriately-named Steam family. Grandfather Lloyd Steam (Katsuo Nakmura, and Patrick Stewart in the English dub I didn't watch) has invented a device called a Steam Ball, capable of containing an unlimited amount of compressed energy in an extraordinarily small space.

Obviously, this opens up an entire world of possibilities. Because steam energy was so hard to create, and required tremendous boilers to process, its various uses were limited. It could power a locomotive, sure, but could you ever contain enough steam to run an airplane? Or to run every device in a modern office building?

Unfortunately, the charitable foundation that has funded Lloyd's work, The O'Hara Foundation, wants to use the steam ball to create massive armies, including locomotives that run on tank treads, flying machines, steam-powered robot soldiers and individual-seat submarines. Along with Lloyd's own son, Eddie (Masane Tsukayama), they plan to demonstrate the colossal power of their steam army during an upcoming Science Exhibition in London.

Eventually, the task of stopping the deranged Eddie and the greedy capitalists of O'Hara will fall to Lloyd's grandson, the plucky Ray Steam (Anne Suzuki in the original, Anna Paquin in the USA version). Once the film gets through this initial set-up, at around the 20 minute mark, all hell essentially breaks loose. The bulk of this film is a tremendous chase sequence, in which Ray and the steam ball are pursued over land, sea and air, from a wondrously-realized period Manchester, all smokestacks and grime, to a glorious, mythically oversized London. It works marvelously, and is fantasitcally innovative and exciting.

Otomo should really have been the one to adapt Alan Moore's "League of Extraordinary Gentleman" series. The film that was made was utterly tone-deaf, and had no indication of Moore's obsessive fondness for its setting. Steamboy on the other hand shares a fascination with the detailed inner-workings of Victorian London. Every contraption in the film, from Lloyd's steam ball to a jet pack to gear-based artificial limbs to an enormous Steam Tower capable of blasting off like a rocket, has been designed thoughtfully and carefully, with an eye for period detail.



Once the enormous battles are over, and the Steam Tower has blasted off, and the movie seems ready to wind down, it unfortunately gets a little too cerebral. At a full two hours, Otomo's movie clearly could lose 10-15 minutes, and I'd suggest that most of its allegorical meaning is pretty clear before the characters begin pontificating towards the end. Some of the speechifying gets tedious and repetitive, particularly when you consider that Lloyd and Eddie Steam have at least three "final confrontations."

And there is an undeniable coldness to the enterprise. Though his world has been realized with such impeccable craft and care, Ray Steam himself is something of a blank slate. He has no discernable personality that I could identify, short of a desire to do good and a fondness for his grandfather. The romantic subplot between Ray and the heiress to the O'Hara fortune (named, of course, Scarlett) could not be more ridiculous or unconvincing.

So, despite all its many successes, and my overall fondness for the film, Steamboy doesn't quite get up to the level of an Incredibles or the Toy Story films. Those movies are not only technical marvels, but are bursting with a humanity and a sense of humor Otomo's film lacks.

The Longest 10 Minute Drive in History

I've just arrived back from the Santa Monica Nissan dealership. I had to have my car towed there this morning, as it stopped functioning last night, while I was attempting to drive it around.

So this morning, my dad calls to wake me up, to inform me that I simply must get my car over to the dealership, post-haste. A few phone calls later, and I'm wiping the sleep out of my eyes in Santa Monica, while explaining to the guy that I not only need a new alternator, but also some spare keys, because I have broken the last 500 that have been provided of me. Through absolutely no fault of my own.

Seriously. I'm not abusing these keys. I'm not using them to shiv prison inmates, or to spoon out cocaine or to pry dried-up chewing gum out of the coin slots of pay phones or anything. Just to start my fucking car. But these things snap in two like nothing - they have about as much tensile strength as matzo.

[Do you gentiles get that joke? Matzo is the paper-thin, and might I add horribly disgusting, bread substitute Jews eat on Passover. Although some deeply disturbed Jews, like my friend Jeff, eat it year round.]

Fortunately, Santa Monica Nissan has a shuttle service to drop you off after you've left your car. This is very handy, as I currently have $2 in my pocket, which is only enough scratch to take an LA City Bus home. And I have kind of a rule about riding in LA City buses. And that rule is, "Don't ever ride LA City buses unless it's a dire emergency, such as uncontrollable bleeding from both eye sockets."

Ever wonder how I can be so sure there's no God? Cause I've been on an LA City bus!

If you read that last sentence aloud in a Lewis Black voice, it's about 25% funnier, just so you know.

So I get into the shuttle car and the driver takes off, and I suddenly notice that this car has the worst possible B.O. smell in the world. The. Worst. I had the window all the way open, with my neck craned as far outside as I could get it, and it was still all I could smell.

The odd part is, before we got into the car, I didn't notice the driver himself having a bad B.O. smell. And that's the sort of thing I'd notice, I think. So it could be that it's lingering in the car, like on that "Seinfeld" episode about the B.O. car.

Anyway, that was the longest 10 minute drive in history. I just arrived back home and couldn't resist relating to you all the story of my harrowing trek down the 10 Freeway, in a car that reeked like a Tikrit Bath House.

I Am Out of Clever Headlines Involving the Name "Valerie Plame"

On all the political websites I've checked out for the last few days, there's a standard theory about Bush nominating Judge Roberts to the Supreme Court. Everyone assumes that he timed his announcement to get his advisor Karl Rove and the CIA leak story off the front page.

It's a reasonable theory. After all, these are crafty guys, and they know that once a story has been out of the public eye for a few days, it's as good as dead.

Now usually, I don't endorse governmental conspiracy theories, because I think most politicians are far too stupid to pull off any clever sort of cover-up. Did any of you see the X-Files movie a few years ago? For that conspiracy to work, the government would have to keep so many secrets - black oily stuff, big greenhouses full of bees, alien spacecraft beneath the Arctic Ice. They can't even keep their mouths shut about who's working undercover at the CIA!

But on this one occasion, something occurs to me. Something sneaky. Could it be that the Valerie Plame case is actually drawing attention away from the appointment of John Roberts to the Supreme Court?

Think about it this way...In 10 years, what will be more important. Whether or not Karl Rove was publicly embarrassed and fired from his White House post, or which conservative assholes sit on the Supreme Court? Even if Rove were allowed to keep his job, worst case scenario is that he advises GWB for another few years and then we have another election.

Sure, Rove could theoretically back another candidate, granted. But still, is the possibility of a Rove-involved election more terrifying than illegal abortion, prayer in school and massive corporate favoritism on an unprecedented scale?

I mean, the Supreme Court is important. Super really really important. Karl Rove, however rodent-like and unpleasant, is just one man. I can't help but think that, by giving up on Roberts and letting him slip through the confirmation process, Democrats are playing right into the Republican's hands.

Yeah, Bush would hate to lose Rove. But he'd really hate to lose the opportunity to stack the federal courts with the vicious moral crusaders of the religious right. That's what they elected him to do in the first place.

I'm also irritated by how effective some of the Republican spin strategy has been this week about Roberts. ABC's The Note is the only place I've seen someone confront this issue online thus far. What's going on is that some right-wing commentators are complaining that Roberts isn't conservative enough.

Ann Coulter, for example, called him a horrible pick the other day, accusing Bush of selling out his base to appeal to moderates and, ugh, liberals, if you can imagine anything so horrid. And the odious Charles Krauthammer calls Roberts "a blank slate," presenting him as an ultimately fair man who will rule as he sees fit, not from any political stance.

This is, clearly, bullshit. Roberts has been a corporate lawyer and a hardcore Republican ever since he exited Harvard Law School. We all know where he stands. So why would all these conservatives be publicly dissing him like this?

Maybe because it behooves Republicans in the Senate (and elsewhere) to convince Democrats that Roberts is an easy-going middle of the road kind of guy, to avoid this kind of escalation of conflict.

But is that really what's best for the Democrats, or the American people? Is it really so much more important to focus on Karl Rove's treasonous and underhanded dealings? I genuinely don't know...I'm kind of asking what you all think...

The Bald and the Beautiful

I read V for Vendetta a few years ago, during a time when I tried to read as many popular graphic novels as possible, and quite enjoyed it, but I'm very surprised they're making it into a movie all the same.

Particularly considering that the hero, the "V" of the title, is essentially a terrorist. Now, granted, he's bringing down a corrupt, totalitarian government, and he's pursuing his quest for selfish, personal reasons rather than on behalf of, say, Allah. But still, any film making any terrorist seem at all sympathetic is going to be a hard sell in 2005 America.

It helps that the film was written by the Wachowskis, the bizarre bearded brothers who brought you passable-to-good movies like Bound and The Matrix and miserable disgusting failures like The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions. And that Matrix video game no one plays.

It also helps that it stars a bald-but-still-sexy Natalie Portman, Stephen Rea and Hugo Weaving. Oh, and the trailer kicks ass. It looks pretty stylish and cool, and not campy, which is your biggest fear when talking about a movie about a guy in a white mask throwing daggers at people. Here's hoping it works.

Breakdown

Have you ever been so angry, you were actually seeing red? I mean, not just pissed off, not even so mad you want to hit something or yell. I mean angry to the point where you start to see odd flashes of color before your eyes, and maybe even feel a bit light-headed.

Well, that was me about two hours ago. Frequent blog readers will recall that, over the past several weeks, I've been having car battery woes. First, my car died in the parking lot behind Laser Blazer, and a friendly crew member working on a Subway commerical gave me a jump start. I got the battery replaced the next day.

Then, about a week later, the damn thing died again. And it's not just that the car won't start - it makes this sad little noise, like it wants to start but just can't manage it, and then there's this high-pitched annoying click. Seriosuly, I thought I might have accidentally parked on an ancient Indian burial ground or something, because how else would be Nissan Altima contract a poltergiest?

This time with no friendly Subway Restaurant contractors around, so I had to have it towed to Pep Boys. They told me that first battery was faulty, and that they would put in a brand spanking new one that would work fine.

Cut to tonight. For no good reason, I decide to go to the video store to return some movies, even though I'm not even working today. Midway through the ride home, I'm cruising through Pico Blvd., when my car starts to vibrate violently before shutting itself off.

Oh great.

So I angle the car to the side of the road and manage to pull it into the parking lot of a local dry cleaners. And here is when I notice that, in a desperate attempt to restart the car by jiggling the key around, I have broke the key off in the ignition. There is no back-up key.

And that's when I totally lose it. I won't get into specifics, but certain portions of the car's interior were stabbed with a key, certain dashboard areas may have been punched or bludgeoned, and more than one booket containing burned CD's was sent aloft. In fact, I banged my wrist pretty hard, and it still kind of hurts when I type.

And then I called my parents and took out some of my frustration on them, and then I called AAA and waited on hold for about 20 hours. Okay, maybe not that long, but if I had started Gone With the Wind when the car first broke down, at least two people would have been kicked off of horses by the time the tow truck arrived.

And while on hold, I was still really angry. It was taking a long time, and they were playing really annoying 80's music. It was that weird old song where the guy's going "What did you think...I would do at this moment", but a musak version without the actual guy singing. And then a recorded woman's voice would come on and say "PLEASE REMAIN ON THE LINE FOR OUR NEXT AVAILABLE OPERATOR..." And every time I would hear that woman's voice, I would get pissed off all over again. So one time, when the woman's voice came on, I just started yelling profanity into the phone.

Can you tell where I'm going with this? Yeah, that last time, it wasn't actually a recorded woman's voice...but a woman. Who proceeded to hang up on me. Or at least I thought she hung up on me. She actually just transferred me to another helpful AAA named Dante who actually took the call. I can't say I blame the initial operator - I wouldn't want to help some stranded motorist who had just referred to me by a naughty word (rhyming with "runt"!) even if he did do it inadvertedly.

I even got into a fight with Dante the AAA guy on the phone. Now, this is not a recommended strategy, to argue with the guy who's about to send you a tow truck. My whole life at that point is dependant on this guy getting a truck out to my location, and I'm giving him shit over a $45 towing fee. What an asshole.

Anyway, the tow truck driver essentially refuses to drop my car off in front of the Nissan dealership where I need to take it. He argues that it's not in a good neighborhood, and the car could be stolen off the street, or stripped for parts. (I can't lock the doors, of course, because the key is broken!)

So we have to pull it into my driveway, which is hard because my driveway is constantly bustling with approximately 500,000 Mexican children, many of them suffering from some disorder resembling advanced ADHD. Trying to get them out of the way, clearing a route for the tow truck, was a task akin to securing the Sunni Triangle. Seriously, the Hell's Angels had an easier time controlling the crowd at Altamont than I had with the driveway kids tonight.

But it worked eventually, and right now my car is hanging out, broken, wide open, in the driveway beneath my apartment. Even if I get it fixed tomorrow, will my confidence in the car ever return? I think I'll probably drive around in it now constantly worried that it's about to die at any second. The Altima is now like that friend who once bailed out on going to the concert with you at the last second. Even years later, after they've apologized and made it up to you, and it's not even a big deal any more, you're still wary about inviting them to another concert...just cause you never know...