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?)

The Enfranchised Moratorium: Britney Bashing

I propose a moratorium on making fun of Britney Spears.

It feels a bit like Johnny Lawrence continuing to pile up the roundhouse kicks on Daniel-san even after the rest of his skeleton-clad Cobra Kai compatriots think he's had enough.

As much as it begrudges me to admit, Chuck Klosterman was exactly right about Spears when he profiled her for Esquire all those years ago. She is (or at least was) the least self-reflective person in the history of the world. And now you are witnessing the end of that, the shitty consequences of living a decade as a product of your handlers and nothing more.

One doesn't have to be a consumer of tabloid stories to know that there is a difference between criticizing celebrity excess and kicking a 26-year-old girl from Arkansas when she's down. It's the celebrity fanboy equivalent of the madonna-whore complex that got us here. There are other options besides unalloyed reverence and no-holds-barred hatred.

Let's leave the poor girl alone, she has no fucking clue what's happening to her.

Feel free to let the door hit you

Apparently some coach I've never heard of (Ritchie McKay) at some school I don't care about (UNM:UArizona::UArizona:Cal Berkeley, and I bearly[sic] care about Berkeley) is on the way out. Fine, happens all the time. But look at the good-bye he's getting:

"I still think Ritchie McKay is a great man and a great coach," University of New Mexico Board of Regents member Jack Fortner told the Albuquerque Journal. "Somewhere, he's going to do great things in a program. And apparently, it's not going to be here at UNM. I haven't had a chance to talk to Ritchie and I will. He's got a great staff, and it's unfortunate that they won't be here either."

I can only imagine that Mr. Fortner was holding himself back. "And he's got a cute family. They'll go great on some university's christmas cards, unfortunately not ours."

"He has a great car, unfortunately he won't be driving it after we impounded it."

"And he has a great house, shame that it was recently rustled by goons."

C'mon, are you a Regent of a University or a Sopranos recurring character wanna-be?

And while we're at it, why do sports have to have so many layers of duplicity? Grow a pair, pull a Streinbrenner, and say, "he sure did suck here." Don't be a passive aggressive dick and go, "Well, he had a cute Scottish Terrier." 1) It's not germane, 2) have you seen an ugly Scottish Terrier? And why does every coach have to pledge allegiance to their current job? We see every coach pull a Nick Saban and say "I would absolutely, positively not leave my current-- Oh, that much?" and then Benedict Arnold himself (always himself) over to a more lucrative or prestigious position. Which is fine! It's what we all would do. It's what athletes do.

We put capitalism on a pedestal, alright that it keeps most of the population in coal mines because it puts a few of us on 20" spinners. So let's stop expecting professional coaches to be holier-than-y'all and instead realize that a coaching job in the SEC is going to be arousing and that coaches who get such offers will get Ayn Randy.

Every Man Is An Anachronism By Tomorrow's Standards

In her brilliant, insightful, terrifying, loathsome piece on the "Say Everything" generation, Emily Nussbaum explores the means and ends of the kids' penchant for internet self-exposure. She argues that my peers and I see LiveJournal, MySpace, etc, etc, as skin-thickeneing, interactive archives of our adolescence.

I bandied about vaguely similar arguments in my response to the Facebook Feed a few months ago (though, because I did so on a blog and as a registered facebook user, my invectives were gleefully hypocritical). Nussbaum shouldn't fret; she joins a long and distinguished list of scientists, philosophers, poets and critics who have blatantly plagiarized my work. Here is just a small sampling of the political and social trends and phenomena about which I was ahead of the curve:

-The Wire
-Scientology
-The fact that Dane Cook sucks
-Poker
-The fact that Dane Cook sucks at Poker
-Enthusiasm over Barack Obama
-Dissapointment over Barack Obama's
-The dire consequences of living the life designed for you by your handlers, sans even the most primitive self-awareness.
-To wit: Britney Spears
-Globalization
-Puggles
-Thai food
-Parker Lewis Can't Lose
-blogs
-lists
-the backlash against string theory
-the second, third, and eighth backlashes against Family Guy
-anal is the new vaginal
-Pixies reunion
-Colbert outdoing Stewart
-Meth
-the death of irony
-the death of work
-the death of privacy
-the death of Anna Nicole Smith
-the four-minute mile
-facebook girls who are obviously fine with you masturbating to their pictures
-bourbon is the new scotch
-the concept of a "Wiki"
-the concept of a "Wookiee"
-the concept of a Wookiee via the concept of a Wiki
-using the Snoop Dogg "izzle" patois in casual conversation
-this halloween costume (seriously)
-The coming apocalypse

Hypothesis Arrived At After Excessive Late Night Beverage Consumption

1) Diet Coke should grow on trees.
2) If Diet Coke did grow on trees, each can would be a fruit. Diet Coke the nectar. And that tab you use to open it the seed. The plant convinces you to carry the fruit. Then wherever you are when you do consume, the tab is discarded, left to form another plant.
3) This post constitutes prior art for any bioengineering start-up attempting to make my life's dream reality.
4) On second thought, Diet Coke should not grow on trees. Instead, it is more a bush or a shrub. Its plant takes the form of mini-fridges. A hardy oak of a full size refrigerator with attached freezer takes upwards of 35 years to mature.

Dr. Foster's Dictionary, September 8, 2006

Today's entry in Dr. Foster's Dictionary comes from the section on slang usage, under "R".

ran-dom [ran-duhm]
adj.

1. occurring without definite aim, reason, or pattern.

"Since they still rely on fixed inputs for their algorithms, computers remain unable to generate truly random numbers.

2. [slang] irrelevent, disconnected, lost, apropos of nothing:

"Most of the Phi Kappa Alpha guys love Seth MacFarlane's random humor."

3. [slang] distasteful, tacky, or otherwise unaesthetic:

"Jane noted on her MySpace profile that her taste in music was 'really random'. She liked everything from Panic! At the Disco to Ashlee Simpson."

4. [slang] signifying choices made for the wrong reasons (usually because of inebriation and/or low self-esteem):

"Tori was not really looking for a relationship because of her recent success with random hookups."

5. [slang] as a beat, or placeholder, in the hipster patois.

"I was at some random bodega in this random part of Park Slope with these random people trying to find directions to this random gallery opening at random in random."

Parallelism isn't necessary, and necessary.

My father always used to say "Consistency over Accuracy." This means that if you aren't sure how to, use commas, you're supposed not to, use them the same way. That way, when people realize that you don't know how to, speak English or, make yourself understood, they can filter your idiocies. This is much better than guessing at, how to use commas. Incidentally, this means that once I started listening to crappy Pop Punk/Emo as a teenager, I had to keep listening to it.

I believe in Consistentcy over Accuracy. And so I hate Shuffle. Don't give me snippets, give me the whole album. If they have a good single, goes my reasoning, the rest of the album must be decent, right? Christina Aguilera's video for Ain't No Other Man is good, therefore her new album is on my portable digital music device. Like I said, I'm devoted to this principle. Instead of per-song Shuffle, I use per-album Shuffle. Great.

Except it menas when I'm not in the mood for a song, I'm not in the mood for the next 15 songs. Please oh Please Apple, won't you let me fast forward an *ALBUM* instead of per song?

I know, I know, this is ugly. It would require a new button. You have those 4 buttons arrayed so elegantly around a slide wheel that also controls volume! And 1 in the middle! Beeeeeeeeutiful.

But worthless. I spend my life click-click-clicking past B-side albums purchased in a wake of fanboidom that are best listened ot at night; when demo tapes were meant to be reverently passed around to and listened to in the same hushed tones with which they were produced. Add a new button I can customize. Y'know what? Fuck other people who don't care about this. Add a button that fast-forwards to the next album. It must not be able to do anything else. And it only works if your name is Dan. And if you don't like Indie (the taller/smarter/more handsom/better older sibling of Pop Punk/Emo) and press it accidentally, it electrocutes you. Then throws you in a pool of Stingrays to be Irwin-ed.

Please Apple, give up your fanatical devotion to Metal/Lucite aesthetics and Turtleneck/Jean wardrobes and give me this ability. I will pay $100 for it.

Signed,
A Concerned Customer

P.S. Alternatively, make it quick again to fast forward without the lag as you spin up your disk to find the album art for this song that WAS THE SAME ALBUM ART AS THE LAST 8 SONGS. I have a hint for how you could speed up this embarrassingly linear access pattern. I can't just come out and say it, but it starts with a p, ends with an h, and has a refetc in the middle.

Facebook's Folly

Warning: Among our small but sophisticated readership there will no doubt be some for whom this post is just so much nonsense. Perhaps these people have the best of it.

What has it been--all of 72 hours since Facebook.com introduced its new Orwell-meets-People Magazine "feed" format? And how long will it be before it's gone, or at least swept under some e-rug? I give it weeks, or less. In a delicious example of the twisted, ultra-reflexive physics of virtual space, the most prominent news(?) items on my facebook feed--and I supppose on many others'--are all about how much the feed sucks. Just a few examples of Facebook groups started or joined by "friends" of mine in the past 48 hours:

FACEBOOK FEED SUCKS
BRING THE OLD FACEBOOK BACK
FACEBOOK MASS EXODUS
STUDENTS AGAINST FACEBOOK NEWS FEED
THE NEW FACEBOOK LOOKS LIKE IT WAS DESIGNED BY A HYPERACTIVE FIVE-YEAR-OLD

I'm especially fond of this last one, created very early on by my buddy Neil and apropos of precisely nothing.

In any event, the lessons here are as many and varied as they are trivial and trite. For one thing, this display of hyperirony goes to the dubiousity and double-edgedness of the "democratizing of information" brought on by the internet and blogosphere revolutions. It used to be that things like laziness, lack of ambition, poverty, and death-squads kept the mouth-breathing masses from opining at the top of their lungs about whatever was grinding their gears on a given day. But the price of opening your mouth has gone down drastically in terms of dollars, elbow grease, and blood. And even this band of anonymous troglodytes that calls itself the American public can point and click.

Behold the era of the Blog Montaigne, the Message Board Martin Luther and the Forum Oscar Wilde. But 92% of it is still tripe, and there is no democracy of taste.

The other thing--and here I borrow again from Chuck Klosterman's stuff on Snakes on a Plane--is that people don't know what they've got til they've got way too fucking much of it. The secret demographic of Facebook, MySpace and their ilk has always been the Peeping Tom, the voyeur, the stalker in all of us. We worshipped the deus ex machina that told us where our exes had last logged-on; we relished in secret the infidelities implied by Joe's girlfriend's claim to be "single" and interested in "anything [she] can get", and we imposed ourselves upon the ever-abiding trust of 19-year old party girls as we scrolled through their photo albums. All of this under a greasy skin of anonymity, safe from reproach in our dormroom lairs.

Let's get down to brass tacks: Facebook and MySpace are gloryholes for the young bourgeoisie.

always have been, always will be. All the feed amounts to is a sign reading "PLACE GENITALS HERE". It reveals to you nothing that you wouldn't have found out yourself on a lonely enough night. But the danger of gonzo-marketing to people's basest desires is that you remind them just how base those desires are.

Mason Malmuth, a guy who was taking down Hold Em pots when your Friday night game was "Shit in the Diaper", is on to much the same thing when he talks about winning at tables full of terrible players. The worse thing you can do, Malmuth says, is put on too many plays. As long as it seems like you're all just having a little fun with your paycheck, your straightforward, correct play will be rewarded. But start getting cute, check-raising, over-punishing bluffs, pushing your position too hard, and you'll actually bully your "amiable gambler" opponents into playing correctly. You'll remind them that this is a poker game, and that your objective is to take their money, and the result will be that you get less of it. Mutatis Mutandis for the Facebook feed. All it has done is bully its perverted base into virtue.

Oh, and forget the fact that I write these words on these topics using the software of the biggest blogging host in the world--bask in the sheer postmodernity of it, be comforted by the fact that string theory does indeed predict this result, and rest assured that present company is excluded.


Feedback: What has been your favorite Facebook Feed so far? I would have to say that mine is "J.D. Removed Star Trek: TNG from his Favorite TV Shows" (name repressed to protect the innocent)

An Elegy for Irwin

I'm a philosophy student, so sure, I'll buy that "every death is a tragedy"--even the deaths of minor celebrities. But the news of Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin's passing hit me a little harder than I expected. A lot of people saw Irwin as novelty act, a slightly crazed and comically earnest punchline to be filed next to William Hung. But would some East Asian Premier weep on national TV at the death of Hung, as the Australian PM did today? I don't think so. Maybe it's because Steve Irwin, as a compelling, entertaining spokesman for conservation, made Al Gore 2006 look like Al Gore 2000.

More likely it's that Steve Irwin's unselfconscious enthusiasm and almost (almost) naive wonderment were a breath of fresh air in a culture too crusty in our cynicism and shadenfreude to ever risk such ingenuousness.

Suffice it to say that the world was a bit more interesting with him in it.

Rants on a Blog

This is likely the last Snakes on a Plane blog post you'll ever read, but it won't be the last X on a Y post. That's because, like this guy's tattoo, the novelty of SoaP took about a week to wear off but its effects will be felt for quite some time. This much Chuck Klosterman notes, along with just about everything else there is to say about why this movie is bad for your soul, in his Esquire piece.

Among my generation, irony is a language, hyperirony a currency, and hyperirony-for-its-own-sake a narcotic. In other words, to get by a healthy amount of the first is essential, a bit of the second is useful, and too much of the last is dangerous. Call me old-fashioned, but I usually look for films, TV, music and other bits of culture that I enjoy. In any other century that last sentence would be unambiguous, but allow me to clarify: to 'enjoy' something in my sense is to enjoy it intrinsically, and not as an irony delivery mechanism or as fodder for the sneering, self-satisfied, sarcastic nuggets of your fellow hirsute hipsters.

Life is too short to continuously blast Raffi's "Banana Phone" or The B-52's "Rock Lobster" just for grins like my ex-roommate did (unless, of course, you actually like Raffi or the B-52s, in which case God bless). That's why when my buddies sent me a canned voicemail of Samuel L. Jackson demanding that I get off my ass and see Snakes on a Plane, I politely informed them that I'd just as soon be on a trans-Pacific flight stocked with a surfeit of venomous serpents.

Oh, and as for the supposed brilliance of the film's title, file it under Ecclesiastes' dictum: There is NOTHING new under the sun. For one thing, nearly every sitcom ever aired followed the same formula of the using the title to spell out the concept, we just never got excited about it because the concepts themselves were usually less absurd (mental exercise: figure out why it is that That 80's Show is a title conceptually closer to Snakes on a Plane than either is to That 70's Show). Then of course there is that other bastion of the upfront title: porn. Now, I know what you're thinking, porn titles at least go so far as to give us some assonance or a second-rate pun (e.g. Butt Fuck Sluts Go Nuts, and Weapons of Ass Destruction, respectively). But lowest-common-denominator literalism gets even lower and more literal than that. To wit: I am apartment-sitting for my buddy and his girlfriend in Jersey City, and one day I took a ganders through their DVD collection in search of amusement. To my delight I found the 1999 gem Hookers in a Haunted House, which was Snakes on a Plane 8 years before Snakes on a Plane was Snakes on a Plane.

And it's got tits.

The Top 25 Revenge Movies of All Time

The situation in southern Lebanon has me ruminating quite a bit on that dish best served cold--not seviche, but vengeance. And so, the best of it on film:

25. Office Space
24. Red Dawn*
23. Robocop
22. Heathers
21. The Punisher (1989)
20. Gladiator
19. The Bourne Supremacy
18. Diabolique (1955)
17. Friday the 13th
16. The Count of Montecristo (2002)
15. Batman (1989)
14. Rocky IV
13. The Karate Kid
12. Star Wars, Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
11. Unforgiven
10. Kill Bill (vo1.1-2)
9. For a Few Dollars More
8. Conan the Barbarian*
7. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
6. Get Carter (1971)
5. Carrie
4. Death Wish
3. Man on Fire
2. The Crow
1. The Godfather

Honorable Mentions: The Toxic Avenger, Revenge of the Dragon, Payback, Revenge of the Nerds, Ocean's Eleven, First Blood I-III (Rambo), Clear and Present Danger*, Commando, Flight of the Intruder.*

*denotes the involvement of John Milius, American cinema's master of vengeance, as writer and/or director.

This list is nought but convtroversial. I suspect many will be confused and upset by how films such as Star Trek II and Conan the Barbarian made it into the top ten while films like Gladiator is ranked comparatively lower. I know there'll be contingents who think Revenge of the Nerds belongs on the list, or another Eastwood movie, or some Bruce Lee movies, or that the Godfather isn't really a revenge movie (it is), or that older films are under-represented in general. Perhaps most fearsome is the cadre of raving children of the 80s who will demand Rocky IV be promoted to #1 or higher (I include it at #14 only as a begrudging compromise. In my mind, anything after Rocky II is barely canonical). In any event, feel free to disagree and state your case.

Long John Schill-ver

Wise was aloof Mr. Depp,
when,impressed by Walt Disney's rep,
after years spent ensconced
in the hills of Provence
he did finally get back in lockstep.

NB: I'm selling my television

Copy of a letter I just sent to Wolf Blitzer's CNN beardfest "The Situation Room":

I wanted to thank Mr. Blitzer and his "Situation Room" correspondent for their piece on the World Cup headbutting incident.

As if to visually underscore the unpleasentness of Zidane's maneuver, the report included a collage of other headbuttings captured on tape and amassed, no doubt, from the computer desktop of an early adolescent of middling intelligence.

Years from now I'm sure I'll tell my grandchildren it was on July 10, 2006 that the world's premiere cable news network first had the courage and rectitude to show me a video of a grown man's head engulfed by an elephant's anus.

I trust Mr. Blitzer is at this very moment working on his Peabody Award acceptance speech.

In Earnest,

DRF

Eventual Gander: Guess Who

On a recent cross-country trip, I found the airlines sending me a not-so-subtle message. Through the miracle of film-scheduling the inflight-magazine promised-me, I was being shown the same film on both my way there and back. Rather than keep my eyes all the way closed for a total of 5 hours to avoid the seven-inch screens the modern jetliner has, I embraced the mediocre and watched the Ashton Kutcher/Bernie Mac vehicle Guess Who.

And to be honest, it wasn't awful. Now, don't get me wrong, it was no Guess Who's Coming To Dinner. Serious issues of class in America were avoided, jokes were stretched out and taken to absurdity for laughs. Bernie Mac is no Spencer Tracy. Ashton Kutcher is no Sidney Poitier. And Thandie Newton is no forgettable generic actress.

But it wasn't trying to be the original. Not only has movie-making changed since the it came out, America has. Back then, Civil Rights was still a buzzword. Now, in 4 states, the majority of people are non-white. We have reached an unsteady equilibrium. And the face of this unsteadiness is... Bernie Mac?

In the original, the father held all the power. He was dominant in the social situation (being the protector of his daughter and family) as well as in the racial climate. In today's shaky family values situation and uncertain racial climate, Messieurs Mac and Kutcher fairly evenly split what power and resentment there was. This was a surprisingly effective twist: no longer was one man in a position to browbeat another. Though the search for mercy through personal experience played great then, now we want situations more immediately embarrassing.

So, how good is it? Good enough to bear if inflicted upon you. Not worth renting. And so, I leave you with this joke of theirs that gets perfectly at the awkwardness the movie lumbers along with: upon first meeting his fiance's family, Ashton experiences a moment of silence. Bernie Mac just mistook Ashton's black cab driver as his daughter's boyfriend, and only now realizes the overwhelming truth. Ashton says, nervously, and ridiculously for anyone with the simplest grasp of genetics: "Wow, I wish she had told me you were black."

I: Maxims and Barbs

Forward

As the better part of August comes and goes, I thought it a good time to post the first section of my long unawaited Twilight of the (American) Idols: Or How to Philosophize with a Remote Control, a philosophical tract on the status of the American Public and its Media.

I. MAXIMS AND BARBS

1
Ours is the age of celebrities as whores, and whores as celebrities

2
The genius of Scientology, like the genius of Viva-La-Bam, is its sympathy with (its identity with) its audience: Scientology was Tom Cruise long before Tom Cruise was a Scientologist.

3
Oprah is the opiate of the masses

4
By violently wedging non-sequiturs and flashbacks between plot points, Family Guy achieves in twenty-two minutes an A.D.D. semblance of the pop-culture-shredding absurdist genius it has taken The Simpsons thirteen years to craft.

5
Andy Warhol later said, “I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is, ‘In fifteen minutes everybody will be famous.’” It is now approximately 13:52.

6
Boardroom adage amendments passed by unanimous vote: “(homo-, metro-, bi-)sex sells”

7
If I had a bullet in my lower intestine for every time MTV played back-to-back music videos, I’d retire at age 67 along the Florida panhandle.

8
Reference is the new meaning

9
To wit: it is possible among men of our age to converse exclusively in bits of Will Farrell dialogue.

10
Precisely what’s wrong with Seth MacFarlane and most university students is that they think nos. 4, 8 and 9 are good things.

11
It should surprise no one that as hip-hop artists shift from have-nots to haves, so too does their audience.

12
Pimp my Ride as exemplar of media marketed to 18-25 year olds: hot bodies and digital effects slapped on the same rusted out old frame with the same shitty transmission.

13
Give it five years and ABC will look like HBO, HBO will look like the Playboy Channel, the Playboy Channel will look like a hardcore gangbang flick, and a hardcore gangbang flick will look like a bunch of Asian children being taken out into the street and shot.

14
Precisely what's wrong with me is I think (most of) no. 13 is a good thing.

15
I mistrust all Six Feet Under fans and avoid them: the will to melodrama is a lack of integrity

16
Zack Braff’s worst crime was making it impossible to like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, since it is an immutable law of nature that every girl who lists Garden State among her favorite films lists it as well.

17
That Conan O’Brien evades any mention of his Harvard education on his show—usually by knocking over his desk mike and making a poop joke—is what success with his target demographic has meant.

18
I was once at a poker table in Atlantic City across from a young man wearing a t-shirt with “NO LIMIT TEXAS HOLD’EM” printed across its front. Sizing up our competition, a friend remarked to me that he had never seen a New York Yankee wearing a “PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL” t-shirt. Apply analogical reasoning when interpreting a Surreal Life cast-member’s claim to be “an actor.”

19

The only thing we have to fear is Fear Factor itself.

20

The Axis of Comedic Evil: Andy Dick, Kathie Griffith, and Kathie Griffin

21

I have been called, among other things, a metrophopic. These charges are unwarranted. I said only that I have a sneaking suspicion that the Queer Eyes are running out of Straight Guys, and that as a result I fear for my flannels.

22

Heron and Trippi had it backwards: The Television will not be Revolutionized.

Oh What a Night

[ an assignment for my Playwriting class. I was suposed to write the most outrageous and teasing first 2 pages of a play that I could. See if you can get the subtle reference to bloodless revolution buried in there. ]

Walter: (the clerk in a convenience store, on his cell-phone, of ambiguous ethnicity) Yes-- I be home 20 minutes. Fine, fifteen. I do have reason! I stay here Tuesday night two hours preparing for health inspector then have to stay three hours Wednesday getting things back to normal. Fine. I promise-- I be there in 15 minutes. No excuses.

Janet: (woman in her 20's, storming in to the store) No, it's not negotiable.

David: (her boyfriend, behind her, but not as hurried) C'mon, Janet, everything's negotiable. (her look says no). Except our safety and health. I just wish you would listen to my-- (she crosses her arms, but doesn't walk away) We've been in a committed, monogamous relationship for five *and a half* months, we've both been tested twice, I trust you and your history of your former partners and, well, (chuckle) we both know I wasn't getting any before-- (trails off)

Janet: You done? (he nods) OK, then we're just going to pick up some condoms now--

David: It's just, honey, if you loved me--

Janet: Y'know, the more you talk, the more I think we won't be needing any tonight.

David: (eyes bulge when he puts two and two together) Oh, no, we will. (picks them up) See, happy? Just, can we get something else, I don't want the cashier to think--

Janet: To think what? That you have sex? Or that you have sex with me?

David: (realizes defeat) I'm sorry. I was wrong. What kind of flowers do you want?

Janet: (kisses him) That's better. Now let's go get us some chips and dip.

Ms. Tarence: (50-something matron walks to counter with bagel and coffee) 3.12, yes yes. (after plopping down money and taking her change) thanks. (exit)

Judge Cranston: (enters, wanders, 60) (to Walter) Excuse me, sir, where do you stock your tobacco, pipes, and tobacco accessories?

Walter: (perplexed) We have cigarettes. Here. Here. And up here. Nicorette over there.

Cranston: Hmm. But no pipes? (Walter shakes his head) Any cigars? Cigarillos?

Walter: (repeating) We have cigarettes. Here. Here. And up here. Nicorette over there.

Janet: Daddy? Daddy! Okay, weird. Well, Daddy, this is David, my-- my boyfriend.

David: Hello Mr. Cranston. (pause, foot in mouth) Doctor! Hello Doctor Cranston! Is a J.D. a doctorate? I mean, does it entitle-- I've heard so much about you. (trying again) Judge Cranston. Judge Cranston? Justice Cranston-- (settles on one). Your Honor.

Cranston: Yes. You as well. (observes the package) So, off to fornicate with my oldest and only daughter? (David blisters and blushes) No matter, you don't want to tell me, I don't want to hear. (to Janet) he's just as you described him, Janet. For better or worse. Speaking of For Better or Worse, is that a ring you're wearing, Mr. David?

Janet: Daddy, it's a-

David: Actually, Daddy, (realizes his mistake) Sir! I mean, Your Right Reverend--

Janet: It's an engagement band. We're engaged!

Ms. Tarence: (rushing back in, to Walter) I gave you a 20, and you only gave me 6.88 in change! You owed me $16.88! This is ridiculous, can't you people do anything right? I come here every day for 7 years, get the same damn coffee and bagel, and you can't even give me proper--

Walter: You want 16.88? That just glorious! Oh, I gave you the ten dollar bill. (opens cash register, pulls out a bill) See here. One ten left. At start of shift, I have two. Where the other one go? Hmm, let me see, let me see, I bet your fat fingers no able to hold it. Before you accuse me, how 'bout you check in between those massive hams you call breasts. I know no one else look there since 1994. What you use for bra? Hoover Dam?

Ms. Tarence: Oh, you little Jook, you better give me that bill or I'll really give you something to be known as lazy over--

Saul: (entering, with ski mask and revolver) Give me your money, this is a hold up!

Walter: (to Ms. Tarence, thrusting the bill upon her) Is yours, we settled.

Janet: (to Saul) Saul, is that-- Is that you?

Saul: Janet. What-- What are you doing here? I haven't seen you since you-- since we-- You told me you had to move!

Janet: Move on, Saul. I had to move on.

Ms. Tarence: Young man, I can't believe this. That you would stoop so low.

Saul: Listen lady, I'm not going to stand for this. You have no idea--

Ms. Tarence: Oh spare me Saul Solomon. No graduate of my third grade *should* stand like that. (reaches out to adjust his posture) Head straight, young man

Saul: (slapping away her hand) Ms. Tarence?!?!

Craig: (entering, with ski mask and revolver) Give me your money, this is a hold up!