The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mormon Zombies

It's a madhouse! A madhouse!

Posthumous baptism is a sacred rite practiced in Mormon church temples for the purpose of offering membership in the church to the deceased. Church members are encouraged to conduct family genealogy research and forward their ancestors' names for proxy baptism.

Offering membership to the deceased. What, are you guys so hurting for new recruits? You've got to go after corpses? What I want to know is this...Let's say, some guy named Tom is dead. Tom died in, oh, I don't know, 2003. In a freak boating accident. He was going to donate his organs to science, but they were all ground up and spread around, and many of them were eaten by manatees before the Coast Guard could arrive.

Anyway, he's been dead since 2003. It's now 2006 and the Mormons offer his immortal soul membership in their fine organization. (Never mind how he's supposed to tithe, post-mortem. Hope you had some gold fillings, Tom!) Well, what's he been doing since he died? Burning in eternal hellfire? Do Mormons have access to condemned souls? If so, how did they manage that one? Did Brigham Youny defeat Satan in some sort of fiddle contest?


If you'd just let us in, we'd love to tell you all the Good News about our Prophet Joseph Smith and his Holy Book of Mormon...Then we'll eat your brain!

Here's where the story gets truly bizarre.

Church President Gordon B. Hinckley has said the baptismal rite is only an offer of membership that can be rejected in the afterlife by individuals. "So, there's no injury done to anybody," Hinckley told the AP in an interview last November.

Well, as long as there's no injury done to anybody, I guess it's no harm no...WAIT A MINUTE THAT'S COMPLETELY INSANE!

An offer of membership that can be rejected in the afterlife? How? Via seance? Do I really need to be dealing with customer service representatives after I die?

MY IMMORTAL SOUL: Yeah, it's the ethereal being that was once Lons, I've been holding for about 20 minutes already...

MORMON CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE: Yes, Lons, thanks for holding. We just wanted to offer you another opportunity to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

MY IMMORTAL SOUL: Look, this is ridiculous. I don't want to join your church, I don't have any money, I'm just trying to be brutally tortured for all eternity for my sins, okay? Just leave me alone.

MORMON CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE: We're offering our postmortem baptismal at remarkably low rates this year...

MY IMMORTAL SOUL: Just, just take me off your list, okay? One of my relatives, like, a year ago, fills out a form and now I'm being summoned back to Earth all the time to join churches. Goddamn ridiculous.

MORMON CUSTOMER SERVICE REPRESENTATIVE: Well, you can opt out of the program at any time.

MY IMMORTAL SOUL: Yeah, let's do that. I've already missed "Two and a Half Men," you know, and a new episode only starts down here immediately after the previous one has ended.

But Jews are offended by the practice and in 1995 signed an agreement with Mormon leaders aimed at preventing the names of Holocaust victims from being added to the genealogical index. The agreement would also have limited entries of other Jewish names to those persons who are direct ancestors of current Mormons.

Figures it would be the Jews trying to make problems for everybody. These Mormons are trying to save your dead ancestors souls, alright, people? How about a little freaking gratitude. I mean, just because your relatives suffered and died in a concentration camp and then went on to burn in Hell for all eternity because they never got around to converting to Mormonism doesn't give you the right to get all uppity.

Mormon church spokesman Mike Otterson said Friday that no meeting had been scheduled, but that Michel has been encouraged to bring his concerns before a working group of church staff and Jews set up in April 2005 to continue to work out database issues.

"One of the benefits of previous meetings is that we established an ongoing joint working group that would address what would appear to be any anomalies, or anything that appears to be slipping through our screening process," Otterson said. "That committee continues to meet and continues to be the best place for addressing these concerns."

All of these people are insane. The Mormons who insist on baptizing dead people whos efamileis don't want them to be baptized are completely insane, but the Jews who are so upset about the practice are pretty damn stupid and crazy too. Who cares if these Utah idiots want to use your dead relatives name in a kooky ceremony? They're dead! They don't give a shit. (Honestly, would they care even if they were alive?) If you want to say weird blessings and incantations in my memory after I'm dead, hey, knock yourself out, pal. Not gonna do you any good, certainly not gonna do me any good, cause I'm dead.

Do they think their relatives are going to get thrown out of Jew Heaven or something if they're zombie baptized? Frankly, I don't think this would be so bad, because I've heard about Jew Heaven and apparently it's not all it's cracked up to be. No good professional sports teams, and the whole place is overrun with endodontists and bad stand-up comics. (Although, if you like Chinese food...eh, you could do worse.)

Freedomland & Date Movie

Hey, here's two movies I watched today. You want the short version? They suck tremendous amounts of ass. So much ass do they suck that the level of force of their suckitude could only be measured in a large, university-based physics laboratory. I think Cal Tech might have the resources, but I'm sure they're already too occupied with something about black holes or String Theory to bother figuring out just how badly Freedomland and Date Movie suck. It's a whole hell of a lot. That's all you need to know.

Okay, you want the long version? Keep reading...

Freedomland



Joe Roth's filmography reads like a felony rap sheet. A few more bad movies, he's going to make Interpol's Most Wanted list. Bad reviews just aren't enough to contain this kind of cinematic terrorism. Somebody get Scotland Yard on the motherfucker.

Egregious though his cinematic crimes may be - America's Sweethearts and Christmas with the Kranks stand out as particularly puerile - they're generally at least well-meaning, light entertainments.

His latest, Freedomland, takes on topics ranging from the horror of losing a child to the American racial divide within the framework of a police procedural. I don't know what made Uncle Joe think he could pull something complicated like this off when he can't even get a broad, silly romantic comedy with John Cusack right. It would be like the guys who made "Brokeback to the Future" taking on the King Kong sequel as their next project.

The resulting disaster isn't quite as cheap and manipulative as Crash, nor as grating, but it's still plenty insufferable. A stupid movie that fails as escapism is one thing, but a stupid movie with delusions of grandeur is an altogether different, and more obnoxious, thing entirely.

The trouble begins when deranged mother Brenda Martin (Julianne Moore) shows up babbling at an inner-city hospital, reporting that she's been carjacked in the ghetto. Something smells fishy to local cop Lorenzo Council (Samuel L. Jackson), who apparently believes that he knows everyone in the neighborhood and doesn't think any of them would carjack a nice lady like Brenda. Or something. I'm not sure. He might also be concerned that he has such an obviously made-up name. This is never addressed directly in Richard Price's script, which he adapated from his novel.

Anyway, Lorenzo eventually gets out of Brenda that her son, Cody, was in the car during the carjacking, a revelation that takes this odd case in a totally different direction. Racist white cops decide that, because of the proximity of the crime scene to the projects, the only way to find the boy will be to shut down the entire neighborhood and harrass all the local residents. Lorenzo thus slowly finds his way into the middle of a budding race war.

And I do mean slowly. Nothing much happens in Freedomland, a problem for a film presented as a compelling mystery. Brenda shows up, immediately we sense something about her story is not right and then sure enough the investigation takes a few predictable twists and turns. But Lorenzo's style of detective work basically consists of berating his sole witness repeatedly over the course of about 48 hours or so. There's no gathering of clues or leads, no searches of local neighborhoods or interrogations, no red herrings or surprising discoveries. Just Lorenzo and Brenda, wandering around the projects and the wooded areas bordering the projects, yelling about what she's hiding from him.

The actors do their jobs, I suppose, and it's not their fault that they have tons of long monologues but nothing to say. Moore, as she tends to do without careful direction, goes way over the top and spends most of the movie in hysterics. Imagine the pharmacy scene in Magnolia drawn out over the course of nearly 2 hours. And Jackson falls back on Samuel L. Jackson-ness. At any moment, you expect Lorenzo to just give up on this wacko and start fighting some airborne serpents or ranting about the Bible.

Edie Falco shows up in a pointless role as a bereaved mother who travels the country helping to solve missing child cases. Yeah, seriously...This sub-plot will give your disbelief a minimum of three weeks' suspension. These parents, all of whom have been touched in some way by a tragic kidnapping or abduction, travel around the country assisting police in finding lost kids.

Don't they have their own jobs and families? Wouldn't insurance and legal issues come into play? What the hell does this have to do with Samuel L. and his ongoing investigation? All good questions and ones I cannot answer.

What's so offensive about the whole thing isn't it inherent lack of drama or accessability, but that Roth takes the Fox News approach to racial issues. Equal time for both perspectives, regardless of whether or not it makes any sense. Sure, Roth seems to suggest, the black residents of the projects whose neighborhood is placed under siege have a valid reason to complain. But, hey, the riot cops who bash their heads in have a point as well. We shouldn't judge one of them just because he beats the hell out of a few people. So there's all these random, gratuitous scenes designed to provide a "fair and balanced" perspective.

Sure, some of the cops seem to distrust blacks inherently. But, hey, some of these black guys are just angry. And, yes, it turns out that there's no good reason for the cops to seal the entire neighborhood, but they're just concerned for the welfare of a doe-eyed child! It might seem even-handed, but it's not honest, realistically or emotionally, and therefore it doesn't work for a second. I won't go so far as to call the movie racist, but it's at best oversimplified.

Freedomland is what all movies would be like if the Nazis had won the war. Peculiar, cruel, unsatisfying pseudo-entertainments designed to turn your brain to mush, muddy your thinking and limit your abiliy to reason concerning important social issues. Can you invoke Godwin's Law in a film review?

Date Movie



Easily the worst film of the year thus far, Date Movie seems to spring from a deep-seated hatred of movies themselves. Generally, film parodies display a reverence for their source material. You don't sense from Young Frankenstein that Mel Brooks thought Universal monster movies were stupid. He loved them, and this send-up was his way of integrating his style of filmmaking - outrageous, slapstick comedy - with the classic style of James Whale.

But Date Movie, a supposed send-up of romantic comedies, has nothing but scorn and cynicism in mind for its subject matter, and life in general, really. It constantly references pop culture, but only to point out that it's lame. It includes a lot of (minor) celebrity cameos and impersonators, but seems to regard all celebrities as ridiculous, preening, talentless hillbillies. It doesn't even deign to tell its own story, merely retelling Meet the Parents and its sequel, essentially scene for scene, and mixing in other references when needed.

Most of this can be chalked up to simple laziness. I'm sure co-writer Jason Friedberg and co-writer/director Aaron Seltzer didn't have a lot of time to throw this bad boy together, particularly considering the timeliness of some of the "jokes." References include Meet the Fockers, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Paris Hilton's Carl's Jr. commercial and even King Kong, but they're not actually used as a jumping-off point for actual humor. They're just references. Sometimes, the references overlap and run into one another, into a kind of AIDS quilt of shitty filmmaking. One scene making fun of "Pimp My Ride" starts goofing on Episode III suddenly without warning. Another scene mocking Sweet Home Alabama gives way to an embarrassing, inappropriate shot of Michael Jackson attempting to molest a young boy. The effect is disorienting at best, tragic at worst.

These jokes are so old, two of them have been diagnosed with senile dementia and one broke its hip and the film's Westwood premiere. Milton Berle should sue the filmmakers for plagiarizing his "Private Joke File." Let me simply say this: At one point, a man refers to his 12-inch cock and then lifts up a chicken. Okay, let's move on. I've made my point.

Unfortunately, the problems extend well beyond sophomoric, trite comedy of the sort that Fatty Arbuckle deemed "too old-fashioned." Date Movie is just generally sour, mean-spirited and angry, and suffers from an appalling level of misanthropy. Everyone in the film is vapid and ugly and they all dislike one another intensely. Fat people and gay men are held up for particularly brutal, unfunny scorn.

As you often see in contemporary movies, homosexuality itself is a joke in Date Movie. In one scene, "star" Alyson Hanigan is given Mel Gibson's powers from What Women Want. (We know this because, in voice-over, she informs us that it's "like I'm in a bad Mel Gibson movie." Note to Mr. Seltzer...If you have to explain it, it isn't funny.) She looks at a biker whose thoughts resound in a frou-four feminine voice. I'm laughing already. But then, Hanigan makes a screwed-up face, to let us all know that gayity is, like, totally gross. And so is being fat, unless you're actually a thin actress in fat suit, in which case it's fucking hilarious.

Stranger still, Date Movie evidecnes a lot of hostility towards date movies. A Napoleon Dynamite impersonator shows up in the first scene, and overacts in the part ridiculously, as if to suggest that the character is overexposed or wasn't funny in the first place. The tone of every scene thereafter will be the same; now that we're a few days or weeks or months removed from this movie or show or commercial or song, we can recognize that it is bad and lame and was always bad and lame and uncool. That "Milkshake" song? How bogus. Britney Spears? What a used-up skank! If all entertainment's so horrible and stupid and disposable, why don't Seltzer and Friedberg do something important and significant with their lives, eh?

I hated Date Movie passionately. And if you liked Date Movie, I hate you. There, I said it.

You Can't Stop the Music, Nobody Can Stop the Music

Full respect goes out to Ace Cowboy at Slack LaLane for finding this huge compendium of online 80's music videos. It's a great collection, though by no means complete in terms of awesome 80's cheese. For example, though there is a Grim Reaper song in the gallery, it's not the classic "See You in Hell," one of the most outrageously ridiculous 80's metal videos ever. Also, you get Thomas Dolby, not it's a song other than "She Blinded Me With Science," which I must say, is a pretty glaring oversight.

If you're my age, it's possible to spend hours looking through this videos with a kind of bittersweet nostalgia seasoned delicately with nausea. I'm in the precarious spot of forever treasuring some of the worst pop culture artifacts of all time. I mean, to come of age when mohawks were trendy, every decor included green and pink neon, the Miami Sound Machine poured out of every jukebox and Judy Tenuda was America's favorite comic...it makes me shudder even now as I'm blogging.

Sexy Time!

Here's Kirsten Dunst, in Cannes for the premiere of her new movie, Marie Antoinette.

Army of Shadows

Initially, the shot that opens Jean-Pierre Melville's 1969 epic of the French Resistance, Army of Shadows, came at the end of the film. A row of German soldiers marches in front of the Arc d'Triumphe in Paris. It's the ultimate symbol of foreign occupation and French humiliation. Saving it for the end of the film, already a tragic scene, would have been nearly overbearing. All the indignities and horrors suffered by the heroes rendered, in a single shot, meaningless. Coming at the film's beginning, it simply sets the scene - France is a shattered country utterly dominated by a corrupt foreign power.

Of the course of 2 and a half fascinating hours, Melville examines the lives of a few hopeful radicals navigating the treacherous and chaotic landscape of Vichy France. Though most of the action focuses on the career of former civil engineer Philippe Gerbier (Lino Ventura) and his assistant Mathilde (Simone Signoret), Army of Shadows unfolds almost like an anthology film. Individual set pieces, missions and adventures coalesce into a portrait of an underground movement struggling to do some good while spending most of its time evading capture.



Melville is mainly known for outstanding crime and gangster films, like the smooth and quietly riveting Le Samourai. Though he switches genres with Army of Shadows, he brings most of his favorite techniques and characters with him. Instead of sketching the world of Parisian criminals through the point of view of a detached outsider, he examines the shadowy, uncertain world of the French Resistance with a relaxed, stoic demeanor. His cool style, defined by long takes and graceful tracking shots, perfectly matches the reserved calm of his characters. To pass unharmed and unsuspected through Occupied France, one must try to blend in whenever possible.

So well hidden are the Resistance members, many do not recognize one another as compatriots in regular society. Jean-Francois (Jean-Pierre Cassel) takes a moment off from a mission to Paris to drop in on his reclusive, academic brother Luc (Paul Meurisse) without ever realizing his sibling is the chief of the entire organization. Moving around between safehouses becomes a neccessity to evade capture. Even that does not work for long - almost every character will be caught by German or French soldiers during the course of the film. Many are tortured, some die and all are instructed to bring along cyanide capsules, just in case.

Though these are horrific, lamentable circumstances, Melville doesn't treat the film as some sort of austere remembrance of the lives lost during the war. Instead, he has made a carefully-absorbed and richly-detailed suspense picture. The individual stories that make up Army of Shadows typically have an element of intrigue and even adventure, like little mini-spy movies with a great amount of build-up and then a modest or non-existent payoff.

One relatively brief, outstanding sequence finds Gerbier and a compatriot held by German soldiers in a police station. Almost wordlessly, they devise and execute a plan of escape. Gerbier races down the street away from the station and ducks into a barbershop, where he asks for a shave from a barber who appears to have Vichy sympathies. The entire time he's being groomed, Gerbier hears the sounds from the street of Germans looking for him. Will the man give his location away? Will the soldiers think to come in the barbershop? Melville doesn't rush the sequence, preferring to take his time and let the anxiety build gradually before jumping right into the next sequence.

Following his escape from the police station, Gerbier will go to London on a quest for increased British military support. When called back to France for an emergency, he will have to parachute out of an airplane. Melville films the entire adventure in stark, matter-of-fact terms. Gerbier tries to sleep on the plane, propped up against the wall wearing his parachute and his glasses taped to his face. He hesitates for a quick moment after told to jump, staring down into the black whirl of space below. Though he's told to roll upon landing, Gerbier slams down hard on the ground feet-first. Then he packs up his gear and tosses it into a lake. Most directors would be tempted to amp up the action here, to raise the stakes in some way, but Melville has the confidence to let the sequence unfold naturally. This is a normal man who has been called upon to tackle far more danger and responsibility than most heroes could manage, and he does so without James Bond theatrics or posturing.

Because of the nature of this unconventional, multi-layered story, Army of Shadows isn't a film about traditional set-up and pay-off. The word "army" is right there in the title, but there's no war-style action to be had. The Resistance couldn't face off against soldiers - their numbers and supplies woulnd't allow for direct, open action. They had to hide out, plot quietly, execute only when they were guaranteed some kind of victory, pyrrhic or otherwise.

Most of Gerbier and his immediate partner's work concerns organization and diplomacy. On those rare occasions when violence will be involved, the agents seem reluctant, even repulsed. What seems to fascinate Melville is their drive, their ambition to succeed, which allows the members to overcome emotional and moral barriers that would have otherwise seemed inflexible. Like Le Samourai and Bob le Flambeur, films that obsess about an unspoken code of honor that unites even the lowliest of theives and murderers, Melville here explores the Code of the Agitator. Anything is allowable so long as it benefits the movement, and the only goal should be the perpetuation of the Resistance regardless of the cost in human lives.

A new restored print of Army of Shadows is playing now in New York and Los Angeles, and maybe even a few other cities as well. Pierre Lhomme and Walter Wottitz's crisp, blue cinematography has been lovingly rendered, giving the film a bright and contemporary feel. As in Le Samourai, the blanched, pastel settings evoke a sense of worn decay. This is a world that might have looked charming when new that has been weathered and allowed to sink into disrepair. These hideouts and ramshackle country headquarters, like their occupants, seem to exist constantly on the brink of total collapse, threatening at any moment to simply give way and fade into the cold forest night.

This One's Optimistic

If my calculations are correct, approximately everyone in Los Angeles will be attempting to score Radiohead tickets tomorrow morning at 10. It's a feeding frenzy that will make the U.S.S. Indianapolis look like the Spearmint Rhino's lunch buffet.

Whenever they breeze through the city, shows sell out immediately. Even Coachella (although to be fair, they co-headlined with The Pixies that night). When I saw them at the significantly large Hollywood Bowl, they were playing several nights that all sold out quickly. And this tour brings them through the relatively tiny Greek Theater for a two-night stint. These things will go in less than 5 minutes.

My friend Jason is hoping to pool his friends who might otherwise not attempt to get Radiohead tickets for themselves. He's urging everyone he knows to log on to Ticketmaster tomorrow morning for seats. I'm thinking that the chances are so unlikely, a few extra persons checking in on your behalf won't make a mathematically significant difference. But you've got to admire the attempt. As Thom Yorke might say, "If you try the best you can, the best you can is good enough."

He also points out that, currently on Ebay, several pairs of tickets are already up for sale. To borrow a phrase from Peter Griffin, that really grinds my gears. I'm aware that, this being capitalism, anyone with a shot at getting early tickets to a hot show that doesn't personally care about the band will immediately jump at the chance, and that I would do no different. But still...lame. If they get the tickets early, why can't they just give them to me?

(And, yes, I'm aware that, in a previous post, I had claimed I would not be bothering to attend the Radiohead show due to economic concerns. This, of course, was a complete lie. But does it still count as blatant dishonesty if I was lying to myself at the time?)

Shocking, Gratuitous Gore

The duplicity and inane insider-speak of John Dickerson's new article on Slate, "Gore, Retry, Fail," perfectly illustrates the media's inherent bias against left-wing candidates. Notice, before I even have to type anything about the article, the headline, a weak pun playing on the computer option "Restore, Retry, Fail," that seems designed solely to work the words "Gore" and "Fail" into a headline. They must have tried at least 30 permutations before settling on that one.

"How about 'A Crushing Gore: Medieval Tortures I'd Like to Perform on the Former Vice-President'? No, too obviously vicious? Okay, how about, 'Blood on the Dance Gore: How Madonna and the Former Vice-President are Ruining America'? Not a good enough pun? Okay, um, what about 'Gore, Retry, Fail: Why the New Al Gore Can't Get Elected'? Brilliant! We're running with it!"

And why does Slate's Chief Political Correspondant think Al Gore can't get elected? Because he's Al Gore.

The article starts off positive enough. Dickerson notes the positive reception to Gore's new film, An Inconvenient Truth, at Cannes, although he fails to mention even what the film is about. If you'd read the article, you'd assume Gore's movie was about his desire to one day be President, not about the forthcoming Global Warming-enabled horrorscape coming soon to an Industralized Coastal Nation near you. He also discusses the newfound enthusiasm for a Gore candidacy in '08 from bloggers and other Democrats.

So what's the problem? Seems like it would be hard to characterize the sudden interest in his political career and pet causes as a negative for Al Gore. You've got to give Dickerson credit, at least, for trying.

This has got to be stirring for a guy who was essentially laughed out of town after losing the 2000 election. But Gore has yet to respond to the groundswell, according to those I've talked to who know Gore well.

Okay, Gore was not laughed out of town after losing the 2000 election. After winning that election, he failed to pursue his legal strategies with sufficient zeal, and conceded rather than remaining to fight. I think it was a mistake, but it's hardly akin to being drummed out of Washington as a laughingstock, in the manner that, say, George W. Bush will be (hopefully) very soon.

Also, how would Dickerson like Gore to respond to this "groundswell," that has been going on for only the past few weeks? Swimming across the English Channel, perhaps? Marketing his own brand of delectable, environmentally-sound frozen entrees? Prepping the sequel, IT2: Truth or Dare?

This sort of vague non-reporting reporting permeates the entire article. It's almost like...John's trying to pull an article...from out of his ass...so he can start his Memorial Day vacation early. But, of course, journalists would never do something like that!

"What Al Gore is doing now is living the life he always wanted to lead," says his former campaign manager, Donna Brazile. "He's a leading intellectual. He's talking about global warming. He's a venturecrat. He's leading the life I think a person like Al Gore would want to lead."

There are lots of other reasons that Gore probably shouldn't run, often articulated by inside-the-beltway types.

So the fact that he's enjoying outspoken public advocacy and is building a reputation as an intellectual (I don't actually believe this claim, by the way) means he shouldn't run for President? Who would be more qualified than a smart, educated man with strongly-held beliefs? John apparently thinks we should only nominate illiterate goobers without any opinions. Maybe he thinks it's important whether they wear boxers or briefs or if they'd be fun to have a beer with.

A lot of Democrats still have sour feelings about a nominee who blew a winnable election.

Yeah, like me. But I'll get over it.

Gore never liked the day-to-day work of politics (as opposed to governing) and was a lousy campaigner. He struggled to beat a weak Bill Bradley in the 2000 Democratic primaries and lost to George Bush (sort of) with the wind of peace and prosperity at his back.

Well, again, he didn't really lose to George Bush so much as he conceded prematurely once George Bush's Dad's buddies had conspired to steal the election. I'll admit that Gore had a rough time in that campaign, but would Dickerson deny that the media representation of the man had at least a hand in that situation? Or do they still agree that poise and confidence and intelligence and proven leadership ability aren't as important as a love of Jesus and affability?

Also, the entire point of the article is that there is a "New" Al Gore who is more likable and less stiff than the old Al Gore. So, presumably, if this new Al Gore were to run, he wouldn't be such a lousy campaigner.

In polls, voters still react to him as negatively as they do to Hillary Clinton, or even more so. He may provide a nice contrast to George Bush now, but Bush won't be on the ballot, and in 2008 the Republican nominee is likely to be running against Bush, too.

Again, John, could the negativity towards these two be the result of 100,000,000 articles just like this one, informing Americans that they hate Al Gore and Hillary Clinton? Or does this hate just spring eternal from the American bosom towards any prominant Democrat?

I will admit that I like the idea of Gore running for president.

What? News to me. Then why don't you stop shitting on him for no good reason?

I'm a sucker for authenticity and prefer a candidate who speaks his mind (even my editor has made fun of me for this failing). But it seems to me that the hype about the New Gore poses a problem for him should he eventually decide to run: He can't sustain the authenticity that is fueling his bandwagon.

Who writes like this? "He can't sustain the authenticity that is fueling his bandwagon"? What the fuck are you talking about? John, your job is to inform, not to gossip. Being a "sucker for authenticity" just makes you a sucker. It's not about authenticity. Stupid. Gore hasn't even said that he wants to run for President yet. There is no "bandwagon," at least in terms of him as a candidate. Maybe in terms of him as an environmental advocate. And he's certainly "authentic" in terms of caring about the environment. He was writing books on the subject when I was in junior high.

It's not that Gore is inherently dull.

Aw, jeez, that's awful big of you. Wish I could say the same for you.

The problem is that the activists and bloggers most approving of Gore's "authenticity" also seem the least likely to allow any deviation from their definition of it.

Oh, I get it. The problem isn't Gore, it's those crazy librul bloggers and their wacky ideas. Man, this shit is convoluted and ridiculous.

Gore's assessment of the last presidential elections suggest he still believes campaigns must be won by moving to the middle, a notion some in his party abhor. He knows about political shading. It's why he can craft that coy language about running in 2008. But if he does too much of this, he will disappoint his new allies.

Here's John's thesis thus far:

Thanks largely to librul bloggers and radical fringe lefty radicals, Al Gore has seen a sudden surge in popularity. Even though most people hate him. And if he decides to run for President, he'll have to do stuff for people who hate him, which will make all those radical fringe moonbat lefty radical lbrul bloggers hate him. So he might as well not bother because everyone will just wind up hating him.

What penetrating insight! He can't wait, CAN'T WAIT, for his new chance to assault Al Gore. He can't even give the guy a chance to announce his candidacy. "Just in case, maybe, one day, if Al Gore decides possibly to run for President, he won't win because you all hate him!"

Talk about the New Gore also builds upon a structural flaw of his last candidacy: Does he know his own mind?

Does he know his own mind? What? We're right back to the "Gore's crazy and unhinged" line. Was this article ghost-written by Ann Coulter, and John Dickerson just went through and removed all the profanity and homicidal fantasies?

If what we're seeing now is the real Al Gore, why was he so easily swayed last time by advisers and pollsters bearing bad advice?

I don't think anyone has said we're seeing some sort of real Al Gore now, as opposed to a fake one then. The real narrative, that John has scrupulously avoided in favor of rumor and innuendo, is that Gore went away from the public eye for a while, devoted himself to causes about which he felt strongly and now has returned to the limelight to hopefully motivate Americans to action. Possibly, if he reaches enough voters who are then persuaded by his message, he would consider running for President.

I think people responding to him now more than before can be explained in two ways:

(1) He's no longer trying to appeal to all Americans, but rather feels a bit more free to speak his mind and be himself. Running for public office and speaking up as a concerned citizen are entirely different activities, and it's only natural someone doing the latter would be more loose than someone doing the former.

(2) The press hasn't focused exclusively on how much everyone hates him for a little while. They've given us all a break, a chance to think for ourselves about who Al Gore might really be, rather than ramming the "boring bookish inauthentic unhinged weenie" meme down our throats every ten minutes.

Unfortuantely, it looks like John Dickerson is declaring that merciful respite over with.

If authenticity is just a political gambit, it's hardly authentic. The Old Gore vs. New Gore angle is likely to become a theme of the coverage if Gore runs. The press will remind us again and again about the 2000 campaign's earth-tone suits and the Great Dane kiss of Tipper at the convention and all the other inauthentic things he did to tailor his behavior to show people what he thought they wanted to see. The press will watch closely for signs of a relapse.

Seriously, this is the dumbest paragraph I have read in some time. John's saying that some disembodied entity known as "the press" will insist on replaying all of their favorite Al Gore bloopers endlessly if he decides to run. But the only one bringing up this crap again is him and he's doing so well before Gore has even declared an intention to ever again seek public office.

WHY, JOHN, WHY? DON'T YOU THINK THERE IS ANYTHING MORE WORTHWHILE TO DISCUSS?

Global warming, say? Or how Gore would stakc up against possible GOP candidates? Or the dynamics of a Gore vs. Clinton primary? No? Nothing? You'd just like to take some time out to recycle through your favorite "anti-Gore" highlights from the past, possibly while touching yourself?

But crusading liberal is hardly who Al Gore really is. He long supported welfare reform, free-trade, and gave a speech promoting faith-based institutions in 2000 that was as supportive of them as George Bush was.

Dude, seriously...what the fuck are you even talking about? Your'e saying that because Gore made a speech in 2000 praising faith-based institutions that he can't get elected President? What's wrong with you? Why not just wait and see what happens and deal with it then? Why make up possible "roadblocks" for Gore's candidacy out of thin air unless, contrary to your previously stated opinion, you want him to fail?

Good News for Herbivores

Even I was surprised to read this:

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Marijuana smoking does not increase a person's risk of developing lung cancer, according to the findings of a new study at the University of California Los Angeles that surprised even the researchers.

They had expected to find that a history of heavy marijuana use, like cigarette smoking, would increase the risk of cancer.

Instead, the study, which compared the lifestyles of 611 Los Angeles County lung cancer patients and 601 patients with head and neck cancers with those of 1,040 people without cancer, found no elevated cancer risk for even the heaviest pot smokers. It did find a 20-fold increased risk of lung cancer in people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day.

So, heavy tobacco smoking is 20 times more likely to give you cancer than heavy pot smoking. And yet we legally allow people to smoke tobacco, so long as they hide out in a hole in the ground where no one can see them and take short, quick puffs. Wot's, uh, the deal?

The results should not be taken as a blank check to smoke pot...

[Interrupting a bong rip] What? Oh, now they tell me.

...which has been associated with problems like cognitive impairment and chronic bronchitis, said Dr. John Hansen-Flaschen, chief of pulmonary and critical care at the University of Pennsylvania Health System in Philadelphia. He was not involved in the study.

Well, cognitive impairment's the whole reason to take up pot smoking in the first place. If people were terrifically concerned about cognition, they'd spend their free time reading Thomas Hardy novels or conducting scientific experiments. As for chronic bronchitis well...yeah, that just sucks. No one wants to be coughing up stuff all day, and if you are in that unfortunate condition, it may as well be tuberculosis. Which is more romantic.

The study was confined to people under age 60 since baby boomers were the most likely age group to have long-term exposure to marijuana, said Dr. Donald Tashkin, senior researcher and professor at the UCLA School of Medicine.

Previous studies showed marijuana tar contained about 50 percent more of the chemicals linked to lung cancer, compared with tobacco tar, Tashkin said. In addition, smoking a marijuana joint deposits four times more tar in the lungs than smoking an equivalent amount of tobacco.

"Marijuana is packed more loosely than tobacco, so there's less filtration through the rod of the cigarette, so more particles will be inhaled," Tashkin said in a statement.

"And marijuana smokers typically smoke differently than tobacco smokers -- they hold their breath about four times longer, allowing more time for extra fine particles to deposit in the lung."

So the study only experimented with joints, then, I take it? This overlooks the extraordinarily widespread use of pipes or bongs (or so I've heard). I've got to imagine a gravity bong or some such thing is worse for your lungs than toking a joint a few times. But what do I know? Unlike Dr. Donald Tashkin or Robert Pollard, I am not a scientist.

Hansen-Flaschen also cautioned a cancer-marijuana link could emerge as baby boomers age and there may be smaller population groups, based on genetics or other factors, still at risk for marijuana-related cancers.

This is pretty cool. It's like having a whole large population of test subjects. If people my parents age (but not them, because they're both high on life) start dropping like flies at 60 from diseases caused by their drug use in the 60's (highabetes, say, or shroomatism), I'll probably have enough time to quit before I get too old. Way to go, hippies!

Find Yourself a City to Live In

I can't really imagine what circumstances would make this new Google toy, Google Trends, actually useful in a practical sense. It analyzes various popular search terms and will tell you where the most searches for that item are coming from. For example, if one were to type in "diarrhea," one would unsurprisingly find Bangalore, India to be the central point of interest in this subject. I suppose it has the dubious honor of being Diarrhea Capital of the World, which is a distinction, I guess, though it doesn't really look so hot on a postcard.

This column from the SF Gate (pointed out by The General) declares Elmhurt, Illinois to be the town with the greatest penchant for "gay porn" searches. It seems to me that this is the only real purpose for Google Trends. Making embarrassing or otherwise suggestive intimations about people based on potentially embarrassing Google queries. After all, we use search engines with the expectation of anonymity.

Let's test it out...I thought of some humiliating search terms which we can use to insult people from cities all around the world.

ECZEMA: St. Albans, UK has cooties.

CORN DOGS: Huge, huge shock here...The citizens of Dallas, TX are most keen to locate hot dogs dipped in batter and fried. I was really expecting Milan. (Is it surprising that Los Angeles comes in at #5 on this list? Wasn't the whole theory that people were more health-conscious out here? I can't imagine anything less health-conscious than eating a whole lot of corn dogs. Unless you're smoking black tar heroin between bites.)

TOBY KEITH: Okay, everyone, take a guess right now...What American city made fully a third more searches for Toby Keith on Google than the second-place finisher?

Do you have a guess in mind?

No, it's not Dallas again.

Yes, it's Oklahoma City, OK. Home to the Flaming Lips, the Starlight Mints and a whole lot of angry Americans. And may God have mercy on their souls.

ASS SEX: Cairo, Egypt overwhelmingly takes the title of City Most Interested in Butty Sex. But the surprising part? My hometown, little Irvine, California, comes in SECOND PLACE. I'm not kidding. For real. Out of the entire world! Irvine, I knew you were repressed and a little stifled but...Oh, man, I had no idea! Los Angeles is #8, and Irvine is #2! A whole white-flight safe little Orange County enclave full of sweaty-palmed perverts secretly fascinated by the world of anal insertion. I just call it "home."

MILF: St. Louis, Missouri. IRVINE COMES IN #4! Is it just that there are four personal computers per person? Or is it as I'd always expected? Irvine is full of weird perverts.

ANAL BEADS: Irvine clocks at #5. Denver takes the top prize.

DONKEY PUNCH: Denver with the championship again. Unbelievably, Irvine doesn't appear. Apparently, despite their fascination with backdoor action, the citizens of Irvine aren't into violence.

LUBE: Irvine at #8. I always wondered about that funny smell. Austin, Texas, lands the top spot.

If This is Anyone but Steve Allen, You're Stealing My Bit!

Yes, I know, you can't copyright the concept of nominating assholes as Worst Person Alive. Other sarcastic Internet guys were doing it before I came along, more will do it after I gather my many millions of dollars in profit and walk away from blogging forever. I'm just saying...I called Rick Santorum evil first! Big ups to reader Kaz for forwarding me this link to The Beast's Top 50 Most Loathsome Americans list all the same. Interesting stuff to consider as I mull over this year's Braffy nominations.

Check this: Tricky Rick, last year's CBI choice for Worst Person Alive, didn't even make the list, but Tom Cruise and George Lucas are both on there. Yeah, George Lucas...How dare he produce classic films that have delighted, at this point, three generations of Americans. What an asshole. He's way worse than the guy who openly compares gay citizens to dog-fuckers.

I don't think Tom Cruise really classifies as one of the Worst People. One of the most confused? Sure. One of the least appropriate to raise an impressionable young child? Absolutely. But worst?

Cruise is a perfect example of a person who is simultaneously in love with and completely unfamiliar with himself, living in perpetual fear of self-actualization, and asserting a legal right to live free of criticism.

Agreed, but you guys think he's worse than Rush Limbaugh and Charles Krauthammer? How many villainous would-be dictators has Tom Cruise propped up? (Okay, L. Ron Hubbard...point taken...)

I definitely dig the inclusion of Larry the Cable Guy, but Oprah? Irritating and shrill, sure. I'd even go so far as to label her behavior in this year's James Frey debacle (backing him initially and then savaging him on her show to save her own reputation) dishonest. But she is not more loathsome than Joe Lieberman, Paris Hilton or Bill Frist. (Seriously, how could Paris not be #1. She might not be the most evil person on the planet, just because true evil requires some level of intelligence and creativity, but she's absolutely among the most loathsome. Don't you guys read The Superficial?)

Also, the entry at #4, where "you," the reader, are implicated as the fourth most loathsome American, kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Not because I think the American people aren't worth loathing. I loathe us most of the time. But because the paragraph is accusatory rather than inclusive. The authors position themselves outside of the implication - it's "You" and not "Us" - which is haughty. Also, the worst thing they can come up with is that Americans watch too much TV.

Assuming that it’s normal behavior to spend several hours each day totally inert and staring into a cathode ray tube. Substituting antidepressants for physical motion.

Look, there's nothing innately wrong with spending your leisure time watching television. There are plenty of more pointless, destructive and inane activities in which you can participate. I'm not saying there's no value to being outside and getting in touch with the world around you, but this notion that sitting in your apartment watching TV on occasion is inherently loathsome and makes you a shallow, trite individual is just ludicrous posturing. Television is just another form of entertainment like any other. If you spend 12 hours a day doing it, sure, that makes you a loser. But spend 12 hours a day doing anything but slaving away in some cubicle makes you a loser to most Americans. Personally, I have more respect for the guy who's figured out how to watch Cartoon Network all day than the guy who's Executive Regional Vice-President in Charge of Specialty Referral for CompuTex.

And then...attacking people on antidepressants? Don't they have enough problems? They're already depressed and spending their hard-earned money for drugs that don't get you high, plus being on those pills kills your sex drive. Why not go after someone more deserving of scorn, like, oh, I don't know...Rick Santorum or any of the other 500,000,000 scumbags that didn't make the list. You trying to say Don Imus and Michael Savage aren't loathsome?

The Da Vinci Code

If American filmmaking has an exact geographical middle of the road, a single vanishing point that defines perfectly bland, exceedingly mainstream taste guaranteed to offend no one, this focus is where you will find the filmography of Ron Howard. Never a director to take a risk in terms of style or content, Howard prefers to adapt straight-forward material in as unsurprising and professional a manner as possible. From children's fantasy (The Grinch) to kidnapping thriller (Ransom) to the Western (The Missing) to period sports movie (Cinderella Man), Howard's never encountered a genre he couldn't drain the life out of and render predictably.

Only money could have motivated his decision to direct a big-screen adapation of Dan Brown's best-seller The Da Vinci Code. The film rights to this phenomenon are a license to print money, and Howard and his producing partner Brian Grazer surely salivated at the prospect of marketing a major Tom Hanks movie based on an international smash hit book that opened on the same May weekend all over the world. But the material could not be a worse match for Howard's mushy, safe temperment. I'd rather see Howard direct almost anything - a GG Allin concert film, a live-action Smurfs movie, a 2 hour infomercial for the Egg Wave - than a wacky religious-themed puzzle-obsessed potboiler.

Predictably, Howard and screenwrtier Akiva Goldsman (responsible for A Beautiful Mind, Batman and Robin and other grim death marches) fail to approach the material with any sense of fun whatsoever. Rather than play the story for what it is - a fast-paced pulpy adventure story in the National Treasure vein - Howard insists on turning Brown's disposable prose into Schindler's List. Everything from Hans Zimmer's ponderous score to star Tom Hanks' strict refusal to emote in any way, or even make eye contact with other characters, bogs the film down, making what should be light, entertaining fare into a plodding lesson in Fake European History. And I don't need to see that, because I already scored a 4 on my Fake AP European History exam.

I never thought I'd write this sentence, but the strangest part is that Ron Howard ought to know better. How could anyone think 2.5 hours of half-asleep Tom Hanks shining flashlights around libraries would be entertaining? Ron's been making movies since the early 80's! How could any creative artist have such a poor sense for their own long-time audience?



I had to cross a picket line in order to see the film tonight in Culver City. Several Catholics out front seemed to feel that the movie was blasphemous, insulting Christ and encouraging viewers to lose their faith. These people needn't really worry, any more than they worried Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade was going to knock their congreagations to the core. Brown's book and Howard's movie use vaguely historical references as signposts, to keep the audience interested and intrigue them with real-world ramifications for the action. But the entire enterprise unfolds in so unlikely and overheated a manner that I can't imagine anyone genuinely taking the conclusions herein seriously. If, as Ian McKellan darkly intones, The Da Vinci Code really reveals "the greatest secret in human history," we're a pretty weak-ass species when it comes to deception.

Robert Langdon (Hanks) discovers the secret after being called to a murder scene at the Louvre while on a speaking tour in Paris. A professor has been murdered and left a message for Langdon scrawled on the floor in his own blood. Also, he has written several clues in blood on various Da Vinci paintings and left some carvings in his own body. I guess he had some time to kill before he died and didn't have a pen handy. Fortunately, Langdon's a symbologist (probably not a real job) and he's joined by the dead man's granddaughter, clever French cop Sophie (Amelie vet Audrey Tautou), so all the various puzzles left by the old man are dispatched with relatively quickly.

The clues lead Robert and Sophie on a quest for the Holy Grail, which they find out from an aging Grail lore expert (McKellan) isn't a cup at all but represents Mary Magdalene, Jesus' wife.

Howard treats these kinds of twists on the Jesus legend as Earth-shattering revelations, the kind of thing that must be depicted with great reverence and sincerity. I have no idea why he feels this way. Sure, a lot of people take the Jesus story very seriously. But this isn't Passion of the Christ here. He's not adapting Bible stories. This is fiction! Some guy named Dan Brown made it up based on some popular conspiracy theories. Just as the Monty Python guys didn't insist on strict realism and deocrum when depicting the Holy Grail or God in their movie, Howard shouldn't feel like everything needs to be so pious.

What we have is a religious thriller like any other. There's an evil cardinal (Alfred Molina) and his equally evil monk assassin (Paul Bettany) who want to keep the truth about Mary Magdalene a secret. There's not one but two secret, ancient mystical societies battling it out for the future of Christianity. But mostly, the movie's made up of scenes ripped out of any detective or mystery thriller. Hanks and Tautou wander around libraries, cathedrals and catacombs, flashlights at the ready, searching for the next clue that they can solve in as speedy and verbal a manner as possible. Think Seven without the corpses.

Sequences like these, in which characters solve impossibly difficult puzzles with preternatural ease, are always ridiculous. Recent films like Sahara and Tomb Raider have relied heavily on similar devices, and it's always build around some ridiculous gimmick that wouldn't be solvable outside the world of a movie. But that's fine. The fun of these scenes is being presented with a crazy, unsolvable puzzle and then seeing a character work it out with only seconds to spare. But the trick is to whole-heartedly embrace the ridiculousness of the puzzles, to have fun with the clues and the solutions. Watching sad-eyed Tom Hanks work out inscription on Isaac Newton's headstone is about as much fun as watching him solve last Wednesday's New York Times Sudoku. Howard's filming the guy like he's inventing game theory or something. This is why the film gets laughs when it wants to shock and surprise.

Honestly, I have never seen a more dreary, unfocused and lethargic performance from Tom Hanks, ever. I don't always like the guy or his movies. I find Forrest Gump hideously unappealing. I thought he made just about every decision wrong about his character in Catch Me If You Can. But in The Da Vinci Code, he seems barely capable of motivating on delivering his lines. He's just distracted, failing to generate any chemistry with Tautou (who's on auto-pilot herself) or anyone else. He'd need to double his efforts in order to deliver a one-note performance.



The only two performers in the whole film who seem to really get the movie at all are Bettany and McKellan. Mercifully, they both kind of ham it up and try to inject the film with a little bit of personality. McKellan, as Grail scholar Leigh Teabing, does his usual wry, cantankerous old guy job - essentially playing an unmutated, scholarly Magneto - and Bettany falls back on bugging out his eyes and displaying his gruesome albino make-up, but it's more than I can say for anyone else in this dull slog. Jean Reno appears near-catatonic in his few actual scenes that don't involve sitting in the passenger seat of a moving car.

I can sympathize with their plight, because essentially no one is given anything to say or do that doesn't relate directly back to this beast of a plot. There's so much background, so much exposition, and Howard and Goldsman just haven't bothered to do the work of translating the book to the screen. A novel can get away with relying on a lot of exposition and backstory. Michael Crichton books don't usually kickstart the action until around page 200. Until then, you're just hearing about the industry or scientific community in which the action takes place. And Brown's book fills in some of the narrative gaps with doses of art appreciation and European history.

But you can't make a movie where people just pace and tell each other about stuff that happened thousands of years ago. It's just not cinematic at all. The Da Vinci Code has a few (a few!) memorable images - Bettany's monk whipping himself to be closer to God, the camera swooping through the glass triangle at the Louvre - but otherwise just plods along, lecturing anyone who will listen about the Knights Templar.

As if bogged down by all this conspiratorial whatsis, Howard's direction has turned slack and artless. The ugly, grainy, overly-dark cinematography fails to capture any of the beauty or shadowy menace of London or Paris. The pacing seems off, and many sequences take far too long to develop any intensity at all. Sometimes, who scenes will come off awkwardly or seem blatantly illogical.

First and most obviously, most of Brown's novel takes place in the course of one night. The French police summon Langdon to inspect a dead body, he scans for clues throughout the museum, he escapes the cops, finds more clues, meets up with the McKellan character, evades capture again and goes to England, and on and on, all before dawn. The timing makes no sense and stretches credibility to the extreme. This is the sort of thing that you can cheat with on the page, but that simply doesn't work in a movie.

But other logic problems abound. Many of Robert and Sophie's escapes defy reason, particularly as they exit Teabing's plane in view of the police. Robert, we're told, suffers from claustrophobia but manages to navigate prolonged periods in enclosed spaces with relative ease. Characters appear and disappear at will depending on the convenience of the plot, and the action climax develops in a way that's extremely convenient and anti-climactic.

In fact, Howard botches all the action scenes in the film. In shooting an early car chase scene, in which Tautou drives backwards into oncoming traffic, Howard just jerks the camera back and forth, seemingly at random. Bettany's monk also pops in and out of scenes with impossible stealth and staggering strength yet can be taken down later by an 80 year old crippled man when the plot requires.

Worst of all, though, as I've said, is the relentlessly dour tone. This is Ron Howard's idea of a summer movie? Really? I should never have broken the vow I made after exiting the theater to A Beautiful Mind..."I'll never pay to see another Ron Howard movie again!" Why would I turn my back on all my ideals?

Bloodrayne

A film like Bloodrayne defies review but I'm going to write one anyway.

Mediocre films are all the same, and are thus easy to describe and pan to an audience. But a shit symphony like Bloodrayne can't be summed up in a few generic phrases. Like a beautiful and unique snowflake that's been dipped in elephant feces and deep fried, a truly awful film like Bloodrayne exists in its own world. A failure, to be sure, but a failure unlike any other exact failure in film history. In this regard, it's quite a remarkable achievement, and certainly an enjoyable experience if one is inclined, as I am, to watch bad movies for entertainment.

Director Uwe Boll, responsible for Bloodrayne along with the equally awful but less amusing Alone in the Dark, tells the press that he tries to make good films, but all available evidence points to a filmmaking method that specifically undermines any hopes of actually producing a worthwhile final product. Quite possibly the most reviled figure among Internet fandom, his movies represent the antithesis of everything the geek community asks for from a genre film - Boll lacks reverence for his source material, he distracts from limp dialogue with snazzy camera tricks and bad special effects and he insists by neccessity on extremely low budgets an dfast production turn-around.

And yet...and yet...These same fans will sing the praises of genre directors whose material isn't significantly better. Oh, sure, Kurt Wimmer won't overplay his hand like Boll. Equilibrium didn't boast a cast of B-movie all-stars and shots of extras hacking at a dead monk's corpse with swords, but it does feature lame, poorly-conceived action sequences and crappy facades made on the quick to simulate the distant future. Why praise Wimmer for succeeding beyond expectations and harp on Boll for having some stupid fun with the materials available to him?

I'm not trying to defend Boll as a filmmaker. Bloodrayne certainly deosn't warrant any kind of spirited defense as a movie. But as a piece of crap, it's nothing short of remarkable, the kind of movie that really ought to have an optional commentary track by Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo on the DVD. I mean...you guys...Michael Madsen has a swordfight against Meat Loaf in this movie! What else do you need to know?



Based on a video game I have never heard of or played, Bloodrayne tells the story of vampire-human hybrid Rayne (Terminator 3 villainess Kristanna Loken), a young girl just trying to make her own way in this crazy mixed up pseudo-Medieval fantasy world full of the undead. Like Marlo Thomas, only with a thirst for blood and slightly better at kung fu.

The script by Guinevere Turner is among the most obvious and plodding imaginable. The story doesn't so much progress as it does lurch around aimlessly within the world of the video game. Nothing develops naturally. If Turner needs Bloodrayne to receive some vital background information, she simply has a stranger wander by and start telling her things. Likewise, when Boll requires a love scene to break up the expositional monotony, he just has his heroine walk up to the nearest male cast member and start necking.

Rayne meets up with a psychic (Geraldine Chaplin) who tells her she must hunt down and kill the vampire who raped her mother and sired her, the cruel Kagan (Ben Kingsley). Kinglsey's made the interesting choice to not act in the role of Kagan, but instead to hang out on the set, staring off into space, occasionally reciting a line in between carefully considering whether he prefers Sun Chips or Fritos. Kevin Costner gives a livelier, more passionate performance in The Big Chill than Kingsley in this movie.

So, after Rayne discovers a vital clue in Scene 24, which is a smashing scene with some lovely acting, she meets up with some helpful vampire hunters, played by Michael Madsen at his doughiest, Michelle Rodriguez doing the worst English accent ever and Bland Hunky Guy #1. Then they all go and kill Ben Kingsley, but not before Rayne lets Hunky Guy lick her boobs and drinks from several golden goblets full of bodily fluid. It may sound complicated, but essentially this is a really bad Buffy episode with gratuitous nudity and gore in place of witty banter.

Or, really, any kind of banter at all. Reminiscent of Saturday morning cartoon shows, Turner's writing style has all the originality of a classic "Scooby Doo" episode combined with the penetrating insight into the human condition of a Guns N' Roses lyric. (I swear to God, Madsen, more than once, is given straight-up Fred dialogue..."Hey, gang, why don't you go check out that spooky abandoned castle? Michelle Rodriguez and I are gonna go look for vampire clues over by that barn!")

Did I mention that Michael Madsen has a sword fight against Meat Loaf?



I did? Well, I'm mentioning it again because it's so remarkable. The Battle Royale with Cheese, the final Earth-shattering contest to determine who can truly be called The Paunchiest Man in Bloodrayne, might well stand one day as the singular highlight of Uwe Boll's long and storied career. The sight of two fat middle-aged pseudo-actors slumping around pretending to be Flynn and Rathbone is Uwe's gift to the world, and I expect some goddamn gratitude!

In one corner, Madsen, star of ESPN's "Tilt," the man responsible for the least convincing performance in Sin City, a movie I'll remind you also featured James King, Brittany Murphy and Jessica Alba. In the other corner, The Loaf, Old Bitch Tits, wearing the wig and make-up left over from the "I Would Do Anything for Love" video. (Has it been long enough? Will Meat finally tell us the thing he wouldn't do for love? Is it "shower"?)

I won't tell you who vanquishes whom in the actual duel itself, but I will say that neither of these guys should ever pick up a sword for a movie again because watching them battle is like watching a panda bear fuck a koala bear. It's over quickly, kind of cute, but also very very wrong.

A customer in the store today proffered the theory that movies in which Billy Zane wears a hairpiece rule while movies in which Billy Zane appears bald suck. Well, if that's the case, Bloodrayne fucking rocks the house, because Billy's been outfitted with this Oustanding Achievement in the Field of Toupery.



Why would you even dream of fucking with Squinty Zane? It's a rule...You don't fuck with Squinty Zane. Because he'll go all Phantom on your ass. And you don't want that, my friend.

So, I guess what I'm saying is that you should go out and rent Bloodrayne immediately. Well, okay, wait until it actually comes out on DVD on Tuesday. But then, go rent in immediately and laugh at it and generally feel good about the world of foreign-made low-budget fantasy-horror based on forgettable PlayStation 2 games.

The All-New Adventures of Speed Buggy!

SPEED BUGGY: Put-put-put-put See any Mexicans yet, put-put, Mr. Bush?

BUSH: Quiet, Speed Buggy...I'm Presidenting!

SPEED BUGGY: Put-put-put-put Sorry, sir. Put-put I just got put-put overexcited.

(NOTE: Hilarious photo courtesy of Uggabugga).

Winter Soldier

Less a documentary than a piece of living history, Winter Soldier records for posterity a gathering of 150 Vietnam veterans at a Howard Johnson's motel in 1971 Detroit. As the war continued to rage overseas, these ex-soldiers gathered to discuss their experiences in combat and in training publicly, many for the first time, in a press conference format. Their stories - full of harrowing firefights, shameful massacres, gruesome mutilations and countless other atrocities - leaves their audience shocked and the soldiers stricken and haunted. This is one of the single most difficult films I have ever had to watch and one that's staggeringly important now that America has involed itself in another bloody and extended overseas conflict.

John Kerry appears briefly, interviewing fellow soldiers about their experiences in Vietnam, but otherwise these men are anonymous voices from the past, recalling how the government gave them a uniform and a gun and taught them how to kill without consideration, without remorse, without compassion and without humanity.



Sporadic footage of Vietnam is interspersed with a variety of anecdotes. One soldier recalls seeing his drill instructor, on the final day before shipping out to Southeast Asia, skin and disembowel a live rabbit before flinging its organs over the grunts. Later on, in country, the soldier will see a colleague perform the same ritual on a Vietnamese woman.

Many others corroborate these kinds of stories, suggesting a pre-planned pattern of wanton cruelty and sadistic violence designed by the American military or its civilian leadership to wear down the Communist's resolve. Even if there was no agreed-upon campaign of terror executed on the Vietnamese people, there was certainly a decision made at some point to look the other way while individual soldiers and even officers violate every single tenet of the Geneva Convention, and even common decency.

Though the witnesses differ in race, age, background and even in their level of anger at their government and leadership, the same concepts and subtexts keep popping up in their anecdotes.

Their training has been designed to dehumanize their reactions and surpress their humanity. A Vietnamese person, civilian or soldier, is not a human. Just a gook, an animal you don't have to feel bad about torturing or raping or burning or tossing out of a helicopter mid-flight.

Perhaps most interesting to me, particularly in light of my recent blog post about the importance of Symoblic War over actual war to Americans, was the way in which soldiers were encouraged to fudge the facts in order to make their ugly work seem vital. Sgt. Scott Camil observes that any dead Vietnamese person, regardless of how they were killed or who they were, was counted as Viet Cong.

"How do you know he was VC?," Camil was asked. "Because he's dead," he would reply. And then they would share a laugh.

Similarly, because success in the war was gauged in terms of body counts rather than territory gained, casualty numbers were forged or fabricated. If 20 Americans died, they would report that 100 VC were killed, just to make it seem like a successful operation.

Obviously, over time, this would drive a man insane. Each day you are marched into the jungle and ordered to kill, but your actions seem to have no consequences. No new information is gained, because you're mainly torturing peasants and farmers. The Viet Cong army still shows up periodically and kills your friends because they know the territory and hide out in the trees. Each day it's just more and more senseless, meaningless horror, and it has left many of these men visibly shaken permanently.

Most of the veterans in the film share that far-off, distant, cold stare that only men who have served seem to develop. One soldier describes having completely forgotten about an incident in which he and some colleagues stoned a young boy to death for fun until years later, when the memory suddenly came to him and left him horrified. Another soldier holds up a photograph of himself grinning while pointing to the dead body of a Vietnamese man. (Sound familiar?)

Watching Winter Soldier in 2006 doesn't just invite comparisons to the present-day conflict. It demands comparison. Many facets of the stories of these soldiers link up with extraordinary presience to the stories you occasionally hear back (but not nearly enough) from the media about the Iraq War. The confused troops in the field, their hands tied by beurocrats and their mission unclear, stumble around and make mistakes and kill innocents. The use of torture as an interrogation technique turns the local population against Americans and severely harms the psyche of the torturers permanently. And of course, as soldiers wind up staying in the war zone for longer and longer periods, their mental states become more and more erratic, unpredictable and quite frankly frightening. What effect does a year or two of constant carnage have on a human being? Is there any hope of returning to the man (or woman) you once were before the killing started?

Winter Soldier would seem to suggest that, no, you can't ever really go back. Most of the men in this movie speak about war as if it was a dream from which they have awoken. Those men in the pictures, killing babies and burning down huts while they're still occupied and trading in detached ears for beers at the local bar, those aren't really them. Their actual identities went into hibernation, allowing the U.S. Government to use them as killing machines in the jungle for a few years.

One soldier makes a statement that essentially sums up the entire film. "This war," he says, "doesn't just ruin the lives of the people who died. It ruins an entire generation. An entire generation of Americans and Vietnamese, ruined, and that's the real tragedy here."

And he's right. Because it only takes a few bastards in high places to make the decisions that cause wars, but it takes an entire nation of people to carry those wars out. Soldiers and their families who never recover from the strain and trauma along with all the other people whose lives they touch. Of course, the people of Vietnam, who have spent the past 30 some odd years trying to recover from the psychic and environmental and generational horror of the 60's and 70's. And there's this notion that the entire world has been polluted by this kind of evil, as well. Not just from chemical weapons tossed into the skies, but from the villainy of a massive army determined to wipe out its perceived enemies at the cost of its own soul.

Of course, some people don't think raping women and then skinning them alive is a big deal.

From Powerline's Paul Mirengoff:

Tananto takes the analysis one step further when he points to the similarity of Murtha's "they were depraved because they were deployed" meme and the line that John Kerry peddled (based in large part on false allegations of war crimes) with respect to the war in Vietnam.

[U.S. Representative and Vietnam Vet John] Murtha is what Kerry once was -- a darling of the Democrats by virtue of his ability to attack our military efforts under cover of his credentials. But all of the credentials in the world don't help when you contradict yourself in a single sentence.

Paul doesn't think the government training you to kill and then dropping you in the jungle or the desert and ordering you to kill has any affect on your psyche. Naturally! It's like that old NRA slogan: Governments don't kill people, soldiers do!

Also, "false allegations of war crimes"? He's suggesting all the soldiers in Winter Soldier are making this stuff up? They're some pretty amazing actors. De Niro's got nothing on these guys in the "strangely intense, deeply sad Vietnam vet" competition.

After Paul's comments, John Hinderaker adds:

Murtha is a disgrace. If there is one Congressman who deserves to be defeated in November, it's him.

Yeah, so what if he was there and has a history of being pro-military? What does he know? Paul read somewhere that the soldiers were all making up those atrocities anyway! My Lai? More like one too many mai tais! BWAHAHAHA!

Winter Soldier comes to DVD on May 30th. It will mark the first time the film has ever actually been released for public consumption since it was filmed by various New York documentarians (including Harlan County USA director Barbara Kopple) and screened sporadically throughout 1972. Order the DVD or learn more about the film here. Or come buy it at Laser Blazer in two weeks!

The Kindest Cut of All

Have I talked already on here about Michel Gondry's planned film Be Kind, Rewind? I can't quite remember. As someone who's desperately trying to write a can't-miss high-concept summer comedy, I'm very intrigued and yet confused by this premise...

Jack Black will play a small-town video store clerk who accidentally erases all his rental tapes. (The explanation is that he has a magnetized metal plate in his head, which sounds a little unlikely and desperate an explanation to me...but what do I know?) Here's the weird part: to please the store's lone loyal customer, an apparently senile old woman, Black then stages and films remakes of all the rental movies.

Seriously. That's the set-up.

The main selling point here is Gondry's visuals coupled with Black re-enacting "The Lion King" "Rush Hour" "Driving Miss Daisy" and "Robocop" as the customers start to demand the remade movies. All the town gets involved and the film becomes a metaphor for the magic and importance of film-making.

Okay, obviously the hook is getting to film elaborate, silly remakes of big popular movies starring Jack Black. But why does he have to remake the films himself instead of buying new copies? Or why not just make his own films instead of remaking dumb Hollywood fare like Rush Hour, that probably wouldn't appeal to an old lady anyway?

I'm inclined to believe this would be the better movie. Maybe in the beginning, he thinks he's going to remake Hollywood movies, so you get a montage or a few scenes of him planning to redo Rush Hour or something, before deciding to get the townspeople to help him pull off a big, epic and original film. That feels more like a complete movie kind of story to me, even if it is a little less wacky and more formula.

But beyond that point, isn't this awfully thin? Gondry's an immensely talented director. His Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was my favorite movie of 2004 (due in part to the immense talents of screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, of course). I just can't see making an entire film based around parodies starring Jack Black. It's a good bit for an Oscar host or a late night comic, but a whole 90 minute film?

I guess it's stupid to pick the film apart sight unseen, but I honestly can't see how this premise makes any sense and it's frustrating to me. I've been racking my brain for weeks now trying to come up with the perfect, easily writable and pitchable premise and this concept flies right in the face of everything I've been taught, essentially. For real.

Mainly in that it's nonsensical. Every time I come up with an idea that's surreal or even just a little weird, I'm told that it needs to make more sense and adhere to strict realism. I've been pitching people an idea I had about a romantic comedy set in an apocalyptic, post-WWIII dystopian future. Okay, that's not even that bizarre a concept. I could see the world "coming to an end" and giving way to a post-industrial wasteland any day now. But still, it's too fanciful, it's too out there. Apparently, suits want stories that are relatable and easy to film. You know, like The Chronicles of Riddick.

Naturally, because of the talent involved, I'm very curious about the movie. I don't mean to imply, at all, that I think it won't be any good. Gondry's made two films thus far - the mediocre Human Nature and the brilliant Eternal Sunshine - as well as some kickass music videos, but along with this year's Science of Sleep, this will be one of the first opportunities to see what he can do with a non-Kaufman feature. Has he just been an above-average stylist riding the coattails of one of our most exciting contemporary screenwriters? Or is he really the imaginative force to be reckoned with his early work implies?

The Ringer & When a Stranger Calls

Not many worthwhile new DVD's this week. Here are two pieces of crap you don't need to bother with, that I will trash for your amusement.

The Ringer



Tardsploitation: A film presenting a person or persons suffering from a mental or developmental disability as a spiritual figure, redeeming the "normals" through selfless, childlike acts of personal sacrifice and nobility of spirit. A condescending sub-genre of the tear-jerker in which the mentally retarded or simply slow-witted stand in for a natural humanity of innocence and pure goodness.

When I come down hard on tardsploitation (as I do fairly often), it's not to imply that Hollywood shouldn't make any films with disabled characters. I don't think the act of putting someone with Down Syndrome or some such thing in a movie is inherently cruel or wrong or exploitative. It just seems to me that no one has figured out how to make a film about such an individual without resorting to these tired, lazy cliches. Retarded guys (and gals) in film are always heroes or martyrs or examples of stoic grace and acceptance. They're never just, you know, people.

Take last year's Johnny Knoxville comedy The Ringer, about a sap who fakes retardation in order to fix the Special Olympics. Despite the fact that it was borrowed for a "South Park" episode last season, a situation that definitely robs the film of some of its shock value and immediacy, it's a solid high-concept premise. You hear that idea, you can pretty much figure out what the movie will be like.

Unfortunately, it becomes clear almost immediately that writer Ricky Blitt and director Barry Blaustein have no idea how to craft this concept into an entertaining film. So they fall back on all the most tired tardsploitation conventions. The Special Olympians in the film are just what you'd expect - awkward goons with bizarre social graces who are nonetheless saint-like, direct and almost completely without guile.

These movies all seem afflicted with the strange notion that intelligence makes a person evil. Now, sure, knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and education does allow people to question the world around them more. But if we all had the intelligence of an 8 year old, would the world really be a better place? Would our relationships all be more fulfilling? Would we actually be getting much more out of life? These movies seem to suggest, yes. I'd suggest that, below or above average intelligence, everyone's different and your life is what you make of it.

You may be thinking there's no way to win in this situation. If the movie goes all out, as offensive as possible towards those with learning disorders or autism, I'd accuse it of being insensitive and crass. But when it holds back and tries to go for a feel-good message of acceptance, I call it condescending and cloying. It's true...this is a delicate balance. I think the only solution, the only way to make a movie with retards that doesn't feel like a horrible tardsploitation film, would be to actually write characters and not Types.

And that's all there is in The Ringer. A stadium full of retarded guys and not an endearing or three-dimensional character in sight. I don't even remember anyone's name - there's scrunchy-faced, blathering retarded guy, fat awkward retarded guy, slow-talking creepy retarded guy, oddly hostile retarded guy and mousey, bow-legged retarded guy. And of course, when you get to know them, they're all really sweet and self-aware and likable.

I'm not trying to be offensive...That's the movie, not me. I wanted to actually get to know some of these guys. The Special Olympians make up the vast majority of the cast, but they're around only to be "inspiriational" and to turn everything we know about the retarded right on its head! Without actually saying or doing anything funny!

For this and many other reasons, mainly relating to a dumb, obvious script and a lazy lead performance by Johnny Knoxville, the story of Steve Barker and his rise to the top of the Special Olympics world couldn't be more lifeless or boring. Steve (Knoxville) needs a sudden influx of cash, to help repair the mangled fingers of his immigrant friend (don't ask) and to settle the outragoeous gambling debts of his sleazebag uncle (Brian Cox, as part of his Annual Tour of Shitty American Movies.) Naturally, he decided to infiltrate the Special Olympics.

I mean, after all...He's a normal, he'll win every event, right? Right? Oh, did you guys already see that "South Park"? Never mind, then.

Of course, there are stock complications. Steve falls for one of the counselors, Lynn (Katherine Heigl), but of course can't do anything about it because she thinks he's retarded! The other athletes figure out that Steve's faking it, but decide to help him anyway for no good reason! Lynn turns out to have a scummy womanizing boyfriend, but again, Steve's helpless to do anything. Oh, how will these situations all resolve themselves by the end of the Big Match?

Okay, it's formula, that would be fine if it was funny. But the jokes just misfire. I think a big problem is Knoxville. Most of the comedy revolves around a normal guy pretending to have a mental disability, but Knoxville's "Jeffy" persona isn't even close to amusing. He just kind of cocks his head to the side and talks in falsetto and refers to himself in the third person. "Jeffy likes you." "Jeffy wants apples." "Jeffy didn't mean to do that!" Ha ha!

So let's review...The main character is dull and unsympathetic, the supporting characters are cardboard cut-outs and stand-ins for common retarded guy cliches, the narrative is bland and has already been done well by "South Park," the jokes aren't funny and the whole enterprise is so terrified of causing offensive that it lacks any sort of edge. That's a recipie for one stupid, pointless comedy.

[And, yes, I know that The Ringer was made before the "South Park" episode. But still, almost everyone who will see the movie has seen that show, making the comparison inevitable. It's not my fault they sat on this bad boy since early 2004.]

When a Stranger Calls



There's low-budget horror and then there's last year's When a Stranger Calls, a film that appears to have been made on roughly the same budget as last night's episode of Chapulin Colorado. Running a robust 87 minutes with credits, meaning that if you see it at an AMC theater it will run just a few minutes shorter than the pre-show countdown, the entire film consists of a girl on the phone, running through a large house. In other words, it's MTV's Laguna Beach with less Maroon 5 on the soundtrack and slightly more dramatic lighting.

The girl is babysitter Jill Johnson (Camilla Belle, who was born when I was already 8 years old). She's trying to get some homework done, but this creepy guy (voiced by Lance Henrickson) keeps calling her. At first, it's relatively benign. After a while, it starts to get unsettling, and that's when he implies that he might like to consider removing Jill's insides before the evening is through.

One problem with basing your film not only on an older film but a popular urban legend is that everyoen knows the story. When a Stranger Calls responds to this dilemma by ignoring it, and plugging along as if we all didn't already know the phone calls were coming from inside the house. (That's not a spoiler, by the way, because it's revealed in the TV commercials for the DVD.)

I guess super-clever scripting or an excess of style might be able to distract an audience from the fact that this totally uneventful film leads up to a completely obvious twist, but director Simon West (of Con Air fame legend infamy...fuck it, Con Air just plain sucks...) doesn't even try.

He just points the camera at Camilla, has her walk or run around, turn lights on and off, and that's about it. There aren't even any cool kill scenes or big scares as you'd expect with what amounts to a slasher film. In fact, there's nothing that could possibly keep an audience's interest. Jill enters the house, walks around, meets the maid (Rosine Hatem), checks on the kids, gets a few scary phone calls, runs around for a bit and then the movie ends. You just keep waiting and waiting for it to pick up, for some death or mayhem or action or something, and it never arrives. It's like Samuel Beckett's Scream, a parallel absurd universe in which Vladimir and Estragon are waiting for Michael Myers.

The Alternate History of Iraq or Stop the Crusade, I Want to Get Off or Baudrillard You Gonna Go My Way

I've always ridiculed the belief that violent movies and video games produce violent people. My reasoning was simple - no one enjoys a nice, gory movie or gleefully amoral video game experience more than I, yet I'm probably the least bloodthirsty person I know. I don't even like the sight of blood, really. Makes me light-headed. And the last time I was in a fight, I was in the 6th grade and some oddball whom the cool kids (read: not me) used to tease all the time came up and sucker-punched me in the face. Oddly, I cannot now for the life of me recall that guy's name. (UPDATE: JASON WALSH!)

This was the foundation for my reasoning on the subject. Obviously, movies don't make you violent. I'm not violent! Also, there's the usual generic counter-arguments: there was violence before movies and video games, even if they give you ideas on how to be violent they don't actually make you violent, desensitizing people to fictional on-screen violence isn't the same as desensitizing them to real world violence. And so on.

Lately, I'm starting to second-guess myself. Maybe all these years I've been wrong, desperately trying to cling to an ideology because it is convenient rather than true. I'd like to believe there's no harm caused by violent movies, because violent movies are totally awesome and I enjoy watching them. Ditto games like "Grand Theft Auto," which are amusing to me and don't fill me with the sudden urge to go kill lots of Haitians.

And I still essentially believe this. I don't think a person who is not ordinarily inclined towards violence will play "Grand Theft Auto" and then embark on a carjacking rampage involving the repeated and extraneous chainsawing of pedestrians. It's like being hypnotized - maybe the experience makes you more suggestible but it can't make you violate your own sense of self.

Here's what's troubling me...In our public discourse, I'm starting to notice a considerably more brutal, even homicidal impulse among Americans than I can recall ever hearing previously in my lifetime. That's not to say that there weren't always reprehensible, immoral people attempting to involve our nation in all manner of illicit and nefarious schemes around the world. There were. I just mean that the everyday conversations in America, some crucial part of the zeitgeist, seems to have turned more tribal, more angry and overall far more willing to endure (as a nation) grisly, endless war. People aren't turning more violent, per se, but they're bothered less by the violence in which they're implicated. Namely, the violence carried out by and on their fellow citizens in uniform.

Again, allow some clarification. Americans are obviously upset about the war and growing more so each day. Bush's poll numbers keep dropping for this very reason. (Also, it costs me just over $40 for a tank of gas.) But the fact is that the Democrats are considering putting up John Kerry or Hillary Clinton as nominee for President, two saps tricked into voting for the war initially despite the fact that millions of reasonably intelligent, non-government-employed Americans knew it was bullshit. Beyond politics, nothing actually seems to be happening to bring this war to an end. Americans seem outraged, sure, but only because they think there's too many Mexicans around.

Here's an AP article about a new video game that carefully and closely simulates the Columbine Massacre. Yeah, you play as either Dylan Klebold or Eric Harris, the disaffected pseudo-goth assholes who decided that the popular kids at their school were so unbearable, the only proper, fitting reaction was murder-suicide. Hey, could Heathers have turned these two into killers?

No, I'm just kidding. Clearly, they were too young to remember Heathers and preferred The Matrix.

The game, Super Columbine Massacre RPG, was posted on a Web site last year, but is becoming more popular now. It draws on investigative material, including images of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, who killed 12 classmates and a teacher before committing suicide.

Players are told it is "ultimately up to you" how many people Harris and Klebold kill that day. Each time Harris and Klebold kill someone in the game, a dialogue box pops up that says: "Another victory for the Trench Coat Mafia."

They settled on that as a catch phrase after "Sorry, Dylan and Eric, but your princess is in another cafeteria" was deemed to insensitive.

Gross, right? Clearly in appropriate and tasteless, sure. Maybe the gameplay and graphics are totally sweet. But it's a bit ghoulish, no? Ironically, an Internet game like this is going to appeal to a lot of high schooler students, who you would think are the people most likely to feel a connection to the Columbine victims. But I guess they relate to the put-upon, bullied students as well. (Also, with a game like this, the curiosity factor has to play a big role. People check it out and give it a try to see what all the fuss is about, to gauge how offensive the game really is, and not just out of some sick desire to recreate Columbine.)

Allow me to clarify here. I'm not saying that playing a game like Super Columbine Massacre RPG will make you a murderer. (And what's with that title? Super Columbine Massacre RPG? Is this a Super Famicom game? Sounds like it was badly translated from Japanese. All your base are belong to the Trenchcoat Mafia.) I'm just starting to think that the cumulative effect of years and years of violent culture - movies, TV, video games - may be starting to dull Americans sensitivity to real world violence.

With the Iraq War increasingly out of control, you've got to start wondering about this 30% or so of Americans who still think the President's doing a great job. What would it take for these people to abandon the glorious notion of a grand American conquest in the Middle East? How much killing and death is required? Or will this point never come until they and their families, personally, are the ones dying? Could all of these video games glorifying past U.S. military conquests, these rah-rah jingoistic action films coupled with the weekly adventures of Hero Terrorist-Killer Jack Bauer be convincing Americans that war is always an appropriate answer for conflict resolution?

I sometimes read the larger right-wing blogs, both to find hilarious things to goof on here and to keep abreast with what the other side is talking about. Much as I enjoy lefty blogs like Firedoglake, it can begin to feel like an echo chamber over there...Hundreds of intelligent, interesting progressives all making and then repeating back cogent arguments to one another, but struggling to find new, like-minded and specifically young voters to join the cause. Like Fahrenheit 911 - an interesting, provocative film that just didn't win over many citizens who weren't already emotionally committed to the anti-war movement.

It's not surprisng, though, that right-wing blogs and die-hard Republicans continue to defend this horrific war. They're invested in Iraq. Personally. Emotionally. Not just because of their staunch party loyalty, but because of their own reputations and livelihoods. They, the American Right and the Fans of GWB, have taken on this war as their cause, arguing in favor of its continuation and expansion every day and rebuffing those who would cry out for peace with the maximum legally allowable level of scorn and venom. Now that the violence in Iraq has turned in on itself, away from isolated insurgent attacks and into full-blown Civil War, their hawkish calls for escalation seem more desperate but no less enthusiastic.

What's interesting, to me, is the way they couch their arguments. Jeff Goldstein over at Protein Wisdom treats the escalation of war as an academic exercize. (If you scroll down to the comments section of this post, you can see me try and fail to make this very case to the man himself). He phrases a call to arms in the most abstract manner he can muster. For example, check out this post, in which Goldstein discusses his fairly straight-forward argument that Americans are afraid to act aggressively because of guilt over perceived past white European "offenses":

And it is a fight for the soul of classical liberalism, which is being undercut (in my estimation) by nearly 40 years of a concerted effort by those whose goal is power and control to relativize meaning and deconstruct, through incoherent linguistic assertions that have unfortunately been widely adopted out of self-satisfied feel-goodism (specifically, an ostensible deference to the Other that allows us to convince ourselves we are “tolerant” and “diverse,” when in fact we have created the conditions to turn those ideas into something approximating their exact opposites).

A simple argument, couched in wordy, sub-graduate school jargon. He's saying "a lot of Americans feel bad about killing browns, but they shouldn't." I'd stress again, the man is arguing that we should increase our level of military aggression overseas because he feels like we're not seen as appropriately tough and strong-willed abroad.

Which is why there are times when we really should turn off the “smart” bombs and show our seriousness by putting the world on notice that, when we believe the situation calls for it, we are willing to ignore the inevitable bad press and the howls of protest from human rights groups, and exhibit a show of strength and military professionalism that is politically disinterested and tactically thorough and lethal.

Jeff wants us, as a nation, to stop caring as much about murdering civilians. As if we cared at all already! But you can't write a blog post saying, "I'm tired of Americans being such pussies about war. Let's kill a lot more people indiscriminately." (And what else is being implied when you suggest making bombs less smart?) Even doofuses can see through that. But to say that we are "showing our seriosuness," disengaging from our pre-9/11 feel-goodism and embracing a more pro-active, concerted effort at "military professionalism"...That's the kind of argument people whose sense of right and wrong has been dulled can get behind.

(I don't want to belabor this point, but another technique Jeff uses to dilute his arguments and make them more palatable is to add on an endless string of clarifications and conditions. Above, he throws in a "when the situation calls for it." At other times, he uses similar phrases - we should be more violent "when the time is right," "according to the situation on the ground," "as determined by generals and military officers" - not to make his point clearer but to muddy the water, to give him an easy out when people call him on being a bloodthirsty warmonger content to send other people into battle while he lounges comfortably at home.)

It's no surprise that weasels like Jeff try to make these arguments. There have always been sadists and creeps and weirdos and ineffectual, frustrated little men who relish the idea of foreign wars as a way to confer some kind of abstract glory on to themselves. That's nothing new. It just seems to me that Americans have become more receptive to these kinds of arguments, that they're less willing to engage in real discussions about foreign policy and more quick to make value judgements based on conventional wisdom. "Iran is obviously an evil country with crazy leaders set on world domination. We have to stop them at all costs, even if it costs thousands of American lives and even more Iranian lives." No one needs proof. Americans are ready and willing not only to believe the worst about other nations, but to act swiftly and harshly in response to even a whiff of assertiveness from foreigners. (Or "The Others," to use Lacanian-Goldsteinian terminology).

Which brings me around to my final point...The Iraq Conflict may be the first wholly Symbolic War. (Well, okay, maybe the Faukland Islands...) We're experiencing both figurative and literal world conflict, but the only one that seems to concern Americans is the War of Ideas and Images. The First Post-Modern Simulation War.

We don't see the coffins of dead American soldiers arrive back on these shores. We don't see images of the fighting or even hear reports about specific conflicts because the environment is too dangerous for journalists and photogs to get close. Casualty counts are always inaccurate, and on the Iraqi side practically nonexistent. We hear about prisoner abuse and torture, but you have to go hunt around online to see any of the available evidence, and even then we're told that far worse infractions are kept from the public. No one's actions in the region, from the President to the Secretary of Defense on down, seem to have any actual consequences, and the rhetoric never shifts or changes at all. No one, in or outside of the press, even talks about the vast amount of soldiers returning from Iraq with severe physical wounds or crippling emotional trauma or both.

What we're shown, instead, are symbolic signposts of progress. A Mission Accomplished banner. A Saddam statue toppled and the man himself hauled before a judge. The raised purpled fingers of recent Iraqi voters. Bush carving up a turkey for the troops.

This isn't the reality of life in Iraq. These are photo ops, public relations events. I'm not saying there isn't any value in a people getting to vote for the first time. But this is a side story, a footnote. "There was a mostly-meaningless vote in Iraq today for some partisan, radical short-term beurocrats who still won't be able to bring any kind of end to the chaos, and may in fact exacerbate the already-intense situation." Great! Terrific! Now tell me about all the important stuff that happened.

Not to mention the endless drone about good news. There's so much good news in Iraq that doesn't get reported! Schools opening and police units forming and infrastructure being built! A middle-aged shopowner in Basra ate an entire strawberry ice cream cone and it tasted really good and he didn't get any sand in it or anything!

I used to think this blather was a distraction, a way for fans of the war to change the subject and throw the "Iraq's a quagmire" meme into doubt. But that's thinking too small. This notion - that the war went well but the media only told one side - will likely end up our Alternate History of Iraq. It's going to be a substitute for reality. If Americans believe that things are going well in Iraq, well that's how things are going to go, actual events be damned!

Which is why bloggers like Jeff and Instapundit and all the others keep insisting that we stop complaining about Bush's war. It's not because negative words on the Internet or in the newspaper will increase American or Iraqi casualties. Obviously, that's impossible. Not to mention, they don't care about that stuff.

Here's Glenn Reynolds of InstaPundit:

While every lost serviceman and servicewoman is certainly tragic and should be mourned, the actual statistics tell quite a different tale from the MSM and Democratic doom-and-gloom outlook. Comparing the numbers of lost US military personnel to past years, and past presidential terms, may even be a shock to supporters of the war.

...

In 2004, more soldiers died outside of Iraq and Afghanistan than died inside these two war zones (900 in these zones, 987 outside these zones). The reason is that there are usually a fair number that die every year in training accidents, as well as a small number of illness and suicide. Yet the MSM would make you think that US soldiers are dying at a high number in these zones, and at a significantly higher number than in past years or under past presidents. This is all simply outright lies and distortion.

Yeah, that ain't so bad! You gotta break a few eggs, am I right?

Check out blogger Tigerhawk in November of 2005:

The total Coalition casualties in all of Iraq in two and a half years of war barely exceed the Allied casualties on June 6, 1944, the single opening day of the Normandy invasion.

Yeah, I mean...only a few more dead Americans than the D-Day Invasion, you little whiners! You call that death?

Again, it's not that they think criticism is going to cause an actual increase in American deaths or terrorism. And it's certainly not that they think it will cause an increase in dead Iraqis. It's just symbolically bad, it makes them look bad, and the war only works if Americans think it works. How far removed have we all become? How insulated? Can we not realize that, because our politicians and leaders do nothing, our money is used to ensure that more and more people get tortured and killed in Iraq every day? It's not Swordfish, where John Travolta is going to use a bazooka to make the world safe for gay haircuts! This is not a video game! This is not a movie! Let's not have a probing and rational discussion about the benefits of war in the modern world marketplace! Let's stop killing people and getting ourselves killed in the process.

An odd quote to end this rambling piece on post-modernism. From Richard Castaldo, a survivor of the Columbine shooting, discussing that video game based on his tragic experience.

Richard Castaldo, who was paralyzed from the chest down in the attack, played the game after reading about it on a gaming Web site. He said it reminded him of the 2003 film "Elephant," which follows students and others on the day of a school massacre without assigning reasons or blame for the bloodshed.

"It didn't make me mad, just kind of confused me," he said. "Parts of it were difficult to play through, but overall, I get the feeling it might even be helpful in some ways. I don't think it's bad to discuss."

Fascinating. First, notice that playing a game based on a violent incident in which he was a participant reminds Richard of seeing a movie with a similar theme. It doesn't remind him of actually being at Columbine High School that day? It reminds him of the movie that vaguely recreates this experience?

Second, and here's the part I'd really love to ask Richard about...Why might this game be helpful? How would a game simulating digitally a school shooting enlighten or edify the game's players? I'm not trying to say I have an answer to these questions, or if there even is an answer, but it demonstrates on some level how our minds discern between fantasy and reality, between simulation and reality.