Best Films of 2006

[UPDATED to include Notes on a Scandal, which I have just seen...That makes it a decidedly Anglophilic year for great filmmaking. 5 of the 10 films on my Best of the Year list now take place in part or entirely in Britain, and British actors and directors are all over the list. Could it be comeback time for the British film industry?]

As hard as I try, there are always movies each year that get away from me. Working in a DVD store, I had access to just about every Hollywood film of any interest to me whatsoever. So if a major American film didn't make this list, it's either because I had no interest in seeing it or I didn't think it was very good.

International cinema is a different story. We rented a lot of foreign films at the video store, but these don't usually hit DVD until they are a year or more out of date. So even if I got to see a great foreign film, it's usually not one from the actual year in question, invalidating it in terms of list-making. There are a few exceptions (one on the list proper), but I always regret not getting to put more international films on my End of the Year lists, so I wanted to mention this right up front. I'm certain that in 2007, I'll write posts about some films that would retroactively have made the Top Films list below.

Here are films that are getting a lot of award/Best of 2006 buzz which I have not managed to see. Bear this is mind when reading my actual list.

The Lives of Others, Volver, Flags of Our Fathers/Letters From Iwo Jima, Days of Glory, Dreamgirls, The Last King of Scotland, Venus, Catch a Fire, Little Children, Black Book, Curse of the Golden Flower, The Good Shepherd, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Melpocalypto, The Painted Veil, Blood Diamond, Stranger Than Fiction

Now on to my picks.

UN CERTAIN REGARD (Runners-Up):

A Scanner Darkly

Richard Linklater's first narrative film made with the painterly rotoscope animation style alienated mass audiences with its complicated, multi-tiered narrative and brown acid ambiguity. An animated hybrid of a '90s slacker/stoner comedy with a dystopian Phillip K. Dick adaptation couldn't have been designed with mass audiences in mind, though, right? Easily the year's best computer-generated film, and its trippiest head trip. (My pick for the best CG-animated family film for the year would be Monster House. In fact, that was the only other animated film this year I could even tolerate.)

13 (Tzameti)

The debut from Georgian director Gela Babluani is a gritty, intense study of the psychology of exploitation. Often read as an allegory for globalization, this story of a poor, desperate youth roped into a nihilistic underground gambling ring could stand in for any situation in which certain privileged individuals are given absolute power over others. Babluani's overall technique is admirable for a first-timer, but in particular I admired the somewhat Podovkian way he uses shot repetition to infuse certain images and objects (like a light bulb switching on) with inherent emotional qualities.

Find Me Guilty

A little-seen gem from early 2006, I'm pretty sure this Sidney Lumet courtroom comedy-drama suffered from America's justifiable skepticism about Vin Diesel movies. He's atypically solid here, as disarmingly likable (and real-life) gangster Jackie DiNorscio, serving as his own attorney in a major, multi-defendent mob trial. At first, the film feels like a docu-drama reworking of My Cousin Vinny, all shiny suits and goombah jokes, but it eventually morphs into a somewhat strident takedown of our court system and conventional notions of "justice," as well as a character study about a man torn between his essentially good nature and the violent criminals with whom he associates. Peter Dinklage does some outstanding supporting work here as a mob attorney that's certain to be overlooked this Oscar season, only because the film opened early in the year.

The Proposition

The Proposition relocates the spaghetti western from Spain (standing in for Mexico and the American West) to Australia, but leaves the genre's trappings pretty much intact. A sparse, largely unpleasant story about brothers set against one another, the film is buoyed by its expressive, dusty cinematography, sharp supporting work from Ray Winstone and John Hurt and screenwriter Nick Cave's dirge-like original folk songs.

Dave Chappelle's Block Party

Mos Def, Kanye West, Common, Erykah Badu, a reuinted Fugees and Dead Prez perform live in Brooklyn and mess around with Dave Chappelle and music video maestro Michel Gondry is there! But this isn't just a document of a notable recent event.



Dave struggles with conflicting emotions while putting together his dream concert, a project that seems to stem equally from his desire to share his favorite music with his fans and his guilt over joining the wealthy elite. It's all particularly compelling in light of his decision to quit his mega-hit TV show and skip the country a short time after the movie was shot. This probably would have made my Top Ten if the film included more footage of the performances themselves. A concert film should never cut away in the middle of a song, ever, no matter how interesting the interstitial scenes may be.

Marie Antoinette

Sofia Coppola approached the fact-based period drama as few American filmmakers have before. Rather than focusing on the painstaking historical recreations that generally distract such pursuits, turning compelling stories into the cinematic equivalent of AP European History notes, Coppola abandons all context, refashioning French history as the story of a naive girl making her way in a confusing world. It's an audacious choice, and one that did not win her many new fans in France and around the world, but it works remarkably well for the movie she actually wanted to make. Kirsten Dunst gave one of her few successful performances to date in Coppola's Virgin Suicides and does similarly sharp work here, capturing Marie's initial awe at and eventual consumption by the decadence of Versailles. And despite the hype, the use of contemporary, anachronistic music plays as a sly afterthought, a witty aside reminding us of the patriarchal universality of Marie's dilemma rather than the focus of the entire enterprise.

MY 10 FAVORITE FILMS OF 2006

10. V for Vendetta

As an action movie, V for Vendetta gets barely passing grades. It's sloppy, the first 10 minutes drag horribly and the cinematography as a whole is surprisingly static and stagey for a comic book adaptation. But in a year packed full of politically outspoken films, V made some of the most incisive, direct attacks on George W. Bush's America, and for that it deserves recognition. (Even the details, like Abu Ghraib clips on monitors in the background and the half-O'Reilly/half-Hitchens TV pundit, felt spot-on.)

The fanboys who complained that it abandoned Alan Moore's critique of Thatcher's England missed the point entirely; writers/producers the Wachowski Brothers and director James McTeigue clearly had very little interest in the specific politics and subtext of Moore's book. They simply saw in V a character wielding a corrupt and authoritarian government's propaganda as a weapon against them, and realized how easily this could be applied to the police state that is modern America. Guy Fawkes references and all. That it's such a perfect match is a testament both to the strength of Moore's imaginitive original book and the Wachowski's renewed vigor as screenwriters.

9. Casino Royale

No way I thought a Bond film would ever make a list of my favorite films in a given year. To be honest, I've never been that huge of a Bond fan, probably because no truly worthwhile entries have hit theaters in my lifetime.

Daniel Craig and Martin Campbell for once didn't try to simply transplant the same old character into a present-day action movie. Instead, they rethought the entire notion of Bond-ness. The immediate trappings of Ian Fleming's creation are there, from James' trademark tuxedos and taste in martinis to the elegant fuck bunnies attracted to him seemingly by scent. But Craig's character doesn't really share that much in common with the previous iterations. He's meaner, less self-aware and no longer impervious to pain or capable of dodging bullets.

Though much of the praise has to go to the screenwriters for reviving the franchise's long-dormant pulse and cynical cool, Martin Campbell just directs the hell out of the entire film. An early footchase, making use of the "free run" techniques previously featured in District B13, and a late gunfight in a sinking Venetian edifice, rely largely on practical effects and authentic stunt work, giving them a punchy immediacy that's far more watchable and fun than Hollywood's standard CGI-intensive, quick-cut summer blockbusters.

8. The Queen

Stephen Frears' The Queen melds a disarming comedy about England's anachronistic monarchy and a quietly devastating drama about aging and feeling suddenly irrelevant. It's rare to see a film dramatizing iconic events of the recent past (in this case, the immediate aftermath of Princess Diana's death), but even rarer to see a filmmaker recontextualize history into a tightly-coiled, dramatic narrative rather than simply recreating the past as it most likely occured. Frears seems uninterested in authoritatively relating the true story of Elizabeth II meeting Tony Blair (and there would be no way to know what the two of them discussed behind closed doors anyway), but instead uses them to explore ideas about tradition and the importance of symbols to the human character.

Helen Mirren's compassionate performance as Elizabeth II, who commands attention by saying and doing as little as possible, has justifiably attracted a lot of awards attention, but the casting in every major role is impeccable. Michael Sheen, who previously worked with Frears on a BBC film about Tony Blair, turns the Prime Minister into a crafty but baffled straight man while physically embodying the guy as well as could be imagined. He deserves a lot more recognition than he has yet received. James Cromwell as Prince Phillip and Alex Jennings as Prince Charles are likewise spot-on and very funny in their respective roles.

7. Notes on a Scandal

I'm biased against films with voice-overs generally because they are such a cop-out. A large part of the challenge of rendering daily life cinematically is the visual expression of inward emotion. Having a character tell you precisely what he or she is thinking via narration circumvents this process, either in a lazy attempt to avoid the hard work of subtle storytelling or to cover for a convoluted, nonsensical plotline.

I sense, however, that if more narrators were as scintillatingly evil and darkly charming as Barbara Covett, I'd get over my prejudice against talky, voice-over-heavy films rather quickly. Barbara's stridently sociopathic, bitterly cynical diary entries, read by Dame Judi Dench with an air of misanthropy and self-satisfaction that recalls Humbert Humbert, elevate what would otherwise be an earnest melodrama into a devastating exploration of panic and isolation. Patrick Marber's adaptation of Zoe Heller's novel bristles with sexual tension, but as in Mike Nichols' film of Marber's play Closer, Notes on a Scandal remains detached, coldly analyzing the human need for companionship and physical closeness with an anthropologist's eye. This is the National Geographic Channel of the perverted mind.

Dench so perfectly nails the odd jumble of Barbara's personality - the ability to appear compassionate while possessing no actual feelings, the seething hatred that pivots instantly into affection - that she seems quite natural and quotidian, despite the fact that nearly no one has a close personal friendship with anyone this vile. Cate Blanchett acquits herself well in an even trickier role, as the sympathetic schoolteacher who carries on an adulterous affair with a 15 year old boy.

6. Three Times

Largely discredited film theorist Siegfried Kracauer believed that the most cinematic types of plots were what he deemed "found stories." That is, stories that arose not from literature or the demands of a given genre, but from the chaotic, irrational business of daily human life. Realistic films, then, don't recreate human life in front of the capture. Ideally, they discover the hidden truths that are already expressed around us daily, but in ways that we can not immediately or directly experience.

Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao Hsien is one of the few contemporary filmmakers to truly hew to Kracauer's (and in some respects, great French theorist Andre Bazin's) ideas about realism in storytelling. He makes films that aren't driven by premises or concepts, low or high. His films aren't particularly ideological or philosophical. He attempts to show life as it may be genuinely perceived by the human eye, to record scenes for posterity and to then scan and edit that footage in an effort to unearth deeper meanings and significance than we would typically derive were these events to happen in front of us (or to us) in reality.

In Three Times, the same two actors (Shu Qi and Chang Chen) play out three different love stories in three different time periods. The first story, set in the '60s, concerns a soldier who meets a cute girl in a pool hall and writes to her periodically. The 1911-set sequence, made in the style of a silent film but with synchronized singing, finds a businessman falling in love with an emotionally remote prostitute. The third sequence concerns an chronically unfaithful couple in modern-day Taipei.

I refer to them here as love stories because they each depict a man and a woman who share some sort of romantic connection, but Hsien never bothers to tell a standard movie love story. Usually, a couple meets and hits it off immediately, but then faces some complication or another keeping them apart.

Three Times presents largely ambiguous, wandering narratives about the nature of affection and the world's indifference to our inner desires. These narratives are inseparable from the material environment in which they play out. Hsien's stationary camera and extremely long takes force the audience's attention on the details of the settings, the subtle nuances of the performances and the music choices, all of which relate back to the respective time periods. (Like the deep focus shots in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, many of Hsien's static panoramas defy us to follow the filmmaker's intention. Where are we supposed to be looking? What, if anything, is actually important about my having this viewpoint at this moment?)

Several "meanings" could be ascribed to the technique here. Is the film suggesting that, though the nature of human emotions may seem consistant, we are really just slaves to our environment and the specific sensory details of the world we occupy? Most of the lovers' dialogue, behavior and surroundings are dictated by the times in which they live. The modern couple converses via cell phone and text message, while the turn-of-the-century couple communicate through surruptitiously-passed notes. Each segment opens with a title card and a glimpse at some of the period's defining technology - a jukebox, a personal computer, a lantern.

Would the soldier be the enterpreneur if he had been alive at a different time? Or are these meant to be totally separate individuals linked only be their temporarily similar circumstances? Though the stories have relatively little to do with one another, some connections are possible. All the men are clients at businesses employing the women. (One barmaid, one courtesan and one performing artist).

These kinds of "explanations" can be satisfying to a certain extent. Certainly, there are many ideas whirling around the film that could make for an intriguing thesis. But the film's really more about taking time to observe. Not to watch, but to observe. To soak in these characters and their world, and to really notice the small gestures or half-heard background noises that we'd normally skip over on our busy way to the next task, conversation, meeting or errand. To see if, admist the chaos of 20th and 21st Century life, there might be a sensible, underlying Story to be discovered.

5. The Devil and Daniel Johnston

Daniel Johnston is a mentally unstable man from Austin, Texas who writes and records very strange, highly confessional pop songs. Jeff Feuerzeig's film clearly holds the man's musical ability in high regard, but generally refuses to descend into schmaltzy sentimentality. This is not a portrait of a "mad genius," whose insanity fuels his ability to Create, but a frank and affectionate consideration of one man's difficult struggle through life and how he has touched a multitude.

Daniel seems to feel things more deeply than most people. He's still haunted by the memory of a girl who broke his heart as a teenager. He's deathly afraid of the Devil, whom he views as a personal adversary. The fictional character to whom he most strongly identifies (and to whom he dedicates a number of songs) is Casper the Friendly Ghost, a lonely dead boy. While in a mental institution, he phones his manager and asks if he can become the new pitchman for Mountain Dew.

This raw, almost childlike openness is part of what give Daniel's songs their emotional heft. We can relate to them not because we all worship Casper the Friendly Ghost, or live in daily fear of our own mortality, but because Daniel's incapable of hiding his naked, needy humanity. It bleeds out of all his songs, and gives them an accessibility and impact that all the ironically-distant, theatrical Panic at the Discos and Fallout Boys out there can't begin to match.

Feuerzeig's film not only establishes Daniel's cred as an unheralded visionary, but challenges the audience with some complex and unanswerable questions about the nature of his music. If it's Daniel's mental illness that makes his music stand out, what does that say about the overall nature of artistic endeavor? Is it wrong for other Austin musicians, and the entire Indiesphere at large, to fetishize Daniel's madness, even if his notereity and flirtations with a real music career have brought him considerable joy?

Easily the best documentary I saw with 2006, The Devil and Daniel Johnston is among the greatest films ever made about a real, troubled artist. It's right up there with Werner Herzog's My Best Fiend and Terry Zwigoff's Crumb.

4. The Departed

Though Martin Scorsese has received most of the attention for his punchy, inventive direction, The Departed is the year's most tense, exciting and entertaining thriller because of William Monahan's savagely witty script. This film contains some of the most quotable dialogue since Glengarry Glen Ross, and the various twists and turns are surprising, timed to perfection and orchestrated beautifully.

Though he's been making great films all along, Scorsese hasn't worked with material that's this fertile and cinematic in many, many years. The gangster underworld of Boston feels of a piece with the other criminal communities Scorsese's camera has explored - the Jersey hideouts of Goodfellas or the Vegas counting rooms of Casino - but this time, the likable characters and musings about love, honor and loyalty serve are the sideshow. Scorsese buries some of his own mannerisms beneath Michael Mann-inspired cop drama theatrics, including the best straight-up action scenes he's ever shot.

Alec Baldwin, Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg are the standouts, each one turning in his respective best performance of the decade. Also notable are Ray Winstone as enforcer Mr. French, Vera Farmiga as a psychiatrist caught in the crossfire and Matt Damon, who's capable of doing really solid work when not phoning it in.

3. INLAND EMPIRE

After giving it some thought, I think this movie is about an actress who becomes so emotionally invested in a film character, she actually enters a pan-dimensional portal which causes her to experience multiple tragedies at once. Propelled from her own past traumas to the traumas of her character to the traumas lurking in her future, she becomes trapped in a vicious cycle of confused love, nightmarish cruelty and narrowly escaped redemption.

Or something like that. Lynch has not so much directed a film as crafted an experience, one that's difficult to summarize and even more difficult to shake off. Unfortunately, most Americans don't want to pay $10 to spend 3 hours being bewildered and frightened, so only a small fraction of our national population will get the opportunity to take in INLAND EMPIRE the way it was surely meant to be seen, in a theater full of other confused, creeped out people.

Very few filmmakers would have the stones to put something this inscrutable, lengthy and, quite frankly, terrifying, out there for the masses to see. Sure, Chris Cunningham directed that freaky Rubber Johnny short, but he didn't open it at the Crest and stand outside giving away free passes to senior citizens, did he? This is Lynch at his most immediate, audacious and vital, something truly original and refreshing in a year overstuffed with rehashes.

2. Children of Men

When I initially saw Alfonso Cuaron's immense, sweeping masterpiece, I got kind of caught up in the specifics of the political analogy and missed the big picture. But I've come to my senses now and realized this is the single most important, most on-target and best directed fictional film of 2006. A riveting action film, a fiery rebuke of contemporary American policies and a thoughtful sci-fi adaptation all delivered in one stylish, fast-paced, extraordinarily gripping 2 hour package.

Cuaron's film ostensibly depicts the Britain of 20 years hence. Humans have become infertile for some reason, which has led to widespread panics, rioting and anarchy. Britain, we understand, has barely held together under authoritarian rule, which the rest of the planet has essentially gone to shit. Brave hero Clive Owen is soon enlisted to protect the world's only known pregnant woman, who must be delivered to The Human Project before the government or the radical lefitsts can get a hold of her.

But it's all just an extended metaphor for contemporary America. The fascistic police enforce brutal immigration laws, scapegoating refugees and hoarding them into squalid, overpopulated camps to die from exposure and starvation. Random explosions and terrorist bombings give everyone a constant sense of unease. Constant marketing encourages people to conform, even in death. Sound familiar?

Which brings me to my problem with the film's analogy. It posits, essentially, that we live in a ruined world over which two groups are battling - the authoritarian government and bands of lefty terrorists plotting a Communist revolution.

Seriously. Cuaron's film seems to argue that these two forces are equal and in opposition, that we all are simply caught in the middle of a larger war about which we are only partially aware. The government, you see, would want to get their hands on a new baby for use as a propagandizing tool, to extoll their own virtue and the citizenry's need for their benevolent iron fist. And the Commie radicals want the baby to instigate their imaginary revolucion, to unite the refugees against their captors.

Oh please. To look at contemporary America and see the Bush Administration and ANSWER as equal and opposing positions that are squeezing the American public between the brute strength of their countervailing ideologies is to be a complete fucking idiot. There's only one group with any power that's fucking up America's future from 2000-2006, and it ain't fucking PETA. A customer came into the store and actually argued this point with me the other day.

"Who were the evil communist radicals supposed to represent," I queried. "Whose fundamentalist ideology and opportunistic quest for power pose as noxious a threat to America's future as BushCo?"

His response? "The ACLU." That's what we're dealing with here...

Anyway, I still think that's an essential flaw in the viewpoint of Children of Men. But it's essentially a minor point. Otherwise, the film is top drawer. In particular, Cuaron and Emmanuel Lubieski have concocted a brilliant technique for shooting their considerable action set pieces. Using a handheld camera, essentially simulating documentary war footage, they place the viewer into the middle of the action in a very immediate, visceral manner. Several extended shots (some seeming to last several minutes) develop an uneasy tension as they unfold. Even if the viewer doesn't consciously notice that there have been no cuts, the unbroken perspective on chaotic scenes of warfare can't help but pull them in.

As a sober look at the sad reality of our decaying civilization, Children of Men really can't receive enough praise. Regrettably marketed by a clueless studio as a chase movie, it's more like a thinly-whispered prayer for some kind of hope. Surely, Cuaron timidly suggests, in the midst of all this horror, there must be some way out for humanity. Right?

1. Borat

So, Children of Men was one artist's metaphorical take on modern American life. In Borat, Sacha Baron Cohen spares us the allegory and simply holds up a mirror. He hides himself behind a moustache to show us who we are. Sure, it's funny, but only because it's so fucking ugly. Those people lucky enough to be born in the wealthiest, most privileged, most isolated nation on the Earth have of course turned bitter, petulant and utterly divorced from reality.

You can tell Borat is the best film of the year because it's the Most Sued. Any movie that's outrageous enough to inspire more than a dozen individual lawsuits must by definition be among the year's best. I first saw the film at a focus group screening in February, and suspected that most of the material would never make it to mainstream American movie screens. Two naked men wrestling in front of a convention full of businessmen? Frat boys fondly dreaming of the day when the powers that be finally see fit to reinstitute slavery? A grown man handing his own bowel movement to a woman wrapped in a napkin?

In fact, the only scene I saw that did not make it into the finished film concerned Borat infiltrating a porno set, and it has already shown up on more than one website. But Cohen's daring in terms of nudity and physical comedy is outmatched by his willingness to show the unadulterated truth about American's ignorance of foreign cultures, etiquette, history and their own proposed belief systems. Several reviews of the film have noted that he frequently repeats certain jokes and one-liners (particularly concerning his prostitute sister and retarded brother, Bilo). This is true but utterly beside the point. The joke aren't Borat's little sayings (though many are quite funny). The joke is that such an obvious fraud not only convinces gullible Americans, but inspires them to reveal their darkest prejudices, childish belief systems and xenophobia.

Consider one of my favorite scenes, when Borat stumbles into a Pentacostal church service and begs for Christ's forgiveness. This scene gets overlooked, because it's not really the film's most fall-down funny (plus, it comes pretty soon after the naked wrestling, when audiences are essentially laughed-out and exhausted for a brief period). But it's clearly one of the most subversive scenes in any 2006 American film. Here we have an actor playing a goofy, sketch-comedy-style version of a Muslim, making a joke out of professing his devotion to Christianity.

There's no two ways about it. Cohen is making the Pentacostal religion into a joke. "Watch this! I'll make these idiots believe I'm really converting to their crazy, stupid faith! See, they totally buy it! They think I'm speaking in tongues! What a bunch of idiots!" Other films make poke sidelong fun at certain Christians, but I can't think of another film that holds an entire strain of the religion up for such direct ridicule. Bravo, I say.

So those are my best films of the year. I've noticed that a lot of critics and websites chose Jean-Pierre Melville's 1964 classic Army of Shadows as their film of the year. I saw this film theatrically during its American rollout this past year, and it's undoubtedly brilliant. (I reviewed it here.)

But to call it the Best Film of 2006 is the most snooty, ridiculous copout imaginable. "Ooooh, look at me. I'm selecting this old French movie as the Best Film of 2006, because there's simply no modern movies that appeal to my sophisticated Old World pallatte! Now where are my Alain Resnais DVD's! I'm in the mood for some light entertainment!"

Doing the Wrong Thing

I have worked at Laser Blazer for almost exactly 2 years. That's not the longest period I have ever held a single employer. From 2001-2004, I worked for Softitler Net Inc., before it was purchased by the Deluxe Corporation of Burbank. I barely escaped with my life.

2 years is not a terribly long time to work somewhere, yet it began to feel like I had been working at a video store forever. There's something strange and a bit unsettling about working in such a static environment. The store opens every day, the same customers come in. The movies they rent change, the conversations are altered slightly, but otherwise the days become an endlessly repeating loop.

My life began to take on this pattern. Wake up, go to work, come home, watch movies, sleep. It was an enjoyable cycle in many ways. I'll always recall my days at Laser Blazer fondly: I made a lot of friends, I watched thousands of films, I joked around with Benicio del Toro, I asked Kevin Smith about being fruit-basketed by Ben Affleck, I consumed several dozen delicious free cupcakes, I finally got to see Chimes at Midnight, I dined-and-dashed the Norms on Pico, I read an insane customer's dreadful screenplay and I met Gabriel Garcia Marquez, face-to-face. It was by far the most fun, interesting job I have ever had.

But it was a badly-paid retail job. I couldn't help but dream of something more. For one thing, people don't respect the retail employee. They just don't. When you work in a store, you are officially a piece of shit to 90% of the population. I wish it was not this way, and I make it a personal point not to treat people this way, but that's just the way it is. I got tired of feeling like I was living on the lowest rung. I knew it was time for a change.

So I've been sending out resumes online and making plans for my future. Hey, I'm 28. As in, too fucking late. Motivation's a strange thing. At least, it's strange to me, because I've never had any. I'm pretty much content to drift along through life, watching a lot of movies and writing and reading and otherwise doing very little. I had a friend named Dave who purposefully took a ton of classes his junior year of college and decimated his social life in order to graduate early. He wanted to get out of school as quickly as he could, so he could enter the workforce.

If he had told me that he planned to eat his own foot, I could not have been more baffled by his reasoning.

Nevertheless, I felt motivated to try something different. I was getting bored. I was sick of sharing my sole daily human interaction with the nutjobs who took the bus in from the Valley, yelling out grammatically incorrect requests for loathsome '80s comedies and loud, witless action films across the store at high volumes, oblivious to the wretched, Staten Island-esque odors they emit constantly due to both a general lack of hygeine and a diet made up mainly of fast-food and Chili Cheese Fritos.

So imagine my excitement when, earlier this week, I got the news that I have been hired by a Shadowy and Mysterious Project Which Can Not Be Named. Seriously. They won't tell me the name of the company. It's a secret.

Maybe when I show up on Monday for my first day, I can find out the name and what the company will actually do. But I'd imagine I still won't be able to tell you people. Oh well. I'm sure it must be tons of fun, if I can't even know what it is or what exactly I'll be doing.

Here's the big problem: Shadowy and Mysterious Project Which Can Not Be Named (henceforth SMPWCNBN) wants me to start ASAP (henceforth "as soon as possible.") But Laser Blazer, clearly, needs me to work my scheduled shifts there.

Now, I could have simply told Laser Blazer that I would need to stop working there by Monday, and worked all my scheduled shifts in between. But that didn't work out for me, for a long and complicated reason that I will now go into in as little overwrought, navel-gazing detail as possible...

As I may have mentioned previously here on CBI (or maybe not...I'm rarely in this introspective a mood), I sporadically suffer from acute anxiety and panic disorder. I say "sporadically" with good cause. Most of the time, I feel fine. Well, no, that's not true. Most of the time, I feel like shit, but in the normal, everyday way that everyone does all the time.

But I don't generally feel an inordinate amount of anxiety. Unless, say, there's a cougar around. Unfortunately, I have a strange trigger - new employment. It's not only new employment that sets me off, actually. I once went on a cross-country road trip with a college friend that caused me to develop pretty severe anxiety. And when I flunked the driving exam and had to retake the test a few weeks later (I exited via the entrance to the DMV...true story...), I got really bad panic attacks for about 2 weeks.

Generally speaking, though, having to switch jobs is the only thing that sets me off, but it sets me off like a motherfucker. We're talking full blown, Tony Soprano-style deathseizures. I tense up and can't do anything. I have quit at least 10 jobs in my life within the first 2 or 3 days, because I get panicky and need to simply escape.

This has made getting new jobs exceedingly difficult. On top of the challenge of just finding a new place to work, I need to find a new place in which I feel comfortable almost immediately, or I'll quit. I just know this about myself. So usually, I need a few days in advance to psych myself up for a new job. To get mentally prepared for the strain of feeling that level of anxiety and panic.

This may not make a lot of sense if you've never had a fullblown anxiety attack. Believe it or not, the best description I have ever heard of what it's like the be in the grips of this thing comes from a member of the band Insane Clown Posse. He said that it's like being tied to a railroad track, and you can see the train bearing down on you. Only you know perfectly well there is no train, and you feel like this all the time.

I can deal with it for a while, but when the real deep dark panic sets in (I used to call it "The Fear" when I was a kid), I'm pretty much at the mercy of my emotions. I do stupid things like quit jobs, fall down, throw up all over myself and this weird mix between crying and blubbering that's probably the most pathetic state in which I could possibly exist for any length of time. There have been several potential careers I have thrown away because of this problem. It's part of the reason I'm a 28 year old with a Master's Degree working in a neighborhood video store.

So, I knew (knew!) that, if I was going to try to hold on to this new SMPWCNBN job, I wouldn't be able to keep up with my Laser Blazering duties.

I know this is irrational. There is no good reason I could not work the next few days at the video store and then start work at the SMPWCNBN. Yet it's just not going to happen.

What am I going to spend the next few days doing? Working on not collapsing into a little ball of nervous energy and dying.

This is unfortunate, both because I get really tired of living like a little bundle of nervous energy on the brink of imaginary panic-death, and because it really screws over all the good people who work at Laser Blazer, who up until today depended on me. It was not an easy decision to do this to them. I considered seriously putting in my fair two weeks notice, putting off the new job and hoping for the best.

But folks, I've got to tell you, I know myself too well to fall into that trap. During those two weeks, I'd devise some very clever reasons not to take this new job, and I'd become so overwhelmed with fear about the SMPWCNBN, I'd never be able to face it. In many ways, I'm a weak man. I can own up to that.

So I pulled the trigger and did the thing that was right (and easier) for myself. I did the Wrong Thing. And I will now pay the price. I understand that Laser Blazer may be off limits to me now. At least, there are individuals of influence there who would prefer that I did not return, at least in the near future. I will be sending back all of my outstanding rentals (and my complimentary Laserdisc player) with my roommate, who still works at the store.

It's a sad situation. Odd to think that I won't set foot in the place I've spent so many years again any time soon. Odd that the people who once made up the sum total of my social network will be essentially inaccessible to me now. I suppose, when done properly, life is both extremely stressful and exciting. If you're having an easy, laid-back but boring ride, you're doing something wrong.

Low-Life Liars

Lately, I've been thinking about shutting down the blog. I haven't come to any 100% solid decision yet, one way or the other. But I've spent probably an hour or two per day, on average, writing for this thing and would really appreciate being able to devote that time to other, slightly more productive pursuits.

But that's only half the story. The real reason I have lost some of my initial zest for blogging has to do with what's going on in the news. I've been writing Crushed by Inertia for a bit more than 2 years now. For all that time, plus an additional year and three-quarters, America has been fighting a bloody, unwinnable war against a vaguely-identified, largely inscrutable enemy. I have voiced my opposition to this insane brutality, if not daily, than at least regularly.

I just don't know what's left to say. I suppose I could just drift over to other topics and stop repeating myself about Iraq all the time, but it wouldn't feel right not to address that big horrible thing our country keeps doing that's in the news every day.

Here's the trouble with our entire public discourse right here.

At the moment, conservatives are pretending to be shocked (shocked!) about Barbara Boxer's remarks to Condi Rice about who pays the costs of the war. Taken out of context, a bit of Boxer's rather extensive comments may sound as if the Senator is degrading Dr. Rice for not having a family. So long as you scan her comments carefully looking for something about which you might object.

Here's the non-offensive "offending" text:

“Who pays the price?” Boxer asked Rice, who is unmarried and doesn’t have children. “I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families.”

Not so outrageous, right? She's making a simple point. The Americans who suffer and will continue to suffer for Bush's War are not the politicians making the big decisions in Washington. They are the soldiers and those who love and depend upon the soldiers. I mean...yes. An important point, but not a particularly novel observation. Note, as well, that Boxer includes herself in the category of people who will not pay a personal price for the war.

Here's Tony Snowjob's response:

White House spokesman Tony Snow called Boxer’s remarks, made during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting Thursday, “outrageous.”

…”Here you’ve got a professional woman, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Barbara Boxer is sort of throwing little jabs because Condi doesn’t have children, as if that means that she doesn’t understand the concerns of parents,” Snow said. “Great leap backward for feminism,” he added.

Oh, man...Tony Snow pretending to care about great leaps backward for feminism! That is classic! Here's Tony Snow on abortion:

If South Dakota has led the way toward a democratic eruption, it also has shaken up the political marketplace by rejecting the popular rape-and-incest exception.

The loophole doesn't make moral sense. If life begins at conception, children conceived through rape and incest are human beings. They are innocent of crimes, even if they are the byproduct of horrendous violence against women. So on what basis should we permit their destruction?

If one argues that a woman would suffer trauma by bringing such babies to term, what would prevent other women from citing trauma as an equally cogent reason for their abortions? Trauma introduces an obligation to pay special heed to the victims of rape or incest.

As a hilarious sidenote, that quote comes from a Townhall column Snow wrote in March of last year. I have pulled it, however, from the blog E Pluribus Unum, because Townhall has apparently removed it and all of Snow's other writings from their website.

Hmm...Why would they delete Snow's ramblings? It's almost as if...they know it sounds backwardfuckass insane to refer to cases of rape and incest as "loopholes."

I mean, let's be honest...Who among us hasn't know at least one young girl who decided she'd really like to have a fetus aborted, but is afraid of the potential legal ramifications?

"Fear not!" says Tony Snow, champion of the Feminist Cause. "All you have to do is submit to violent sexual assault by a stranger! Or, if that doesn't pan out, probably because you are too ugly, simply fuck a close male family member! It's a total loophole!"

So, okay, Snow couldn't be more full of shit if he chased 10 Taco Bell value meals with a gallon of prune juice. Granted. Here's my favorite warmongering, nasty but still somehow adorably befuddled conservative pundit, Andrew Sullivan, on Boxer's remarks, which he deems "vile."

That's the only word to describe Senator Boxer's ad feminam attack on Condi Rice yesterday. There was a trace of homophobia to the smear as well. This kind of attack is like the "chickenhawk" smear and worthy of low-life liars like Michael Moore. We really should be able to debate national security without the politics of personal destruction. The senator should apologize. Today.

Holy fuckstick. I disagree with pretty much every single aspect of that statement. Even some of the punctuation. In fact, let's look at that again, and I'll bold everything that's clearly objectionable.

That's the only word to describe Senator Boxer's ad feminam attack on Condi Rice yesterday. There was a trace of homophobia to the smear as well. This kind of attack is like the "chickenhawk" smear and worthy of low-life liars like Michael Moore. We really should be able to debate national security without the politics of personal destruction. The senator should apologize. Today.

(1) The only word? I mean, even if you think that Boxer's comment was out of line, Andrew won't allow for any other possible interpretation. What about "inappropriate"? "Offensive?" "Hurful"? "Misguided"? No, the objective truth about Boxer's statement, printed above, is that it's vile. Why? Because it was said by Barbara Boxer, whom Andrew dislikes.

(2) Why is it necessarily anti-feminist for Boxer to point out that Rice will be personally unaffected by the costs of this war? Now, if you wanted to do some research on Barbara Boxer's history of questioning members of the Bush administration, and discovered that she had never made a similar comment to a male member, you would have the beginnings of a case. It would still be inconclusive, unfortunately, because the stakes of the war debate have never been as high as they are at this crucial turning point, so perhaps the question never seemed as pertinant to Boxer before. Also, perhaps Boxer simply does not know the family status of all the male Bush administration members, while Rice's singleton status is a well-known and frequently-discussed matter of public record. But you could at least say "here is some inconclusive evidence to suggest that Boxer meant the 'childless' remark as a feminist attack." Of course, Andrew has done none of this legwork, and makes none of these exceptions. He just assumes that Boxer's vile statement attacks Rice in an anti-feminist manner.

(3) A trace of homophobia? Guh? Here's the Boxer quote again:

“Who pays the price?” Boxer asked Rice, who is unmarried and doesn’t have children. “I’m not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old and my grandchild is too young. You’re not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, with immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families.”

CONDI RICE HAS NO IMMEDIATE FAMILY! She is single, childless and both of her parents are dead. Is she gay? I have no idea. Who gives a fuck. She's warped and evil, that's all I care about. And Boxer's calling her out on frogmarching other people's families into a kill zone without having any personal stake in the outcome. I have no idea where Andrew sees homophobia coming into play here.

(4) I also don't see any smear. She doesn't even address an adjective at Condi. She simply uses the pronoun "you." There is nothing wrong with being an adult woman with no husband or children, therefore pointing this information out can not be considered a smear.

(5) "Chickenhawk" may be considered a smear, but it's such an accurate and succinct way to describe the critique of unenlisted war supporters, I don't think it qualifies. It upsets these people so because it's so dead-on accurate.

(6) How hilarious is it that he calls "chickenhawk" and "childless" vile smears, and then thinks nothing of referring to Michael Moore as a "lowlife" in the very next sentence. Andrew, Andrew..."Lowlife" is far more personal and vicious an attack than "chickenhawk" or "individual with no immediate family." You're implying that Michael Moore is a lesser biological form than yourself. That he is subhuman. War supporters self-identify as hawks, so the only offensive term there is "chicken," which is something elementary-school kids call one another. Grow the fuck up.

Also, though it's exceedingly common to hear right-wingers call Moore a "liar," I have only ever seen evidence that he occasionally employs questionable reasoning. No one has ever demonstrated to me any proof that there is a direct lie in one of his films.

(7) Why is Sullivan pretending that Americans have ever debated national security in a sensible, reasonable manner. Bush allows for no such thing as this "debate" which you speak of. He's the Deciderator, remember? What he says, goes. And he says, "bomb those sandy bastards"!

(8) "The politics of personal destruction," eh? You mean, like outing a covert CIA agent because she's married to a political enemy? Or like continually questioning the sanity and sincerity of a former Vice-President, one-time Presidential candidate and environmental activist over the course of multiple decades? Or, perhaps, implying that a war hero may have shot himself in order to secure medals? Or using an opponent from your own party's adoption of a non-white baby as an opportunity for cheap race-baiting? Those are all pretty personal, destructive tactics...

(9) Note to Democratic politicans: Feel free to ignore all advice from Andrew Sullivan.

Okay, so Andrew is wrong wrong wrong about this particular issue, a shocking 9 times. It has to be some kind of land speed record.

But he's been right about a far more important issue for at least a few months now. I'll probably never forgive him for calling me a traitor for opposing the Iraq War (not personally, of course) back in 2003, but few bloggers have been as on top of the Bush administration's bungling and torturing (the ol' B&T) in the past year than Sully.

And that's really the galling, infuriating thing about this entire faux-scandal that makes me want to quit blogging. It's all just a distraction from the carnage in Iraq, and when I write about its naked stupidity, I just end up catapulting the propaganda a bit for Team Bush and distracting all of you from what's important.

So here are Boxer's actual comments in context. Taken together, they are an eloquent and, in some places, heart-breaking assault on the war Rice helped to start and run. Notice that they have nothing at all to do with Condi's personal character or choice of lifestyle.

So from where I sit, Madame Secretary, you are not listening to the American people. You are not listening to the military. You are not listening to the bipartisan voices from the Senate. You are not listening to the Iraq Study Group. Only you know who you are listening to, and you wonder why there is a dark cloud of skepticism and pessimism over this nation. I think people are right to be skeptical after listening to some of the things that have been said by your administration.

For example, October 19th '05, you came before this committee to discuss, in your words, how we assure victory in Iraq, and you said the following. In answer to Senator Feingold, "I have no doubt that as the Iraqi security forces get better -- and they are getting better and are holding territory, and they are doing the things with minimal help -- we are going to be able to bring down the level of our forces. I have no doubt" -- I want to reiterate -- "I have no doubt that that's going to happen in a reasonable time frame." You had no doubt, not a doubt. And last night, the president's announcement of an escalation is a total rebuke of your confident pronouncement.

Now, the issue is who pays the price, who pays the price? I'm not going to pay a personal price. My kids are too old, and my grandchild is too young. You're not going to pay a particular price, as I understand it, within immediate family. So who pays the price? The American military and their families, and I just want to bring us back to that fact.

NPR has done a series of interviews with families who have lost kids. And the announcer said to one family in the Midwest, "What's changed in your life since your son's death?" The answer comes back, "Everything. You can't begin to imagine how even the little things change, how you go through the day, how you celebrate Christmas" --

Mr. Chairman, could I please --

SENATOR JOSEPH BIDEN: (Off mike) --

SENATOR BARBARA BOXER: "You can't begin to imagine how you celebrate any holiday or birthday. There's an absence. It's not like the person has never been there. They always were there, and now they're not. And you're looking at an empty hole. He has a Purple Heart, the flag that was on his coffin, and one of the two urns that we got back." He came back in three parts: two urns and one coffin. He's buried in three places, if you count their house. He's buried in New Jersey. He's buried in Cleveland.

That's who is going to pay the price.

And then you have the most moving thing I've ever heard on a radio station, which is a visit to a burn unit and a talk with the nurse. Devon suffered burns over 93 percent of his body, three amputations: both legs, one arm. His back was broken, internal organs exposed. As the hospital staff entered the room, they would see photographs on the wall, pictures of a healthy private standing proud in his dark-green Army dress uniform.

"It's very important," says the major, "that nurses see the patient as a person, because the majority of our patients have facial burns, and they're unrecognizable, and they're extremely disfigured."

So who pays the price? Not me. Not you. These are the people who pay the price.

The Reddest Eyes You've Ever Seen...In Seattle...

And the pills the greenest green...In Seattle...

Check out Paula Abdul, appearing on a local Seattle affiliate to promote "American Idol," and thoroughly wasted off her ass. I'm no expert, but I'd guesstimate she's about 300 sheets to the wind.



It's pretty much totally awesome that the first generation of reality TV hosts are starting to self-destruct. Abdul's become the most ludicrous public drunk since Henry Earl. Donald Trump is currently losing a public war of wars to Rosie O'Donnell and Barbara Walters! P. Diddy's last album went over like Bush's Iraq speech. And Tyra Banks now weighs a good deuce, deuce and a half. (Not bad!)



You know what this means...It will only be a few more years until the first generation of reality TV stars begins to self-destruct, and that's going to be one hell of a good time. (Well, okay, except for Omarosa and Janice Dickenson. They're starting out at such an admirable level of crazy, there aren't many depths left to plunge.)

Everybody Likes Trout

So, it looks like we won't only be shipping 20,000 more Americans into a dusty shooting range. We'll also be sending them into Iran and then possibly Syria! Great! Because, you know, we have more than enough supplies and armor for the men and women who are already there! And it has been going so well for us lately, what with all the bullet-and-drill-hole-riddled corpses turning up each day and the state-sponsored Saddam snuff film that's been making the rounds online.

I'm continually shocked and appalled by our willingness as a nation to send our fellow citizens to their deaths. Not by the gall of our leadership. I'm long past the point of being surprised by Dick Cheney's or George W. Bush's unquenchable bloodlust. They're just two sick deviants, less capable of genuine human feeling than most hand tools. Expecting them to propose rational solutions to our diplomatic or military problems is like expecting your newborn infant to compose a libretto while riding a unicycle down the Eastern slope of Mt. Haleakala. It's our press and that remaining 30-some percent of our population who clings even to this day to "war at all costs" as a personal political philosophy who continue to make me sick to my stomach. "Do whatever you like, but don't try to stop our unwinnable war!"

It's over. We lose. The confederation known as "Iraq" is gone, torn down to make way for an explosion factory. (Okay, fine, an explosion factory with a big Wal-Mart in the center.) Almost anyone sane who knows what he or she is talking about at this point has voiced this opinion or some variation on it. Freaking Henry Kissinger was saying that he didn't think we can win this thing, and that guy was still arguing for Vietnamization in, like, the late '80s.

If you still want us there, it's because you just like war, which probably means it's not costing you anything. Now, I'm not saying you should be silenced if this is genuinely your opinion. Write articles about the thrill of being a citizen of an aggressively militaristic nation, of being an enthusiastic civilian during wartime. I'm sure such a stand will earn you a lot of fans in the armed forces! (<--sarcasm)

But don't try to pretend it's just one last little "surge" and then we can win this thing. When Joe Klein says stuff like this, it embarrasses all of us collectively, as a nation:

And so a challenge to those who slagged me in their comments. Can you honestly say the following:

Even though I disagree with this escalation, I am hoping that General Petraeus succeeds in calming down Baghdad.

That's missing the point on an epic, previously unimaginable scale. Klein's lost on a Claire Littletonian scale. (Or, for fans of classic TV, a Will Robinsonian scale). It's not about whether we hope that the surge thing won't work. Planning military strategy isn't about hopes and dreams, and even so, I'm not even sure what Petraeus is actually supposed to do. (They say this operation is an effort to "resecure" Baghdad, but what does that mean? It was already secured once, and then it de-secured itself. Who's to say that won't just happen again, even if we "succeed" at first?)

It's about knowing that it's the wrong idea, just like many sensible citizens knew the war was the wrong idea in the first place. And you know how we all know it's the wrong idea now, even if some of us were wrong four years ago? Because this new idea is actually the same goddamn stupid idea BushCo has been progressing for four years!

This is not a change in strategy. It's a change in tactics, and a minor one at that. The strategy remains the same - get into potentially lethal firefights with insurgents representing a variety of different sects, organizations and interests, never able to depend on support from the fledgling and partisan government or the angry locals. I mean, yeah, it sounds good, but thus far the results have not been pretty.

And on top of this, as if it wasn't bad enough to deal with the notion of escalating this clusterfuck, which sounds to me like discovering that you have indigestion and immediately inhaling a dozen Taco Bell chalupas, it appears that Great American Warlord Bush may be spreading the fun into Iran and Syria as well! To make sure they don't feel left out, I guess...

Washington intelligence, military and foreign policy circles are abuzz today with speculation that the President, yesterday or in recent days, sent a secret Executive Order to the Secretary of Defense and to the Director of the CIA to launch military operations against Syria and Iran.

The President may have started a new secret, informal war against Syria and Iran without the consent of Congress or any broad discussion with the country.

Well, at least it's informal. It'll be like the Casual Friday War, so all the troops can wear collared shirts and jeans and take an extra half hour for lunch.

This is very real, I'm afraid. Today, American forces raided an Iranian consulate in the Iraqi city of Arbil and detained 5 Iranian employees. Now, correct me if I'm wrong (and I may be, because this is not my area of expertise), but isn't a consulate considered to be foreign soil? So, technically, did American forces just invade Iran today?

I can only think of three reasons why Bush might have decided not only to escalate the Iraq War but to destabilize the entire Middle East by engaging in several simultaneous wars.

(1) Bush saw the 2004 Election as some kind of unspoken suicide pact between himself and the voting public. Their decision, despite representing a decidedly thin majority, was to go down collectively with the ship, to take Bush's fate as our own and mutually accept the consequences.

We'll call this The Badlands Theory, in honor of Terrence Malick's oddball lovers-on-the-run crime spree classic of the '70s. In the film, Martin Sheen kills his girlfriend Sissy Spacek's father and convinces her to run off with him. They commit a series of pointless crimes while evading the police, and are eventually captured.

So, in this analogy, Bush is the Martin Sheen character; cold and indifferent to everything and everyone, concerned only with fulfilling his temporary urges and ensuring the loyalty of his cohort. America is Sissy Spacek. And with a few exceptions, you pretty much never want to be represented in any scenario by a Sissy Spacek character.

We're being pulled around the flat, desolate, hopeless badlands of Montana by a maniac in the hopes of eventually...well, it's not clear. Escaping police pursuit? Settling down somewhere to hide? Proving our manhood before going down in a blaze of glory?

(The title of this post references one of Sheen's delightfully deadpan lines from the film, in which he rejects the notion that his girlfriend might dislike a certain species of fish on the basis that he enjoys it. He betrays pretty much zero emotion or empathy for other human beings throughout the entire film, save the occasional and brief bout of anger, which is what makes him such an ideal stand-in for our petulant boy-king.)

(2) Destabilization, chaos and spreading violence was the plan from the beginning.

As he always has, Bush is operating in what is essentially a consequence-free environment. What does he, personally, have to worry about should the Iraq effort continue to go sour? Not much. There's always the remote chance he'll be impeached or brought up on war crimes once he's out of office, but that probably won't happen. At least, not until he's a really old man.

But then look at the plus side. His rich corporate pals continue making a killing on military contracts, brutally ripping off the US Government and endlessly resupplying our troops with overpriced gear, food and necessities of life. He gets to leave office without ever conceding defeat, changing course or submitting to criticism. Finally, and I still believe this, as an insane religious nut, he sees war in the Middle East and on Islam in particular as part of his sacred Godly duty. The more Muslim countries become involved in a direct clash with the West, the better.

(3) He's hoping we'll piss everyone off enough that someone will plot another sizable terrorist attack against one of our cities.

Marc Faletti of Punk Ass Blog has a theory:

Well, when did the Republicans enjoy their greatest popularity? When was this country hungry for war?

Right after 9/11.

I joked about it at the time, but Pat Robertson mysteriously predicted a 2007 terror attack. Could it be that he knows something about this new strategy that we don’t? Isn’t it _possible_ that this administration is doing everything it can to make sure we get “hit at home” again?

If we don’t get attacked again, national sentiment towards Republicans will only worsen. The current Wealthy Powers That Be will almost surely be forced out the door in 2008, right along with the gravy train they’ve made for themselves. Their current actions seem to threaten their own interests… unless they believe they’re making it more likely we get hit by another terrorist attack, at which point we go back to the good old days of nationalism and bloodthirst.

Bush and Cheney know that Americans love a war, so long as it's exciting and we still have a chance at winning it all. I think what Americans love the mostest is not just "war" but that "march of war" concept they market so successfully during the early days on the news. Battles in this city and that, big colorful maps on the nightly news showing where our troops are headed in zippy topographical detail. (That is, if Geraldo doesn't give away all our positions by doodling in the sand with a stick first.)

The best thing that could possibly happen for them would be another major terrorist attack on America, giving them an excuse to fully invade Iran and Syria. (They might do it anyway, but I'm sure they'd prefer to have rhetorical cover like this.) And what would be the best way to ensure that terrorists keep America in their crosshairs? CONTINUED AMERICAN AGGRESSION IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

I don't think the Bush administration planned or carried out 9/11. I'm willing to accept the al-Qaida explanation. However, I think it's highly possible that they knew about it in advance and purposefully did nothing in order to gin up support for their bullshit war, and I think they'd love the opportunity to do this again should it arise. So what's the harm of making everyone around the world more upset with us? If anything, such a scenario is win-win for the powers that be.

I'm inclined to go with #2. But who, save Laura and Barney, can say for certain?

Crip Walkin' and Chicken Hawkin'

Glenn Greenwald has an interesting post up about supporters of this insane
Iraq "Surge" idea. His notes that Fred Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, one of the architects of this surge plan, argues for a necessarily large increase in the number of American troops in Iraq. In fact, Kagan states pretty plainly that the surge won't work unless many thousand more troops than are currently available are deployed to the region.

The president must request a substantial increase in ground forces end strength. This increase is vital to sustaining the morale of the combat forces by ensuring that relief is on the way. The president must issue a personal call for young Americans to volunteer to fight in the decisive conflict of this generation.

Glenn then makes a connection that's patently obvious. If you are one such young Americans, and you support Bush's war and Kagan's plan for its escalation, you should enlist to serve your country in Iraq. And not only for the sake of rhetorical consistancy.

At this point, to continue supporting a policy that has caused such a cataclysmic loss of life, American, Iraqi and otherwise, one would have to think that "victory" in Iraq was the single most important cause of our time. After all, it would have to be worth several thousand American lives and, at best, several hundred thousand Iraqi lives.

I do not personally believe this, nor did I think that any such victory was attainable at any point during Bush's Iraqi Adventure. So I did not support the war, because why should Americans or Iraqis die for something that isn't truly essential for our survival, or that wasn't even possible?

But if I did believe this, well...I'd only have a few options:

(1) Go off to war.

(2) Admit to myself and anyone else who asked that I'm a coward, willing to send other men to die for what I think is important but unwilling to potentially sacrifice my own life or the lives of close friends and family members.

(3) Find a way to aid the war effort significant enough to substitute for my presence on a battlefield.

The so-called right-wing "chickenhaws," young men or the parents of young men who strongly support Bush's war but refuse to serve, tend to go with #3. They claim that their writing about the war and bringing issues to the public's attention compensate for their absence from the field of battle.

This is almost always bullshit. Most right-wing bloggers and pundits reach a relatively narrow audience, and it would be hard to argue that most of them are having any influence on the national dialogue one way or the other (unless you count starting arguments with left-wing blogs). I mean, Jonah Goldberg's got that cushy columnist job with the LA Times, but no one actually listens to his idiotic ramblings. High school seniors have enough knowledge of history and political science to rebuff 98% of his arguments.

Rush Limbaugh and Hugh Hewitt might be able to make this case - they probably are helping out the war effort more by bloviating about it daily on the radio to millions of listeners than they would getting their pasty asses blown away in approximately two seconds on the streets of Ramadi.

For the rest of them, they're not doing enough here at home to make up for the good they could potentially do in Iraq. (Note that I don't think more troops in Iraq is a good thing, but they do, and we're taking their arguments at face value.)

So that's the basics of the chickenhawk argument. Glenn insists that he doesn't typically subscribe to this view on the basis of all wars. If you supported, for example, American intervention in Bosnia, you were not morally compelled to go to Bosnia yourself and help out, because this was a task that the American volunteer army would have been capable of carrying out.

I disagree. I think, if you want America to fight a war, you should go fight so long as you are physically capable. My one caveat would be the definition of war. We have an active volunteer military during peacetime to carry out necessary individual operations, many of them covert, and I suppose that's relatively important in the interests of national security. But a war? Don't support it unless you want to fight it.

But Glenn does think that "surge" supporters should sign up. After all, we're now talking about sending the Army out on a task they are ill-staffed to complete. If you support the task, you are morally compelled to help carry it out. Otherwise, you're just a coward, shuttling off other, better men to their deaths for your own personal edification and protection.

Honestly, if you are young and healthy yet continue to refuse to enlist in the armed services, it proves that you don't consider the War in Iraq to be a fundamental necessity for America's continued survival. If phasing out American military involvement in Iraq were truly an existential threat, you'd do whatever needed to be done to make sure that didn't happen in the interest of your own continued personal safety and happiness.

In light of the current troop shortages impeding Kagan's plans -- to say nothing of plans for confronting other countries and Terrorists beyond Iraq -- how can those who strut around as Churchillian defenders of American greatness in the face of Evil possibly justify their ongoing refusal of this call? The World War II values they are constantly invoking in order to justify endless war weren't defined by war cheerleaders but by war fighters.

Naturally, such cowards don't like to be called out on their cowardice. Worthless-for-all-save-comic-value blog Right Wing News is staffed by one such coward, John Hawkins. Here's his response, in full, to Greenwald's thought-provoking post:

Over at Unclaimed Territory, lefty blowhard Glenn Greenwald is advancing the same old, tired chickenhawk argument libs have been using for years, but just in case, he's taking 2200 words to say the same thing most libs can do in two sentences.

Here's the short version:

"As a result, it is now morally indefensible for those who are physically able to do so to advocate a "surge," or even ongoing war in Iraq, without either volunteering to fight or offering a good reason why they are not doing so."

If he doesn't think you can back the President on a surge without participating, then the reverse should be true. Since Greenwald wants us to surrender to the insurgents in Iraq, he should be over there acting as a human shield for a member of the sectarian death squads. Heck, if you add in all his sock puppets, Greenwald could act as a human shield for 4 or 5 terrorists and neck cutters.

Other people have made similar points and Greenwald has a long, tortured explanation for why this sort of non-reasoning only applies to people who believe in winning the war, not people advocating that America surrender in Iraq, but it's such bupkis that it's not even worth addressing.

If people like Greenwald don't like the idea of a surge, there is certainly an argument that can be made against it. It's not sustainable. It encourages the Iraqis to rely on our troops instead of doing things for themselves. It will likely increase casualties and costs. If we "surge" and nothing comes of it, it could boost the morale of the enemy. Unlike Greenwald's lame "chickenhawk" argument, at least those are legitimate criticisms of a surge.

He then links to an article that refers to the term "chickenhawk" as a slur, as if it were something over which he had no control, like race or height. Clearly, the term upsets him because it is so apt.

Anyway, one aspect of Hawkins' frankly pathetic response to Greenwald struck me. He's making an ideological point about principles and semantics, not crafting a genuine response to Greenwald's actual criticism. You'd think he and Greenwald were arguing about film theory or Kant's Pleasure Principle to read his post, not discussing plans for expanding a horrifically bloody international conflict.

Hawkins starts small: He's only trying to point out that Greenwald makes an error of logic in conflating war supporters with soldiers. At best, even if his reasoning were airtight, he'd prove that Glenn Greenwald is a hypocrite. He doesn't even come close, but it's still interesting to note that he doesn't bother even taking up the question on its own terms, directly stating why he feels he should be excused from military service.

To do so would necessarily cause him to be mocked incessantly, as Ben Ferguson discovered when he made this ridiculous comparison between supporting the Iraq War and supporting the Yankees baseball club.



Hawkins may have proved himself just a bit smarter than Ferguson. He refuses to get caught trying to actually explain or confront his cowardice, so he changes the subject, employing one of the most thin, lame analogies imaginable.

According to Hawkins' reasoning, someone who supports the removal of American forces from Iraq should have to serve as a human shield to protect militant Muslim terrorists. Come again?

Since Greenwald wants us to surrender to the insurgents in Iraq, he should be over there acting as a human shield for a member of the sectarian death squads.

One would have to make any number of incorrect, somewhat ludicrous assumptions to even make this analogy remotely sensible. To wit:

(1) American forces in Iraq are actively preventing sectarian violence
(2) Glenn Greenwald opposes American military involvement in Iraq because he supports Muslim terror
(3) Muslim terrorists groups are actively recruiting sympathetic Americans to serve as human shields

Obviously, none of these are true. Most Americans who oppose a "surge" in Iraq (a group which includes...most Americans) do so because they think it won't do any good in stopping the violence, not because they lurves them some beheadings. Obviously.

Hawkins only retreats to such blather because he can't justify his failure to appear in Mesopotamia. And it demonstrates his basic naivete, his lack of understanding about what war really means. It is not a parlor trick or a conversation piece. A war is not an excuse to show off your debating skills (not that he has actually demonstrated any). Hawkins says "send more troops." Reality says "there aren't any more to send, unless all the guys like you voluntarily sign up." Then Hawkins responds "Whatever, whatever! I do what I want!"

When you advocate shipping American troops off to a war zone, you are advocating for an increase in American deaths. That's what happens when soldiers walk into a war zone. Some of them get dead. This is not theoretical, no matter how much Hawkins clearly wishes it were.

To advocate such a policy when it cannot even be carried out because of a lack of manpower, and then to refuse to help personally is any way, is to demand that more Americans who aren't you die for no good reason. That is monstrous, and it's the charge Greenwald, myself and other members of the liberal blogosphere are making against the chickenhawks.

The fact that they can only respond with bad analogies and pretzel logic ("well, why don't you go help some Muslim terr'ist death squads then!") demonstrates a kind of flagrant moral bankruptcy that I can not begin to understand.

Crank

Rockstar Energy Drinks are plugged frequently throughout Crank, even in the credits, and it's an ideal match of film and synthetic mass-produced artificially-flavored beverage. Energy drinks are all about pumping your body full of stimulants, sugars and chemicals in order to produce a short, but pleasant, buzzy sensation. And the film Crank is designed exclusively for your slack-jawed, wide-eyed visual consumption, giving you a fleeting, but tingly, buzzy sensation.

Think of the film as a rather brief, largely uneventful mushroom trip. Provided you promise not to do any unnecessary thinking, giving yourself entirely over to the ludicrous cartoon vibe and maniacal senselessness, you will most likely have a terrific time, with only a slight headache and a desire for a long nap afterwards. Break the rules, start to actually consider the movie and how stupid it is, and you might experience irritating sensory overload. Just remember, know your DVD dealer and never rent more than you can handle.



So Rockstar Energy Drinks do quite well for themselves, branding-wise. The real loser here is Rockstar Games. They can't really do a live-action version of their best-selling "Grand Theft Auto" video game series now, because Mark Neveldene and Brian Taylor have gotten there first. Crank perfectly simulates not only the games' content - a crazed killer stalking city streets committing all manner of violent crimes in the service of a complicated and time-pressured "mission" - but their free-form, anarchistic, anything-goes spirit.

Chev Chelios (Jason Statham), in addition to possessing superhuman strength and endurance, will literally do anything to anyone in order to stay alive. You sense that, if revenge on his enemies required the liquidating of an entire university campus filled with puppies and adorable toddlers, Chev would not only pull the switch but laugh sadistically and masturbate whilst doing so. He doesn't give a fuck, and neither does the movie, and that's what makes it unpredictable and fun. Like Falling Down meets The Warriors, only without all those time-wasters like social commentary and, you know, story.

Chev wakes up feeling decidedly unwell. We get a few shots from his perspective right off the bat, and the prognosis isn't good. His vision's blurred, he's having sharp chest pains, he can't walk properly. A DVD set to play in his entertainment center explains the situation: Chev's a hitman, he recently assassinated a powerful Chinese crime lord (Keone Young) and now the cruel Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo) has injected him with a poison called the Beijing Cocktail for revenge.

As Chev's personal physician (Dwight Yoakum) explains on the phone from Vegas, the Cocktail inhibits the body's ability to produce adrenaline. If Chev doesn't keep his adrenaline levels up, he'll die. So if Chev wants to remain alive long enough to kill Verona, he has to keep moving. The film's essentially one long chase sequence in sort-of real time, with Chev zipping around Los Angeles searching for bad guys, evading cops and devising clever ways to keep his adrenaline flowing.

Neveldine and Taylor make their writing and directing debuts with Crank, and their reliance on showy camera tricks and effects is excessive bordering on ridiculous. A few of the gimmicky shots actually work. Chev races through a mall's back corridors while talking to his doctor on a cell phone, and brief shots of Yoakum speaking on the other end of the line from the airport are projected on the walls in the background as Chev runs. It's quite effective, giving the impression of Chev trying to focus on the information he's receiving on the phone while doing three or four other, more strenuous activities at the same moment.

But just as often, the style's unnecessarily fancy and overblown, calling attention to itself instead of upping the film's intensity, energy or impact. The best moments aren't so much visual as comic. Chev's savage adventure turns out surprisingly funny, one of the few non-Guy Ritchie vehicles to give the extremely charismatic Statham a worthwhile part. Though their Tony Scott-inspired visual pyrotechnics occasionally threaten to derail the entire enterprise, Neveldine and Taylor have still managed to put together a highly watchable and gleefully over-the-top entertainment.

The casting, for example, really pays off once the initial gimmick has started to wear out its welcome. In addition to Statham and Yoakum, who gets a lot of mileage out of what's essentially a superfluous, expository role, Amy Smart does funny work as Chev's girlfriend Eve, who thought he'd been programming video games for a living rather than starring in one. In the film's most memorable scene, they come up with an inventive, if not entirely sanitary, solution to Chaz's little medical problem in the heart of LA's Chinatown.

Crank doesn't really care so much about the laws of medicine, physics or public decorum, but it does manage to keep to its own internal logic. For the most part. Occasionally, the film violates real Los Angeles geography - I doubt Chev, in his state, could navigate that quickly from Westwood to Koreatown, even with a stolen cab and motorcycle. Only once or twice does it show Chev actually slowing down, so when it happens, it's pretty noticeable.

A long scene in Eve's apartment really breaks the tone of the film. We're going, going, going, cutting quickly between different perspectives, locations and film stocks, and then all of the sudden we're having a nice, romantic dialogue in a sunny apartment. This would be the equivalent of Speed having a scene were Keanu and Sandy pull the bus over to grab a quick chili dog. I know they wanted to have some semblance of character development, but he's not allowed to stop and chit-chat with Amy Smart or he'll die, remember? Dr. Jones! Dr. Jones! No time for love!

Otherwise, I quite enjoyed Chev's goofball antics. The conclusion, in particular, hits a campy note just exactly right. It's ballsy to go for camp value in an action comedy in 2006. One false move, and you're directing The Big Hit. But Crank worked pretty well for me, blurry fast-cut nausea-inducing editing and all.

The Illusionist and Idiocracy

Two movies that begin with the letter I...Okay, that's all I've got...

The Illusionist

The other historical magician movie. Not only does Neil Burger's The Illusionist share a lot of superficial similarities with Christohper Nolan's The Prestige (authentic period detail, superior cinematography, a turn-of-the-century setting, ideas about the nature of deception and honesty), but they suffer from the exact same plight. These are elaborate puzzle movies whose solutions are far too simple. Part of the problem may be in making a film about magicians that are intended to trick us. When you tell an audience up front that they are going to be fooled, it makes fooling them that much harder. The Usual Suspects doesn't tip you off that there's some crazy mindfuck twist coming...It's just a funny, kind of confusing gangster movie for about an hour.

Prestige still manages to be a pretty solid movie, in spite of the botched third act. It looked great, features some nice perfromances and has a few really great scenes. The Illusionist ends up relying far too heavily on a blatantly obvious, unsatisfying conclusion, and never amounts to much of anything aside from some pretty pictures.

The pictures are extremely pretty. Burger and cinematographer Dick Pope have underlit everyone with a warm, golden light, giving the faces the glow of a Rembrandt painting. Some canny, subtle references to silent film techniques likewise bring the period to life. And one shot, in which Paul Giamatti's police inspector walks urgently down a hallway lined with antlers and deer heads, is truly inspired. It comes early on, and portends to greater things than Burger actually has in mind.

In adapting Steven Millhauser's short story Eisenheim the Illusionist, he shows his hand far too early, spelling out the central mystery plainly in the first 30 minutes of the movie. Mysterious illusionist Eisenheim (Edward Norton) has brought his magic show to turn-of-the-century Vienna, interspersing his impressive effects and tricks with heady monologues about the nature of time and space. One night, he manages to impress the Crown Prince (Rufus Sewell), and only then realizes that His Highness' intended is Eisenheim's childhood sweetheart, Sophie (Jessica Biel).

Most of the action concerns the Prince's puppet, Police Chief Inspector Uhl (Giamatti), and his investigation into Eisenheim's background. A trick in which the illusionist seems to bring spirits back from the dead to speak with the audience becomes something of an obsession for not onyl Uhl, but all the citizens of Vienna. Eisenheim professes to be purely an entertainer, but if a known dead person appears on stage, how can anyone say it's simply a trick?

Saying anything else would give it all away. I fear I've said too much already. I'm tempted to still give the movie a passing grade because it looks so nice, but it would have been better served with developing the relationship between Eisenheim and Uhl or Uhl and the Crown Prince rather than focusing so intently on a twist gimmick that doesn't work. There's a lot of interesting subtext in this story, about commoners who serve and please the rich but cannot join their ranks. (Interestingly, the notion that Eisenheim is a Jew who changed his name, and that Uhl may be a Jew as well, is floated but never developed. This of course would add another fascinating layer to the relationship between these two talented but peculiar men whom fate has set into conflict.)

But the film just keeps driving on toward that silly climax, which honestly is so easy to guess that it's almost insulting. Seriously. There's a scene where the characters pretty much come out and announce the scheme that will drive the entire rest of the movie. It was so blatant, I assumed Burger meant for us to know this information, and only realized towards the end of the movie that he thought he was saving it for Act the Third. Not good.

Idiocracy

I root for Mike Judge. He's ahead of his time. You can tell because people never appreciate his work in the present. When "Beavis and Butthead" was on television, it was the shorthand phrase for the "dumbing down of America," representative of all that was wrong with media and youth culture. But of course, it was perhaps the most spot-on satire of that very culture available at the time. Ditto Office Space, Judge's live-action directorial debut, a film that made about $20 on its initial theatrical run but is now rightly hailed as a comedy classic.

So even though I knew that Idiocracy had been a troubled, endlessly postponed production and that the studio had basically refused to advertise it because of their total lack of confidence in its quality or marketability, I still held out hope that it might be funny. "Maybe no one gets it now, but in 10 years, everyone will remember it as the best comedy of 2006."

Nope. No way. Not going to happen. This thing sucks worse than that Jump to Conclusions mat. I did not laugh one single time in the entire 87 minutes.

You can tell the film has been retooled a bit since it was first shot. (It looks pretty cheap for a science-fiction comedy, too, but I wouldn't normally hold that against it if it worked otherwise.)

A narrator comes in frequently to fill in holes in the plot and provide background about the grim future in which the film is set. He tells us that, because smart people have priorities other than breeding while stupid people have dozens of offspring, in the distant future mankind has become extremely dumb.

So when Army private Joe Bowers (Luke Wilson) and prostitute Rita (Maya Rudolph) awake in the future from a scientific experiment gone haywire inour own time, they're easily the two smartest people alive. They find a chaotic world full of trash, in which everyone sits around and watches television all day and no one can speak properly.

Judge runs into many, many problems at this point. Mainly, he hasn't come up with any kind of actual narrative set in this future world. Joe and Rita wander around for a while, being chased by horribly inept police officers for no good reason. They meet an incredibly stupid lawyer named Frito (Dax Shepard). Joe wants to find a rumored time machine to get back home, but he's sidelined when tasked to save the world's crops, which will no longer grow, by the United States' loudmouth pro wrestling President (Terry Crews). But there's no real conflict. Judge has given himself total freedom from story, presumably because he wanted to focus on humorous observations and character bits. But notice that I said "presumably because," and not "because."

There aren't really any humorous observations, at least not about what it would be like to be the Smartest Person on Earth. Joe's predicament seems like pretty much what you'd expect. He's constantly frustrated because no one can keep up their end of a conversation. And almost by definition, there aren't any funny characters. How could anyone be funny? They're so dumb, they can barely speak! Frito, for example, says "fag" a lot, which I always find exponentionally more funny every time it is said in a motion picture. (For anyone reading this in the distant future, that was meant as sarcastic.)

Additionally, this future never comes alive because it's so inconsistant. What does Judge really mean by "stupid," anyway? For many characters, their retardation seems limited to poor vocabulary and an unhealthy diet. Others seem incapable of basic life functions on their own. Nevertheless, America continues to function. There is electricity and gasoline and television. There are elections and massive farms and functioning corporations. How can this be?
All this may seem like nitpicking, but it isn't. Because Judge didn't figure out what he meant by "stupid people" in the future, his movie lacks bite. Obviously, the whole thing is meant to satirize our own time. We're the stupid people of the future, watching TV all day and ignoring the consequences of our actions and hopelessly out of touch with our own history and culture. But his targets are so random and his jabs are so scattershot, it's hard to get a read on what Judge is really trying to say.

In fact, the tone started to irritate me with its lack of focus. It's like Judge is saying that we should all give up - people are dumb and they will just get moreso. Who cares?

Watching the film is sort of like having a conversation with an annoying libertarian. Not to say that there aren't principled libertarians with some amount of integrity. But a lot of the time, I get the sense that the philosophy is just an excuse for misanthropy. This person just dislikes other people and doesn't care what happens to them, so they just throw up their hands and say, "Oh well, it's a lost cause, there's nothing to be done, better to simply wash our hands of the whole thing."

That's kind of like Mike Judge's attitude coming in this movie. "Oh well, everyone's an idiot but me, humanity's fucked, might as well make a stupid comedy about it..." Right into despair, because it's so easy.

But personal philosophy aside, the movie's just kind of relentlessly pointless and obnoxious. Stale riffs on shows like "America's Funniest Home Videos" and the popularity of pro wrestling were tired when Judge was still working for Spike and Mike. And what is with any comedy spending this much time talking about growing crops? You're telling me that every single person in the future is a retard and the biggest problem they're facing is that the lettuce won't grow right? HOW DID THEY EVEN MANAGE TO PLANT CROPS IF EVERYONE'S SO STUPID?