Grindhouse

Quentin Tarantino/Robert Rodriguez mash-ups have improved with age. In the '90s, their collaborations tended towards the goofy but slight (From Dusk Till Down) or the downright excruciating (anyone else remember Four Rooms?) Like I said, things have improved.

Sin City found Rodriguez in rare form, still not making a film with any kind of emotional payoff or resonance, but at least making something fun and vital and entertaining from beginning to end. And he did so with a vital assist from Tarantino.

The two have now reunited for a grindhouse double-feature, a modern imitation of those old Z-grade '70s Times Square features that still get run in revival houses like Austin's Alamo Drafthouse or our New Beverly Cinema here in LA. This is a gamble. Most Americans aren't actually familiar with these old films: crudely-shot, badly-worn and gleefully perverse bits of nastiness. But beyond the subject matter's relative obscurity, the very concept itself seems destined to fail.

In short, how can two famous directors who work with decent-sized budgets and big stars under the auspices of a major Hollywood studio recreate a grindhouse film?

By definition, these '70s films were made on the cheap, with a bunch of nobodies, in a week or two. Manos, the Hands of Fate, isn't the worst movie ever because it was trying to be campy and bad. IT REALLY IS THAT CAMPY AND BAD, and that's why audiences continue to watch all these years later (even if it is only the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" version).

Rodriguez and Tarantino physically cannot recreate this. Thus, they CANNOT make a true grindhouse film. All they can do is imitate. That's what Rob Zombie did in The Devil's Rejects last year - he used his own resources to make a film that imitated the gruesome horror/road movies of his youth. Which is fine, I suppose, but not terribly exciting.

Rodriguez and Tarantino have, thankfully, devised a third path that I had not anticipated. (Really, a third and fourth path, as their films are not entirely similar). Not only does it work, but it works phenomenally, using '70s style to comment on filmmaking today AND potentially introducing a new generation to an obscure but hugely entertaining moment in American cult filmmaking.

Planet Terror

I'm not sure if every theater will get the same print, and see the Rodriguez film first in the line-up, but that's how it worked for me. Interestingly, Rodriguez has pretty much declined to make a grindhouse film. None of these '70s movies on which he's riffing had these kinds of elaborate make-up and special effects sequences. They rarely had huge explosions or action scenes, or a lot of gunplay. These people were working with four-digit budgets (if that!) They had enthusiasm, ambition and, frequently, some degree of technical knowhow. But they did not have the Weinstein Company behind them.

Instead, Rodriguez has made a big, funny, outrageous, cartoon zombie spoof that borrows the adolescent nihilism of grindhouse films. I haven't seen Sin City in a little while at this point, but I'm tempted to say it's topped by Planet Terror in terms of sheer fun. If nothing else, it's a whole lot more funny than any previous Rodriguez film, as if he'd managed to borrow the brains of old-school Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson for weekend brainstorming sessions or something.

At this point, I think it's fair to say that Robert Rodriguez thrives on uncomplicated, straight-forward action and horror. Whenever one of his films must rely on actual CHARACTERS or interpersonal drama to succeed, it will not work. He knows not what to do with, you know, people. Utilizing new technology to create the latest in live-action video games is more the guy's metier. Everyone's bored by overly-labored, complex non-starters like Once Upon a Time in Mexico, but boredom wouldn't be possible during Planet Terror. The thing doesn't stop moving for a second.


The opening credits are more "grindhousy" than anything that will follow in the rest of the film. Cherry (Rose McGowan) cries as she go-go dances in front of an unenthusiastic crowd. (Her boss reminds her that it's called "go go dancing," not "cry cry dancing," in a speech that reminded me of Larry Bishop's skeezy car wash tirade in Kill Bill 2).

Later that night, she winds up bumping into an old flame, the mysterious and massively-badass Wray (a fantastic Freddy Rodriguez, Rico from "Six Feet Under"). It's just in time, too, because at a nearby military facility, a shadowy government operative (Bruce Willis) and his team have accidentally flooded the atmosphere with a potent poison gas that is soon transforming the local population into mutant cannibal freaks.

What develops, as Cherry and Wray encounter other survivors and hole up in a barbecue restaurant, is pretty much a frenetic and grisly Romero send-up. (The presence of Tom Savini as one of sheriff Michael Biehn's deputies practically invites the connection). It's in some ways kind of similar to Rodriguez's work in From Dusk Till Dawn but more immediate, over-the-top, violent and funny. Rose McGowan's gun-leg has already become the film's most iconic image, but clever little devices and silly visuals like that abound throughout the film.

'80s legend Biehn, who was once James Cameron's go-to tough guy, gets his best role in YEARS as Sheriff Hague, an entirely likable play on the classic gruff B-movie cop archetype. He even gets to reprise the role in one of the fake trailers that come between the two films! Biehn's final scene with his brother JT (a similarly-terrific Jeff Fahey) is the one moment in Terror that has anything even resembling pathos.

Despite all the silliness, Rodriguez does slip in some insights along the way. I loved Willis' monologue explaining the origin of the poison gas - which decisively sets the film in the present-day, provides for one of its biggest laugh lines AND even lends the grim conclusion some poignancy.

But it's his use (overuse, really) of digital trickery and animation effects that really let us know where Rodriguez stands. He genuinely seems to feel that computers improve every aspect of filmmaking. He's not trying to recreate grindhouse films, really, so much as he's IMPROVING upon them. He can make movies as goofy, unhinged and personal as those old cheapo '70s features, but he can fill them with amazing stunts and impossible action sequences. He can even make the wear-and-tear of old prints, the grain and dirt that's usually the bane of classic cinema fans, into a FEATURE of his new movie. The fucked-up splices, the missing reels and so forth are part of the fun of his movie, rather than minor irritations or distractions that have become a constant "part of the experience" of going to the grindhouse over the years.

In some ways, he succeeds. I have rarely seen an actual grindhouse film that's this consistantly entertaining. And I've never seen one with an action climax on this kind of scale. But I feel like I come down more on Tarantino's side of this debate, which I will get to shortly.

The Trailers

There are four fake trailers included in the film. One plays before the first feature, and the others play in between.


Rodriguez did one himself, Machete with Danny Trejo, which is pretty cool. Edgar Wright of Shaun of the Dead fame contributes a really hilarious one called Don't. Rob Zombie crafts the surprisingly authentic Werewolf Women of the SS, the only one of these trailers that genuinely feels like a real grindhouse trailer and has the added benefit of starring Udo Kier and Sybil Danning. (There's an additional cameo that is so good, I would not dream of spoiling it here).

By far the best trailer, one of the year's best short films, really, is Eli Roth's Thanksgiving. Holy shit, this guy is some kind of demented genius. I mean, I liked Hostel a lot and am eagerly awaiting the sequel, but this trailer is extremely sick and perfect. It's as if Roth took every idea for a death scene he'd ever had that was too disturbed or brutal to make it into his actual movies, and then just shot them all in quick succession from odd angles. Brilliant.

Death Proof

Tarantino takes a diametrically opposed strategy with this film from his directing buddy. Rather than use contemporary technology to alter or IMPROVE upon '70s filmmaking, Tarantino has made a bittersweet ode to the forgotten movies of the past, as well as a lament for the soulless bland filmmaking that has come to dominate the marketplace. His film, in some ways, feels like a response to Rodriguez's. "That's a lot of fun," he seems to say, "but not even the world's most powerful computer can replace the thrill of amateur filmmaking, of seeing something that was handmade by enthusiastic nobodies." I think he's right.

Death Proof is SO committed to recapturing the old spirit of the grindhouse, it even gets boring and static in the midsection. I don't know if Tarantino purposefully limited his budget or what, but it feels like he RAN OUT OF MONEY about halfway through and needed to invent some dialogue scenes as "filler" to get to 85 minutes. Any fan of these movies will immediately recognize the sensation - grindhouse films have one or two cool moments in the first half hour, to capture your attention, and then get pretty slow and boring until the end.

BUT WHAT AN ENDING! The final 30 minutes of Death Proof is, without a doubt, some of the best work QT has ever done. Seriously. Kurt Russell is fantastic as Stuntman Mike, a really sadistic piece of work who tools around Austin in his modified Chevy Nova, looking for nubile packs of young girls to crash into. (His car was designed for film and TV stunt work, you see, so it's 100% death proof provided you're in the passenger seat).


Unfortunately for Mike, he has now taken on a group of female stunt drivers, including Rosario Dawson, who now test the upper limits of his driving (and fighting) ability. It sounds dumb, and it is, but in an exceptionally smart way. These final racing scenes feature two classic '70s movie cars (Mike's Nova comes up against a Dodge Challenger, the same car from Vanishing Point) skidding around a contemporary freeway otherwise filled with Toyota Camrys and SUVs. At one point, Russell's car careens through a marquee advertising Scary Movie 4.

These old cars, and the old movies that featured them, had PERSONALITY. They were the products of individuals, not corporations, and because they were made with no money or celebrities, the personality became the star attraction. When I think back on The Candy Snatchers, I don't remember the chase sequences or double crosses. I remember that weird old actor with the beard who chortles "An 8 year old that can't talk! Who ever heard of a child that doesn't talk!" Or the old stage actor who plays the mad scientist in Night of the Bloody Apes. His strange overacting is memorable because it's just so weird.

Computers, you see, they don't do "weird." Or "cheap." Or "homemade." They do exactly what you tell them to do, which is pretty much the 180 opposite of a camera, which does what you tell it only if you're amazingly fucking good with a camera.

But beyond all that "meaning" crap, this is really just great filmmaking. After the House of Blue Leaves sequence in Kill Bill the First and now these crazy racing scenes, Tarantino has proved himself more adept at shooting action than the vast majority of contemporary action directors. The race scenes from the Fast and the Furious movies look like shit in comparison. It's laughable. How humiliating for guys like John Moore, Paul Greengrass and the God-King of Shitty Action Scenes, Michael Bay, that QT can take such a simple premise and turn it into something so intense and exciting.

And, of course, as with every QT film, the music in Death Proof is absolutely stellar. Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, where have you guys been all my life?

Know Fear

And Now, the Saddest Search of the Week

Someone came to the blog today having performed this Google Search. And I quote:

"looking for sex in ducktown tn"

Is it as bad as all that? (Don't worry...It only links to me because I reviewed the reprehensible Johnny Knoxville film Daltry Calhoun, which coincidentally was set in Ducktown.)

Pfffffffffffffffffffffttttttttttttttttttt

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...

For all the talk about potential candidates who haven't entered the 2008 presidential race — from Mayor Bloomberg to Vice President Gore to Senator Thompson and Speaker Gingrich — the one that who would bring the most to the race is Vice President Cheney.

...ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...

Were Mr. Cheney in the race, it's hard to imagine that the president's approval ratings would not be five or 10 points higher. The reason is that the administration would have a defender on the campaign trail as part of the public debate.

[Loud snorting]

Mr. Cheney has virtues as a candidate in his own right. He has foreign policy experience by virtue of having served as defense secretary, and he has economic policy experience, having served as a leading tax-cutter while a member of the House of Representatives.



Lawrence Kudlow wrote a column a while back saying he hoped President Bush asked Vice President Cheney to run for president in 2008. It was a fine idea then and it still is — not because the current field is particularly weak, but because Mr. Cheney is so much more experienced and shrewd a figure, one who could help settle some of the arguments about the Bush years in favor of Mr. Bush. A White House aiming to get Mr. Cheney elected could also avoid some of the hazards that befall lame-ducks — drift, brain drain, irrelevance. Such a campaign might lift Mr. Cheney 's own standing in the polls.



This is not an endorsement, and there are things we find attractive about many of the other candidates. But for those of us who are concerned with extending Mr. Bush's campaign for freedom around the world and cutting taxes at home, a Cheney campaign is attractive.

Okay, okay...I'm okay...Whew...Just let me collect myself here...

In the same Alabama speech in which Mr. Cheney quipped about wanting to run for office again, he said, " America is a good and an honorable country. We serve a cause that is right, and a cause that gives hope to the oppressed in every corner of this earth. We're the kind of country that fights for freedom, and the men and women in that fight are some of the bravest citizens this nation has ever produced. The only way for us to lose is to quit. But that's not an option. We will complete the mission, and we will prevail." What a contrast to the carping over tactics that has infected some of the Republican field and to the fever among the Democrats for cutting off funds for our GIs and sounding a retreat.

Nope, I've lost it again...

The Ventriloquists at the Roxy!

I'll remind everyone later on in the week about this, but this coming Thursday, my friends The Ventriloquists will be opening at The Roxy for Philadelphia's Man Man. You have heard me rave about both of these bands frequently here on The Inertia - this will be a rare, awesome chance to see TWO great acts (three, hopefully, if Simon Dawes lives up to the hype...) for the Scrotastically low price of only $10!

The Ventriloquists on MySpace!
The Ventriloquists on iTunes!
We Are Man Man!

Definitely check out that MySpace link for the Ventriloquists. (What would be the good casual term of familiarity of this band? The 'Quists? The Vents?) They've put up some cool new tracks from the Albino Pomegranite EP, including one catchy song called "Sidecar" that I'm not sure I've ever heard before.

Blades of Glory

Let's consider two popular comic actors - Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn. Both have made a career of being the best characters in mediocre movies (including Old School, that rare Frat Pack film with two "best characters").

Vaughn and producer Ben Stiller teamed up for Dodgeball a few years back, a nearly-unwatchable, painfully unfunny comedy about a bunch of idiots who play dodgeball against a bunch of other idiots to save a small gymnasium. The film has a good cast and a few jokes work (though many of these, such as Rip Torn chucking a wrench in a guy's face, appeared in the trailers), but it's a slack, uneventful affair that's pretty thin, reliant almost exclusively on poorly-executed physical comedy and cheap sub-"Mad TV" schtick.

Ferrell and producer Ben Stiller have teamed up now for Blades of Glory, about two cocky male figure skaters forced to compete in the Olymics as a couple. Formula-wise, it could be Dodgeball 2. Instead of Rip Torn, you now have Craig T. Nelson as the cantankerous, whacked-out coach who's got to whip these guys into shape. Instead of the high-stakes professional dodgeball circuit, this film takes place in the professional ice skating circuit. Cameos still abound, along with gross-out humor, slapstick and oversized, sketch-comedy-style characters. Stiller's flamboyant Dodgeball adversary has been replaced by Will Arnett and Amy Poehler as a creepy brother-sister skating team.

And yet...and yet...Blades of Glory couldn't really be less like Dodgeball. That film felt tired, bored with itself in a strange way. (Vaughn's visible boredom in his role was a big part of the problem). Ferrell and the rest of the new film's cast go through these sophomoric shenanigans with such fresh-faced enthusiasm, you'd think the antic sports-themed farce were invented last Tuesday instead of roughly 100 years ago. The scenes are sort of funny, the situation is kind of funny but the performances are frequently hilarious.

So, one more time, for the record...There is nothing original, sophisticated or culturally redeeming about Blades of Glory. It did, however, make me laugh my ass off at times, and kept me generally amused throughout. On the Frat Pack-o-meter, I'd rank it below Anchorman, Talladega Nights and Old School but above Dodgeball, Wedding Crashers, Zoolander and any other non-Wes Anderson films with Owen Wilson. I'm really starting to dislike that guy, in fact...















Chazz Michael Michaels (Ferrell) and Jimmy MacElroy (Napoleon Dynamite) earn exactly the same score in the Olym Wintergame finals. So, naturally, they get into a fistfight on the winner's podium and get simultaneously banned from competitive figure skating for life. Four years later, Chazz is the alcoholic star of "Grumbles on Ice" and Jimmy laces up little girl skates at the SportMart. Then, Jimmy's twisted stalker (Nick Swardson) discovers a wacky loophole in the Wintergame rules - Chazz and Jimmy can't compete in singles figure skating, but they could compete as a team!

Safe, obvious mainstream comedy fodder. A solid high-concept pitch. This style of comedy has become a formula because it works. Or, at least, it works sometimes. Fortunately, this is one of those times.

As Ferrell and writer Adam McKay do in their films (Anchorman and Talladega), screenwriters Jeff Cox, Craig Cox, John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky refuse to let realism intrude on a good joke, giving Blades of Glory a loose, flight of fancy vibe that keeps the proceedings light and watchable. Ferrell doesn't just play a macho asshole, he plays the most deluded sex-addicted testosterone-fueled doofus in history. Napoleon Dynamite isn't just a fey blonde-locked priss, he's a ludicrous exaggeration of every stereotype about male figure skaters. There isn't just a footchase, but a footchase through a crowded mall on ice skates while the chaser's wearing a business suit adorned with glitter.

It can be a bit much at times, and obviously any film with this much physical comedy and silliness is going to have some jokes miss their mark. But there are a lot more funny scenes than not, and a few moments that, if not exactly "smart," at least demonstrated some level of wit in the midst of all the stupidity. The skating routines in particular are well shot and designed by first-time directors Josh Gordon and Will Speck, who previously worked on those surreal Emerald Nut commercials. To use a metaphor from a different sport, I wouldn't say they've knocked it out of the park on their first try, but Blades of Glory is a solid double.

Live From Baghdad

This is a great idea. Why hasn't anyone else thought of this?

The Gun Toting Liberal’s Alexander Paul Melonas is now pursuing the Iraq embed opportunity and has written the DOD to begin the vetting process.

Long story short. Lame right-wing blog Red State announced that they were sending a blogger to Iraq, making it sound as if they had been personally invited by the Department of Defense to do so. Of course, they had not. Instead, they had spent several months lobbying the government to permit them to go report from Iraq.

So, okay...typical scumbag rightard maneuever. But...having said that...I think we can all agree this was an excellent idea. Most Americans, and I definitely include myself here, lack even a basic understanding of all the various, complex factors at play in this Iraq mess we've created. This is one of the major reasons I was against Bush's venture in the first place. Americans, and especially their president, don't know shit about the rest of the world. At all. So we probably shouldn't invade it, because we'll just get lost and refuse to ask any of the locals for directions.

I'm not sure if there's a remedy for this. How do you reverse so many generations of willful ignorance and anti-intellectualism? Like it or not, asshattery is part of our national character, like deep-friend Oreos or Sanjaya Malakar. Without it, we are nothing.

But it's still a good idea for more bloggers to actually go see what's going on for themselves and then report back. Even if it has to be one of the guys from...ugh...Red State, which is currently running this post on its front page:

Back in September 2004, when John Kerry and his Magic Hat were on the campaign trail he floated the idea that George Bush would reinstitute a draft if reelected.

Answering a question about the draft that had been posed at a forum with voters, Kerry said: "If George Bush were to be re-elected, given the way he has gone about this war and given his avoidance of responsibility in North Korea and Iran and other places, is it possible? I can't tell you."

This, obviously, was meant to terrify the key collegiate pencil-necked pseudo-male demographic into submissive urination and voting for him.

Irony is a cruel mistress. Jack Murtha has come out in favor of a draft. Let the debate begin.

Yeah...John Kerry said that George Bush was a crazy warmonger whose excesses would eventually require a draft to carry out. And now Jack Murtha is arguing that the only fair way to conduct all of King George's wars would be to...have a draft. How...um...ironic? Do you think?

According to Red State, I guess, the point is that John Kerry threatened voters with a draft and another guy from his own party has now suggested a draft. This situation only appears ironic if you (1) ignore all context, (2) take Murtha's suggestion at face value and (3) hit yourself over the head with a ballpeen hammer until you forget the meaning of the word "irony."

But, heck, let's send 'em to Iraq anyway. Maybe it'll build some character. And I fully support the Gun Toting Liberal's sojourn as well. Obviously, we wish these brave citizen journalists all the best on their travels and a safe return, regardless of their political persuasion. In fact, I'd love to go myself, if I wasn't manacled to a Mystery Job in Santa Monica and a condemn-worthy apartment in beautiful downtown Palms.

Great Moments in Conservative Humor

I'm thinking about making this a regular feature.

Conservatives attempt to actually make humor from time to time and the results are always intriguing. I might even go so far as to call them "confounding." Just not "funny."

Our first item comes compliments of Think Progress. It's a video from last night's White House Correspondent's Dinner, the annual event where our press corps and our elected representatives get together to drink and act like co-workers, even though working together is nowhere in their job description. Seriously, I know I'm not the first person to point this out, but the very notion of a chummy annual dinner between the journalists and the politicians they're supposed to be covering is inappropriate. That would be like the dudes from Price Waterhouse having lunch with all the Oscar nominees the day before the show. It's not a guarantee of impropriety, but it sends the wrong impression.

George Bush, being a deeply unfunny man, has always had kind of a tact problem at these dinners. See, Presidents are expected to kind of lightly make fun of themselves for the pleasure and giggling schoolyard delight of the White House press corps. Bill Clinton memorably made a video about goofing off aimlessly at home when Hillary is out of town. Bush, on the other hand, did a slideshow in which he pretended to look around the White House for Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Get it? Because he started a war based on them and then didn't find any! Oh, his geopolitical recklessness sure is amusing!

And then, when Stephen Colbert showed up and attemptd to do the exact same thing - turn a frank observation about the state of Bush's presidency into a joke - rightards called him incivil and refused to laugh and rode him in the press for weeks.

Anyway, Bush only appears briefly in this clip. (He still does manage to be unfunny, however. A comedian asks him if he has any funny nicknames for Karl Rove. We all know he has one really famous one - turd blossom, which either refers to a flower that grows on lumps of cow dung or the lingering aroma of a fart, depending on who you ask - but he responds with a ripping "He's fired."

Is that a joke?

"Hey, what's your favorite nickname for your long-time co-worker?"

"He's fired!"

"Um...ha ha?"

[NOTE: This is actually a good joke if you happen to be Donald Trump, provided you don't use it too often.]

Misplaced aggression is like a language with this guy. It's his most basic emotional state, Bush at equilibrium.

Instead, this bit focuses on a really really really lame freestyle rap this comedian doofus whose name I have already forgotten does with Karl Rove. Seriously. Freestyle rapping with Karl Rove. Go watch the clip.

First, he asks Turd Blossom some questions about his hobbies, a delightful bit of business that seems to stretch on for approximately eleventy bajillion years.

"So, Karl, do ya have any fun hobbies?"

"Not really."

"Nothing? Nothing you like to do?"

"I don't drink alcohol."

This conversation makes Charlie Rose's show look rousing and lively. Huell Howser watched this clip and said, "Wow, this is fucking boring!"

Then, Karl Rove starts talking about how he likes to hunt quail and rip the heads off of small animals. It all pretty much goes downhill from there. Definitely a Great Moment in Conservative Humor.

Having said that, MC Rove has nothing on this Michelle Malkin column. Tbogg linked to this, but I had to click through to Jewish World Review and read the whole thing for myself to believe it. It reads like one of those weird, militant chain e-mails you get from time to time, vaguely hostile "open letters" addressed to large groups of people that just get handed back and forth ad infinitum across the Intert00bz. (Or maybe that's just my grandmother...)

This is the most hilarious thing I have read in a while.

Dear Muslim Terrorist Plotter/Planner/Funder/Enabler/Apologist,

You do not know me. But I am on the lookout for you. You are my enemy. And I am yours.

I am John Doe.

The killer from Se7en?

Oh, no, it's just Michelle Malkin...Then why isn't it Jane Doe? Did your hypothetical alter-ego representing individuals who feel similarly to yourself about terrorism undergo gender reassignment?

(I mean, yeah, I know, it's about all these "John Doe" legal cases, wherein public-spirited citizens like Michelle reported all these Muslim Imams to authorities, causing them to be detained and harrassed even though, you know, they hadn't actually done anything.

I actually don't think you should be able to be sued for reporting suspicious behavior, mind you. But I still think Michelle's attempt to express solidarity with these unnamed informers is amusing.)

I am traveling on your plane. I am riding on your train. I am at your bus stop. I am on your street. I am in your subway car. I am on your lift.

I am your neighbor. I am your customer. I am your classmate. I am your boss.

I am John Doe.

I gotta tell ya, John, you're kind of creeping me out more than the terrorist. They just want to blow me up to make a point. But you seem really into the whole thing, you know? I mean, you're on my train, okay, that's one thing. But then you're at my same bus stop? That's kind of weird. Then, later, I see you on my street? And in my subway car? And finally my lift, supposing that we went to England for some reason? Give a fucking terrorist apologist some space, J.D. Damn!

I will never forget the example of the passengers of United Airlines Flight 93 who refused to sit back on 9/11 and let themselves be murdered in the name of Islam without a fight.

You know, like in that Paul Greengrass movie...

I will never forget the passengers and crew members who tackled al Qaeda shoe-bomber Richard Reid on American Airlines Flight 63 before he had a chance to blow up the plane over the Atlantic Ocean.

Yeah, the idiot who failed to light his shoe on fire. Wikipedia powers, activate!

Passengers on flight 63 complained of a smoke smell in the cabin shortly after a meal service. One flight attendant, Hermis Moutardier, walked the aisles of the plane, trying to assess the source. She found Reid, who was sitting alone near a window and attempting to light a match. Moutardier warned him that smoking was not allowed on the airplane; Reid promised to stop. A few minutes later, Moutardier found Reid leaned over in his seat; her attempts to get his attention failed. After asking "What are you doing?" Reid grabbed at her, revealing one shoe in his lap, a fuse which led into the shoe, and a lit match. She tried grabbing Reid twice, but he pushed her to the floor each time, and she screamed for help. When another flight attendant, Cristina Jones, arrived to try to subdue him, he fought her and bit her thumb. The 6 foot 4 inch (193 cm) Reid was eventually subdued by other passengers on the airliner, using plastic handcuffs, seatbelt extensions, and headphone cords.

Yes, let's never forget the sad tale of Richard Reid, the al-Qaida wannabe who somehow got his hands on an ACME catalogue. Back to Meesh-Meesh:

I will never forget the alertness of actor James Woods, who notified a stewardess that several Arab men sitting in his first-class cabin on an August 2001 flight were behaving strangely. The men turned out to be 9/11 hijackers on a test run.

And I will never forget the alertness of actor James Woods in all those movies where he's playing a cokehead, which is at least 80% of them.

I will act when homeland security officials ask me to "report suspicious activity."

I will embrace my local police department's admonition: "If you see something, say something."

I am John Doe.

She'll act...even when she doesn't see any suspicious activity. She'll do something suspicious and then report herself. That's Mich John's level of commitment to the vague concept of "homeland security."

I will protest your Jew-hating, America-bashing "scholars."

If there's one thing Michelle Malkin hates, it's fake scholars! Unfortunately, we don't get any names of actual Jew-haters. I think it was Professor Plum who expressed anti-Zionist sentiments in the conservatory...but I can't prove it yet. It could have been the lounge.

I will raise my voice against your subjugation of women and religious minorities.

But only in other countries. All you home-grown women-subjugators and atheist-haters are still cool.

I will challenge your attempts to indoctrinate my children in our schools.

"Sayin' we comes descended from monkeys...That's not my cultured heritage!"

I will oppose all attempts to undermine our borders and immigration laws.

I will resist the imposition of sharia principles and sharia law in my taxi cab, my restaurant, my community pool, the halls of Congress, our national monuments, the radio and television airwaves, and all public spaces.

This shit is really offensive. That first part implies that the major aim of immigration laws proposed by Michelle and other hard-line Republicans is terrorism prevention. The vast majority of people who are impacted by increasingly strict border and immigration policies are not terrorists, they are poor people. Trying to gloss over that fact with platitudes about being "John Doe" and standing guard against jihadis is cowardly in the extreme, an indication that Michelle knows deep-down her beliefs are motivated by racism and xenophobia, requiring her to disguise her true intentions beneath rhetoric.

And that second part...I mean, where to begin.

(1) Why start with taxi cabs? You couldn't at least pretend not to operate entirely based on stereotypes?

(2) Has anyone in America ever once reported an attempted imposition of sharia law at a national monument? I've gotta tell you, pretty much every American monument I've ever been to, there's a guy selling pork hot dogs somewhere right around there. So that's a violation of sharia law right there. Ever been to the Philadelphia Art Museum? There's probably eight, ten violations of sharia law going on on those front steps at any given moment of the day, and that's not even counting the bums loitering around the premises and whatever the hell they get up to. The only time I've ever been to Washington D.C., a guy came up to me right in front of the National Archives and tried to sell me a shirt featuring a huge pot leaf covering the White House and reading, "Washington: Keep Off the Grass." (Obviously I bought one.) If this doesn't represent a healthy respect for non-sharia American law, I don't know what does.

(3) As far as restaurants and radio stations go, if they want to run on sharia law...more power to them. It's not any of my business how you want to run your restaurant. I think it's probably a bad idea, at least for the restaurant, because a burqa will catch fire really quickly if you get hot peanut oil on it. (And in the case of the radio station, KLOS could start operating under sharia control tomorrow and you wouldn't notice a difference).

(4) Why go on? This is really really stupid.

I will not be censored in the name of tolerance.

No, apparently you won't be censored. You wrote it, I'm reading it. End of transaction.

I will not be cowed by your Beltway lobbying groups in moderates' clothing. I will not cringe when you shriek about "profiling" or "Islamophobia."

Well, no one's shrieking anything, and no one's expecting Michelle to cringe, I wouldn't think. But it is strange she can't fathom how this very piece she has just written could be viewed as "Islamophobic." A fear of Muslims is, in fact, the entire theme of the article. She writes of an imposition of Islamic law on our sacred national and social institutions, and cautions us all to be eternally vigilant against the Muslim menace. Then she turns around a few stanzas (verses? lines?) later and scoffs at the notion of Islamophobia. What else is there to call it? Islamo-concernia? "A Slight Case of the Arab Willies?"

I will put my family's safety above sensitivity. I will put my country above multiculturalism.

I will not submit to your will. I will not be intimidated.

I am John Doe.

Stunning. A stunning ability to miss the point. Michelle, you have already been intimidated. That's what this is all about! The John Does were intimidated! That is their defining characteristic! They saw suspicious looking Muslims, felt afraid and intimidated and reported them!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to have a stroke.

No Cure for Cancer

What the fuck is going on with Katie Couric? When did she become a total nutbar?

[John] Edwards, 53, admitted that he'd "been focused on Elizabeth and the family,'' since he and his wife found last week that the cancer that had been in remission since 2004 had now spread to her bones.

In an interview Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes,'' correspondent Katie Couric suggested to Edwards that people could view his decision to continue running for president in the face of his wife's illness as either callousness or "insatiable ambition.''

Those are tough questions, Edwards said, looking tired this morning in his conversation with Bay Area reporters, but Couric "asked the questions American people are asking themselves. The American people deserve answers from me and Elizabeth.''

That's John, gracious as usual. But this is some pretty ugly business. Going after a candidate for President because his wife has cancer?

And, yes, this is definitely Katie going after Edwards. She tries to pull a Hannity, to float the topic as a secondary source. "You know, Alan, some have said that Hillary Clinton met her husband Bill while working at a Tijuana donkey show. What are your thoughts on this development?"

The ol' "some have said" maneuver. Same move here. "Some may think about perceiving you as callous." I mean, Katie, either you're suggesting that he's callous or you're not. This "some people may interpret..." bullshit is just a diversionary tactic meant to throw off the incredibly stupid. They will, of course, eventually come to believe that this is their own idea formed rationally within their own heads.

"Hey, I just realized that I view John Edwards' decision to continue running for president in the face of his wife's illness as either callousness or 'insatiable ambition!' I am really insightful, isn't I?"

If anything, I think Katie should have to explain this concept that she pre-supposes some voters will eventually settle upon. How exactly does Elizabeth Edwards helping her husband campaign reflect any callousness on his part? Is there any reason to believe he is coercing her into helping him out?

I mean, okay, if she had a terrible case of the flu, and he was dragging her all around town kissing hands and shaking babies, fine, then I could understand the argument. "Hey, that asshole's making his wife run around town kissing hands and shaking babies, when she should be home in bed sipping delicious fresh-squeezed orange juice and watching The Price is Right."

Fair enough. But Elizabeth Edwards isn't ever going to get better. (I'm sorry to be blunt, and I feel terribly for them both, and find their actions of the past few weeks more than a little heroic, but that's the long and the short of her condition. It's terminal.) I think there's ever reason to believe she and her husband sat down and had a serious discussion about how they would spend the rest of her life. And they settled upon "campaign for the American presidency." Most terminal patients have to settle for much less excitement in their final months/years. It could be worse.

So, okay...What does that have to do with callousness? A "serious" couple would spend their final years together (and Elizabeth could potentially live for 5-7 years by most estimates) sitting in a darkened room waiting for the end to come? Curling up in the fetal position and quietly sobbing? Life goes on, even if your cells have gone rogue and turned on you. I mean, shit, this critique just doesn't make any sense at all.

And "insatiable ambition"? Is that anything like "unbridled enthusiasm"? Because, you know, that's what led to Billy Mumphry's downfall.

Seriously, though, anyone who is running for President is ambitious. Unambitious people don't run for President. Some of our best Presidents have been our most ambitious, starting with our first, who led a ragtag, half-equipped army against one of the greatest Colonial armies ever amassed! But he would have given it all up if Martha developed a nasty case of gout! Believe you me! To think otherwise would be exceptionally callous and even gauche by Katie Couric's genteel standards.

Oh, excuse me...By the standards of the hypothetical people Katie Couric has conjured for the purpose of humiliating John Edwards and kickstarting a nasty right-wing meme. Way to go, America's Sweetheart!

Also, I should add that the phrase "insatiable ambition" is pretty meaningless. If you achieve your goal, you would then cease to be ambitious. Therefore, all ambition is insatiable, by definition. If John Edwards wants to be President in any way, shape or form, this is an ambition that will be insatiable until such time as he becomes President, at which point he will no longer have ambition to be President. He will be President.

Now, if Katie means that campaigning along with his Cancer Wife reflects John's deep-down authoritarian Will to Power, an "insatiable" drive to conquer all that he surveys, then once again, I'm afraid I don't follow.

Mo' Taffy, Mo' Problems

When did P. Diddy become pregnant with quintuplets?




















Don't get me wrong. I think it's sweet that he's decided to gain 100 pounds as a living tribute to his dead, obese friend. But this may be pushing it a bit far.

I suppose he did tell us that he won't stop. I thought he meant "making records," not "inhaling fudge," but he never did specify.

Shocking Headline of the Day

About to head out to a delicious lunch at one of my favorite West LA eateries, Bread and Porridge, but before I go...had to share this ridiculousness from the front page at AlterNet.

And I quote...

Support Continues to Erode

Yeah, no shit...

The article is about support for Attorney General Abu Gonzales, but it could be about pretty much anything these days.

Our Power Doesn't Run On Nothing

I only got into the Thermals' The Body, The Blood, The Machine a short time ago, having totally missed it when it came out last year, but it otherwise would have made my Best of the Year list. It reminds me a lot of old-school Bad Religion. The brash intensity, the biting outspoken political commentary. It's very smart, very loud music that only sounds tossed off and silly. (For an album that's so clearly punk-inspired, it's also very slow and deliberate, inviting the listeners to consider the lyrics and concepts rather than just careening into one another semi-rhythmically.

Anyway, there's a track on the album called "Power Doesn't Run on Nothing" that doesn't an excellent job of summing up the American take on world diplomacy. To wit...

Our power doesn't run on nothing/
It runs on blood/
And blood is easy to obtain/
When you have no shame

The Republican Party under Bush, really our entire government with a few minor exceptions, is utterly and completely without shame. Perhaps more so than any other administration in American history, which is really saying something. Here's Dick Cheney speaking just today to the Republican Jewish Coalition. (Don't they sound like a fun and not at all humorless group?)

Vice President Dick Cheney on Saturday accused the Democrat-led House of not supporting troops in Iraq and of sending a message to terrorists that America will retreat in the face danger.

"They're not supporting the troops. They're undermining them," Cheney told a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition at the oceanside Ritz-Carlton hotel in Manalapan, Fla., about 60 miles north of Miami.
...
Cheney called it a myth that "one can support the troops without giving them the tools and reinforcements they need to carry out their mission."

Do I really even need to follow up on this point? I'm sure astute, and even somewhat less than astute, readers are already making the connection in their head. The man whose administration left injured troops to rot in moldy, deteriorating hospitals...The same man whose pre-war "planning" consisted of rubbing a rabbit's foot and an overnight Civilization III session...The man who hired 24-year-old nitwits to run the Baghdad stock exchange...The man who was content to send troops into battle without proper armor or supplies...The man who backed Rumsfeld's "light, small, ineffectual and barely visible army" strategy in the early days of the occupation...He's now saying that you can't support the troops without giving them the proper tools and reinforcements.

That's beyond shameless, beyond hypocracy. There's no word for what that is. Shamelapocracy. Bullshitonomy. Assholicism. Anyway, it's completely infuriating.



There's no music video for "Power Doesn't Run on Nothing," but here's the YouTube for another song from the album, "Pillar of Salt." If you go to the actual page on YouTube, you can peep a hilarious argument in the comments about whether or not the song is "against God" and "anti-Christian," which are of course the same exact thing...

Fanjayas Unite!

Oh, man, Sanjaya is totally going to win "American Idol" and it's going to be ridiculously awesome. It's not that the guy has absolutely no talent. It's that the guy has absolutely no talent and is incredibly creepy.

I think it was that hula dance. There was something genuinely unsettling about this entire sequence. His total lack of self-awareness, his willingness to be exploited and made to look ridiculous in front of literally millions of people. It was almost inhuman, that performance, and therefore compelling. You keep thinking, what's going on in his head? Doesn't he realize how poorly this is coming across? How lame he will be made to appear?



Sweet...

What's even more incredible than Sanjaya's combination of talentlessness and determination to go on television weekly to prove said talentlessness is the fact that some people out there genuinely like him! For reals! There's an actual community of people online who believe that Sanjaya haters like Simon Cowell dislike the guy because they are racist homophobes! (Trust me, none of it's worth linking to.)

I'm not sure who's more sad...The Sanjaya-lovers, either be deaf or abnormally attracted to shit-eating grins, or the Sanjaya-haters who are actually emotionally invested in the outcome of "American Idol."

Take the woman who has promised to fast until Sanjaya is kicked off the show. Wow, really? Doesn't she realize that she could do herself serious harm before next week's results come in? Maybe she's Jew-fasting, which is really more like having a late lunch when you get right down to it.

We're Taking Your Favorite Song Out of the Jukebox

Ready to stare into the face of comic genius?



HA HA HA! Oh, man, that is perfect...

Insert "Spinal Tap" Reference Here

Some guy in Flint, Michigan may have figured out how Stonehenge was built. His technique is so thuddingly obvious, it's hard to believe no one had pieced it all together before. I mean...as a species, we can design the microchip, but no one had ever determined that you can spin a very heavy stone around on a rock?



Perhaps it's not that Wally is so much more CLEVER than anyone else for figuring this out, but that people who aren't Druids don't bother to test out elaborate theories like this in their backyard. I mean, I get that the guy is retired, but where does one find the hours in the day to slowly adjust heavy stones atop rocks in the hopes of reverse engineering British tourist attractions? I can barely manage two loads of laundry and a haircut in a whole weekend.

Tinseltown Torquemadas

Driving home from work a few days ago, I saw a billboard on Santa Monica Blvd. featuring a bound Elisha Cuthbert being tortured. Risque movie advertisements are nothing terribly original around Los Angeles, but this one struck even my seasoned, jaded eyes as a touch extreme.

The film, Captivity, comes out in June, and presumably featured Ms. Cuthbert and a cadre of similarly-toned young people being tormented by a faceless, half-obscured foe with some kind of elaborate-yet-flashback-friendly backstory explaining his insatiable craving for innards or screams or what have you. Hey, at least they're not murderous puppets, okay?

It turns out, the ads were disturbing enough to get pulled only days after being released. Bear in mind, we're perfectly alright with the posters for Hostel 2, which feature a nude Bijou Phillips seductively displaying on to her own severed head...

Here's the Hollywood Reporter:

In the wake of a public outcry against Los Angeles billboards and New York taxicab tops advertising the upcoming movie "Captivity" with images of the abduction, torture and death of a young woman, After Dark Films said it will take down the offending ads by 2 p.m. today.

After Dark, its theatrical distribution partner Lionsgate Films and the MPAA received a barrage of phone calls objecting to the gratuitous depiction of the film's star Elisha Cuthbert being tortured and killed.

In all fairness, they did name their company "Dark Films." So it's not like they have anything to hide. It would be much more outrageous if this film came courtesy of "Jasmine-Scented Baby Chocolate Kitten Films."

The billboards, first posted March 13, feature four frames with captions above each one. "Abduction" shows Cuthbert with a gloved hand over her face; "Confinement" features the actress behind a chain-link fence with a bloody finger poking through; "Torture" depicts Cuthbert's face, covered in white gauze, with tubes shoved up her nose; and "Termination" shows her with her head thrown back, seemingly dead.

The ads appeared on 30 Los Angeles-area billboards and 1,400 New York taxi tops. After Dark is paying to have them removed -- and while some billboards in the Hollywood area were still visible Monday, others already had come down.

The "torture" panel is the one that's really disturbing. It's genuinely a shocking image - a woman being suffocated - writ large on the city's skyline. You sense this will be one of those fascinating historical footnotes that students will read about our civilization hundreds of years from now, should we miraculously live out the reign of King Shrub.

"The American culture was so violent, they would hang photos of their most beautiful girls being brutally tortured in the public square for amusement." Hey, I like horror movies, but even I can admit this makes us look bad.

Even worse is the fact that the film studio won't own up to the fact that their producing a torture movie.

Lionsgate said Monday that it had no involvement with the ads, which were produced by Art Machine Digital, and that all the marketing for the movie had been handled solely by After Dark.

"This film was done in association with After Dark Films. The nature of the association allows After Dark autonomy over their marketing materials, and therefore we neither saw nor approved this billboard before it was posted," said Peter Wilkes, head of Lionsgate investor relations. "Once aware of the materials and the reaction to them, we immediately asked After Dark to remove the billboards, to which they immediately and cooperatively responded."

So, in short, Lionsgate position is as follows:

"Yes, we financed and agreed to distribute a film called Captivity focused on the kidnapping and torture of a young girl. But we had no intention of actually advertising this film to the general public. That's all on you guys!"

I mean, yes, the ad was a bit excessive and graphic, but the real issue is that there are now several American films being produced each year about torture. Not even involving torture, necessarily, but about torture. The Hills Have Eyes remake, which has a sequel opening soon, was about nothing but torture. The opening half hour was the most standard, boring, rote retelling of the classic horror set-up imaginable. You sensed the actors and director's boredom with the scenario.

Then, the family gets to the desert, and it's just 75 or so minutes of vivisection. I don't have a problem with movie violence, per se, and it has to be considerably extreme to get any kind of genuine rise out of me, but I just get bored with a film like Hills Have Eyes. Repeated shots of gory mayhem are not entertaining in and of themselves. The film has to build its own tension, comic or otherwise, and then release this tension through the creative use of shocking violence. (As in David Cronenberg's A History of Violence or even, to use a more extreme example, Peter Jackson's Dead Alive).

The first Hostel film is often cited as the cornerstone of this new American genre (the Japanese have been fans of the torture film for several decades now), and it definitely has some outrageous money shots, but it's at least a real film with a real storyline (and even comedy). Take out the drills and third degree burns and you'd still have a movie, albeit a generic and largely uninteresting one.

The Hills Have Eyes, these new Texas Chainsaw remakes, these direct-to-DVD wretches with names like Rest Stop, they try to out-gross and out-butcher one another, but they're worn down by the Law of Diminishing Returns. The audience has already been shocked about as much as they'll be shocked by gruesome imagery, and now we're just dulling the severity and affect of the word "torture."

I'll say again for the record, I have no real problem with movies that feature torture. In fact, I like a lot of movies that include a good deal of torture, like Three Kings or Casino Royale or even Hostel and Oldboy and Ichi the Killer. That last one's 98% torture scenes! I even like that awful Showtime "Masters of Horror" series, in which noted film directors like John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper and Dario Argento take turns making stupid hour-long horror films full to bursting with as many unsheathed nipples and exploding duodenums as can be purchased with a $438.93 budget.

I just think it's stupid and hypocritical for a studio to get defensive about an advertisement for a torture film when they have actually made a torture film.

After Dark said the posting of the billboards was an accident. CEO Courtney Solomon said the wrong files were sent to the printer, who then passed them on to the billboard company without approval from any executives at After Dark. Execs from the indie production company were attending ShoWest in Las Vegas last week and had no idea the wrong billboards were posted until they returned from the convention Thursday to a flood of e-mails and phone calls from angry parents and offended women.

"Personally, I wasn't going to go with this campaign. I thought it was OTP (over the top)," Solomon said. "Nothing like this can ever happen again."

I mean, shit, that is so lame. This guy's the CEO of an entertainment company, and this is the best lie he can come up with? The wrong files were sent to the printer? That's a fucking high school lie. "Joe, this book report is terrible." "Oh, I must have printed out the rough draft! I'll get you the real one tomorrow!"

I like as well that it's assumed the only ones who would be offended are parents and women. I'm male and I was initially surprised to see that image floating above a busy intersection. It's a picture of someone being held against their will, tortured, suffocated and murdered. Naturally, only concerned parents or fragile ladies with their delicate, Victorian sensibilities could possibly be offended.

Having said that, I feel the criticism of the poster, though initially understandable, is still not particularly logical.

He added that the images on the billboard are not an accurate representation of the film, which stars Cuthbert as a woman who awakens to find herself being held in a cellar. "This movie is certainly a horror movie and it's about abduction, but it's also about female empowerment," Solomon said. "We reshot the ending so the main character ends up in as much of a positive situation as the situation could allow. There is no rape or nudity in it, though it should be an R-rated movie. For the audience it's made for, it's satisfying to that audience. I'm sure that's not the same audience that's complaining about the billboards."

The "female empowerment" line is lame, but still...I basically agree with what Solomon is saying here. These movies come at torture scenarios from the perspective of the victim, pretty much always. Like the Freddy or Jason films of the '80s, they have found a way to have fun with the idea of twisted, senseless murder while essentially remaining on the side of goodness and light. Whether or not they reshot the ending, Cuthbert will be the hero of this story. We in the audience will feel frightened because we imagine ourselves held captive in a basement.

The other side would be something like "24," which places the audience in the perspective of a torturer. We don't feel afraid, but oddly empowered, because our hero is a man who is willing to break any rule or defy any convention in order to win the day for motherfuckin' Amurica, bitches!

I find that much more distressing than the idea of Elisha Cuthbert being buried alive.




















Well, that does look empowering...

Another reason I'm inclined to believe Solomon about this movie, by the way? It's directed by Roland Joffe, of The Killing Fields and The Mission fame. Most of Joffe's films aren't as good as those two, but he's hardly some post-Eli Roth genre hack.

(Photo courtesy of What Would Tyler Durden Do)

Why Kwame Sucks

I would never tell Kwame Brown that he sucks to his face. The guy's 6'11". A friendly back slap from this guy would put me in the hospital for weeks.

Yet tonight, I felt perfectly comfortable lobbing this insult towards him from not very far away. (He was also informed that his perpetual sloth and lackadaisical attitude towards his occupation resembles a co-worker of mine named Rupak, though I'm thinking that sort of inside reference would go right over his head. If such a thing were possible.)

Through a benevolent act, 20 co-workers and I managed to get into one of those luxury boxes at Staples Center to see the hometown Lakers (sometimes known as the "Gay-kers" to those who insist upon hating on popular basketball franchises AND homosexuals simultaneously) take on the Portland Trail Blazers. It was, in a word, awesome. In two words, it was "totally awesome."

I am not a basketball fan in any sense of the word. In fact, going into the Staples Center tonight, I realized (to myself, of course) that I could only NAME two active Lakers. Kobe Bryant, who is a celebrity icon and alleged rapist first and a famous athlete second, and Lamar Odom. I have no idea how it is that I have come to know of Lamar Odom, and not only to recognize and remember his name but to know his team affiliation. It must be some kind of holdover from my days of living with rabid sportsman Matt, who would take advantage of my perpetually stoned collegiate inertia and dominate the television for weeks at a time.

Matt's theory went something like this...All I wanted to watch were old TV shows like "The Simpsons," most of which I had seen and all of which would surely be re-run at some future date. He, on the other hand, wanted to watch live sporting events or sports recaps, programs that could only be seen and enjoyed at that exact moment in time. (Recall, these were those horrible, dark days before the advent of TiVO and the DVR. How did people manage to entertain themselves?) Most of the time, I was too spaced out or lazy to argue.

I thought I had forced all of that "SportsCenter" information out of my head and replaced it with rock songs, film theory and shrill anti-Bush blog posts, but some random scraps have remained.

For what it's worth, I also remember that this guy looks creepy:

...and that this guy...

...was arrested in 2001 with 213 pounds of marijuana in his van.

Which is hilarious on many levels. Who breaks traffic laws when they're driving around with 213 pounds of marijuana? Who even needs 213 pounds of marijuana? I mean, obviously it wasn't for personal use. Even Nate couldn't be that many tokes over the line. But being an NFL player, you're already making a lot of money and, even worse, you're extremely visible. Which is the last thing you want to be if, you know, you're a fucking drug dealer!

Anyway, despite the above references being pretty much the extent of my sporting knowledge (okay, I also know that Barry Bonds is a dick and that Ice Cube can get a triple-double, even when he's just messing around), I had a great time at Staples tonight.

And it wasn't only the free booze and food and the kickass suite, although that stuff never hurts. A fridge full of Heineken keg cans, some garlic french fries, pulled pork sandwiches and Snickers Pie will, in fact, buy you several hours of my time and not a small amount of loyalty. But beyond the sybaritic delights, I actually enjoyed just watching the basketball game. Perhaps all this time, I have been bored by basketball because it is on television, which consistantly renders live events as flat and uninteresting, or because of bad views in horrible seats. Really, I'm not sure I've ever attended a sporting event before and had what anyone would reasonably consider a good seat. So, like, of course I've always found them boring.

Well, not baseball. That's genuinely boring. I mean...come on...There's a liesurely game and then there's a bunch of dirtbags spitting and scratching themselves and sometimes trotting around in a circle. It's not even a particularly fine line. The only people capable of really getting into baseball are seriously confused nerds. See, they should be focusing all that energy on exciting careers in accountancy or in the high-growth field of Star Trek memorabilia collection, but instead, they have become obsessively focused on compiling and arranging meaningless statistics. Reading an intense baseball fan blog is pretty much identical to reading an advanced academic paper on String Theroy. Except in the latter case, brilliant minds are struggling to answer the grandest, most significant questions our species has ever posed about the universe, and in the former case, a bunch of douchebags are trying to figure out which left-handed sluggers are the most consistant in windy conditions. Otherwise, though...it's uncanny...

In fact, I think there's very very little chance I could ever become a fan in any way, shape or form of any sport aside from basketball. I prefer it to all other sports because it is well-paced, the games and seasons are short enough to remain interesting all the way through (though the Playoffs take too long) and because it is not baseball.

My infrequent opportunities to watch and enjoy basketball is no one's fault but my own, of course. I don't like sports and would never set aside any resources of my own to attend a sporting event. If I go, I go because someone else invites me, and why would they shell out hundreds of dollars on my non-sports-caring-about ass?

Think of it in these terms. If you had only ever seen Lawrence of Arabia on a video iPod, or projected on a bedsheet 100 yards away, you probably wouldn't think it was a terrifically interesting movie. But check it out in 70mm widescreen some time.

I'm bringing up this theory as a remote but intriguing possibility, not because I firmly believe it to be true. I mean, I know that one reason (among many) that I can't get into hockey is because it's too taxing to follow a tiny little puck as it races between the legs of hulking guys wearing body armor around a big white rink for several hours at a time.

No, it's far more likely that the beer, the chicken fingers and the lively, enthusiastic company made the game compelling. That and the newness of the experience. (I had only been to Staples once before, and it was for a Crosby Stills Nash and Young concert, and I was in a normal bleacher seat. I believe the last time I watched a professional basketball game was when I was 8 or 9 years old, back in Philadelphia, checking out a Sixers game at the Spectrum. I could be mistaken about that, but I don't think that I am.)

That and the fact that it was an abnormally involving match-up, fairly close almost the entire night and notable for a startling, barely-human feat of strength from Kobe Bryant. Probably all of the above.

Funny, She Doesn't Look Simlish

I usually don't like directly posting corporate propaganda here, but this is just too strange to pass up. Lily Allen has re-recorded her hit "Smile" entirely in Simlish, the language of Electronic Arts' incredibly boring Sims game. I tried playing Sims, in which you simulate the life of an individual or couple living in a bland suburban enclave. But before I had a chance to do anything, my characters kept pissing themselves. I'm serious. Your characters have to pee all the time, but there's only one bathroom, so if one character needs to shower to go to work, the others all wind up pissing themselves. This would happen pretty much every time I played, until I decided that such a thing was simply undignified, and gave up on the experience entirely.

Admittedly, I'm not very good at video games, but you shouldn't have to be The Wizard, starring Fred Savage, in order to avoid urinating on yourself in a game. I hadn't installed the Crohn's Disease Expansion Pack or anything...

So, anyway, long story long, I'm not into The Sims. But I did enjoy this music video, created entirely within the game and spoken in its eerie, gibberish language.

300

Is Zach Snyder's adaptation of the Frank Miller graphic novel 300 an ode to George W. Bush and his doctrine of pre-emptive war in the Middle East, or is it merely a cartoonish depiction of one of history's most famous battles? It certainly feels like a statement on the need for aggression in foreign policy and the inherent weakness of compromise or capitulation.

Certain sequences seem to directly respond to contemporary American politics. When the Queen (Lena Headey) pleads with the Council to send more troops to the front lines, her rhetoric rather directly echoes our Congress' recent debates on a similar matter. When King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) argues about the need for war to protect "freedom" from "tyranny," one can't help but by reminded of America in the Spring of 2003, the pressing need to "fight them over there" so we won't have to face our enemy here. And, of course, the depiction of said enemy as diabolically evil, sexually perverse and physically malformed recalls the blatherings of every right-wing scumbag from Michael Savage to Michelle Malkin to Ann Coulter, who insist that there can be no settlement with our present-day Arabian and Persian foes. Only slaughter.

A common counter-argument to this view, that 300 the film has been designed as propaganda for Bush's war, is that it's based on a book written well before the Bush regime came to power. What utter nonsense. Certainly, the decision to make a film out of the book occured post-Bush. As did the decision to write this particular version of the script and film it in this particular style with this particular perspective. Not to mention that I have read the novel and the film is considerably different. (That scene I mentioned with the Queen isn't in the book at all, if I recall correctly). You heard the same bullshit when V for Vendetta came out. Sure, the book was about Thatcher's England. But the book is not the movie...Done. Care to try again?

So it's entirely possible that the film was meant as an argument in favor of Bush's Iraq Adventure (and possibly an Iranian one to come). But I don't really think this is the case. 300 represents something much older than George Bushism. Snyder's film and Miller's book have tapped into a regrettable sub-genre that runs underneath much of our culture - war porn.

300 may be the most offensive piece of war porn I have ever seen. Seriously, if you screened this film for Leni Riefenstahl, she'd say..."It's really good, but could you make it a bit more subtle? I just feel like we're hammering people over the head with this thing."

300 fetishizes violence in a way that is not at all reasonable, or even entertaining; it magically transforms sadistic cruelty into heroism and fascism into freedom right before your eyes. If Generalissimo Franco had a nightmare that was guest-directed by Mel Gibson after a 10-day coke binge, 300 would be the likely result. Warner Bros. must have hired some expert sound editors, because otherwise I swear you could hear Snyder and Miller jacking it during some of the rousing speeches and frequent beheadings. I left 300 a bit disgusted, but more than that, exasperated. How could you reason with someone who thought that this ugly, gruesome spectacle has any merit, as popcorn entertainment or otherwise? Certainly, it goes without saying that I would do my best to avoid anyone who shares its worldview, which is pretty much universally hateful, hostile and an affront to thinking, sophisticated, modern people everywhere.

It's also incredibly boring and repetitive.

The armies of Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), god-king of the mighty Persian Empire, coalesce outside the Greek city-state of Sparta. They have come because the Spartan king, Leonidas, refused to bow before Xerxes and, in a show of pride, murdered a Persian messenger. Unfortunately, the corrupt Ephors and Councilman who control the Spartan army have refused to aid in the city's defense, so it's up to 300 brave Spartan warriors to defend all that they hold dear against the largest army in all of Asia.

Eventually.

First, they spend what feels like hours stalking around the countryside in underoos, showing off their grased-up abdominal muscles and celebrating their imminant martyrdom. In voice-over, Dilios (David Wenham) goes on and on about the "warrior code" of the Spartans, how they never surrender, how they begin learning to fight at the age of 7, how they detest any sign of weakness and respect only stoicism and on and on and on. We see Leonidas kill a wolf as a child, just in case we didn't get the message that he's a badass who don't take shit off no one, even Mother Nature.

(This isn't really a fault, but 300 is also one of the gayest movies I can recall. Not terribly surprising, I guess, for a movie about Ancient Sparta, even though the movie would never admit that all its leading male characters have, at one time or another, dabbled in the homoerotic arts. At one point, a character mocks the Athenians as "boy-lovers," a clear attempt to distract audiences from the fact that they are watching a film set in Ancient Greece starring a cast of naked men pledging their undying devotion to an oily Gerard Butler while a narrator emphasizes repeatedly that they are "hard and strong, strong and hard." It's like Logjamming on steroids.)

300 was shot much like the previous Miller adaptation, Sin City, with the live actors set inside a digitally-created background. Director Robert Rodriguez used the technique in that film to simulate Miller's black and white comics, bringing an antiquated panel style to new life on the screen. I thought it was largely successful, visually innovative and a lot of fun. Zach Snyder comes up with a few nice-looking sequences in 300, my favorite being the shot of Leonidas and his men as they watch Xerxes' ships get knocked about in a storm, but the film overall looks pretty awful.

Daylight is always brown, nighttime is always blue, and they both look washed-out and muddy. Though there's lots of fighting, there are very few establishing shots to give you any real physical sense of the action that's taking place in the big picture. What remains may be brutal and gory but it's not terribly cinematic.

What's more, Snyder seems to be developing a case of latent Peter Jacksonism in terms of the use of slow motion. Action scenes that should whip past are slowed down, dulling their intensity, making what should be some of the movie's most striking moments and images feel overblown and silly. (A shot of one of the Spartan heroes dying at the hands of a Persian on horseback is a perfect example. Like Jackson's King Kong falling off the Empire State, it would have more impact if it didn't take 10 fucking hours to go down.)

Evidence of Snyder's affection for Peter Jackson is evident as well in the Persian army's "creatures," many of which do not appear in the book and look ridiculous. An oversized troll, really just a misplaced Middle Earth troll, has an dreary, predictable back and forth with Leonidas. A hunchback named Ephialtes (Andrew Tiernan) looks entirely fraudulent. I can't tell if the character was digitally retouched at all; it looks like a man wearing a silly rubber costume. How did Snyder even think he could get away with this, post-Gollum?

I mean, I went in expecting the politics to bother me, and they did, but at least I thought the film might be aesthetically pleasing. No such luck.

As I said, the film's not really all about Bush, as some online liberals have argued. You'd have to be delusional to conflate the buff, heroic Leonidas, who bravely rushes into battle 10 feet in front of his men, with Commander Codpiece. Bush is more like Xerxes, anxiously awaiting news of the battle from atop his golden slave-drawn chariot. The film's just about the glory of war, how great it is when attractive nude men attack one another for sport and to bring glory to their leaders (particularly if you get to watch it from the comfort of a movie theater).

It's designed specifically to delight those odd authoritarian military junkies who are in our midst and always have been, even before Bush. You know who I'm talking about...Nerdy loners, usually men, who hang around in the Borders "Military History" section, post comments on the Free Republic forums, frequently turn the conversation around to martial arts they know or weapons they own, and can't wait for some dirty brown foreigner to start talking smart so we have an excuse to drop some bombs. War is what gives them their sense of self, I suppose, or what sets them apart from the loathed intellectuals and hippies living off in their elite urban enclaves.

Regardless, I'd expect some will savor every stab wound, every slash of the sword and arrow to the eyeball. Insecure white men, those who feel threatened by the unknown, by women and minorities, will see a film like 300 as confirmation that their suspicions were always correct. Their manlitude is a gift from the gods, they represent the greatest single development in the whole of Creation, and history calls upon them to fight any and all comers. Remember, it's okay to root for deplorable violence, provided it's delivered upon a person representing a foreign, decadent culture.

300 is very very big on the notion of Western supremacy. The Greeks of the film aren't just defending their long-ago destroyed city (how many modern Americans are even aware of the past existance of a place called "Sparta"?), they're defending all us good, civilized Whites against the Foreign Hordes. They fight to save Us from Them. The "beasts," the "brutes," the "barbarians," as they are repeatedly called. When we get a look inside the court of Xerxes, everyone's naked and writhing around. There are monsters, freaks and, of course, lesbians. No lesbians in Sparta, no sirree. They're not allowed because they aren't strong and hard, hard and strong.

Watching this movie is like spending 2 hours inside Charles Krauthammer's head and it made me decidedly uncomfortable. That is, when I wasn't laughing at the cheesy ludicrousness of it all.

[UPDATE: I forgot to mention the reprehensible use of nu-metal on the soundtrack during some of the battle scenes. Honestly, it's shocking that any filmmaker would actually use this kind of lazy Korn knock off during a battle scene any more. That is so ridiculously overdone. All this "Let the Bodies Hit the Flooooooooooooooooooooooooooor" shit went out in, like, 2002, dude.]

It's Fitzmas in March!

HA HA HA!

Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted Tuesday of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI in an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity.

Libby had little reaction to the verdict. He stood expressionless as the jury left the room. The verdict was read on the 10th day of deliberations. Libby faces up to 30 years in prison, though under federal sentencing guidelines likely will receive far less.

One proto-fascist down, eleventy billion to go.