A Polymathic Chomskyite Speaks!

It's Either Barack Obama Or We're All In Trouble

2008-02-05T17:03:00.000-08:00

As you can see from the title of this entry, I am endorsing Barack Obama for President of the United States. But I am only doing so because the Democratic primary voters were stupid enough to fail to elevate John Edwards, the only real candidate for reform, change and justice. The Republican candidates are of course out of the question. Considering that Hillary is so despised on the right that dead Confederates are likely to rise from their graves just to vote against her, she's clearly a bad choice. That leaves Obama. Having read his policy proscriptions he at least seems like the best choice, but anyone who claims Joe Lieberman as "[his] political mentor" is worthy of suspicion. So I'm making this endorsement with my fingers crossed in the audacious hope that the man isn't just full of shit.

It Appears That Soylent Green Time Has Arrived At Last

2007-12-05T19:20:00.000-08:00

On the way into work just recently I listened to NPR's "Forum" with Michael Krasny. That day's topic was retirement age relative to longevity. Two of the three guest "experts" were members of conservative think tanks. The other was a professional demographer.

Their collective hypothesis? Since Americans are living longer they should not retire at 65, but continue working as long as they are "vital" and "thriving." It reminded me of an anti-Social Security propaganda piece published last year at National Review Online. The apparatchik who wrote it described the Senior Olympics, in which very old men and women threw javelins, ran the mile in five minutes, competed in gymnastics and generally demonstrated that they were genealogical freaks. But not according to the apparatchik. No, this guy rhetorically asked "If senior citizens can perform at this level physically, why should they be allowed to retire?" Of course left out of this risible bit of rubbish is the fact that most seniors can barely function at any level, let alone throw javelins or run races. Now this kind of nonsense has gone mainstream, or at least what passes for it in our benighted age.

My maternal grandmother is quite perky for an 85-year-old. She drives her own car, does her own shopping, takes lunch with friends from church, and is generally quite active - for an 85-year-old. If some bureaucrat were to "assess" her capabilities and order her benefits taken away because she should supposedly be working, she'd be dead in a month. The only kind of work my grandmother knows how to do is seamstressing, and that requires standing up for hours at a time while performing very precise maneuvers with one's fingers. It is stressful and exhausting, and no person of 85 could possibly do it, at least not full-time under the onus of having to earn their living.

Aside from the obvious canard that those who are living longer are, ipso-facto, capable of working full time, there is the problem of age discrimination, which is bad and getting worse. Several years ago, when my dad was trying to get temp work in warehouses, time and again he would impress with his resume and work experience in shipping/receiving, inventory control and stock-keeping. The people at the temp agency would excitedly call this or that warehouse and send him off for a full time position. But as soon as he would arrive the (invariably much younger) supervisor would take one look at him and say, "I don't need you. Go home." And you'd better believe that this applies in the white collar world as much if not more than it does in that of the blue collar.

The only professions where age is valued are those you'd expect: Law, medicine, accounting, financial services and, most especially, banking. Then there are the craft fields related to entertainment, such as film and play directing, cinematography and videography, editing, production design and so forth. That's about it. So where are all the other retirees supposed to find work?

Nowhere, hence the title of this blog.

Why I'm Not Posting

2007-10-28T12:22:00.000-07:00

For those of you who care, I now spend most of my time working with video. I have a YouTube account:

http://www.youtube.com/robtran

As well as accounts on Blip.tv, Revver and LiveVideo. I may write something here now and again, but it's unlikely.

The American Film Institute's List of 100 Greatest American Movies: They Speak With a Forked Tongue

2007-06-22T17:52:00.000-07:00

This past week the American Film Institute released yet another list of the "Top 100 American Movies of All Time." The films selected spanned from 1915 to 1996. This one, as with the list released in 1998, caused me to gnash my teeth in frustration. The biggest problems were the omissions and the ordering, but worse still was ghettoizing the list to only those films produced - key word there - in and/or by America. Surely the AFI can be a bit more ambitious, or are its jury members worried that a list including foreign films would crowd out many American "greats"? I think the latter is the main concern. I will restrict myself to the list at hand, such as it is.

If a movie is to be labelled "one of the greatest", it had better have all of the following qualities: Great, even ground-breaking performances; superb visual artistry, even if that artistry is spare; an original plot with memorable dialogue; technical achievements that influenced later films; long-term resonance with the viewing public; long-term (or eventual) acclaim from the serious critical community. An excellent score doesn't hurt either, especially if it is a musical. So how many of the films on the list include all these qualities? Shockingly few. For brevity's sake I shall pare the list down to those that do in a list of my own, to wit and in no particular order:

1. Citizen Kane

2. Casablanca

3. The Godfather

4. Lawrence of Arabia

5. The Wizard of Oz

6. On the Waterfront

7. Singin' in the Rain

8. Psycho

9. Raging Bull

10. Dr. Strangelove

11. Apocalypse Now

10. Midnight Cowboy

11. The Best Years of Our Lives

12. The Birth of a Nation

13. A Streetcar Named Desire

14. A Clockwork Orange

15. Taxi Driver

16. Jaws

17. From Here to Eternity

18. The Third Man

19. An American In Paris

20. City Lights

21. The Wild Bunch

22. Platoon

23. Duck Soup

24. Pulp Fiction

25. Unforgiven

Obviously the AFI jurors and I don't see eye-to-eye. Remember the list of qualifications above. "Greatness" is not in the same category of aesthetic juddgement as "good" or "people's favorite" or even "influential." For example, I didn't include Snow White and the Seven Dwarves or Fantasia because while innovative and historic, they are also brimming with corn and are essentially gimmicks ("a feature-length cartoon!"). That's not to diminish Disney's achievements, but among the greatest of all time? Sorry, no. That goes double for "issue" movies like To Kill a Mockingbird and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?. There were some films - like West Side Story - that were painful for me to leave off because they are personal favorites. Conversely there were films, like The Birth of a Nation, that I was loathe to include, but had to for the sake of honesty. Another example of this was Pulp Fiction, a movie I enjoyed though it is a bit too clever, yet nevertheless I was forced to give credit where credit is due - it is one of the most innovative films ever made, and it includes arresting visuals and great performances. The dialogue is brilliant and of course its influence has been enormous, if too often risible.

Irksome was the sight of box office champions of dubious quality like Gone With the Wind, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and E.T. This is especially true with Butch Cassidy.., now considered to be one of the worst movies ever to be a box office smash. Gone With the Wind is only a bit better, whereas E.T. holds up fairly well 25 years later. But now on to what I find most infuriating about the list: The numerous errors of omission and comission, and what ended up in the top ten.

That more of Stanley Kubrick's work, especially Barry Lyndon and Full Metal Jacket, is not included is a testament, I think, to the contempt in which he is still held by too many people who should know better. Ben Hur, but not Spartacus? As much as I admire Gore Vidal's uncredited screenplay work there is simply no comparison; indeed, Ben Hur does not belong on the list at all (but I get ahead of myself). Where is Once Upon a Time In America? Where is Nashville, or McCabe and Mrs. Miller? How about Twelve Angry Men? Why King Kong but not Jason and the Argonauts? But these are only the omissions. Much of what was put on the list is far more insulting to my understanding of cinema, not to mention my intelligence.

While I concede that it's a cultural fad to lionize The Searchers despite the evidence of the movie itself, what were the jurors thinking putting Dances With Wolves on the list? Other insults to good taste include, first and foremost, The Sound of Music, along with Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Yankee Doodle Dandy (included, apparently, because of the way footage of the title number has been branded onto people's minds through repitition), The Jazz Singer (ditto, but because it was the first "talkie", to which I say a resounding "So WHAT?? Have you SEEN that turd??"), and Rebel Without a Cause (a decent genre film that somehow wandered onto the list from...well, who knows?). There are no other genuinely bad movies on the list. But too many mediocre-to-good films. It's embarassing to me, as an American, to see Star Wars included. I loved that film when I was a wide-eyed thirteen-year-old boy, but it just doesn't hold up - marginal acting, horrendous script and a fairly lousy visual sense given its ground-breaking effects (the likely reason it's on the list at all). Griffith's The Birth of a Nation belongs there only because Intolerance was left off. It's racist themes and lionization of both the Confederacy and, God help us, the KKK mark it as an execrable piece of trash, whatever its innovations and inventions.

Only slightly less infuriating is the top ten. Not including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove and A Clockwork Orange renders the top ten simply not credible. Yes, yes...by all means include Citizen Kane, and The Godfather. But here's an idea: Apocalypse Now anyone? For its flaws it is a stunning masterpiece, a revolutionary contribution to the art of cinema with some of the most arresting images and performances ever committed to celluloid. Lawrence of Arabia (though, aside from Sam Spiegel, more a product of Britain than the U.S.) and Singin' In the Rain most definitely. But the inclusion of Schindler's List is absurd, and the appearance of The Graduate is patent nonsense. One can quibble about On the Waterfront and The Wizard of Oz, as good arguments can be made for both their inclusion in the top ten and their exclusion. Now with the bottom ten of the top twenty there can be no argument in my view; the majority of the films don't belong there. I've already made the case against Star Wars. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest includes one great performance, and that's Jack Nicholson's. The rest are good to serviceable. It's A Wonderful Life is a well-crafted bit of studio pap that has, through TV reruns, secured a kind of traditional place in our national culture, but it in no way belongs in the top twenty. That brings me to Some Like It Hot, the glorification of which has always escaped me. Not only is this movie not fit for the top twenty, it's not fit to be seen on late night TV. And that's not just a matter of opinion. It's a demonstrably dumb movie with a dumb premise and dumb performances. Sunset Boulevard should be honored, but not so highly. It's a bit too precious by half. Psycho belongs where it is, though I'd place it as 20th. All About Eve is great but not this great. The African Queen is in color; not much else besides Bogie's performance recommends it. The Bridge on the River Kwai is a tough call. It was one of those films that was difficult for me to exclude from the AFI list in toto. I'm a great admirer of David Lean, believing him to be in the pantheon of the half-dozen or so greatest directors in cinematic history. But no, ultimately its melodramatic story and poor dialogue keep it from greatness.

These lists should not exist. The many words I've expended on this one may belie that sentiment, but it's one to which I hold. While there are indeed great and greater films, it is fruitless to do other than identify the very greatest, great and good without resorting to numbers and ranks. In only this way can we do justice to artistic achievement.

The Cadaverous Cunt From Columbia

2007-05-08T20:54:00.000-07:00

I have resisted the temptation to write about Anne Coulter for over a year. It just seemed so obvious, even after she indirectly referred to John Edwards as a "faggot." Lots of other folks, especially James Wolcott over at Vanity Fair, were doing such a splendid job I thought "Why bother?" But after watching her pee on the national carpet yet again, I find that I really have no choice. To remain silent is to acquiesce.

This time her target is Barack Obama. Her claim is that a Newsweek poll showing him leading all Republican candidates "helps al-Qaeda." Deliberately, mind you. Her interlocutor was the ever more credulous Geraldo Rivera. When he asked her to clarify, she stated that these polls had to be "push polls" designed to discredit Republicans, and that anything that discredited Republicans, ipso-facto, helped al-Qaeda which, in turn, was prima facie evidence that Newsweek - and possibly Obama - was in cahoots with our enemies.

Anne Coulter is a professor - cough!! - at Columbia University. I assume she has tenure, because I cannot imagine an untenured professor getting away with being such a deliberate national disgrace and keeping their job. While I don't believe in censorship, I do believe that some jobs - broadcasting not among them - require such gravitas as to force those who hold them to also hold their tongues. Not only does Coulter not hold her tongue, she gives it free reign to say whatever comes churning out her roiling id. This is not Chomsky critiquing American foreign policy. No, this is the rhetorical equivalent of spraying obscene grafitti on the Lincoln Memorial.

I say enough is enough. She can be an obnoxious partisan, or she can be a professor beholden to all of the trusts that position implies, but she can't be both. Columbia needs to make a decision, and the sooner the better.

Once More Unto the Breech-Loader

2007-04-29T12:30:00.000-07:00

I have thought a lot about what happened at Virginia Tech, and I'm amazed that it doesn't intrigue or at least shock anyone that we refer to these "massacres" in an almost blase fashion. When those two ten-year-olds in England murdered that toddler near the tube station the English lost their collective mind. The boys had to be protected 24/7 from people who didn't even know the victim's family, let alone the victim. Yet here Timothy McVeigh got a few "boos" at the station house and that was it, with over a hundred dead. That's a bit of a nasty contrast.

After years of studying - and watching - the changes that have occurred in this country since 1968, I have a very strong theory about how we arrived where we are. There were three tragedies in '68 that sent this country and its culture careening down this atomized, amoral and violent path: the assassinations of MLK and RFK, and the election of Richard Nixon. It was also at that time that corporations began using then-rising inflation to strong-arm unions into give-backs. The old urban coalitions of blue collar blacks and ethnic whites, and Jews and blacks, were slowly destroyed through a combination of the Republican's "Southern Strategy" and Nixon's Machiavellian implementation of Affirmative Action in the most racially divisive way possible. At the same time, Reagan introduced a new social callousness wrapped in a velvet package by emptying the mental institutions of California, promising "community care" that never materialized, thus dumping thousands of mentally ill onto the streets. Nixon's monetary policies encouraged banks and corporations to start down the path to mergers and acquisitions, a wholly destructive but highly profitable new way of doing business.

Then came Reagan as President, and then Bush I, and all of the above was accelerated dramatically. It was during the Reagan Era that a group who had once rightly considered themselves to be economically indestructible - white, middle-class, male professionals - found themselves laid off by the thousands, then the tens of thousands and finally between '87 and '94 the hundreds of thousands. Meanwhile, de-unionization kept apace with de-industrialization. Blue collar folks were told to go back to school and learn a new skill or trade. Those who could did so, thousands of them becoming computer and software engineers. The passage of NAFTA and GATT assured that within 15 years of starting these new careers they would be laid off to make way for someone in India or China, or someone brought to the United States from those countries and others.

We first began to see workplace and office massacres in the 80s. The first one of note, committed by James Huberty at the McDonalds in San Ysidro, California, was clearly the work of a madman. But others were not. In fact, the vast majority have not been the work of madmen. Charles Whitman is considered the "grandfather" of spree killings but he had a tumor pressing right up against the portions of his brain that regulated agression and inhibition. No, this phenomenon springs directly from men and women humiliated and degraded by a new economic order that views them as disposable no matter their efforts or loyalty. And so in the early 90s such people, understanding the new order thus established and what it meant for the future, began applying frantic pressure on their children to succeed. They filled their children's lives with meaningless structure and hammered them to get the best grades, and excel at sports and extracurriculars. In effect, instead of protecting the childhoods of their children they, in a panic, unleashed upon them the monstrous system they themselves now had to endure in the workplace.

And so as the 90s wore on some children, like some adults, decided to pick up guns and defend themselves. There was one massacre after another, mostly small. Then Columbine happened, and the country finally took notice in the form of harsher security, profiling "weird" kids and generally making life even more miserable for students nationwide.

It will take a dramatic change in our socio-cultural and - most especially - socio-economic systems for this trend to be reversed. It might even take a full-blown violent revolution, though God I hope not. But if nothing changes, we can expect more of the same. Perhaps even worse.

William Paley and Leslie Moonves: A Comparison-Contrast

2007-04-12T17:23:00.000-07:00

Two years ago the movie "Good Night and Good Luck" received a great deal of attention. It dramatized Edward R. Murrow's televised confrontation with Senator Joseph McCarthy, an incident that some historians believe was a cultural turning point in the defeat of McCarthyism, if not McCarthy himself. What the movie only limns is the enormous risk taken by William Paley, then President of CBS. Immediately after the broadcast there were many in America who were calling for Murrow's job, if not his head. Paley held firm in his support. But of course, that was "good" speech.

Today Leslie Moonves was faced with a similar challenge. Threatened by Al Sharpton with boycotts and protests, and seeing some sponsors duck and cover, Moonves could have stood by the principle that however abhorrent Don Imus's comments may have been, he had the right to make them in the context of an entertainment show on the radio. But he did not. He folded like the cheapest of cheap suits. The irony that he is the current President of CBS and therefore an heir of Paley is almost staggering in its implications. Moreover, Moonves failed the test implicit in the First Amendment, that if we believe in freedom of speech it is precisely that speech we most despise that should be defended with the greatest ardor. But hey, Moonves had investors to please, right?

If Moonves has any shame at all, he'll remove every mirror in his home and office.

Boycott CBS and Viacom Over Don Imus's Termination

2007-04-12T15:47:00.000-07:00

UPDATE

Over the past two weeks it has come to my attention that, not having listened to Don Imus since 1995, I was unaware of the depths of his racism, mysoginy and homophobia. It is one thing to be offensive and politically incorrect to make a point (i.e., Lenny Bruce), it is quite another to engage in such speech for the sheer cruelty and meanness of it. Therefore, and with due consideration, I have decided that I will not proceed with any boycott of CBS or Viacom. --RA

My God, I never thought I would enter the public sphere to defend the likes of Don Imus. But there it is. I've had it, and I will not equivocate. The termination of Don Imus from his extremely popular radio program because of speech found "offensive" by certain individuals was nothing more or less than a McCarthyesque witch hunt. Unlike Michael Richards, whose career in entertainment ended because the community of entertainers decided collectively and quietly that he should go, Imus's career in national, commercial radio has been ended as the result of direct actions taken by Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, both of whom are hypocrites given their anti-semitic remarks in the past. Their direct intervention is all the more hypocritical given that their comments were made ad hominem, whereas Imus's remarks were made in the context of an entertainment program.

This is what must be done. CBS, and its corporate owner, Viacom, must be shown in no uncertain terms that this kind of corporate censorship will no longer be tolerated. They must both be boycotted, and Leslie Moonves - the head of CBS - must be alerted to the fact that his job is not to act as a Cultural Commissar but CEO of a major entertainment corporation, said corporation being in the business of giving the public what it wants. And 3.5 million of them daily wanted Imus.

I do not have access to all the information I need to post right at this moment, but please bookmark this page and return to it over the next several days. I will post the requisite e-mails, web site URLs and other information necessary to get this started. Although not a fan of Imus, I would like to reach out to his fans as a fellow American who finds his censoring abhorrent to our national values. Again, as a progressive-leftist I find it hard to believe that I am doing this, but it must be done. And it will be done.

Jimmy Wales and Tim O'Reilly Can Suck My Cock

2007-04-10T00:10:00.000-07:00

Yes, you read that title correctly. It was deliberately worded. In case you haven't heard, these two net-gurus (O'Reilly came up with the "Web 2.0" concept, and Wales is co-founder of Wikipedia) have decided that what should or should not be said "in [their] living room" is to be the new standard for speech on blogs across the Internet.

Well, fuck them and their mothers. I don't know about you, but MY living room has been host to no end of invective, incitement, rumination, bloviation, conversation and blood-curdling blaspheme. But then that's the whole point, isn't it?

We don't want what can or cannot be said in a private living room to determine what can or cannot be written on or to a blog. Or anywhere else. While I'll be the first to admit that I moderate comments to this blog, I do so with the intent of keeping out what I see as trolls. Others might not see such people as trolls - more's the pity - but that's their right.

Lets keep the web free. Lets ignore O'Reilly and Wales.

The Evil That Is Marshmallow PEEPS

2007-04-05T18:06:00.000-07:00

Every year, I got TWO Easter Baskets. One from my mom and dad, and one from my maternal grandparents. I was allowed to gorge myself for about ten minutes each, then they would be whisked away for "later." When "later" came, I would greedily chomp on everything - especially those WONDERFUL Reese's Peanut Butter Easter Eggs - except those God-foresaken globs of toxic grease known as Marshmallow PEEPS. A fouler-tasting confection I can scarcely imagine. I've always believed that the Satanic purpose of PEEPS is identical to that of candy corn at Halloween: To rub in the cute little noses of innocent children that sometimes LIFE TASTES LIKE SHIT.

But run a Google search on PEEPS, and you will discover that Satan's minions are everywhere. People actually put up web sites dedicated to their love of the stuff. And what, exactly, is that stuff? Marshmallow my ass. I've eaten marshmallows, and they don't taste like turpentine. My guess is that PEEPS start their lives as some sort of industrial adhesive, and then are recycled. And the look of the things! No style whatsoever, just shapeless "chicks" and "rabbits" in garish colors that are an insult to the eye after gnoshing on a finely-chiseled chocolate Easter Bunny.

No, PEEPS are a menace and I refuse to have any truck with them. Back when I was a kid, I was willing to endure a good dose of Catholic guilt from my mother and grandmother over the "waste", just to avoid eating them. I believe that someday, many centuries from now, archaeologists will dig up our landfills and find that the only objects readily identifiable are the millions upon millions of discarded PEEPS. And then they will shake their heads in despair of our culture.

"300": We Flex Our Mighty Pecs In Your General Direction!!

2007-03-17T19:36:00.000-07:00

I finally saw it today, and liked it very much. One thing, though; could I possibly be the only person of all those who've made such hay of the physiques of the actors playing the Spartans who noticed said physiques were digitally enhanced? David Wenham, who played Faramir in THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, here plays Dilios. Wenham is 6' tall, but is slight of build. The pecs, chest and six-pack he sports in this film could have only been achieved with steroids. Yet everything is perfectly proportioned, which is not what happens when slight men use steroids to bulk up. The same goes for Gerald Butler, who plays King Leonidis. The guy looks bigger than Kirk Douglas did in SPARTACUS and, well, nobody in movies has ever had that big a chest except Arnold Schwarzenegger.

With this fresh observation in mind, I am retroactively amused by all the talk of how "gay" were these men's physiques. If those critics had only known the truth.

The Late, Great Stephen King

2007-03-15T12:07:00.000-07:00

When I was 13 I was given Carrie for Christmas, and just devoured it. Announcing that I was now a fan, my family was relieved to know that they had something to buy me for Christmas and birthdays since I'd outgrown toys. I remained a rabid King fan until my junior year in college, when after three years of studying truly great literature I found King's books to be increasingly boring. It wasn't that his writing powers were declining; it was that after reading, say, The Brothers Karomazov a book like Christine just didn't measure up. This doesn't make me special, just different from other folks.

From 1987 to the publication of the first Dark Tower book I would only read King's short stories, which remain very good pieces of horror genre writing. The Dark Tower series became my guilty pleasure, and the ending of Wizard and Glass honestly had me in tears. But the last four books were so awful that I came to understand that King would continue to crank 'em out until the day he drops dead. And that's because he's not a writer anymore, he's Stephen King Incorporated, and like all good corporations he has to keep a steady flow of product moving into the marketplace to maintain brand integrity and ensure profits.

I would posit that Stephen King is an exemplar, the first prominent example we have of bad movies and TV ruining someone who could have been a truly great writer of important books. There are flashes of tarnished brilliance throughout King's ouevre: Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, The Body, The Last Rung on the Ladder from the Night Shift collection, Gerald's Game, Dolores Claiborne, and Wizard and Glass. These stories and books give insights into what kind of writer King could have been, and so reading them is bittersweet. That such a prodigous talent was blunted and ill-used is ironically evident in the splendid grandiosity of many of his best genre books. Who can deny that The Shining and The Stand, not to mention 'Salems Lot, are among the best books of horror ever written? But that's the tragedy. They're only among the best horror books ever written. I'm sure that satisfies King (not to mention his accountant), but it offers no satisfaction for our culture at large.

The accident that nearly took King's life changed him. He has become arrogant, petty, even nasty in his dealings with the public, the critical establishment and other writers. He routinely writes vicious criticism of books by authors far better than he, and his outrageous comments upon receiving a lifetime achievement prize from the same committee that selects the winner of The National Book Award were telling. As to the public, I heard him on NPR's "City Arts and Lectures" series giving a talk in San Francisco that fairly dripped with arrogance and entitlement. And critics? His one comment, regarding suggestions that he cut his bloated tomes down to a manageable size, was "Cut this." Long gone is the playfulness and inherent decency that he once exhuded both on the page and in person.

But the question is why? His wounds have healed, and although he must sometimes walk with a cane he is not crippled. So why has he not put the accident behind him? I think I know the answer, though I cannot explicitly state it for legal reasons. Let me just say that it was VERY suspicious that the man who ran over King suffered a fatal heart attack some time later, and on King's birthday (something he alluded to on "City Arts and Lectures" in a creepily giggling manner). It is no secret that King was visibly enraged in the courtroom when that man received a light sentence. And the man's family said that there was no history of heart disease on either side of their family, and that he was as hail as a horse. They were clearly suspicious. So am I. You may draw your own conclusions.

This Is Spinal Tap: Anatomy of a Bad Joke

2007-03-01T16:48:00.000-08:00

It is always dangerous to analyze comedy. The only rule is this: Funny is funny, except when it’s not. But there are times when sheer hype can take something that is unfunny and make it seem funny to unwitting audiences (no pun intended). Case in point is the “Set to 11” scene in “This Is Spinal Tap.”

Anyone who has watched the movie knows to what I’m referring, but just in case you don’t, here it is: Rob Reiner, playing the mockumentary director Marty DiBergi (and I wonder what director’s name is being spoofed there?), is talking to band member Nigel Tufnel, played by Christopher Guest. With a flourish Tufnel reveals the “secret” to the band’s “big sound.” Whereas most bands’ amplifiers are just set to 10, theirs is set to 11, “for that extra burst of sound, ya’ know?” DiBergi replies, “Why not just make 10 louder?” Tufnel stares at him in befuddlement and then mumbles “Well…it’s 11.”

That scene is now considered a classic, and in fact “set to 11” has become a cultural touchstone, popping up in mock reference to everything from over-loud comedians to over-heated political rhetoric. But there’s a little problem. That scene isn’t funny; in fact, it’s the opposite of funny because what it’s parodying is actually logical.

Amplifiers do in fact have volume controls with numeric ratings just like any other sound-producing devices, and their highest setting is usually 10. So if Spinal Tap did in fact want to best other bands by becoming louder, the logical thing to do would be to add a higher setting to their amps. The joke would have only worked if Spinal Tap’s amps went up to 10, with Tufnel erroneously explaining that most bands’ amps only went to 9, and DiBergi correcting him.

I saw Spinal Tap twice when it originally came out in 1984. Neither audience so much as tittered at this scene. I remember sitting there both times thinking, “Ok, I know what the joke is supposed to be, but it doesn’t make any sense.” And it doesn’t. So why is the scene considered a “classic”?

The answer is, I think, hype. Twenty-three years later “This Is Spinal Tap” is considered one of the greatest comedies ever filmed. But apparently in the minds of too many people a movie that is labeled a “classic” and one of the greatest comedies ever made must be frame-to-frame funny. And that’s just not true. To take an example from another genre, many cineastes believe (rightly, in my opinion) that “The Wild Bunch” is a masterpiece. But that doesn’t change the fact that it has quite a few flaws (like its dialogue, and some of its caricatures). Those flaws don’t detract from its greatness. After all, not every great film can be as flawless as “Citizen Kane”, “Lawrence of Arabia” or “2001: A Space Odyssey.” Successive audiences have been taught by the hype surrounding “This Is Spinal Tap” that every scene in it is hilarious, and that this particular scene is a classic. And so most people believe it. It is a self-perpetuating cultural delusion, and yet another illustration that while dying is easy, comedy is hard.

Except when it’s not.

Leprous Surfaces

2007-02-21T17:24:00.000-08:00

Not long ago I was looking at a friend's refrigerator. It was literally covered with magnets, but what caught my eye were those tiny word magnets that allow you to write sentences, poems, hell, even a novel on one of those double-wide Sub Zero models. And then I started to feel nauseous, and had to turn away. That sensation caused a revelation, which I'd like to share with you.

Recently our consumer culture has been encouraging the creation of leprous surfaces. Such surfaces can be a refrigerator door, the back of a car, a pizza crust, the edges of a computer monitor, cubicle walls. Just about anything. We all seem obsessed with affixing as many bits and pieces of stuff on these surfaces as we possible can, and I don't get it. At times it seems as if too many people are subconsciously remembering past lives lived in lepor colonies, and they're trying to recreate the effects of the disease.

Even food is effected. Pizza, for example. While the "combo" pizza is always a favorite, too many pizza palaces are putting so many toppings on so little crust the result looks like a lepor's back. It's off-putting; really, I mean, who wants to bite into a steaming-hot wedge of fissured skin?? I sure don't.

Which brings me to piercings and tattoos….

George Carlin Has Jumped the Shark

2007-02-13T10:59:00.000-08:00

I have always admired the brilliant work of George Carlin. Along with Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce, he is the preeminent comedian of the last half-century. Though he started doing staid routines for supper clubs, 'round about '69 or so he realized that something was happening in the culture of which he wanted to be a part. And so was born the "hippy-dippy" Carlin persona that he stuck with until the early 80s, when he gradually reinvented himself as the world's funniest curmudgeon. The pinnacle of this new act came in 2002 with his HBO special You Are All Diseased.

It wasn't "vintage" Carlin - it was, amazingly for a man in his sixties, entirely new Carlin. But one thing remained, an iconoclastic and contrarian strain of anti-establishmentarianism that resulted in multiple, very funny jokes basically sticking it to "the man." Here's an example:

And what's with this shit about smoking cigars? Arrogant, yuppie assholes suckin' on a big, brown dick. And I know what you Freudians are going to say: 'Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.' Yeah? And sometimes it's a big, brown dick!

With this resurgence I eagerly awaited each of his next two specials, only to be grievously disappointed each time. The fire was out, and his crotchety old man act no longer seemed like an act. But nothing prepared me for what I received in my e-mail in-box last night, and what it seems to suggest about Carlin's state of mind. But first, some background.

Over the last month or so I've been posting videos to YouTube. Only one has been a real video, a filmed image of myself. The rest of them have consisted of groups of title cards on which I've written various jokes and bits of business. Most of them last no more than 20 seconds or so. One of them contained the following joke on two title cards:

"When two bald men sit together, they tend to make an ass of themselves."

I first heard this joke in a YouTube clip of an old (1972) Dick Cavett TV special that included an interview of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. I assumed that, as per usual, Cavett was quoting some long-ago comedian from the golden age, like Groucho Marx or Jimmy Durante, and therefore felt no compunction about using the joke. The clip with the joke was up for just over three weeks, and got a whopping 109 views. The search tags for the clip were "Yul Brynner Telly Savalas bald men." The title was "Bald Is Sexy, Except When It's Not." And last night I got an e-mail from YouTube with the title "DMCA Violation." "DMCA" stands for Digital Millenium Copyright Act, so I knew it was serious. When I opened the e-mail I found the following:

Dear Member: This is to notify you that we have removed or disabled access to the following material as a result of a third-party notification by George Carlin claiming that this material is infringing:

Bald Is Sexy, Except When It's Not: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFloLib3AF4

Please Note: Repeat incidents of copyright infringement will result in the deletion of your account and all videos uploaded to that account. In order to avoid future strikes against your account, please delete any videos to which you do not own the rights, and refrain from uploading additional videos that infringe on the copyrights of others. For more information about YouTube's copyright policy, please read the Copyright Tips guide. [emphasis added]

I cannot for the life of me figure out how "George Carlin" (most likely one of his lawyers) found that clip. YouTube gets two million uploads a day. So how did they come across some schmuck who inadvertantly used one of his jokes without attribution?? I'm guessing that I was ratted out by somebody, but that's not the issue. The issue is that with this kind of pettiness Carlin himself has now become "the man" he has made a career of deriding. "Arrogant yuppies"?? How arrogant is it to report as "copyright infringement" the posting of a single (and very, very OLD) joke in a short clip? Very arrogant. Carlin has, at long last and sadly, become a braying hypocrite. But I suppose I shouldn't blame him too much. Eventually our system gets everybody.

Modern Males' Lament

2007-01-31T16:12:00.000-08:00

Face it, ladies, this is true of too many of you....

My YouTube Debut

2007-01-09T13:19:00.000-08:00

It's modest, as I don't yet have a digital video camera, but it's a start....

Beware - my sense of humor is bawdy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVNhZWXppGA

Attention Haters

2007-01-06T14:59:00.000-08:00

This is addressed to the many people who like to fill my in-box with little missives about my weight. Is that the best you witless morons can do? I mean, really, show some bloody creativity once in a while. When I click on hate mail I expect to be entertained and you, my fine feathered friends, are failing to do your jobs.

The Disgraceful Execution of Saddam Hussein

2006-12-29T19:23:00.000-08:00

Sometime today or early tomorrow, Saddam Hussein will be executed by hanging. In hanging Saddam Hussein the Iraqi authorities, complicit with the United States, will validate his life's work. They will be demonstrating, as he spent his life demonstrating, that might makes right and official murder is a proper tool of governance.

I will not go so far as to say that the Iraqi government will "become" like Saddam Hussein, because to my knowledge they will not torture him to death or execute him arbitrarily. After all, he did receive a fair trial for his monstrous crimes. Nevertheless, the moment the trap door opens beneath his feet, Saddam Hussein's world view will be vindicated. Instead of spending the rest of his life in a cell, eventually becoming a footnote with only the memory of his crimes to keep him company, Saddam will be given the chance to think to himself one last time "I was a great leader once, and now I am a martyr."

And that is the greatest injustice of all.

A Note Regarding Comments

2006-12-19T13:09:00.000-08:00

As some of you are no doubt aware, Blogger is in the process of updating its user interface. The latest version is in the Beta stage of development. Many of you who use Blogger have already converted. I have not, because Google is making it an incredible pain in the ass. Eventually I'll have to, of course, and in the meantime I am having no end of problems: Can't post embedded video or audio clips; can't post photographs or graphics; and, most annoying of all, I'm not getting notified every time a comment is posted here.

I just discovered this by clicking on the Moderate Comments tab of my dashboard, something I didn't think I had to do given that I am supposed to receive e-mail notification of any comments that are posted. So my apologies to those of you who posted comments and never saw them. They're all up now (except for a few nasty ad homenims - those went down the memory hole, as they always will). I will respond to some of them in time.

I thank you for your patience.

Quote of the Week

2006-12-17T06:30:00.000-08:00

In a book review published recently, the New York Sun allowed Josef Joffe to get off the following line regarding the fecundity of "the West" versus Muslims:

It may run out of babies, but will it also run out of spunk?

Apparently Mr. Joffe is not...up on his idiom. Not to mention which comes first.

Try not to laugh too hard.

Our Country's Grave Error

2006-12-16T17:35:00.000-08:00

When the Civil War ended this nation had a chance to right itself. It had a chance to unmake that which had been made by the traitors of the Confederate States Of America. But we did not. Lincoln, with his great heart, said, "We are now contrymen again."

But he was wrong. He did not live to see how wrong, but wrong he was.

It is my opinion that those who made up the Confederate government, and all those in its armies beyond the rank of lieutenant, should have been given two choices: Exile or execution. If such a thing had been done, then the South would never have been the scourge it became and remained for 120 years. And it would not be the social, political and cultural backwater that it for the most part remains.

I cannot imagine any reason that justified allowing Nathan Bedford Forrest to run around the South, raising hell and helping to found the Ku Klux Klan. Better that he had been in irons, on his way to some foreign place where he could act out his savagery away from our beloved country.

We would all now be better off if such things had happened. And to those who would claim that "the South" would have just fought a "guerilla war", I submit the following: The Army of the Potomac, The Army of the James and, last but not least, Sherman's Army of Georgia.

In other words, they would have lost again.

DVDs And Their Discontents

2006-12-13T22:53:00.000-08:00

I had a rather interesting conversation in my local Hollywood Video the other day. Expressing frustration at the horrific playing condition of too many of the DVDs at hand, I asked a clerk why more people weren't complaining. His rather surprising reply was that people didn't mind because they were used to their CDs acting up. When I asked him to elaborate he said "Well CDs scratch all the time."

I wonder if that's true. I don't know, because I've only had one CD melt down on me, a copy of K.D. Lang's album "Engenue" that just got worse and worse with each playing. Skipping, track-jumping, freezing - you name it.

Anyway it doesn't matter. This is not a conspiracy theory. Neither NetFlix nor Hollywood nor Blockbuster is going to stay in business if DVDs are consistently unwatchable. But the problem is that, after a day or two (or a week or two, depending on the film), their DVDs do become unwatchable. I thought it was my fault, that my player was too old or somesuch.

That was before I started playing DVDs from my own collection after having problems with those I'd rented. The difference? My DVDs were not watched by idiots who had no idea how to handle a DVD. They worked everytime. The rented DVDs required about twenty minutes of careful cleaning before they would play...that's assuming they would. Many - too many - were unwatchable. They would not even load. The few that did would stop halfway through the movie, make that strange ka-shick noise and just refuse to go any further. It would not be a gross exaggeration to say that this was - and is - infuriating. Unlike the hassle-free experience I always had with rented VHS cassettes, lately I have to cross my fingers when renting a DVD and hope I can actually watch it, or watch all of it.

So what to do? We as consumers need to start protesting DVDs. They are unstable mediums of recorded entertainment. They are too fragile, and too likely to rob us of the entertainment we are seeking. Last but not least, even those that work are, all too often, a colossal pain in the ass, what with the cleaning to make them work. It was never like this with VHS cassettes, even though they would sometimes break. If a tape broke in your VCR you took it to your local (honest) VCR shop and it was cleared right up.

Now? Hollywood Video has instituted a policy whereby you can - at .25 cents a copy - purchase "insurance" that the DVD you have rented will be "covered" if the next renter says there is a problem with it. That is like McDonalds charging .25 cents a burger as insurance that you won't get e coli. It's ludicrous, and it needs to stop.

DVDs are a symptom of our high technology times. Microsoft - among others - puts out bad software and then, in so many carefully chosen words, tells all of us "tough shit." We like what technology can do, even when we're being sold a bill of goods. And that's the problem.

I think that our dilemma can best be summed up in the difference between Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. The former has left the lizard-like morality of Silicon Valley far behind. Woz has established educational foundations, and he tries to help people. Steve Jobs is all about Apple Computer, and how well its stock is doing. He drives his employees relentlessly, and seems to have no soul. So who do we want as our mentor? Woz or Jobs? I think that the latters last name gives it all away. Don't you?

Sprinkles In My Joints Or, A Gout Emanation

2006-11-30T11:30:00.000-08:00

This posting is a bit different, in that I discuss something that really only pertains to me. Please indulge me in my self-indulgence. I shall expound on weightier matters very soon.

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How bad of a Catch-22 situation does one have to find oneself stuck in before one is entitled to throw a tantrum? Though strictly a rhetorical question, it has vexed me lo these many months. You see, I have gout. Or perhaps more accurately, gout has me. If gout only rings a dim bell, it is because it was a disease of the late middle ages to the early 20th century, a Dickensian affliction reserved for Scrooge and Marley. But not anymore.

A strict definition of gout is an unhealthy build-up of uric acid in the bloodstream resulting in the accumulation of pirene crystals in and around the joints of the feet and legs. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? Masochists love it for the way the pain puts them in mind of ground glass gnashing against their ankle and knee bones. Yes, a lip-smacking good time.

Gout has many causes, but in my case it is hypertension, also known as high blood pressure. When my blood pressure gets high, it gets positively baked, so I have to take three of the most potent angiotensin blockers on the market - Norvasc, Diovan and Procardia, the latter of which never fails to put me in mind of defibrillators. My blood pressure weakens my kidneys, and they in turn fail to properly filter the uric acid from my blood, thus it does build up and, well, you can guess the rest.

But that's not the Catch-22. Nope, far from it.

I have to take non-steroidal anti-inflammatories for my gout because of the hypertension. The NSAIs that I take are colchicine and indocin. The chief side effect of colchicine and indocin - aside from turning my lower intestines into an over-flowing sewer and my anus into a blown manhole cover - is that they neutralize all three of my blood pressure medicines. Once neutralized said medicines don't work, my blood pressure goes up, my kidneys sputter and the uric acid level rises and floods my joints. This means I have to take more colchicine and indocin and...ok, that's It.

I'm holding my breath until all this goes away. And where's my binky, dammit?!

Meat Mechanics in the House of Pain

2006-11-18T14:06:00.000-08:00

At a picnic in the summer of '98 my abdomen began to feel distended and swollen. It was also rigid in a strange way, as if my stomach had been replaced by a large rock. The next morning when I awoke it was worse: A pinching pain just above my navel and a visible bump in the same place, as if something had tried to poke through from my innards and gotten stuck. It was a hernia, and a bad one from the look and feel of it. I called my doctor that same morning and thus began an odyssey that would terminate with my deliverance into the hands of what I've now come to think of as the Meat Mechanics. You might know them as surgeons.

Most of us have had a discomfiting experience with our HMO, probably more than once. Those few of us who don't belong to an HMO have doubtless read about them and the often-tragic results of the shoddy care they too often provide. If we're lucky, though, we have no knowledge or experience with an HMO's Ninth Circle, the outpatient surgical center (OSC). Outpatient means exactly what it sounds like: you're out the door as quickly as they can move you. These facilities have existed for many years, but recently they have become almost mechanized. This machine shop atmosphere has bred a new type of surgeon (a chilly stratum of an already cold profession) who in my very unfortunate experience seems to view the human body the same way Mr. Goodwrench views the average Buick.

I went to my doctor, who touched the bump, pronounced "Oh my, yeah, that's real!" then recommended a surgeon, who later poked and prodded me while scratching his chin in a thoughtful manner. "You've got yourself an umbilical hernia there," he said, causing the word "mechanic" to pass through my mind for the first time. I was told the hernia would require surgery, and soon. A volleyball match ensued between my surgeon and my HMO, with an elusive authorization number acting as the ball being spiked back and forth over the net of my life as, beneath a graveyard somewhere in Prague, Franz Kafka rolled over and yelled "For pete's zake, pe'foam ze zurgery!"

Finally a date was set. I was given the usual pre-surgery warnings: no aspirin, no booze, etc, but with a little twist I hadn't expected: I would have to find a ride home or else the surgery would not be performed as scheduled because I would be going home the same day. Having been healthy and accident-free since before I was no longer covered by my parents' insurance, I had assumed that, this being an invasive procedure (i.e., my body would be cut open with a knife), I would be in the hospital at least one night. I was wrong, and furthermore there would be no hospital, but rather the medically glorified office building that is the OCS. How was I to get home? My grandmother seemed the only option, but the idea of her septuagenarian spine trying to walk my drug-leadened, post-operative body out to her car was not reassuring.

I thought back to my childhood, when I had my tonsils removed. Though fearful of being away from home, being very, very close to the people who knew how to save my life had been most reassuring. I would get no such comfort now. My mind turned to the children who might be having surgery the same day as me, and I wondered how they would deal with it. My own waiting brought dread. Most disturbing to my sleep was the apprehension I felt at the slip-shod way all of the preparations were being handled, and what that foretold of the surgery itself. My dreams filled with cries of "Flatlined! Flatlined!" or, worse still, "Oops!"

On the big day I reported to the OSC, was led to a phalanx of partitioned prep cubicles and told to undress, slip into a surgical gown, lie down on the bed and "relax". I was offered a magazine, which I accepted. My blood pressure was taken. I was given a pill, to help me "relax". I was briefed by the anesthesiologist, who asked a couple of quick questions, failed to adequately respond to my worries (chief among them the chance of waking up during the surgery because of a tolerance for drugs, one built up from four years of taking Xannax for panic attacks), and then explained how I was to be knocked out. Next came the surgeon, who said, "How are you? We'll be getting to you soon." I remember thinking to myself, "Did he say 'to you', or 'to your car'?" Again the word "mechanic" flickered across my consciousness.

I waited, and waited, and in the meantime was given a shot of something stronger than the pill. Several times some anonymous person in O.R. green would whisk open the curtain to my cubicle, glance at me, then swing it closed again. The curtain opened one last time as my bed and I were unceremoniously yanked out of the cubicle and shoved down a hallway. I mentioned to one of the orderlies that I didn't think the drugs were strong enough, I didn't feel like I was going to fall asleep, and was ignored. I once more mentioned the Xannax issue. Again, I was ignored. Once in the operating room I was pulled from the bed onto the operating table. I was gassed and fell unconscious. Then I woke up. Oh God in heaven, did I ever wake up.

As the world came into focus and was audible again I felt two nurses shaking me hard and heard them yelling "Come on, Mr. Anderson! Wake up! Time to get dressed and go! Come on…up, up, up." I was in the "post-op room". In the background a child was shrieking in what sounded like quite literal agony. This child would be left in that state for at least fifteen horrible minutes before it was merely wheeled away into a room where it could not be heard - this answered any questions I had about kids and surgery. During those fifteen minutes I was given a swig or two of 7-Up, was asked if I was in pain ("YES!") and given extra morphine. This was a good thing, because I wouldn't be allowed to stay in the "post op room" for very long. It was full, with at least eight and perhaps as many as ten other post-surgical patients, all of whom were getting the bum's rush because the spaces were needed for still more surgical patients. And so on, and so on, precisely like a manufacturing floor. It was then that the term Meat Mechanics was born in my mind. It was the only term that fit the ordeal, and the ordeal was far from over.

Since I was meat, it was necessary to process and prepare me for delivery as quickly as possible. Therefore a nurse whose name I do not remember but whose words I'll never forget proceeded to dress me while - I kid you not - offering a running commentary on the fragrance wafting from my feet and my general physical condition, in that order. Ignoring my yelps of pain as the morphine wore off (albeit with merciful slowness), and offering no more of it, she badgered me into my underwear, pants and shirt, sat me down on a wheelchair and rolled me at a fast clip into the lobby of the OSC. My suturing had been completed less than an hour earlier.

My grandmother was late, but not because she was careless. Having helped my grandfather through several surgeries and been through a few of her own over the years, she expected that, despite being an "outpatient", I would be placed in a recuperation room for at least a few hours. Ten minutes after being wheeled into the lobby, the desk nurse briskly inquired where my "ride" was and when I slurred that I didn't know she walked away frowning. Twenty minutes or so later she stalked up again, this time visibly annoyed. "You DO have a ride home, don't you?" I answered in the affirmative, and was told rather abruptly that this waiting would not do, no, not at all. I was then asked my grandmother's phone number. I could bearly think, what with the drugs and the pain, but finally managed to come up with it. My grandmother was called, and when she arrived was shocked to see me already dressed and in the lobby, and said so. The desk nurse explained in a monotone that "it was policy that patients be picked up promptly." She was handed a prescription for a variety of medications. She asked if there was a pharmacy on the premises. The answer was no. She would have to get the prescriptions filled on our way home.

The desk nurse left my grandmother to deal with me, but we were lucky in that another nurse saw the difficulty she was having and offered to help. Together they pushed me out to her car. As she helped me get in, each movement I made felt like someone was twisting a white-hot knife into my belly. I recalled something told to me by a security guard once, of how he would rather be punched than slapped and shot than stabbed. When I had asked why, he had explained that all four had happened to him and that slapping and stabbing were much more painful. Now I understood all too well what he had meant.

My grandmother somehow managed to get me into the car, but not before having to shout "Robbie, be careful!" at least ten times. She drove to a pharmacy and went inside. I waited in the car for an hour, sweating, half-hallucinating and in almost unbearable pain. By the time she got back I felt as if I had done something terribly wrong and was now being punished, but what I'd done I simply couldn't remember. As we drove to my apartment she turned on the air conditioning, the blessed cooling of which balanced my temperature to the point that I fell into exhausted sleep.

Then I had to wake up again. "Robbie we're here. Can you get up those steps by yourself?" Did I mention that I lived on the second floor of my apartment complex? A strange omission, that, because getting up to my room was the final interrogation of this, my own private Spanish Inquisition. It took just over a half-hour to climb twenty steps. Each time I lifted a leg I got that knife in the belly all over again.

I belabor my pain for a very simple reason. It was talking to me, warning me. And it is, like the pitiful screams of that anonymous child, the most compelling evidence I can present to prove beyond all rational doubt that my surgery and post-operative handling should never have been performed in the manner they were, and neither should anyone else's, ever. These houses of pain that HMOs have set up must not be allowed to operate as they do. Even though my surgery was successful, I felt in the end the way a Confederate or Union field hospital patient must have felt during the Civil War, like I had survived a horrendous ordeal of pain and screams and misery. Just two problems: I was a civilian, and it was 1998.

I think it beggars the whole point of industrialized progress to question whether a patient's dignity and comfort should be as important as the outcome of their surgical procedure. Of course it's as important. The fact that certain unqualified bureaucrats seem to think it is not is a scandal. And if you don't believe me, just go outside right now and intentionally lift up something the wrong way, something entirely too heavy. Proof shall be forthcoming.

Our Current Police State of Affairs

2006-11-18T13:49:00.000-08:00

The state and federal corrections systems of the United States are an abomination and a scandal. Rehabilitation has been abandoned in favor of "punishment" so brutally and systematically inhumane as to warrant investigation by the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague. The charge? Crimes against humanity. If this seems severe, it is nothing compared to what is happening to every prisoner, to one degree or another, in every correctional facility in the United States. And all of this stems from the most pernicious form of corruption imaginable, the same kind that resided within the German people just prior to and during World War II. This corruption takes many forms. For example, there is a very simple cause and effect reason why these conditions persist and worsen. Jails and prisons, like any other institutions, operate on budgets. These budgets are augmented when there is a need and cut if there is not. With the over-crowding of jails and prisons now epidemic, prison and jail administrators have found a perfect money-raising system: allow and even encourage prison conditions to reach the breaking point, and then cite the resultant violence as proof positive of the necessity for more money…and more prisons, of course.

Beyond the bureaucrats who justify their own existence and earn their living this way, there are their cultural cheerleaders, we the people in whose name these crimes are committed and who have been screaming these twenty-five years for more, more and more punishment. How much is enough? How many people really know that this is the minimum you can expect as a prisoner in these United States:

*You are convicted of a crime you have (or have not) committed, must stand before a jury of your peers, a judge, the prosecutor, your family and who knows who else and be told: "__________, you have been convicted of ____________. The sentence of this court is ___ years imprisonment at _______________."
*You are taken away from your family, job, friends, home, car, stuff, movies, restaurants, vacations, sunshine, parks, football games with friends on Sundays, plays, lovemaking and warmth and transported against your will to what amounts to a concrete and steel dungeon filled with malevolent strangers.
*You are ordered against your will to strip, and an officer inserts his/her fingers into your anus and/or vagina looking for "contraband". This will not be the last time this happens to you.
*You are placed in a (most likely) 5' X 8' cell and a steel-barred door is closed behind you. While you are in that cell you have NO privacy and NO rights (i.e., guards can enter at any time and examine - or steal - the meager belongings you are allowed).
*Have to make a bowel movement? You will make it on a freezing cold stainless steel hole in the floor in full view of everyone. When your cellmate has to make a similar movement you will have the pleasure of smelling it.
*You will be told when you can sleep, wake up, eat and move about. When you are outside your cell you will be forced to follow a (typically yellow) line on the ground. Any deviation from these rules, whether inadvertent or not, results in still more punishment.
*Every single diversion from the above-described routine will be presented to you as a "privilege", which can be taken away at a moments notice.

Juding from the rhetoric spewing from every orifice of the media, I have no choice but to conclude that most are ignorant of these realities. Furthermore, we are all morally complicit in the barbarity of our prison systems by virtue of our insistence that "merely" having one's rights taken away and being confined is not enough, that there must still be more, and worse. According to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, the sort of institutionalized depravity that now exists in our prisons is considered torture, as indeed it is, and is further deemed inhumane, regardless of the crime or criminal. Furthermore, it has been established by international law and treaty that when someone is incarcerated they may lose their civil rights, but not their human rights. Currently in the United States this standard is ignored, with hideous results.

Rape and sexual assault have existed in our prisons for decades, but there's been an important change in its nature and practice. Now it is a fully ritualized, prison administration-approved, pseudo-cultural and, worst of all, thoroughly common experience for all prisoners. Once upon a time - say, twenty years ago or earlier - a person in prison for the first time could avoid rape by following the simple rules of not accepting any favors from anyone, and letting it be known that you would not allow yourself to be "messed with". Now it doesn't matter what an inmate does or how he or she does it. Rape is as much a part of the prison matriculation process as stripping upon arrival and being issued clothing and bunk material. The guards negotiate with gang members, saying "Look, we need you to work over so-and-so for such-and-such reason. Do a good job, and we'll throw you the best looking young blonde/black/Latino who comes in next."

Official collusion in criminal acts is a clear sign of corruption in general; the standardization of savagery is part and parcel of the sort of deep corruption already discussed. There is, however, a possible remedy. The War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague is currently sifting through mountains of evidence - including victim testimony - to bring indictments for crimes against humanity against Ratko Muladic and others. Among these crimes is mass rape, used as a means of fomenting terror and thus control. That is precisely the same thing that is going on in our prisons.

When it comes to these sorts of atrocities I'm an internationalist; I say if the U.S. courts will do nothing comprehensive to stop this, then let's take it to the Hague. Even if nothing ever really happens to the perpetrators, even if they know they'll never be extradited, they will also know that they will never, ever be able to leave the borders of the United States or even travel in international airspace without risking arrest (as with Pinochet). Their names and their deeds will be public knowledge, and the savagery they encourage and, with female prisoners, in which they actively engage will be known to all.

On the cultural front, since James Brown was imprisoned back in '89 and Arsenio Hall made his (now) legendary - and, in retrospect, rather politely oblique - reference to Brown being "a real sex machine now", prison rape has been a subject of snarky cultural humor, not to mention "street spice" added to dramatic films and TV shows for greater "realism". The HBO program "Oz", about a maximum security prison, was lauded upon its debut in 1997 for it's "brutal realism". The fact is that the rapes and sexual slavery depicted in that show are mild precisely because they are shown as somehow dramatic, when in real prisons such horror is routine.

The correctional system of this country is turning into a Monster Factory, cranking out viciously enraged and understandably anti-social people by the hundreds and thousands. Case in point was the incident in Jasper, Texas where a black man was dragged behind a truck until he was torn in half. The white man driving the truck, who was sentenced to death, had just gotten out of prison, where he was apparently raped by African-American inmates. That brought this man down to such a low place that when asked, after sentencing, if he would like to say anything to the family of the victim, his response (for the record) was a chilling "Yeah. Suck my dick." The abominable abuse he endured during his incarceration, while not an excuse, is certainly the explanation for his amoral callousness.

We must decide what sort of nation we will leave our children and grandchildren. Will it be one populated by tens of thousands of seething men and women looking for the most vicious revenge possible and thereby ensuring more state violence and repression? If it is not, then it is we who must take the responsibility in our own collective hands and reform the United States prison system. To paraphrase Thomas Dewey, in a democracy people tend to get the society they deserve. If we allow this madness to continue, especially at the rate of increases in incarceration, we will soon find our entire country poisoned by it, in effect morally and ethically corrupted. Then it will be too late.

An Immodest Proposal for the Death Penalty

2006-11-17T21:53:00.000-08:00

Executions are carried out in the name of the people, either of a given state or the entire country in Federal cases. Therefore, it is only right and fitting that each citizen should bear the burden of responsibility, of duty, to carry out the will of their fellow citizens when called upon (as with jury duty and, formerly, military service) to do so. In the case of executions ordered by a state court, a lottery shall be held which would include the names of every person in that state over the age of 18. In the case of executions ordered by a Federal court, a national lottery of the same type would be held. The individual chosen in either case would then be ordered to report to the prison at which the execution was to take place (with a proper travel and lodging stipend provided where necessary), whereupon they would be taken to a anteroom near the death chamber and provided with a pistol loaded with two bullets.

At the appointed time, the condemned would be brought into the death chamber and strapped to a chair, facing away from the door leading from the anteroom. Their hair having been shaved away from the proper points behind their ear and at the base of their skull, the black marks made to guide the chosen citizen's aim would of course be clearly visible. The citizen would be lead into the death chamber and seated in a chair facing the back of the head of the condemned. The appropriate arm and hand would then be placed in the Firing Strap. Smelling salts would be at the ready, as would a sanitary bucket for nausea. The citizen would be required to sit, if necessary, for as long as it takes them to complete the task at hand.

Obviously, such a brutally honest death penalty practice would result in not a few shirkers. Because of the gravity of the duty, and to dissuade lottery "winners" from tucking tail and running away, a severe non-compliance penalty would of course have to exist. The best would be ten years in a maximum security Federal penitentiary, without the possibility of parole. This would have the added benefit of giving the citizen an excellent education in what is done, again in their name, to the other criminals.

It is my firm belief that the institution of such a process would greatly ameliorate the arbitrary and unfair manner in which the death penalty is meted out. Furthermore, it would have a tonic effect on that great majority of American citizens who seem to believe that what the government does or does not do has little if anything to do with them. Of course, the immediate and permanent abolition of the death penalty could also be a potential side effect of this process.

Spock the Vote

2006-11-08T17:18:00.000-08:00

To My Regular Readers (especially Republicans) - Please excuse this particular blog, as it is profane and mean of spirit, but it is also me letting off six years worth of STEAM. I had to get the poison out some way. In fact, Republicans should read no further.

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The Republican zeitgeist of "permanent majority" has just been rammed right up their own asses by a voting public that is FED UP! But not according to Brit Hume over at FOX News. No, according to Mr. Hume this was just a "standard election." I have a request of Mr. Hume, and here it is:

Suck my cock. Get on your knobby, hairless, lily-white, paternalistic Protestant knees and worship my sceptre of passion. Because that's about as close as you and the rest of the Gang of Idiots at your "network" are going to get to a microphone-shaped object for a loooong time. Shit's changin', and the days of nodding sagaciously while, say, Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin rhetorically vomited all over your studio are OVER! It ain't gonna play in Peoria much longer.

Does this mean there are no more conservatives? No more atavistic mouth-breathers who mutter vaguely violent threats while stirring the pot above their cook-fires?? Of course not, because this is America, the Land of Stupid. The Land of Let Rich Assholes Ruin the Economy so long as "the faggots" can't get married.

I'm hoppin', but not because of the Democratic sweep. Despite their befuddlement missing this one would have been like missing Mt. McKinley with a howitzer from ten yards away. No, what's got me all hot and bothered is that 49% of the populace DIDN'T vote Democratic. The idea of that many intellectually derelict fools wandering around and voting scares the shit out of me. These are the kind of people who looked at the name of Rick Santorum on their ballot and thought - undoubtedly while rolling a fresh booger between their thumb and forefinger - "A true man of the people." Fuck 'em, fuck 'em all. There is no reasoning with the deranged.

So although this election offers hope, I'm still worried. I can't help it; I'm a progressive in Moab.

Purpose As the Engine of Human Agency

2006-11-04T13:09:00.000-08:00

Purpose is a neutral inspiration, and can be wielded for good or ill. Adolph Hitler wanted to “cleanse” the world of Jews and build a German Reich that would last a thousand years. Martin Luther King, Jr. wanted to end segregation in the Southern United States, enfranchise all African-Americans and bring peace to his nation. Though neither morally nor materially analogous, they were both animated by a sense of purpose. And, ironically, both men were killed by those who hated them for their purposes and what said purposes had already brought and might yet bring to the world.

Not all purpose is so passionate, all-consuming and world-changing. Many are the number who go through their day with no other purpose than to survive to the next. Higher up on the scale are those whose purpose is to gain a little more skill, earn a little more money and thus, they hope, a superior place in their society. Higher still are those whose purpose is not only to thrive economically but socially; indeed, the orientation of their whole life is towards the acquiring of a good career and a happy family. Highest of all are those, like the aforementioned Dr. King, whose purpose in life is to earn an adequate income and enjoy the warmth of a loving family while leaving the world a better place than when they were born.

Another kind of purpose is singular, obsessive and personal, based upon one’s perception of one’s own talents. This purpose can likewise lead to good or ill, though on a much smaller scale. Dr. Jonas Salk sought to cure polio. It was his singular purpose for much of his life. He succeeded, but one is lead to wonder what toll that singularity took upon his personal life. None? Then all to the good. But if his pursuit of that vaccine led him to neglect his family and friends, a moral conundrum arises.

Should Jonas Salk or, for that matter, any man or woman gifted with great intellectual potential seize upon that potential and follow it to its fabulous end, foresaking all else and all others? In so doing they may improve or even save the lives of countless millions, and yet there is the possibility that those closest to them shall suffer emotionally and otherwise. Given that hindsight does not alight upon anyone until life has been fully lived, how is anyone to know what their sacrifices shall gain? If the sacrifices prove that their purpose was folly, what then? And how can anyone know this, and so how do they make an informed decision? The answer is that they cannot, and so humanity’s furtherance rests upon what purpose means to any one person at any one time. It is the ultimate question, and given that the answers are only knowable in the future, purpose is not in itself a power unto itself.

Purpose must therefore be viewed as an engine of human agency. Idiomatically synonymous terms such as “drive”, “determination”, “perserverence” and “will” have stood in for the blander original, but they all mean the same thing: That which animates human action. Our species has escaped the cycle of eat or be eaten, procreate and die for this very reason. Without such animation homo sapiens would never have crawled out of its caves, let alone established the civilizations that have together formed our collective history. And without such purposeful animation in the future humanity will stall and fail, yet the conundrum remains.

The Vicar of the Void

2006-11-03T12:43:00.000-08:00

Religious faith is profoundly personal. It both illuminates and measures character, and it can shine a light on the ethical and moral state of a given person. It can also be the facilitator of the conscience, reinforcing a faithful person’s understanding of right and wrong. Nothing about this is mysterious much less mystical, and yet Richard Dawkins would have us believe that faith is not only a variant of “magical thinking” but inherently dangerous. He claims that religious faith of any kind gives radical fundamentalists a kind of ecclesiastical cover, from under which they can justify any act. By this reasoning all those who are faithful are responsible for the acts of murderous extremists. This is, of course, patent nonsense, yet it is the central thesis of Dawkins’s latest anti-religious screed The God Delusion.

The simple truth is that Dawkins uses evolutionary science to clothe the nakedness of his anti-religious bigotry. He is much more than a mere atheist; indeed, Dawkins is unapologetic in his belief that religion is a form of derangement, and that those who teach religious belief to children are guilty of a kind of crime. But all of his arguments are fallacious for the ironic reason that they are unscientific. Dawkins states, with no scientific proof, that everything in the Bible is false, that there is no spiritual life beyond this world and that God does not exist. His arguments are purely anecdotal, based as he explains it on “reason” and “common sense.” Again, the irony of this is that if anyone were to walk into a scientific conference on a given topic and claim that they “knew” that this or that theory was false because of “reason” and “common sense” they’d be laughed out of the room.

Dawkins is blind to this fallacy in the same way that run-of-the-mill bigots are blind to the common humanity of the “other” they so despise. It never occurs to Dawkins that there is a real possibility that science itself, through research and experiment, may yet provide the final proof of much of the Bible, life after death and, yes, the existence of God, with the only dissonance coming from the fact that although faith requires no such proof such proof may yet be forthcoming. Dawkins’s failure of imagination is typical of most atheists. They as a group refuse to even discuss the possibility that there is something to religion, therefore – and again ironically – acting very much like fundamentalists themselves. A closed mind is a closed mind, be it closed by belief or by an overdeveloped sense of reason.

And so Dawkins ignores all evidence inconvenient to his theory. There is in the world today the rivers Jordan, Tigris and Nile. There are the cities of Damascus, Jerusalem and Rome. There are the identified ruins of the city of Babylon, and the civilization of the Philistines. These things are real; they exist in the world, just as they exist in the Bible. Yet according to Dawkins the Bible is, cover to cover, a book of fiction. Yet if the Bible were a complete work of fiction, would it not contain names of cities and peoples that were also wholly fictional? One would assume, but Dawkins evades this contradiction.

Along with places and things the Bible teems with people. Are they mere characters in a work of fiction? Some may be, like Kings David and Solomon, Lot, Noah, Moses and even Abraham himself. But how to explain the very real Pontius Pilate, Emperors Tiberius and Nero, Flavius Josephus, Saul of Tarsus and, last but not least, the Apostle Peter, who we know from the historical record of the Roman Empire was crucified upside down on the order of Emperor Nero. Again Dawkins offers no refutation of these facts, in fact he ignores them. And I have only dealt with the Judeo-Christian religion. Since Dawkins is attacking religion as a whole, I might also have delved into the historical buttressing of much of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and so on.

Dawkins’s alarm over the rise of religious fundamentalism is understandable. Such people are a threat the world over, and never more so than today. A well-reasoned and argued refutation of fundamentalism would have been welcome, especially from someone with the intellectual gifts of Dawkins. But attacking fundamentalism was not enough for the eminent biologist, who seems completely terrified of religion in general. His is a sad, pinched, narrow and petty view of life on this earth. Squeezing spirituality in all its myriad forms out of life is akin to taking love out of the human equation. One is left with cold, dry calculation, an accountant’s universe.

Scientists from Newton to Einstein to Sagan were never willing to completely dismiss the idea of the infinite, so Dawkins’s zealotry isolates him all the more. He is the Vicar of the Void, the Doyen of Darkness, a man incapable of seeing mankind as anything other than meat. I shudder to think of where such a worldview might lead.

The Wedding Crasher

2006-10-27T18:03:00.000-07:00

While perusing the sometimes delightful, too often baleful clips available at YouTube I made a distressing discovery. Among the footage of kitties, doggies, horrid lip synching (when will people learn?), baby's first spit-up, "oh look, dude, my pants are on fire!" and, of course, "my breasts are naked...NO THEY'RE NOT!", I found many couples who had posted videos of the moment when the guy takes a knee and asks the gal for her hand in marriage...on YouTube..in front of tens of millions of strangers. I also discovered wedding moments, reception antics, romantic roman-a-camera. And after all of it I feel I must ask "Are these people out their minds??"

Imagine if you will Rasputin Royale, sitting in his basement apartment, obsessively clicking through YouTube. He's hairy, pencil-necked, hollow-chested and somewhat dull, but possessed of a deep malignancy of spirit and mind. He's also mentally unbalanced, but because he hasn't done anything that would lead anyone to notice this, he has managed to amass an impressive array of Col. Samuel S. Colt's finest, not to mention Capt. James Bowie's. And, just for variety, a few surgical kits he picked up...somewhere. Finishing off the collection is an assortment of duct tape, handcuffs and waist-and-leg restraints. Thus far Rasputin's subconscious mind has yet to latch onto a demographic worthy of his particular brand of attention, and so his conscious mind has not been roused to action.

One fine evening Rasputin is roaming around YouTube, watching scenes from Street Trash and Slayer videos. He decides to find out more information about a given band member's bio, maybe find an interview, so he types their name into the search engine. As it happens, said band member shares the same last name as Peter Popquestion, recently engaged. So Rasputin also finds Mr. Popquestion's "we're engaged" clip.

Uh oh.

Suddenly Rasputin's subconscious screams “BULLSEYE!!!”, his conscious mind knowing just what to do. Peter Popquestion has been doubly stupid enough to assume that only family and close friends would ever see the clip, so he has included instructions to the church and reception hall in the introduction to same. Do you think it is possible old Peter might have a party crasher?

But never mind the myriad, drooling, John Wayne Gacyphiles out there in Cyberland. Not everyone invited to weddings and receptions bears good wishes for the happy couple. You know, those “..and guests” people who get seated waaaay in the back of the church and the hall, the ones who can never hear a damn thing. To them the whole affair exudes more than a faint whiff of narcissistic exhibitionism. There are generally two types of these guests. Those who wistfully wonder when it will finally be their turn or wish it had never been them in the first place. And those who, at the reception, methodically drip the juice from their under-cooked tri-tip onto the pure white of their rice while thinking of how pretty the bride's head would look at the end of a stake.

Happiness and bliss are contagious in more than just nice ways. And some couples make it all worse by innocently or stupidly rubbing everybody’s noses in their good fortune. You might argue that innocence and stupidity are two different things, but you’d be wrong. Someone innocent of the cliff edge winds up just as dead as someone who sees it but decides they can fly. There is no difference in that distinction.

With this in mind, I have a message for all those connubial YouTubers out there. It’s a bit harsh, but it needs to be: Do you airheads really believe that anyone besides your family and close friends give two shits about your upcoming nuptials, your romantic joy? How about one shit?? As I have demonstrated above the only other interest will be malign, and could ruin your whole big day. So do yourselves – not to mention the rest of us - a favor and stick to kitties on fire and your Levi’s first spit up, ok?

Where Was I On Tuesday, October 17th 1989 at 5:04pm?

2006-10-17T13:52:00.000-07:00

Residing at 1845 Green Street, #303. That's Lower Pacific Heights, just above Lombard St. and the Marina District in beautiful San Francisco. For those of you who may not remember, the Marina District almost burned to the ground. More on that later.

When the quake started I was sitting on my bed, tying my shoelaces. I stood up, took one step and felt the first tremor. Being from California I thought nothing of it. After all, I'd been through countless shakes over the years, even a fairly big one while studying in my high school library in '81. So these were no big deal. But this time was different, as became apparent when the shaking got worse..and Worse....and WORSE. I sprinted to my front door and stood in the frame, watching in horror as my apartment shimmied and shammied like some monstrous dancer moving to a Satanic beat. When at last it stopped I scrambled in a panic through the hallway and down the stairs. Running beside me was a neighbor wearing only black socks, boxers, a half-buttoned shirt and a loose tie. We nearly tangled up with each other on the stairwell and fell the rest of the way down.

Outdoors was perfect chaos. The alarms of every car on the street shrieked in indignation as people milled about, chain-smoking and nervously conversing. We endured at least one bad aftershock, and the sidewalk was covered in broken glass at intervals, but we had avoided any major damage, thanks to the granite upon which Pacific Heights was built.

After a time I crept back into my building and up the stairs to the roof. There I found the building superintendent staring out at the Marina District, fear unfurling across his face. I asked him what was wrong, but all he did was point and say "Look." I did, and felt the same fear shiver up my spine and draw sweat from my brow. In the distance two Victorian apartments - on Chestnut Street, as it would turn out - were in flames. But that wasn't the problem. No, what was frightening was the water pressure coming out of the nozzles held by an SFFD hook-and-ladder crew. At first it was a forceful stream, then a mild flow, then a useless trickle, then...nothing. Past became prelude as I recalled what had happened in 1906, when the water mains all broke and the fire marched across The City and only failed to go beyond Van Ness because that avenue was so wide the sparks couldn't leap all the way across.

But San Francisco in 1989 had something that San Francisco in 1906 did not: Mayor Art Agnos. He had fought hard to keep the two fire boats (one named "The Phoenix") that The City had purchased in '87 for just such an emergency. Miles of hose connected their powerful pumps to the nozzles in the Marina District that sent an unending stream of bay water onto the flames until they were extinguished. Those two boats saved San Francisco.

We were without power in that part of The City for four days. I celebrated my 25th birthday in the dark. One benefit of no electricity was seeing The City in complete darkness, an eerie moonscape the likes of which I will probably never see again. It occurred to me at the time that this is how the bay had looked to the first Spaniards to explore it two hundred years earlier. How they must have held their breath at its beauty.

The same could not be said of how the Marina District looked in the harsh light of day. Sidewalk curbs four feet in the air, homes pulverized, other buildings appearing to have been shoved from behind until they leaned precariously at the edge of streets. It was almost beyond belief.

My Great Uncle Leo, who lives in Tiverton, Rhode Island, nearly had a heart attack as he watched the World Series and saw Al Michaels bouncing up and down, yelling "WE'RE HAVING AN EARTHQUAKE!!" His TV signal went dead for a solid ten minutes. When it came back on there was a live feed of the Marina District in flames and the Cypress Structure demolished. His sister and brother-in-law - my maternal grandparents - lived in the Bay Area, and he was terriried something had happened to them. So he picked up the phone, dialed their number...and got a buzzing sound. Everything was of course dead, including the phones. He eventually got through, and learned that everyone was ok. We were all very lucky.

I hope and pray that the "Pretty Big One" is as close as we'll get to the real "Big One" in my lifetime. So far, so good.

There Goes YouTube

2006-10-10T15:12:00.000-07:00

As most of you probably know by now, YouTube was purchased by Google yesterday for $1.5 billion. According to reports in today's San Jose Mercury News, what clinched the deal for YouTube's (now millionaire) founders was the "help" that Google offered "managing" copyright issues. English translation: Starting in about a month, you will no longer be able to watch those clips and previews of TV shows and movies that make YouTube so much fun.

I myself have recently enjoyed complete TV performances by the late, great John Denver that included a duet of "Leaving On a Jetplane" with Cass Elliot (of The Mamas and the Papas), from 1972. Once Google "helps" YouTube "manage" their copyright issues such gems will become impossible to find. As a writer and budding filmmaker I understand copyright, but how much money is actually lost by streaming a 34-year-old performance by two dead singers?? For that matter, how much money is lost when someone posts ONE sketch from either a classic or more recent showing of Saturday Night Live?? Next to nil, and that's the point. Copyright enforcement is totally out of control in this country. The laws passed at the end of the 90s are stifling creativity in general and fair use in particular. And it doesn't just affect the serial DVD rippers out there. It has also affected some of the "stars" created by YouTube itself.

Case-in-point is the YouTube artist formerly known as "Brookers." While once she could dazzle by, say, performing an inspired lip-synch of "He Had It Coming" from the musical "Chicago", she is now creatively stifled by a TV production deal. She accepted the poisonous embrace of Carson Daly, and with that the constraints of the marketplace, including a paranoid attitude towards potential copyright infringement. Now instead of expressing herself she must censor herself, something she never had to do on YouTube.

I will seldom use YouTube once copyright infringement is strictly enforced. The original content from users just isn't good enough, and when it is good enough there isn't enough of it, something I find ironic considering the ubiquity of the web and the ease of mastering YouTube. Whether they are deliberate (someone's latest attempt at animation) or not (someone's pants catching on fire), most original clips are too dull.

So let us raise a glass to YouTube, the most recent and perhaps last exemplor of the revolutionary spirit of the Internet. Let us make a toast to its short life, and marvel at how fast the system can destroy a social phenomenon. And then let us weep.

An Appeal to the 9/11 Conspiracy Theorists

2006-09-28T15:48:00.000-07:00

When first I heard many of the theories and conjectures that are explored in "Loose Change", I was intrigued. Back in '01 and '02 I felt there were indeed many unanswered questions surrounding the events of 09/11/01, and that most of the official attempts at answers were flimsy at best. These feelings lingered on, and so I was quite interested to view the original Loose Change about six months ago.

Upon watching it, however, things seemed amiss. While I felt (at the time) that the film's creators meant well, there were too many missing pieces, too much speculation and not enough hard investigation backing up the film's ultimate claim. And so I went out onto the web and tried to find answers of my own.

Since that time I have been appalled at the ludicrous idiocy of too many of the people who have crawled out of the woodwork to act either as "experts" about "what really happened" on that terrible day, or as supporters of the filmmakers. Very early on - as in almost immediately - it became clear that Loose Change gives conspiracy theory a bad name (as if it didn't have a bad enough name already). For example, it took almost no time at all to discover through research that that even high-grade construction steel will lose more than half its tensil strength when heated to within 50% of its melting point. And that's just one fact among many that are glossed over in Loose Change.

I write this with sadness, because the filmmakers and their ever-growing numbers of supporters are doing terrible, terrible damage to the cause of progressive-leftism in general and speaking truth to power in particular. I happen to be convinced that while the conspiracy to murder President John F. Kennedy is probably unknowable, there is NO doubt that there was a conspiracy, and that elements of it carried over to the murders of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. But now those of us who believe such things will be lumped in with you, the Loose Change crowd. That's a tragedy, because what we know to be true has been demonstratively proven precisely because so many dedicated private individuals, investigators and writers worked so hard to unearth hard facts. Unlike you, who deal in half-truths, innuendo and conjecture that is at times painfully imbecilic.

This is probably futile, but I must try: Please stop. Please stop now. Stop making fools not only of yourselves but of all those - past, present and future - who seek to divine the truth from untrustworthy governmental and corporate entities. Remove this stain from the progressive-left movement before it is irreparably damaged. Our country's future depends on it. You have abused the powerful instruments that modernity has brought to you, and led too many astray. Now it is time to undo what you have done, before too many more people are no longer able to discern what is true from what is fantasia.

Tri-City Triumphalism

2006-08-31T18:40:00.000-07:00

The place where I was forged is located 35 miles south-east of San Francisco. The three cities that make up this suburban zone are Newark (where I actually grew up), Fremont and Union City. All three of these cities are low to the ground, with only a few buildings breaching the ten story mark. Comprised almost exclusively of tract-style homes built between the mid-1950s and early 1980s (when the Great Condo Rush began in earnest), these three towns have little to recommend them, but what there is can be diverting. First, a bit of history.

Despite what most of the "official" town biographies say, the cities that comprise the Tri-City area were settled, for the most part, by families from New Jersey and New York just before the Gold Rush of 1849. The most prominent of these - the Blacows, Pattersons, Mayhews, Stevensons and Mowrys - have left their names on some prominent streets and avenues, and not much else, save for the Pattersons. They more or less owned all of what is now Newark and much of Union City, and the last family member, a son, died in the family manor at Ardenwood in the mid-1970s (more on this later). The last Blacow daughter died in 1997 at a very ripe old age. About the others I know nothing at all, except that the Mayhews operated a boat landing and ferry, hence Mayhews Landing Road in Newark. How do I know all this, being the relative whipper-snapper that I am? Well, when I was a wee boy I spent my recesses being regaled by the septuagenarian janitor at Schilling Elementary School while my peers engaged themselves in more intellectual pursuits like picking their noses and comparing boogers, and playing "break the pencil". It just so happened that this janitor was the grandson of a Patterson, and knew of what he spoke, unlike the folks who wrote "History of...” books in the 1970s.

Newark started as a farming community with a good deal of railroad and ferry line stops (hence the many roads called "Landing"), segued into heavy industry after World War II and has now become a bedroom community. That about sums it up. Union City's history is much the same; in fact, it’s almost exactly the same, though Jane Fonda did come and hold a pro-union rally there in 1978 for God alone only knows what reason. Fremont, on the other hand, has a rich and interesting history that I will attempt to limn without an excess of verbiage.

Fremont was founded on land originally owned by none other than General John C. Fremont. Initially comprised of five townships - Washington, Irvington, Niles, Centerville and Fremont - it incorporated in the early 1950s under the latter moniker and attempted to swallow up then unincorporated Newark as well, but failed (by the way, to "incorporate" is to become an officially recognized town or city, as opposed to a spot on the map). Aside from the fact that Bill Walsh coached Washington High School's football team for a few years, three things distinguish Fremont's history: Automobile manufacturing, railroads and Charlie Chaplin.

Yes, that Charlie Chaplin.

In 1914 William "Bronco Billy" Anderson purchased a tract of land in the township of Niles and built Essanay Studios (as in S.N.A., the first letter of the last names of the three founders). He did this because he felt the surrounding environs of Niles Canyon (more on this later) and Sunol (ditto) could easily pass for the Southwest in the two-reel westerns in which he specialized. That, and most of the best land in LA was being bought up by wealthier moguls than he, like Mayer, Zukor and Laemmele. By 1915 the main buildings were complete, and the studio had attracted an interesting repertory: Ben Turpin, Mary Pickford...and a relative unknown clown from England named Charles Chaplin. It was for Essanay Studios, on the dusty roads of Niles Canyon, that Charlie Chaplin's "Little Tramp" character was first filmed. Within a couple of years Chaplin, having had enough of the local residents and their "obsess[ion] with alfalfa", had packed up and moved on to Hollywood and greater fame. In just a few more years Essanay itself closed up shop, primarily because the weather was not suitably sunny for the outdoor filming then required (even "interiors" were shot on roofless sets). All that remains now is a plaque and an annual Charlie Chaplin Days Festival, and that's too bad.

Railroads came to criss-cross Fremont, and still do, by sheer geographic coincidence. Proximity to San Francisco and, especially in more recent years, Oakland made it an ideal location for the switching stations of the major lines, like the Southern Pacific. Driving down Niles Canyon Road, you can still find the occasional abandoned tunnel, usually with their years-of-completion chiseled on them like tombstone dates: 1896, 1901, 1908 and so on. Most of these tunnels appear amidst the canyon woods suddenly, and caress the visitor with a breath of untouched history.

General Motors built one of its largest auto assembly plants at the southernmost extreme of Fremont. It chugged along amiably enough until falling into disrepair in the 1970s, when GM closed it. In the early 1980s GM, the United Auto Workers and Toyota came to an agreement that led to the creation of the first international, jointly owned and operated industrial factory in the United States. It was basically the old GM plant, re-christened NUMMI, or New United Motors Manufacturing Incorporated. The plant still operates to this day, pumping out Japanese cars made with American steel and American cars filled with Japanese parts.

Believe it or not, this rather unremarkable cluster of cities has more than a few things to do for entertainment. Let's start with the simplest sort, to be found in Union City: Nothing. Newark has four primary attractions: Ardenwood Regional Park, Coyote Hills Regional Park, the Leslie salt flats and Shirley Sisk Grove. Ardenwood, located on Ardenwood Boulevard off of Highway 84 (from Interstate 880 - Highway 17 Nimitz Freeway to you old-timers), should rightfully be called the Patterson Ranch Regional Park, because it is comprised entirely of that family's former Victorian mansion and the surrounding farm land and Eucalyptus groves. The farm actually works, and you can buy fresh produce nearby. Furthermore, during the summer months Civil War reenactors entertain crowds with scenes of bloodless battle. Also, the docents at the house - which is quite beautiful - dress up and party like it's 1899.

Of somewhat more interest is Coyote Hills Regional Park (no, there aren't any, not anymore) and Museum of the Bay. This is located near the Dumbarton Bridge, at Jarvis Avenue. It is possible to see the remnants of the old train trestles that crossed the Bay at that point, as well as explore the local flora and fauna. I've been told that somewhere in the hills just west of the park you can find the ghostly remains of the old Dumbarton Bridge Toll Plaza, but I haven't been able to find it myself. The former bridge was blown up in 1984, and the new one was featured in the movie Sneakers with Robert Redford, Dan Ackroyd and Sidney Poitier – it’s the one Redford's character can "hear" as he lay in the trunk of some bad guy's car. The new bridge itself is your basic concrete carbuncle, so don't waste your time with it.

I have it on good authority (some episode of "Modern Marvels" on The History Channel) that a guy broke the land speed record on the Leslie Salt flats on the exact date of my birth. In Newark, where I grew up. I mean, really, that alone ought to be worth a trip to the flats, right? Then again, maybe not. I'll let you decide. Last but not least is Shirley Sisk Grove, located next to the NewPark Mall (which you should NOT visit). A sort of groovy, miniature version of San Francisco's Stern Grove, this Eucalyptus-filled patch of gently rolling, grassy hillocks is the setting, during the summer months, for free concerts every Sunday afternoon. Past performers have included Juice Newton, Pete Escovido and Big Bang Beat (made up of the original members of the Zasu Pitts Memorial Orchestra). Its a genuinely nice public space.

At last we come to "Fremont, Gateway to Newark" as the bumper stickers used to read in the 1970s, when locals actually gave a hoot about such town rivalry. Now that every town and city between Oakland and San Jose has oozed into one undifferentiated pudding, who cares? Actually there are a few sights worth seeing in Fremont. First and foremost for me is Mission Peak, a 2500+ foot high pile of dirt, grass and granite that towers over, well, Fremont. Its a wonderful day hike, but you must really be in good shape. Also, like most East Bay Regional Parks it is infested with Lyme disease-carrying ticks in the summertime, not to mention the occasional Mountain Lion (Cougar). The dangers are worth it, because when you reach Mission Peak's relatively low summit you are surrounded by one of the most stunning vistas in the Bay Area, and on clear days you can see San Francisco glittering in the distance like the Emerald City. From there (the Peak, not San Francisco) it's a quick drive to Niles.

This district of Fremont is the only one that is also still distinct. Its architecture has a Victorian flavor to it, and in fact The Victorian Hotel, where Charlie Chaplin stayed, still rests on a corner of the main street looking much as it did ninety years ago. Niles also features some wonderful "pop" antique shops and colorful bars. No longer the biker Mecca it once was, still on Memorial Day and Labor Day it gets more than its fair share. Just a short drive from the district is the mouth of Niles Canyon, which twists and turns above Niles Creek up to Sunol and the Livermore Valley, but those are outside Fremont, so let's back up a bit, shall we?

Drive down Mission Boulevard and you'll come across Mission San Jose, one of the last to be personally founded by Junipero Serra, and still standing. There is a graveyard next to the old Mission, where it is possible to find tombstones dated as far back as the 1850s. Further on down Mission Boulevard is Ohlone College. I mention this institution only because of the peculiar site at which it was built, up a steep portion of the East Bay hills. Needless to say, students do NOT want to be late for a class and have to run for it.

There really isn't a whole lot else to be found in the Tri-City area. For some reason it hasn't produced much in the way of famous or celebrated folks. Only two come to mind: Olympic skater Kristy Yamaguchi and comedian Christopher Titus (of the FOX show "Titus"), the former by Fremont and the latter by Newark, where he was a high schoolmate of yours truly. I recommend a visit primarily as a diversion, something different to do on a long weekend. You could do worse. Like Hayward, for example.

Net Neutrality Vs. Corporate Hegemony

2006-08-22T12:07:00.000-07:00

There is a bad bill currently wending its nasty way through Congress and the Senate. This law, if passed, will be a boon for corporations like AT & T and Verizon, and a bane for all independent users of the Internet, regardless of size. The crux of this law is its envisceration of the concept of "net neutrality", which refers to the idea that no one entity can be allowed to control access to the Interntet. Many people already have to put with this sort of nonsense; for example, people who surf the Internet through such Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as AOL and Comcast. Much web content is arbitrarily censored by such ISPs, through the leverage they have by virtue of the Terms of Service agreement that every user must digitally sign. Now imagine the Internet itself being so censored. It is a frightening idea, and if this law is passed we in the United States would find ourselves held prisoner to the almighty dollar in much the same way that Chinese Internet users are held prisoner by ideology.

This is what will happen to all independently operated web sites, no matter if it is grandma's Flicker album or mighty Google. Once AT & T, Comcast and Verizon have control of the bandwidth with which they deliver the Internet to customers, they will be able to force all websites to pay special access fees. Those who pay such fees will see their site/service placed on a nice, fast superhighway. Those who do not will be forced to use the digital equivalent of dirt roads. So Google and others who could afford these fees will have access to the customers of the various providers, but that is not a paliative. Only web sites that are also themselves corporations could afford to pay the access fees to each monopolist provider. Furthermore, as the coffers of the providers swell with the fees paid by both customers and websites, they will of course want to have all the marbles. Users will one day have reduced or no access to websites that compete with the providers' content. Again, to use Google, imagine that Comcast comes up with its own suite of search engine products. Its primary competitor is Google, so naturally it will bar access to Google altogether or deliver it at such a low bandwidth that it takes a half-hour for it to come up.

As is plain to see, the Internet as we have come to know and love it will cease to exist. Gone will be the great days when an at-first modest blog like Daily Kos could grow through links and word-of-mouth to become an international powerhouse. No blogger will ever have a hope of that kind of success again. And those that made it to that rarified air will quickly be destroyed if they can't afford the access fees, and most of them won't.

I urge all of you who love the Internet and what it has provided socially, culturally and economically to go to the Save The Internet website and send a message to your Congressperson and Senator (no link brought to you by the infuriating web entity known as Blogger). Our voices must be heard, and this law cannot be allowed to pass. What is at stake is nothing more or less than how meaningful the First Amendent will be in the 21st century.

A Lover's Guide to San Francisco

2006-08-14T12:07:00.000-07:00

William Saroyan wrote, "San Francisco now sells what she once gave away for free." He was right, of course, and that was almost fifty years ago. This knowledge sometimes leads me to wonder what young people today - who only a few years ago groused about the "Dot.comming" of The City - would make of that, or the fact that nearly forty years ago the Gray Line bus company ran "Hippie Hop" tours through the Haight Ashbury district; they did a brisk business with little, blue-haired ladies gasping at the sight of young women without bras!!

I further muse over how today's young folk would react to "seeing the elephant", a 19th century colloquialism, meant to convey that the speaker had actually gone west to San Francisco in search of their fortune in the gold fields (which, ironically enough, were east of The City), and been horribly disappointed by the truth (or "elephant") of the town. The sheer sight of the place - dirty, loud, unkempt,and garish - was enough to send many an ambitious young man running back home to New York or Boston or Philadelphia.

But what would be the point of the telling? Most griping youngsters fail to understand that, tarnished as it is, befouled by the glass-glittered steel and concrete defecations of profit seekers though it may be, San Francisco is still one of the most beautiful and dream-inspiring cities on the face of the earth. It is North America's Xanadu, just as New York is it's Rome (forget D.C.; that's just the government's address), and a thousand years from now men and women will tell stories of it as we now do of Kubla Khan's dwelling place.

I know The City from first hand experience of a significant duration. From 1983 to 1992 I lived, studied and worked in San Francisco. I came to love it, but that love was and is complicated. Those aspects of the place that inspire my love I will share with you; those aspects that inspire loves opposite I will proffer as an urban caveat emptor. I will assume you have never been to The City; those who have will please pardon my windiness.

Now to my first, and most important, bit of advice: Come in February. Yes, you read that correctly. It will be cold and windy with rain beating down, but in San Francisco such weather, if properly prepared for, adds atmosphere to the place, a gray emanation that lends it a gravitas it lacks in the stark yellows and blues of summertime. At this time of year it also lacks tourists. This is VERY important. How so? Let me put it in simple terms. The difference between a June visit and a February visit is about 12 hours, the aggregate amount of time you will spend waiting in line for everything, including, on Fisherman's Wharf, entrance into a lousy liquor store to buy a pack of cigarettes, gum or a map. The City is bursting at the seams in season; out of season it is as serene a world-class city as you will find.

If you land at San Francisco International Airport, please accept The City's apologies. No one is quite sure how this cement fungus began to spread, or why, unlike a real fungus, it has no discernible pattern. Nor can anyone I've met say for certain why it is called San Francisco International Airport when it is barely within The City's borders. Perhaps one day there shall be two cities: San Francisco and "SFO". One can only hope The City sloughs off this mass more sooner than later.

When first you enter The City, ask to be taken to Nob Hill. This pinnacle will give you an unobstructed, panoramic view of the entire city, as well as easy access to the Mark Hopkins Hotel, and Grace Cathedral a bit further down the slope. One hundred years ago Nob Hill could have easily been referred to as Vulgotha, as its top was the squatting yard of the grotesquely large mansions of the banking, railroad, shipping, gold and silver magnates of the day. That all ended in 1906 when what surely must have been the Wrath of God - in the form of earthquake and fire - destroyed the "homes" and spared only one portico, which now rests, as a sort of warning, at the head of a lagoon at the far western end of what should be your next stop.

That place is Golden Gate Park, and it is wonderment. Designed by the same man who oversaw the making of Central Park in New York, it is very much in the English style - natural, meandering and lush. It is best to stay away from JFK Drive and Park Presidio, and their overflowing parking lots. Better to park nearby and walk in (people are often surprised to find unrestricted residential parking across from such a major "attraction"). Eventually you'll find a trail, and after you've gone a very little ways, you will be struck by how sudden comes the sensation of being deep in a real forest, far away from any city. Luxuriate in that sensation, for to my knowledge it can be had in no other urban park, including Central Park and Hyde Park in London. Part of the reason is that Golden Gate Park's western end opens out to the Pacific Ocean as opposed to, say, more blocks of urban effluvia.

A note of caution about Golden Gate Park. Though it is indeed like a forest, said forest was planted and nurtured by one John McClaren, so you must always watch your step and look where you're going. McClaren, like most who've made their mark on The City, was of a singular mind. He believed that parks must remain unblemished, whereas the city fathers of the time believed that a civic park must contain as many memorials, statuary and honorarist plaques as possible. Since McClaren was in their employ he was obliged to obey, but seeing as he was never told where these things were to go, he simply hid them in groves of trees and clumps of bushes -- where now you're likely to bump into them, literally. At times he went too far with this, I think; on the north side of the park, in just such a hiding place, one can find a huge piece of granite upon which rests a plaque listing every young man from The City killed in the trenches of World War I. It is a tragically long list, its erection was paid for by an association of their mothers, and hiding it was callous and cruel.

There is much to be seen Golden Gate Park besides trees in. I recommend the Japanese Tea Garden and the public space between what was once the DeYoung museum and Steinhardt Aquarium. What is most of interest about this space, and the pedestrian tunnels that connect its corners to the rest of the park, is that it, the Tea Garden and the late DeYoung were all built for the 1894 Mid-Winter Exposition. Steinhardt is good for a few laughs if you've been to a world-class aquarium like the one at Monterey Bay; otherwise ignore it. Ditto the monstrosity that replaced the DeYoung. I would also stay away from the Asian Art Museum, as it rarely holds much of interest. Better to move along to the next glorious and natural part of The City: The Palace of the Legion of Honor.

This is one of the most austerely beautiful museums in the world, which makes sense as it was built specifically to honor the French dead of World War I. The best exhibits to come to The City are displayed here. I myself saw The Dresden Medieval Heraldry Collection within its walls when I was but a lad. Its standing collection is also first rate. You should be sure and wander the expansive grounds outside the palace, as they offer wonderful vistas of San Francisco's stone-strewn Pacific shore. To one side of the exterior of the Palace you will find a rather odd collection of what look like plaster figures surrounded by barbed wire. This is a memorial to the Holocaust, and the longer you look at it the more powerful it becomes. Look to your right, past thePalace, the lawn at its marble feet and the groves of pine beyond, and you may catch a glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge and, nestled below it, Ft. Point. This is where you should go next.

I won't belabor you with the history of the bridge, because that could easily fill a book. Just know that while it is no longer the longest suspension bridge in the world, it is still the most gorgeous collection of reddish-orange steel of any type or use on which you will ever set your eyes. So high are its two towers that 20mm machine guns were installed on them and manned during World War II. On The City side of the expanse, down a long hill from Highway 101 and the Bridge Observation Deck, you will find Ft. Point, the last surviving brick and mortar fortress in America. Ever wonder what Ft. Sumter looked like on the day of secession, before the bombs started falling? Ft.Point is the exact same type of structure, although the cliffs above it removed the necessity for walls on its southern side. Civil War re-enactors demonstrate the cannonry and drill practiced at this fort that never fired a shot in anger. Most fun of all, in my opinion, is to sign the huge guestbook at the entrance, then leaf through its already signed pages (you will of course have plenty of time to do this - if you go in February). I can think of no viewable artifact extant in The City that provides a better glimpse of the multitude of nations from which San Francisco draws its countless visitors. And you never know, you might find the signature of a celebrity or two. I myself found this message from an inveterate great-great grandson of the Confederacy: "We would have shelled this one if we'd had the chance!"

I would suggest that at this point you walk to Aquatic Park, where as often as not there is an impromptu jam session going on upon the steps of the grandstand, and continue straight to the docks near Pier 39 for a day trip to Angel Island, but I'm afraid I can't do that. You see, if you go to The City in February, you can't go to Angel Island. I have no idea why this is, and will take this opportunity to excoriate whoever made up that dumb rule (shame on you!). I guess my description of it will have to suffice. Angel Island, like Treasure Island after it, was the Ellis Island of the West Coast. Filipino, Chinese and Japanese immigrants were processed there, and some of those buildings remain. Of more interest to the historically minded are the barracks left over from World War I, when this was a combination fort and training base. They sit where they were left, like a virtual ghost town. There is hiking amidst a plentitude of forest, but beware; it's all uphill.

Next stop, Pacific Heights. Head north on Van Ness, towards Fisherman's Wharf, and stop at California Street. Walk west up (and I do mean UP) California until you reach Laguna Street, then walk north. Look around you. The buildings you will see contain some of the most gruesomely over-priced apartments in the world. You can bask in the knowledge that you are not being so fleeced, while still enjoying the look of the buildings themselves, from converted Beaux Arts mansions to Art Deco towers, to still other mansions that have not been converted, but are actually owned and lived in, and not by curators, either. The very thought of this may make you jealous, but don't let it spoil the elegiac mood in which such buildings and homes can put you. When you reach the peak of Pacific Heights, take another good look around. This is the second best panorama in The City, and especially of the bay and, of course, the Pacific Ocean. In the afternoon the sun gleams off that wet, endless mirror like a million bright torches held aloft.

Now down again, down Laguna Street into the long shadows of all those pretty buildings. Down until you reach Green Street, then turn left and continue. Eventually you'll notice a broad slice of Victorian wedding cake, in the Queen Anne style, resting across the street from you. This is The Sherman House, and it is in my estimation the most beautiful Victorian building in The City - and that's saying something. "Carpenter Gothic", indeed! I'm partial to the Queen Anne style of Victorian, so don't take my word for it. Drink the sight of it in for yourself and then decide.

If you keep walking north you'll eventually reach the southern fringe of The Presidio, which is now completely open to the public. It is yet another glorious expanse of trees and foliage, and the barracks and officers quarters of its former tenants - the Sixth Army - are surprising in their comeliness. Looking at them you'll understand why an assignment to the Sixth was one of the plumbest in the military. Exiting the Presidio, you'll likely find yourself on Lombard Street - the boring part (the fun part was designed that way to keep horse-drawn carriages from sliding down steep hills in the rainy season - The City used to have several such streets). My advice is to go left until you've arrived at the Palace of Fine Arts, all that remains of Bernard Maybeck's undoubtedly breathtaking contribution to the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition. The columned structures and the ponds around them, taken together, may constitute the most romantic spot in the United States. Again, I'll leave that one up to you to decide for yourself. A number of movies have been partially filmed there, including Hitchock's Vertigo, and it is the home of the world famous Exploratorium, which is also a lot of fun.

Now what? I'd suggest you catch a cab so you can zoom down Lombard Street, past the awful miracle mile-esque motels and hotels and "eateries" until you're at Fort Mason, embarkation point for most troops heading to the Pacific Theatre during World War II. Fort Mason is currently home to a number of small, fairly well-funded art and theatre groups (including the legendary Magic Theatre, where Sam Shephard once plied his trade), and it's well worth a look around. Just past it you will find my favorite floating landmark.

The Jeremiah O'Brien, open most days, is the last surviving Liberty Ship. These vessels were cranked out in the hundreds and thousands during World War II by the Kaiser Shipyards in San Francisco, Oakland and Long Beach (if I remember correctly). Intended as supply craft, they were lightly armored; hence the current existence of just one. This boat is a three-fer, really; history buffs will love it just for what it is, movie buffs will love it because part of its engine room was used as a set for the movie Titanic and lovers of ordinance (like your's truly) will REALLY get a kick out of operating (though not firing) the ship's deck guns, including its primary anti-aircraft battery. Several years ago a friend of mine and I must have spent an hour on that thing, sitting on its metal seats, slowly turning its elevation and swivel wheels, "tracking" large aircraft in the sky. It was a wicked thrill, let me tell you. Another nice bit of history involving this craft is more recent: It sailed from its berth at Fort Mason all the way to Normandy, France for the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day in 1994.

Well, that's it. That's The City, as I know her. What, you say? What about Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 39, Broadway, Union Square, Chinatown, North Beach, the Cable Cars and California Street? I'm willing to bet that most of you reading this are intelligent folks, so allow me to pay you all the compliment of being blunt: Those places are for TOURISTS, not VISITORS. There is a difference. San Francisco can be the most romantic experience of your life, or the most sordid. It really depends on how hard you're willing to look, how far down below the gaudy muck you're willing to dig to find the rare diamonds. For example, I mentioned walking down Laguna Street to Green, then turning left. If you walked down one more block onto Union Street, turned right and kept going across Van Ness Avenue, you would find a nice assortment of unusual and curious antique shops. Of course, you would have to bypass the western half of Union Street in all its yuppie glory, but that's the point. San Francisco will open its most brilliant and colorful charms for you, like a flower in springtime, but only if you look past the garish plastic garden.

Oh and incidentally, you may have asked yourself why I kept referring to San Francisco as "The City". Provincialism, perhaps? Not at all. What else should I call a place like I've just described?

Mel Gibson Must Be Allowed to Make and Release His Movies

2006-08-04T12:34:00.000-07:00

People, both inside and outside of Hollywood, are advocating banning Mel Gibson's movies. Not boycotting them once they come out, but actively working to block them from seeing the light of day. Gibson is currently in post-production of his Mayan Empire epic "Apocalypto". I've seen the trailers, and it looks VERY good. It should be out in December.

And I want to see it.

Mel Gibson has every right to release his films, as people have every right not to go see them in protest over his anti-semitic remarks. The only right way to attack hateful or bad speech is with more and better speech. If every artist with odious ideas were to be banned from our culture then the first to go would have to be Ezra Pound, a truly disgusting human being who just happened to also be an extraordinary writer. Ditto H.G. Welles, Ernest Hemingway and D.H. Lawrence. Oh and you can forget about James Bond, because Ian Fleming was of the old British school that believed the "wogs" were to be kept in their proper place.

Mel Gibson is an extraordinary director and actor. "Braveheart" was and remains one of the great epic films ever made, right up there with "Lawrence of Arabia" and "Spartacus". I want to see more of Mel Gibson's films. Though I doubt he'll ever be a "star" again, that may be all to the good. He can then focus on making his own films, which is his proper metier.

What must not happen is what happened earlier this week when executives at ABC, undoubtedly under horrendous pressure, nixed Gibson's proposed mini-series about the Holocaust. Such pressure must cease. Censure him yes, definitely, but don't censor the man. It's the wrong thing to do.

Is Beirut Burning?

2006-07-28T14:43:00.000-07:00

To be silent in the face of what is happening in Lebanon is to be morally complicit in the commission of war crimes, so I can be silent no longer. Yes, Beirut is burning, and it is a sickening tragedy. Between 1975 and 1990 Lebanon in general and Beirut in particular suffered through a horrific civil war of all against all. I remember the news stories, because most of the worst of it happened in the 80s when I was in high school and college. At the time I just thought "More Middle East madness" and blew it off. But I am older and wiser now, and the stakes - both militarily and morally - are much, much higher.

Between 1990 and two weeks ago the Lebanese managed to rebuild their society, their cities and their culture. And in two weeks their hopes and dreams have been blasted out of existence. I find this not only horrifyingbut infuriating, not least of which because the Lebanese are themselves largely to blame. By allowing a group of Islamist thugs like Hezbollah to stay armed and in active control of the southern half of their country, the Lebanese took a viper to their collective breast, and now it has bitten them in the form of the Israeli Defense and Air Forces.

And yet the Israelis are also to blame for the carnage on the ground, not only for the obvious reason that their bombs are doing the destruction, but because their response to Hezbollah's provocations has been disproportionate to the point of criminality. There is no excuse - including the fact that Hezbollah places men and materiel in and around civilian areas - for the kind of destruction that the Israeli's have wreaked. They have every right to defend themselves, and keep their borders secure. But destroying all of Lebanon is not going to protect them; quite the contrary, it is going to make them less safe as their actions are leading many Lebanese to join Hezbollah's military wing.

The entire situation is as maddening as it is tragic. Neither side is deserving of praise, and both sides have been victims of the other. But there is one group who, while not blameless, are deserving of compassion, and that is the Lebanese and Israeli civilians being blown to bits. But here I will stop, because photos and video speak much louder than mere words. Below is a list of links to YouTube clips of the war. They are graphic and very disturbing, but I believe it is necessary to confront what is happening in Lebanon so as to find the moral strength to stop it. More clips like these are uploaded every day. Just run a search using word strings like these: war middle east lebanon or war in lebanon.

NOTE: Unfortunately, many of the posters decided to add inappropriate music to their clips. I would suggest muting the sound before watching them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJJm7B6AKuc&search=war%20in%20lebanon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOsZlhGW-Fg&search=war%20in%20lebanon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjvH4t-Aarc&search=war%20in%20lebanon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXstHrNlsr4&search=war%20in%20lebanon

A Noble Creature ALMOST Gets One of the Chickenshits Hunting Him

2006-07-26T19:17:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the link, but there was no embed code for this nauseating clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQsTGIvmp90

Snarks on a Dork

2006-07-17T14:42:00.000-07:00

The "Snakes on a Plane" phenomenon has been lauded as somehow honest, invigorating and funny. It is none of those things. It is a disaster. It proves that the American viewing public is much like the American voting public: stupid beyond all belief. This Internet "meme" also proves that the web is slowly becoming what television was from the beginning: pseudo-cultural fodder for idiots. But instead of calling the Internet "the idiot box", I suppose we would have to call it "the idiot distributed network." Last but not least, this film proves that Samuel L. Jackson has officially become a self-parody. What a fucking disgrace.

Modern Meanness

2006-06-22T12:20:00.000-07:00

Recently I forced myself to endure Sarah Silverman’s paean to herself, “Jesus Is Magic.” At the end of it I was truly stunned. How, I asked myself, could this vicious, self-hating Jew of a racist possibly have a healthy career in standup comedy? There seemed to be no answer. But at around the same time Ann Coulter’s latest screed was published, and, per usual, she began promoting it by showing up on various talk shows and saying things that were beyond cruel. What is appalling about Coulter is that in the same way that Silverman has a career, no one ever challenges Ann about anything she writes or says. Matt Lauer came close on the “Today” show, but then ended the segment with the ludicrous “Always great to have you on.” Really? Would it “always be great” to have on, say, Charles Manson? Saddam Hussein?? The mind reels.

All of this has led me to the conclusion that the culture at large is responsible for these two women, and that is because the culture at large is just plain mean, and getting meaner every year. It is tempting to think that one cannot account for this meanness, that the culture – like the nation – is too large and varied to offer a single explanation. But I will not succumb to that temptation.

Simply put, over the course of the last 28 years the spirit of this nation has curdled. Its people have given themselves over to avarice, greed and superficiality in general to such a degree that cruelty is accepted as a societal norm. Arrogance, vanity, callous disregard and loathing have become the prime modes of interpersonal discourse and behavior. Business has been exalted as the highest realm for human endeavor, when in fact it is the lowest common denominator of human endeavor. Venality slithers like a serpent through the desiccated remains of what was once a great, democratic and civic garden of national purpose and mutual understanding. Atomized both by choice and, unwittingly, by the system, the citizenry have twisted individuality from a personal virtue related to pride of place into an aggressive, callous belief system that arrogates all to the self and nothing to the community.

Twenty-eight years ago California voters passed the aptly numbered Proposition 13. It was portrayed at the time as a “taxpayer revolt”, when in reality it was choreographed by Howard Jarvis and Paul Gann, two right-wing operatives from ultra-reactionary Orange County who were also helping to engineer the ascendancy of Ronald Reagan. Proposition 13 was not the only property tax relief measure on the ballot, but it was definitely the worst. Then-Governor Jerry Brown put up a courageous not to mention righteous battle to stop it, but in the end the appeals to voters’ collective greed won out. After its passage California began a wrenching descent from the promethean heights it had once occupied. Its public schools, starved of funds, began to collapse; the great system of public colleges and universities, the envy of the nation, atrophied and began to exclude students it would have once easily embraced; roads, bridges and other physical infrastructure started their long slide into disrepair; essential services were squeezed to the breaking point, and began to disappear. Worse still were the secondary impacts. One example is the phenomenon in the 1980s of towns and cities closing all manner of parks, zoos and public sporting facilities because they could no longer afford to pay liability insurance. Untold damage was thus done to the public commons.

The passage of Proposition 13 would turn out to be the first shot fired in the reactionary revolution then brewing in the boardrooms, churches and country clubs of the nation. The indifference of much of the public in California to the havoc wreaked by Proposition 13 turned out to be a bellwether. Ronald Reagan was soon elected President of the United States. And in California, a Neanderthal non-entity named George Deukmejian was elected Governor. Not long afterward the grotesque Pete Wilson of San Diego was elected to the United States Senate, defeating Jerry Brown. Reagan was re-elected and Gary Hart was assassinated by the increasingly pliant media. Thus were the 80s born.

That accursed decade created much of the trouble we as a nation and shared culture find ourselves in today. Many refer to the 80s as the “Decade of Greed”, and that’s a fair moniker. Unions were decimated in those years, followed by the white collar middle class. But what is missed is the almost psychotic selfishness engendered during those years and into the 90s. Take the homeless, for example. Universally derided in the media and by individuals in conversation, this national disgrace was simply left to fester. Those who became homeless were to blame, not the system that took away their jobs, their incomes and, finally in many cases, their sanity. No one could see their connection to these people as citizens of the same nation, let alone as people. No, it was always “them.” Until, of course, one of the “us” ended up in the same position.

The Internet boom of the mid-late 90s cemented the new ethic of “me first”, as anyone who didn’t invest or create a start-up or otherwise worship the Golden Calf was derided as a fool who failed to “think outside the box.” When the boom went inevitably bust, those whose lives were torn apart found that their countrymen and women couldn’t care less. “What?” they were asked, “you didn’t save any of the money you made? Didn’t prepare for a rainy day?? Well, piss on you.”

The stolen elections of 2000 and 2004 made things worse not so much from a political standpoint, though that was bad enough, but by creating a sense of helplessness amongst the citizenry at large. This was reflected in the culture as it coarsened to the point where misery, pain and suffering became the butt of jokes. As the reactionary right wing seized control of all aspects of political and social power in the nation, those few with human decency found themselves overwhelmed.

And thence came the likes of Ann Coulter and Sarah Silverman. Coulter claims to be speaking out against the “liberal elite” that is supposedly running things, when of course this idea is farcical to anyone paying the least bit of attention. No, Ms. Coulter’s success is, ironically, a tribute to feminism. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon and the University of Michigan Law School, Ms. Coulter took full advantage of the trails blazed by her feminist forbearers. And then, true to her time and cultural moment, she promptly turned on them. Now she is the spokesperson of the extreme right. So-called mainstream Republicans publicly roll their eyes at the mention of her name, but privately cheer her on. Her cruelty knows no bounds because there is no Joseph Welch to ask her “have you no decency, at long last [Ms.]?” And why is there no modern equivalent of Joseph Welch? Because for the last thirty years every potential modern Joseph Welch has been programmed to be either indifferent to someone like Coulter, or to actively support her. There appear to be no heroes waiting in the wings.

Sarah Silverman may or may not become a genuine star. I’m betting she doesn’t make it, not because of her disgusting jokes but for the more mundane reason that she’s just not very funny. Those who support her make fatuous claims that her critics “just don’t get it.” Silverman herself has made the same claim in numerous interviews, but sadly for her “they don’t get it” is the last refuge of bad comedians. Her most controversial jokes are defended by her and others on the grounds that they are purely ironic. I would like to know what is ironic about this joke: “The best time to get pregnant is when you’re a black teenager.” What is the target of the irony? If it is racism then the claim is ludicrous nonsense, because the joke uses a racist stereotype as its punch line. How is that “ironic”? There is no putative racist figure (i.e., a Klansman or other white supremacist) at the center of the joke to point to the irony. Compare that joke to the one joke in Silverman’s oeuvre that is genuinely ironic: “My grandmother survived the Holocaust. Oh, excuse me, the “alleged” Holocaust.” This deftly skewers Holocaust deniers without mentioning them directly, but the indirect reference is clear. But who or what is the indirect target in the first joke? There is none, as the joke is nothing more or less than racist to its core in that it uses a racial stereotype to get laughs. Sarah Silverman has, in my opinion, discovered the very callous culture I have described, and is hitching her wagon to it. She is cruel because cruel sells in these times, and she herself is cruel. I think her choice of a mate says it all. Jimmy Kimmel, her long-time boyfriend, is another example of the retrograde renegade in modern entertainment, the kind of vicious hack who couldn’t have gotten arrested in show business in the 60s or 70s. His boorish “The Man Show” set women back 90 years; 90 because one has to go back before suffrage to find women treated so uniformly as sexual chattel.

What is to be done about this? I fear that nothing can be done. My generation, those born in the mid-late 60s and early 70s, and the following generation of boomer babies, must grow old and die away before this nation and its culture will be cleansed. Either that, or some sort of civil war. And if it comes to that, God help us all whatever our age.

An Object Lesson in How NOT To Run An Independent Bookstore

2006-05-24T12:02:00.000-07:00

Recently Slate Magazine published a rather disparaging essay on independent bookstores, arguing that they weren't as necessary as most bibliophiles thought. Written in a glib style the piece would probably be unconvincing to most of those who frequent such bookstores. I, however, happen to agree with the essay's central point, and that agreement arises from hard, personal experience.

I worked for famed Kepler's Books in September of 1994. Kepler's was one of the original "big three" independent bookstores that began by selling paperbacks in the 1950s, the other two being Cody's Books and City Lights. Ray Kepler ran his bookstore in much the same way as Fred Cody and Lawrence Ferlinghetti ran their's; for the sake of books, and for a modest profit. All three stores were legendary in the 1960s, but Kepler's became especially famous for the milestones that so many of that generation experienced while perusing its shelves: first joint, first kiss, first exposure to Ginsberg, Bukowski, Burroughs.

The 70s were no more kind to Kepler's than they were to Joplin, Hendrix or Morrison, and things started to slip. This changed with the arrival of the 1980s and Ray's handing of the barely-alive store to his son Clark. Clark Kepler was and remains a first-class Yuppie, a genuine testament to his era. Clark Kepler tried to have it both ways by corporatizing Kepler's while simultaneously trying to retain its original "atmosphere." He moved the store from its original Menlo Park location to a very large, "big box" type retail space, hired professional managers and gradually eased out the old crowd of booksellers who had worked the stacks in the 60s and 70s. These were replaced by your typical work-a-day retail clone, folks just looking for a job who thought it might be fun to work in a bookstore. I freely admit I was just such a person when I applied. I was going to a community college at night to work my way towards becoming a Technical Publications professional, and just needed a job to cover basic school expenses. Besides, I thought at the time, the workers seem like pretty cool cats. I was in for a nasty shock.

First was the interview cycle. I had to interview three times for a job that would be part-time, about 25 hours a week to start. Full-time was a "privilege" that had to be earned, I was told. Not to be dissuaded, I impressed my interviewers such that I was offered a "probationary" position. This didn't surprise me because that is the norm in retail. When I arrived for my first day of work, I was startled to see I wasn't alone. There were eight other people huddled around the door that cold day. It was like an audition, and as I would discover that is precisely what all of us were about to undergo. This was not going to be a probationary period in the accepted sense of that term.

The first few days were filled with creepy, indoctrinating meetings with various managers. What struck me at once was the emphasis on "personal style" - PC for "act and think like us, or else." It seemed that as a Kepler's employee my uniform would be hippie-grunge, and my mental state was supposed to be both tie dye and Iron Yuppie. It was completely nuts. The capricious nature of the affair revealed itself as, one by one, people were fired. This was usually abrupt, callous to the point of rudeness and downright mean. The only manager in the store who was not a PC-besotted female was Clark Kepler himself, and it was obvious that this was by design. As the four of us who remained progressed to the middle of our third week we were given performance evaluations. That's right, performance evaluations after three weeks of training.

It might seem risible to complain about performance evaluations after such an interval, but understand the enormous amount we were all expected to learn for the pitiable $6 an hour we were being paid and the part-time hours. Clark Kepler was, understandably, obsessed with the idea that only exemplary customer service would save Kepler's from being devoured by Barnes and Noble and Borders. So he hit on the idea of expecting every employee, however low, to provide the kind of service one would expect from a genuine, well paid library professional. For example, we had to navigate Books In Print, an ancient database for books that was sysiphean in nature. Next was Kepler's own, internal, inventory control system, which was a bit better. Then the formidable stacks, through which employees were expected to unerringly lead every inquiring customer who asked for a particular book. Failure to find said book within a minute or two was a black mark. All of this was too much for eight weeks, let alone four, let alone three.

And the customers, oh God the customers! A greater collection of spoiled brats I had never experienced before and haven't experienced since. On my first day using the horrific Books In Print I was peppered with more insults than I ever had working the drive-thru at Taco Bell the previous year. Most astounding were the sneering "So WHAT?!" responses when the manager riding shotgun explained that this was my first day. A worse group of people I cannot imagine serving. Perhaps the bitch-bastard brigade that frequents places like Nordstrom's or Barney's, but not many others.

Try as I did I didn't make the cut. I was asked to leave and did so, fuming. But I was not given the full four weeks to which I thought I was entitled. I wrote to Clark pointing this out and asking for another chance. His response? In so many words: "Tough shit." I went back to Kepler's in 1996 to do a little shopping. Only one of the group from '94 was still employed, but I almost missed him because he was barely recognizable. Whereas once he had dressed and groomed very much like a preppy, now he could've been mistaken for almost any grunge-loving twenty-something. I greeted him and we chatted. Seems it wasn't his idea to make the change. He was ordered to transform himself (think of that the next time you're in Kepler's and groove on all the "laid back" employees). And so you can imagine my schadenfreude when Kepler's closed its doors in August of 2005. A more fitting end I could not imagine. But I had forgotten about the spoiled hordes, the fools who believed in the Kepler myth.

Not long after the close a group of investors approached Clark and offered to fully fund the store. Loyal customers likewise offered donations to keep Kepler's open. Now doubtless there were those who did this in a communal spirit, as Kepler's had been around for fifty years. But the nature of it suggests the usual snobbery of the witless affluent, refusing to allow their store to fail. I think that Clark should be working for someone else now. He perpetrated a long-running fraud on his community by presenting a hippie-dippie atmosphere behind which worked the most loathsome corporate machinery imaginable. The point is that for the employees, at least, there was no appreciable difference between Kepler's and the chain bookstores. Clark auditioned them instead of just hiring and training them, exploited them to the maximum degree, forced them to "study" about their jobs on their own time for no pay, ordered them to change their personal appearances to conform with Kepler's identity and, eventually in most cases, booted them out the door to the sound of the icy stylings of his managerial staff. The only reason Kepler's can be called independent is...well, it can't, can it? Not with all the "community investment" keeping it afloat. No, now Clark is just another two-bit CEO, in this case of Kepler's Incorporated. At least he finally is "working in an honest trade."

The Da Vinci Ode

2006-05-22T16:19:00.000-07:00

People around the world, it would seem, are willing to read anything. And watch anything. I am of course referring to that execrable piece of literary filth entitled The Da Vinci Code Or, How Dan Brown Got Stinking Rich. There's no sub-title, but its true. Have you read the book? I tried to, and was horrified that such a badly written book has sold 40 million copies.

Aside from the imbecilic placement of such words as "the" and "it", there's the dialogue. I must say that a very funny parody could be written if the dialogue was simply copied as is and put in another context, because it's that bad. But even worse are the ludicrous plot and utterly lifeless characters, and the way Brown takes real institutions with real people and essentially slanders them.

Take Teabing, for example. This character's name, considering he's British, is dangerously close to teabag. But thats only part of the problem with Mr. Teabing. In an absurd deux ex machina the once kindly-seeming professor turns out to be a frothing villain, the literary equivalent of pulling a rabbit out of a hat, and as about as exciting.

But thats nothing compared to the stunt - and it is precisely that, a ludicrous stunt - that Brown pulls on the Catholic Church and one of its lay organizations, Opus Dei. According to The Da Vinci Code the Catholic Church is a thugocracy that's been pulling the wool over the eyes of its members since its inception. Even worse, Opus Dei is portrayed as essentially the Catholic Church's Gestapo, complete with menacing, murderous monks. Not only is this a complete crock of shit, it's lazy writing. The only reason Brown got and is getting away with it is because neither the church nor Opus Dei wants to dignify his nonsense with a lawsuit. Worse still is the fact that Brown ripped off his scholarship from a book written by two other crackpots. The guy hasn't even got a decent imagination.

Some might feel I'm being a snob, and perhaps I am. But it is really appalling to know how much very good writing DOESN'T get published in this country and then see the success of The Da Vinci Code. Book publishing being a business; expect to see more crap like this in the future. And in case you think standards aren't eroding, the witless fool who wrote The Celestine Prophecy had to peddle it out of his car to new age bookstores before it started to take off. The Da Vinci Code came right in through the front door, agent and all.

A Word of Warning to Christian Dominionists and Reconstructionists

2006-05-12T16:33:00.000-07:00

Please don't try it. Cease even to think of it. We, your fellow citizens, who believe in freedom, liberty, equality before fair and impartial law, fairness and egalitarianism, will not allow you to turn this country into a theocracy. We will try and reason with you, debate you, help you to see the extreme error of your beliefs. We owe you that much at least, in our great democracy. You may think us weak, but you will be wrong.

For if you persist in trying to hijack the governments of this nation - local, state and federal - so as to remake this great land into a theocratic nightmare, we will destroy you: we will burn you out of your homes and businesses; we will shoot you down in the streets; we will march on and sieze the major cities and capitols across the land. We will make war on you until either you have surrendered or none of you are left alive. We know how to do this, because we are Americans too, and have done it before: to each other, to Germany, to Japan. You are not the only ones who can become ferocious in the pursuit of victory.

And after such a war? Assuming you were intelligent enough to surrender, there will be no great reconciliation as there was after the last Civil War. All of you will be offered two choices: exile or death. Because at that point we will have had enough of you, will want to be shut of you and your meanness and cancerous spirits for ever and all time. So in your multitudes you shall either leave forever or perish.

I pledge all of the above with my back, my heart and even my soul. I may lose the latter in helping to exact so terrible a cost from you, but at least I will win my country.

I Think This Really Says It All

2006-05-05T15:07:00.000-07:00

David Copperfield Gets Punked

2006-05-04T17:00:00.000-07:00

This imaginative Frenchman has taken France's worst export - the "art" of mime - and melded it with one of America's worst exports - David Copperfield. The result is quite amusing.

Thank God For the French

2006-04-11T18:14:00.000-07:00

The malevolent morons of the American "marketplace" (God forbid we should call it a "society") are all atwitter about the so-called French "surrender" regarding the repeal of their late, lamented labor reform. This imbecility can be found here and in many other places on the web, and more generally in the MSM.

Yes, by all means, the French should piss all over themselves for the sake of the global economy. I think what commentators are most afraid of is other societies following the lead of the French people and telling the capitalist hegemon to go to Hell. Certainly such a logical and entirely reasonable response would be a tonic here in the United States, where people daydream about wealth they will never possess and thus go along with the most egregious Republicrat nonsense with nary a peep - and, at times, their complete and enthusiastic agreement.

But not the French, who are collectively intelligent enough to recognize that it would not stop with the CPE, that a victory for the corporate line would result in more and more such victories as time went on. Those who argue that the French are "lazy" and "fools" are either unaware that the average French worker is among the most productive on earth or are actively trying to conceal that salient fact. Either way, the result is the same: Corporate propaganda at its most hidebound. These nattering nitwits actually believe that the worst thing that could happen in the United States is everybody getting five or six weeks of paid vacation a year. Such is their greed that they would deny the screamingly obvious, that such benefits increase worker productivity, and thus profits. But any suggestion that people who actually work for a living should get a break is anathema to the stooges of the corporate kleptocracy. They would rather drink acid than budge an inch. It is in rebellion against such attitudes that revolutions are made, and won.

"Can't You Stop Saying 'FUCK' All The Time??"

2006-03-29T14:36:00.000-08:00

Apparently not.

Brevity Is The Soul of Wit...

2006-03-13T15:08:00.000-08:00

...not to mention the truth.

Barking Loons React to 'Toons

2006-02-24T18:07:00.000-08:00

By now all of you have doubtless read about - and been appalled by - the ludicrous overreaction in the Muslim world to the publication last September of the few harmless cartoons shown above, depicting the prophet Mohammed (jihadists will note the lower-case spelling, and can now commence foaming at the mouth). I find this whole thing yet another example of the tail wagging the dog. The Muslim world is, sadly, filled to the brim with despots who have no surfeit of reasons to want to distract the people they hold in their immiserating grasp. Their confederates amongst the radical Mullahs are only too willing to fan the flames, no pun intended.

What I find infuriating, however, is the craven response of Western governments and the Western press more generally. Christopher Hitchens angrily and appropriately (for a change) asked why we weren't standing tall in support of Denmark. Cartoonist Doug Marlette offered a scathing and entirely accurate take on the whole issue in today's Salon. The duplicity of the Western press was most gallingly demonstrated after a French editor defiantly republished the cartoons a few weeks ago, proudly stated that in France he had the right to make fun of any religion, and was promptly fired.

I'm sorry, but if I can handle the movie THE LIFE OF BRIAN and the incessant Jesus-bashing on "South Park" and anything produced by Seth McFarlane, then these Middle Eastern clowns can handle a few cartoons. And so in solidarity with that French editor I hereby publish the offending cartoons. Peruse them at your leisure.

Garrison Geezer

2006-02-24T17:27:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week Garrison Keillor once again made an ass of himself on the virtual pages of Salon.com This time Mr. Woebegon had the brilliant idea that every person who wishes to run for President of the United States must have in their background a term of military service. Many have suggested that Garrison (ironic-sounding name considering his thesis, don't you think?) was merely joking in the Swiftian vein of "If there are too many Irish orphans then let us commence eating them." This may be so; only old Prairie Home Companion knows for sure. But I rather doubt it on the evidence of his column. Either he's serious or his "satire" is so well camouflaged as to be invisible. Kind of like Dick Cheney's recent quail hunting partner. If you are one of those who actually agrees with this nonsense, then I have some orphan munching of my own to offer you. To wit...

No one who has earned more than $50,000 a year can be elected President. Also, no one who has ever owned a cat. No one who has ever owned a dog, either, those four-legged bags of wet-nosery. No one who has eaten Skittles, neither. And, most definitely, no one who has ever been caught* picking their nose in public.

No man or woman who has ever experienced more than two orgasms in their lifetime should be allowed to run for our highest office. Sexual release drains the precious bodily fluids and thus saps a person's strength. Over time, this condition could become permanent, and we can't have our Commander-in-Chief walking around without his essence.

Now here are some things I believe a President must have in order to qualify for this high office. First - and this applies to men and women - a flowing, flaxxen beard. Nothing bespeaks wisdom like a good set of chin whiskers. In addition to hair on the face, hair on the chest is a good idea, and again, that goes for the men and the womenfolk. Another requirement, this time just for men, is the possession of a truly awe-inspiring pecker. Nothing shouts "Leadership!" like a sweaty, throbbing, ten-inch cock in a perpetual state of arousal, as long as it is not inserted into any nearby, moistened vaginas. Loss of essence, don't you know.

*Private picking permissible.

Tom Cruise Gets Punked

2006-02-21T11:38:00.000-08:00

The four guys who write/edit The Beast have balls of steel. They also happen to be hysterically funny. Last year they included Tom Cruise on their annual list of "The Fifty Most Loathsome People In America."

Believe it or not, Cruise threatened to sue. Their response included the image posted above, along with a mock singles profile portraying his lawyer as a sleazy troglodyte. Check these guys out at The Beast.

An Amusing Bit of Bollywood

2006-02-16T11:26:00.000-08:00

I found this floating around the Internet ether. Enjoy!

Those Goose-stepping American Soldiers

2006-02-15T14:11:00.000-08:00

Imagine that you're sitting in a movie theatre with a bustling crowd, anticipating the violent war movie you've all come to see. The movie starts, and the hero is a wily, skilled and clever man with a powerful build and an even more powerful vendetta. He is after the soldiers of a foreign army who have humiliated his comrades in a raid, tortured and murdered members of a wedding party and performed medical experiments on prisoners. Your hero is resolute, unstoppable...and Turkish. The bad guys? They're Americans.

Welcome to cultural blowback. Twenty years ago we here in the States laughed at tales of hoary Soviet TV shows in which cackling, evil CIA agents were defeated through the heroic efforts of the saintly KGB. But this is a movie, made with a $10 million budget and, just to rub it in, two American stars: Gary "The Buddy Holly Story" Busey and Billy "Titanic" Zane. It was produced by Turks, stars Turks and is all about the moral superiority of the Turkish military (try selling that one to a Kurd or a Greek).

Our reputation really has soured since our invasion of Iraq. Turkey is a member of NATO and has been an ally for decades. There has been much cultural exchange between our two countries; however, the Turks refused to allow us to use their southern-most bases as a staging ground for the invasion, and since an incident in 2003 when a squad of Marines arrested a group of Turkish Special Forces (an incident depicted in the film), the Turks have been genuinely pissed off at us.

It's saddening to read about such things. You can read about it yourself here.

King Kaufman of Salon.com For Asshole of the Year

2006-02-13T17:34:00.000-08:00

I know it's early yet, but his nasty little essay about Michelle Kwan is unlikely to be challenged (and I say this with full knowledge that we are in an election year). So only the Olympics matter, and she never won, huh? What a piece of work Kaufman is, and others like him who undoubtedly hold the same view. There are only national championships in every Western country on earth, not to mention quite a few in Asia. And every year a world championship matters - Ms. Kwan having won said championship FIVE TIMES. And then there's the little matter of those Silver and Bronze medals. Think of the thousands of young women around the world, twirling artfully in local rinks, who would give their right arms to be a "loser" like Kwan.

If she's a loser, I should be such a loser. And so should Kaufman, a third-rate hack writing (badly) for a two-bit web site. Allen Barra is twice the writer Kaufman is, and three times the sports writer. Kaufman is drunk on the All-American "Winning is Everything" Kool-aid, and he's also full of shit, as this little essay of his so ably demonstrates.

Click this link to read it for yourself.

From the Department of "Who Gives A Shit?!"

2006-02-13T13:35:00.000-08:00

Not long ago Bernard Henri-Levy visited the United States. The resulting book, American Vertigo, should have either disappeared into the cultural ether or been soundly ignored, because frankly it isn't all that good. But the book had the misfortune of having been authored by a Frenchman, and so it became necessary to wheel out one of the bigger asshats in modern American culture, for a ritualistic pasting on the front page of our nation's most respected newspaper. To all of this I say, "Who gives a shit?!" Are there not many more pressing problems in our country than what some Frenchman has to say about it? I'm not a Franophobe (this would result in the curious trick of me hating myself - I'm of French-Canadian origin), but no one can genuinely understand the modern United States who has not been born here and/or lived their whole life here. And even people meeting those criteria will probably only have an accurate understanding of their region, or perhaps state.

Bernard Henri-Levy writes a book. Garrison Keillor makes an ass out of himself in criticizing the book. Then Christopher Hitchens attacks Keillor for being a "philistine." Hitchens attacking Keillor is like using a 155mm Howitzer to hunt squirrels: It's overkill, entirely too much brain-wattage deployed against entirely too little of importance. Here's a sample:

Not since the xenophobic patriots of World War I took to roughing up German waiters and announcing that sauerkraut was henceforth to be "Liberty Cabbage" has there been such a fiesta of all-American bullshit: of what Kipling of all surprising people called jelly-bellied flag-flapping.

And so on. Here are the links, first Keillor then Hitchens.

hate...Hate...HATE!!

2006-02-13T13:07:00.000-08:00

Entirely too much of the Internet is filled with hatred. Whether it's blogs or message boards or web sites devoted to this or that pet peeve. I don't know about you, fair reader, but I lose my lunch every time I encounter such hatred. So if you feel as I do and need a tonic in the form of scathing, scatological satire then go here.

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

2006-02-12T09:21:00.000-08:00

I have no doubt that somewhere in the world a Muslim is being killed in a cartoon riot, in an attempt to intimidate the West into foresaking those precious freedoms that were hard won in sweat, blood, tears and toil. As much as any needless death is a tragedy, I cannot and will not allow myself to be intimidated and neither should you.

Muslims, if they are to be accorded the respect they so fervently crave, must stop throwing lethal temper tantrums every time they feel "offended." And if those nations that are Muslim majority want to be welcomed into the family of civilized nations then they must learn democratic ways, both political and cultural. Governments that manipulate Muslim frustration and rage - said rage and frustration having been feuled by their own corruption and incompetence - for dubious, even sinister, political ends must not be embraced by the West as in the past. The West is not blameless; indeed, the United States, England and, in particular, France have all cynically exploited the divisions within Islam between Shi'ite and Sunni, Salafism and Sufism, secular government and religious jihad, all for economic ends. That too must stop.

For now the challenge to the West is more immediate. A gauntlet has been thrown down by Muslims all over the world, and etched onto that gauntlet is this message: Do as we say! We children of the Enlightenment must react to this as we always have, with a resounding "NO!" Sic Semper Tyrannis, so it ever be to tyrants, be they one or in their multitudes.