In the Beginning Was the Nerd...Redux

Some extraneous thoughts that will not be running in my coverage of New York ComicCon in The Onion - A.V. Club this week:

-I moved out of my comic book phase about 10 years ago, but I must admit, spending time at this convention made me all kinds of nostalgic. The writing seems to be much better, and much more thematically diverse than it was even in '96, when I followed more mutant storylines than an episode of The Surreal Life.

-From the looks of it, these nerds are getting laid.

-In my story, I mentioned Eli Roth, the Lynchean auteur behind such masterpieces as Hostel, Cabin Fever, and Hostel 2. Here's something else I learned about him during his appearance at ComicCon: Roth takes a good deal of pride in being a young man of Jewish descent who has managed to crack his way into the tough world of Hollyood.

-Jon Landis, director of An American Werewolf in London, Animal House, Blues Brothers, Three Amigos! and Coming to America, was one of a panel of six legendary horror directors that drew about a tenth as many fanboys as Roth and the chick from Sorority Boys.

-Peter Mayhew, aka Chewbacca, turned me away when I asked for a quick interview. "No press," he said. Actually, his publicist said it. Mayhew himself shook his head and said, "GrrrrrrrreeerhrrWhrrrhrhrBuhhhhrrhrahGaaaaaaaaaaauaua"

That mother(superior)frocker!

Have you heard of the unlucky abbot
with a cock that was shaped like a rabbit?
 It fit in no one,
 till one day a nun
with a cunt like a hutch dropped her habit.

-D"vagina like a warren? No, that's not it..."an

Breaking News: Hampshiregate

The Democratic Party headquarters in New Hampshire were broken into!

Even the staid New York Times couldn't resist saying "Burglars have broken into Democratic Party headquarters. No, you're not having a flashback to 1972 and the infamous event [boring New York Times recounting of "facts" "sensically"]". So I'm just going to take this as a warm-up, a practice: write a few jokes, and then dissect them. Your (better) jokes in comments.

• "Will this lead to John Lynch's downfall?" (he's the governor of New Hampshire; yes I looked it up)
  
• "It was probably Candians." Look, I don't think it's funny, but The Leviathan will. Not because of NH's proximity to Canadians, but because some nationalities send him all a-stitches. E.g., "Luxembourgians". I can hear him laughing already.
  
• "Maybe it's Zombie Nixon!" Wait, is there any other kind of Nixon?
  
• "New Hampshire? Isn't that in Vermont?" Look, it's late. Here at The Enfranchised, it's timely, funny, sensical: pick 1.
  
• "Maybe it was the Libertarians." That's not a joke; it's a warning. Those libertarians are fucking fierce, and they're coming for you. Consider yourself alerted.
  

Like I said, your (funnier) jokes in the comments.

The Great State of New Jersey

Pride sometimes comes late.

So often politicians refer to the Great State of , when I was pretty sure they couldn't possibly mean it. Really? Ohio? I mean, I'm down with Dayton, but any state that has both Cleveland *and* Cincinnati? As a teenager, I filtered out "The Great State of" as propaganda.

Today, I found my faith.

1. From wikipedia's Hackettstown, NJ article: "It is believed that Hackettstown was named after Samuel Hackett, a prominent landowner who allegedly "contributed liberally to the liquid refreshments on the christening of a new hotel, in order to secure the name which, before this, had been Helms' Mills or Musconetcong".
   
   Long before all sorts of complex trips for Congressmen, New Jerseyans appealed to the common man by enabling his debilitating alcoholism. Bribery of the people, for the people, by our town's namesake.
   
   
2. Of course, no Wikipedia article would be complete without a droll recounting of statistics. So, let's learn about Teterboro, New Jersey: "As of April 1, 2006, out of a 2004 Census estimated population of 18 in Teterboro, there were 39 registered voters (216.7% of the population, vs. 55.4% in all of Bergen County)." This section is, I fear, written with tongue wholly unassociated with cheek. The only proviso is a caveat in the introduction of the article: "It is worth noting that the 2000 census failed to count any of the residents of the Vincent Place housing units who had moved into the newly built homes in 1999. The uncounted residents, including the Mayor and all four Council members, would help make up a projected tripling of the population enumerated by the census."
   
   
3. And then, there's my hometown, New Providence, whence we learn "In 1759, the balcony of the Presbyterian Church in the town collapsed. The lack of serious injuries was declared by Divine Providence, and the town was renamed to New Providence." Which is a crappy name for a town. But considering the original name was Turkeytown, even historical theological architectual failures are a great excuse to pick a new name. Just imagine if that name had survived until high school sports had been invented. "Well, the Turkeytown High Turkeys sure are turkeying it up today, those turkeys. Oh, and they're ugly."
   
   

In what other state can town naming and demographics be half as sleezy? We've taken something as boring as trash reclamation and made it a haven for Italian families most acquainted with cannoli, guns, guns hidden in cannoli, and cannoli guns.

Never again will I make fun of my home state. At least not until we do something stupid, funny, stupidly funny, or funnelly stupid (funnelly stupid is like the traffic flows around Garden State Parkway toll plazas).

Or this.

The Academy Is...

The Oscars happened. And it turns out that all Martin Scorsese had to do to win one was show Leo in the missionary position and hurl Martin Sheen off a building.

The Departed was as good as a movie gets without being a great movie. (Interestingly, As Good As It Gets is also probably as good as it gets without being great.) Its relative dominance confirms what everybody already knows about the Academy: popularity contest.

But it's not as bad as the rest of pop media. If the E! Channel is the House of Representatives, the Academy is the Senate. It's still about a layer of symbolic bullshit draped awkwardly over the concerns of a small group of moneyed special interests (in this case the studios and their PR teams, who lobby every bit as hard as Abramoff), but whereas the House is tethered to its constituency tightly enough that they have to hop-to with every fickle shift in the polling data, the Senate operates at just a bit of a remove. So the Senators (the Academy members, hear me out on this analogy) become less concerned with earning constituents' pats on the back as they are with earning their own pats on the back.

To wit:

Babel, yet further proof of Alejandro González Iñárritu's ability to convert three half-finished screenplays into an overlong "socially conscious" yarn via arbitrary (and usually implausible) connections. See also: Syriana

The Queen: Another opportunity for the Academy to remind everybody how much they loved Princess Di.

Little Miss Sunshine: Indie filmmaking by numbers. Somebody should tell these guys that if merely mentioning the names Proust and Nietzsche in a piece of writing were enough to make it intellectually stimulating, The Enfranchised would be bigger than The Huffington Post.

Letters from Iwo Jima: I haven't seen this one, but I'm pretty sure we won that battle, planted a big ass flag, and everybody involved went back to their business with much merriment. Truly inspirational.

and of course The Departed. Great source material, a taut adaptation, top-notch performances (including Alec Baldwin whose 'type' seems to have become 'playing against type') and slick direction. Only problem is that it's about a third as good as Goodfellas, Casino, Raging Bull, or Taxi Driver (or Brick, or Children of Men, or Pan's Labyrinth for that matter).

Hey, at least people will stop saying things like, "Scorsese doesn't hold a candle to Academy Award (R) winner Paul Haggis. I mean, did you see Haggis on Entourage?" and "Screw Scorcese, how about Academy Award winner (R) James Cameron. I mean, did you see Cameron on Entourage?)