Toner_Low

2010-09-12T23:21:00.003-04:00

GOTTA GET THIS OFF MY CHEST

I try to avoid using the Internet for any political sermonizing, but the carnival of hypocrites, opportunists, and the willfully ignorant surrounding the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque" has gone on for far too long, and at such a fever pitch, for me to keep my opinions bottled up any longer. So, citizens, let me learn you some truth.

Sham Consideration for the Victims' Families

The only semi-plausible case against the building of Park51 is the discomfort it will cause for families of 9/11 victims. This might sort of make sense, but the people using this as their justification never got angry when punditrix Ann Coulter unleashed a venomous broadside against a group of 9/11 widows in 2006. It's in Coulter's book Godless, no less. Quote, "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much ... how do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they'd better hurry up and appear in Playboy." People eager to defend the feelings of families impacted by the World Trade Center tragedy should start by attacking Coulter, maybe even burning a book or two of hers, instead of pumping their fists in the air every time she smacks down another undeserving target whose politics don't agree with hers.

Bloomberg Could Have Stopped This?

One thing that modern conservatives seem to agree on: elected officials who overstep the prescribed limits of their power are no good. Yet one of the bad guys in this whole brouhaha, according to foes of Park51, is Mayor Bloomberg, who should have stepped in and run the whole project out of town. Never mind that, by doing so, he would have interfered in a matter in which he had no official say--the permits were in order, the transactions were legal, and the community boards had approved the whole thing. Bloomberg not only refrained from kiboshing it, he even proved himself the only hero in this fiasco with a couple of speeches that should have ended the whole affair.

Sacred Ground

If it needs to be mentioned again: Park51 is being installed in a building that formerly housed a Burlington Coat Factory. There's at least one strip club nearby, and probably a gay bar. Fast food and delis are everywhere. There's another mosque already, four blocks away, and no one has ever complained. Sacred ground my ass.

Feisal Abdul Rauf Is a... Something

Rauf is a Muslim, and Muslims are all terrorists, right? Except that Rauf belongs to a sect of Islam that continues to be persecuted by hard-line fanatics like the Taliban and Al Qeada.

What the Koran Really Says

Commenters on sites across the Internet have been playing a tired game of quoting the inflammatory passages from the Koran as proof of Islam's sinister secret agenda. The book says wage war against Christians, Jews are pigs, etc. First of all, I'm highly doubtful that all these dittoheads have been scouring their copies of Islam's holy book for these snippets; far more likely, they've been cutting and pasting from Michelle Malkin or some such far-right-winger. Second of all, quoting passages from ancient religious texts doesn't prove a thing about what motivates present-day believers. The Old Testament says to eschew shrimp and denim, yet I know plenty of Jews who would never pass up a lobster dinner or a comfy pair of Levis. The God of the Old Testament also doesn't seem to condemn slavery or genocide. Jesus said explicitly that rich people can't go to heaven and that he wanted children to be in conflict with their parents (putting him at odds with the 5th Commandment), yet Christians are hardly seeking to put the heads of wealthy parents on the tops of spiked poles. Martin Luther, enshrined in stained glass in the church where I went as a kid, was a full-blown anti-Semite who truly believed Jews were a demonic race, yet no one, as far as I know, has every accused Protestantism of having an anti-Semetic secret agenda. Oh, I could go on. Yes, there are contentious passages in the Koran, there are eyebrow-raisers and such, but there are also reconciliatory passages and warnings not to judge others (and, if the film Lawrence of Arabia is to be believed, there's a passage letting the Muslim faithful know that that they don't need to read and obey every single word of the Koran).

Farenheit 451

It may seem hypocritical of me to champion Park51 while opposing another guy wanting to exercise his free speech, Florida pastor Terry Jones (it certainly is a very... fishy fish). In general, I don't like book burning. I don't like the idea that, hey, here's an opinion that I disagree with--let's destroy it! (And yes, I was joking about burning Ann Coulter's book--I don't even think her books deserve to be consigned to the flames, which says it all). Plus, there are constructive acts and destructive acts. Building a prayer center that includes a swimming pool is a constructive act. Burning copies of a book just to knowingly piss people off and further erode any kind of small gains we've made toward making the US look awesome in the eyes of Middle Easterners is stupid. Osama bin Laden and his crew have controlled the narrative in that region, and we're running around completely without a clue as to how we can operate with that kind of control. Apparently, force doesn't get you control of the narrative--we've tried, and years later our enemies still get to put the spin on anything that happens. That's not going to change if we keep on torching Korans and protesting mosques.

It's always tempting to defend one's ideology by ramping up one's outrage, but what I'd like to see from everyone is a little less ideology, and a little more thought put into solving real international--and historical--crises. Fanaticism got us into this mess, and it's not going to get us out. Build the mosque already.

2010-09-02T21:31:00.003-04:00

BOOK CLUB PICKS

Here are the selections for the book club. Fly, readers, fly to your local independent bookstore, purchase these marvels, and begin your edification post haste.

--A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
--The Drifters by James A. Michener
--The Trial by Franz Kafka
--Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries by David Ulansey (this one's hard to find so get your library system on the horn pronto)
--Narcissus and Goldmund by Herman Hesse
--World War Z by Max Brooks

2010-03-15T15:16:00.003-04:00

I Liked STAR TREK

A lot of comparisons can be made between TREK '09 and THE PHANTOM MENACE, except that I was entertained by ST09 and was bored by TPM.

Random thoughts...

* The last movie made "for us" was probably #6. So be it.

* I saw it on opening night, and was initially more disoriented than anything. I think Stephen Wright had a joke about coming home to find that someone had broken into his apartment and moved every object two inches to the left. That's how I felt. Later, upon explaining it to a Shatner-or-nothing purist, I found that I actually enjoyed the experience of the film. We went and I saw it again, and I had a much better time having gotten used to it all. In the late Fall, when the DVD came out, I watched it with a number of classes, and they went nuts over it... in a good way. It was nice to see kids excited about anything called STAR TREK, even if it's not "the original." The fact that it made a bunch of money means that the potential exists for a sequel, and a sequel could always be better. Despite winning a Razzie for Transformers 2, the writers generally say pretty agreeable stuff in interviews. They have also done another project I liked a lot.

* I agree with all of the logic flaws you point out. These flaws happen in a number of films, and I see about 50-100 new movies a year. They even exist in classic films. A prime example is in STAR WARS. (The real STAR WARS.) No saving events in the rest of the movie would have happened without the Imperial officers on watch deciding not to shoot that escape pod with C3P0 and his gay lover aboard. There'd be no movie if there had been one more guy on deck who might have said, "You know, we'd better shoot it down, just to be safe," or, "Send a shuttle after it. We're ONLY looking for stolen plans for OUR ULTIMATE WEAPON, and a great place to hide them would be an escape pod with a homing beacon. The rebels would know just where to look. Hell, looking at its current trajectory, it's about a hundred miles from Mos Eisley, and the rebels could be hidden down there, waiting for it."

But that flaw doesn't derail the movie for me because I enjoy watching the characters do what the characters do.

The same goes for STAR TREK. The more I watch it, the more I like these iterations of the characters. I just... enjoy watching them do the stuff they do. It's almost like commedia del arte acted by talented clowns. The plot's not essential. The fact that they don't play Pantalone and Capitano the way the last troupe did isn't essential to me. I enjoy these characters and this ensemble. That IS the movie for me.

* Is it "Star Trek"? Excellent question. You know, a lot of the Star Trek series are mostly bad. Sturgeon's Law and all that. If I were to pick out truly flawless episodes of TOS, I'd probably have about 20 out of 79. Maybe 20 with TNG... if that many. Let's not even discuss VGR and ENT. DS9 is the one exception. I enjoyed a lot of DS9. After the midpoint of season 3, only about one in five episodes is a stinker. (And even that is a mild aroma... more dusty/musty than fetid.) So, the more I go away from Star Trek, the more I see it as a great concept with interesting characters and wonderful moments, but not a flawless set of series. And it rarely matched the description of it given by its creator, even when he was at the wheel. We tend to think that "Star Trek" is a really coherent, consistent entity, and it's not. It's wildly inconsistent in vision, continuity, and even philosophy. Doesn't keep me from loving it... in general/kinda/for the most part. But I can't wax about Star Trek the way I can wax about, say, ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT. Like it or not, ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT maintains its vision and tone very consistently, only deepening it rather than diluting it as it goes on. Of course, it doesn't hurt that it only ran 2.5 seasons. Still, I feel that its 2.5 seasons are more artistically consistent than TOS' first 2.5 seasons.

I think Nick Meyer spoiled us. I really do. He was to Star Trek-writing what Jeremy Brett was to Sherlock Holmes-acting. It was effortlessly magnificent... or so it looked.

Anyway, as I watched the film a number of times, the better and better I felt about the treatment of the characters. For me, my favorite ST movie is #3, largely because of the characters. (WOK is a better film, but SFS is one that I personally enjoy more.) Not only are the characters well-depicted, the film's ultimate message for me is that, after everything, these relationships are more important than the missions that joined them. As I re-watch STAR TREK '09, I see the seeds of those relationships. I like that. The goobertastic SF elements were just McGuffins. I pretty much ignore them. Yes, a truly great movie should have both great characters and a great plot, but I can handle a movie with great characters doing cool stuff in a goofy plot. (Frankly, the plot to KING LEAR is incredibly goofy... and no, I'm not comparing the two in any other aspect.) There are many TV series with sometimes-mediocre episodes that are still watchable because of the characters and performances; THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW comes to mind. Even a so-so plot is forgivable because of the charm of the actor/characters.

* I would have done the film very differently. Let me just get that out of the way. That's another discussion.

* The coincidences DO pile up. And I realize that the movie wasn't written for me. Looking at it through the eyes of audiences for whom, for better or worse, THIS will be "Star Trek," things like the conspicuous convenience of Scotty's posting are meaningless. I don't think it's ultimately meant to be a moment of, "Aha! So THAT'S how Scotty and Kirk met." For the audiences for whom the film was written, they'll look back on this film several sequels from now and say, "Yeah, that engineer's the guy he picked up on the ice planet."

OVERALL...

I don't think the story's meant to be too original. For me, it was a workmanlike variation on the durable structure of the monomyth. I become increasingly fond of that story as I age. In a way, a good monomything is like seeing a familiar Shakespeare play with a new cast, director, and design. It's not the only game in town, but I generally enjoy it. I certainly did in this case.

2009-12-21T23:20:00.003-05:00

MORE ADVENTURES IN SPACE

Yes, I have fallen way behind the curve--I only saw Star Trek last weekend, a mere half a year after it came out in theaters. Didn't love it--man, did it bring back some stale cliches--but there were a lot of things I liked about it, and I'll start with the positives.

Great cast. I had thought that putting other actors in those hallowed roles would be the weakest part of the movie, but it was completely the opposite. Everyone does a good job, and the only quibbles I had, with Chris Pine and Simon Pegg, aren't really with the actors themselves. Karl Urban, who hammed his way painfully through so many Hercules and Xena episodes, is actually quite good as McCoy, as is Zachary Quinto as Spock, Bruce Greenwood as Capt. Pine, Zoe Soldana as Uhura, and even the actor who played Kirk's dad. Everyone gives appealing, well-rounded performances, which is kind of rare for a space opera.

I said before that Pine could never fill Shatner's shoes, and I was partly right; the Kirk in this Star Trek isn't the same guy from the series. Pine's got the swagger and the eye for women, but not the authority or the air of command. Instead, he's lugging around a mountain of vulnerability, which helps to offset his bad-boy rebelliousness. Blame the era; modern audiences would never sit through a film about a (non-corrupt) police commissioner, preferring instead the adventures of a reckless loose cannon who's always having to turn in his badge.

The new Kirk isn't the only thing we've seen before. The writers give their characters plenty to do, but they stick to a familiar, borrowed script, and the story just doesn't make much sense. By my count, the sins are:

Time Travel Just Happens

A science teacher in high school once pointed out how, in the Fifties, things that got irradiated grew big. Radiation was the 'magic' that made lizards and tarantulas grow into dangerous giants, and the public bought it because, generally, people didn't know much about radiation. Nowadays, audiences wouldn't believe a nuclear test making a termite (or whatever) grow to the size of a mac truck--anyone can tell you that radiation most likely leads to cancer.

I feel like black holes are the new version of this. Since the late Seventies, they've been used in a lot of hack sci-fi as a method of time travel. But the thing is, Stephen Hawking published his widely-read pop-physics book decades ago, and anyone with a library card should know by now that black holes would probably not send someone back in time--most likely they'd rip the traveler and their vessel apart.

Anyway, the time travel in this movie still doesn't make much sense. Why does Nero's ship go back to the moment prior to Kirk's birth? Why does it take Spock's ship 25 years to catch up? And why does another black hole destroy Nero's ship at the end of the movie, instead of sending him back further?

Not Much Vastness In Space

Coincidence plays such a huge part in this movie that I hardly know where to begin. The worst example is where Kirk ends up on some wintry planet, is briefly pursued by some creature that, at the last minute, is devoured by another creature, then is saved from that second creature by--Spock, who just happened to be a few yards away. How big is the universe again? And the two of them pretty much accidentally ended up on the same planet? And Scotty's on the same planet too, again only a few yards away?

Let's Send One Guy to Bring the Really Dangerous Stuff

If I understand correctly, the problem at the heart of the film is that Spock was sent to the Romulan homeworld to create a black hole, and screwed up. Who the hell decided to send Spock--a lone ambassador--on this mission? Isn't this the kind of thing that Starfleet is always sending its fully-manned ships to take care of? This "red matter" that creates black holes seems pretty dangerous, so maybe someone should have beefed up security, maybe sent at least one big guy armed with a phaser to go with Spock.

Two or Three Guys Can Easily Take Out a Huge Ship

So the key to victory, as ever, is to get a couple of good guys into the bad guys' ship, and they'll take it down. I hated this when the Next Generation crew took down the Borg, and I hate it now. First of all, why is the Romulan ship so big? What's all that space for, aside for visuals? If I did a WWII-era movie about a couple of US lieutenants who get about the Japanese warship Yamamoto and take the whole crew down, I'd be laughed out of Hollywood, yet it's a standard part of sci-fi movies--some ridiculous vulnerability that allows two or three heroic souls to overpower an enemy crew and take over their starship in five minutes or so.

We're the Eeeeevilllll Bad Guys

And I didn't think Eric Bana did a bad job, but here again the cliches seemed pretty thick. The Romulans cruise through the galaxy in what looks like a giant sinister artichoke, lit only by mood lighting, helpfully wearing dusters and overcoats to identify them as baaaaaaaad. Even though at one point Nero says his ship is a mining ship, it's outfitted with an infinite number of torpedos. For cave-ins?

So in sum: none of these things would have bothered my too much, except that I was led to believe that this was a special Trek movie, a real departure from the standard operating procedure, when really it borrowed from The Wrath of Khan and several earlier movies. For all that, I look forward to seeing the sequel, given the likeability of the cast and the impressive look that everything had. But could they just come up with an original story?

2009-10-07T23:35:00.002-04:00

WATCHMEN REVIEWS

For some reason, I never posted anything on WATCHMEN after I saw that movie. One thing I always wanted to comment on were two reviews I read right after the film came out, one by the New Yorker's professional smart-ass and comics non-enthusiast Anthony Lane, and one by New York Times former fanboy A. O. Scott. Neither reviewer liked the film, but Scott's was by far the superior review, because Lane clearly felt it was beneath his university education to even comment on an entertainment enterprise spawned from a comic book. I recently came across a blog post at Irresistible Targets that says pretty much everything I wanted to say. Have yourselves a looksee--

2009-10-06T23:44:00.003-04:00

RAISING KIDS IS LIKE CLIMBING A MOUNTAIN

This was the comparison a co-worker and I came up with the other day. But it needed some fine-tuning, so we modified it a few times and came up with:

--Raising kids is like climbing a mountain with no map.
--Raising kids is like climbing a mountain while suffering from vertigo so intense that you can't determine which way is up or down.
--Raising kids is like climbing a mountain with no food, no clothes, no supplies, and your feet severed at the ankles leaving bloody stumps.
--Raising kids is like climbing a mountain with Elmo as you sherpa.
--Raising kids is like climbing a mountain with Barney as your sherpa and all attempts to shove the purple dino into a crevasse result in nothing but failure and an unending stream of irritating, puerile songs.
--Raising kids is like climbing a mountain only every single muscle in your body is paralyzed so you're not climbing the mountain as much as staring up at it as it looms over you like a frozen wave of granite, while you starve slowly.

2009-07-08T23:42:00.003-04:00

THE TRUTH ABOUT HERCULES (AND MAYBE GILGAMESH)

Let us turn now to the great dragon-slayers, to Sigurd, and Beowulf, and St. George, and, first among them, Herakles, subduer of the deadly Hydra.

In his Histories, Herodotus claims to have evidence that the Egyptians worshipped Herakles, or Hercules, as a god ages before the Greeks venerated the mythical hero.

The Greek myth may preserve clues that the story of Herakles has a hidden cosmic significance. To start with, there are the Twelve Labors--basically the centerpiece of the whole story. What's interesting is that each labor relates to a constellation in the Zodiac, or at least a constellation near a Zodiac configuration.

The millions of people who visit this blog every day have no doubt noticed my fascination with David Ulansey's book on the Mithras cult and its ties to astronomy. The Herakles story, with its connections to the Zodiac, may have another similarity to Mithras worship. The hero's trials may have represented grades of initiation, with the final grade--the final labor--being the key to the most heavily guarded secrets of the cult.

For his final labor, Herakles went into the underworld to bring to the upper world Kerberos, the three-headed dog that guarded the gates of the Underworld. Before undertaking this task, Herakles was initiated in the Eleusinian Mysteries, a cult of Demeter that was supposed to possess secret knowledge of the afterlife and the renewal of vegetative life on earth each year.

The Herakles story is one of cycles; the sun through the constellations of the Zodiac, and the decay and renewal of the seasons. The implication is that death and life themselves are cyclical.

More than the entertaining adventures of a really strong guy, was the real purpose behind the Herakles myth a guide to secret esoteric knowledge? And was that knowledge a guide to navigating the afterlife, or even a set of instructions for returning to life?

There are also several similarities with Gilgamesh story; Gilgamesh's saga ends with its hero, as excessive at the tale's beginning as Herakles is at his, eventually obtaining a plant which allows the old to become young again, but he loses it. Did the authors of the Gilgamesh story and the Egyptian version of the Herakles myth borrow from the same sources?

If someone can figure out how I can turn this idea into a screenplay for Tom Hanks, I'll cut you in for 10% of the eventual gross.

2009-07-03T14:38:00.002-04:00

THANKS, DARWIN

As if to put a cold, dark period on the fulfillment of my evolutionary purpose, my health took a dive around the time that the new guy was born; I developed a painful, ugly sore on my eyelid (and all you ladies out there who are into puss-filled boils, let me tell you, it made me look hot), then I caught one of the many, many diseases that has been circulating throughout New York lately. This one appears to be a bacterial infection of the throat--whoopee. The sore's better and the throat is on the mend thanks to antibiotics, but still, natural selection has made its point; having now produced two offspring and thereby extended my genetic material into the next generation, I can now begin my slow shamble toward the elephant graveyard. Let's hope they have cable.

2009-07-01T14:28:00.002-04:00

HERE HE IS

I promised you a photo, so here's the new addition to the Toner Clan. The Great One Himself at rest.

2009-06-28T23:00:00.002-04:00

BIG NEWS AT THIS END

My second son arrived Friday, the 26th--looking pink, fit, and bound for the ivy leagues. Harvard, if you're reading this, my kid will own you by the time he's sixteen. Pictures to come--

2009-05-30T01:45:00.002-04:00

THIS & THAT

Recent movies...

Terminator: Salvation (2/5 stars)
"Well, it's no TERMINATOR 3."

Angels & Demons (3/5 stars)
"For centuries, those incessant babymakers have had the coolest costumes and props. Now they have an exciting story, too."

Drag Me To Hell (4/5 stars)
"Much fun. The ending's pretty obvious, though."

Up (1/5 stars)
"I prefer Russ Meyer's original."

FROM THE VAULTS...

I dug this up in an old gmail account. Some rantings from back when I had a soul and my life had meaning. Ah, those were the days. Now, I'm reduced to reruns. Anyway, enjoy...

I just got back from the first science fiction convention I've been near
in 15 years. It was everything you would imagine it would be.

In the dealer's room, many people were selling t-shirts emblazoned with
"funny" sayings, or endless quotes from MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL.
One of the shirts said, "WARNING: I have a vocabulary of over 75,000
words, and I'm not afraid to use it."

I thought this was pretty obnoxious. So I came up with my own t-shirt
slogans to sell to the fans. Part of me actually wants to get these
printed up and take them to a con, to see how fans would react. For your
enjoyment....

I'm insecure because I'm physically unattractive and/or socially awkward.
The main way I make myself feel good is by using my intelligence to try to
make others feel bad.

The majority of Mundanes are actually happier than I am.

I honestly think these outfits and costumes make me look my absolute best.

I laugh obnoxiously loudly so that others will know what a great sense of
humor I have.

Why bathe when you're as smart as I am?

No matter how many hit points my D&D character has, that bully from middle
school could still kick my ass.

If they say it with a British accent, I will laugh, no matter how unfunny
it is.

The secret of comedy is allusions to other films or books. No real wit or
irony is required. Simply the allusion.

Overweight people can look very attractive, but not wearing that.

Deep Space Nine ran two more years than Babylon 5, and was never in
serious danger of cancellation. But we're gonna deny that.

My greatest fear is that CADDYSHACK may actually be funnier than HOLY
GRAIL. Shhhhhh. Don't tell anyone.

Comics aren't worth my time. Unless they're written by Joe Straczynski.
Somehow, those are magically good.

This beard is my way of compensating.

Would a vampire really dress that way? I think we both know the answer.

Horror fans are cooler than s/f fans. But you didn't hear it from me.

I can recite entire scenes from HOLY GRAIL and HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE. Guess
that makes me the funniest thing in the whole, wide world.

Desperately waiting for the next Weird Al CD so I can finally "rock out"
again.

BUFFY -- Tune in for the masturbation fodder, stay for the story.

I put on fuzzy slippers shaped like rabbits with sharp fangs, and think,
"Man, I look *good.*"

I (heart) The Sound of My Own Voice

I secretly know that three of the five STAR WARS movies are, honestly,
pretty wretched.

Endlessly repeating "I've got a bad feeling about this," is not a running
gag. A running gag also has to be funny.

2009-05-09T01:24:00.003-04:00

STAR TREK (3/4 stars)

This is to the Original Series what QUANTUM OF SOLACE was to GOLDFINGER. And I liked QUANTUM OF SOLACE. But I'm not sure we've evolved as a culture when QUANTUM OF SOLACE is what we get after standing on GOLDFINGER's shoulders for 40 years. Our culture's clearly gotten more bloodthirsty, but I'm not sure we've gotten classier. I often feel as if we've culturally exchanged Grand Marnier for a cocktail of PGA and Tang. The latter will get you drunk faster, but maybe drunk isn't the whole point.

But, overall, I pretty much liked it.

I miss this stuff...

In other news, I'm vaguely on the run. Amazing wackiness has happened (write to me for details if you're actually curious) that's slowed down my filmgoing. No legal trouble or health trouble (for me) or job trouble. But for many reasons, the Circus of Doctor Lao is putting its tent pegs back down at Toner Low for a while.

2009-04-22T23:34:00.003-04:00

THE PENN STATION BOOK CLUB

So I missed my train getting back to Penn Station after tonight's book club meeting. A mixed blessing; I got to wander around, amongst the Rangers fans, looking for the books we had just decided to read, and discovering some others as well. I bought Travels with Herodotus by Kapuscinski, which we hadn't selected to read but should have if only I had thought to nominate it, and, heading upstairs to Book Corner, I bought Bonk. Because the books we voted on were (not necessarily in this order):

--Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
--The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
--Devil in the White City by Eric Larson
--A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul
--Run by Ann Patchett
--Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Other books nominated but not selected were:
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
A Mote in God's Eye by Niven and Pournelle
Labyrinths with Path of Thunder by Christopher Okigbo
This is Your Brain on Music by Dan Levin
Hubert's Freaks by Gregory Gibson
Time's Arrow by Martin Amis
The Black Swan by Nassim Niholas Taleb
Maimonides (Jewish Encounters series) by Sherwin Nuland
St. Lucy's Home for Gifted Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
The Ornament of the World by Maria Rosa Menocal
House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

2009-04-11T22:47:00.001-04:00

HELP STOP THE SPREAD OF LITERACY IN OUR SCHOOLS

...by not reading this informative post.

2009-03-29T00:06:00.001-04:00

CARTOON OF THE MONKEY GOD

I once briefly studied Chinese; I can't remember any of it, though I do remember a teaching assistant named Ken from Taiwan saying that the best part of having a Chinese background was getting to hear the stories of the Monkey King from your grandmother. I don't have a Chinese grandmother, alas, but I had been exposed to the stories of the Monkey King, Sun Wu-kung, when as a child I had caught part of the animated film Alakazam the Great on television. The movie was a 1960 Japanese version of the Chinese story, dubbed by American actors including Frankie Avalon, Sterling Holloway, and Jonathan Winters. It stuck with me because it was more violent than most cartoons I had seen, and extremely exotic. Buddha, or at least someone like him, is a character in the film.

After college I read Arthur Waley's translation of the Monkey King story, and also saw a terrific stage adaptation by Mary Zimmerman. But until today, I hadn't known that a Chinese studio had also made an animated film version of the earlier part of the story, titled Havoc in Heaven. No English translations of this award-winning and very influential film exist, though some kind soul has posted parts of it on Youtube, and it's dazzling. A little slow, though; as with the written version, bureaucracy, in this case the bureaucracy of heaven, plays a large part in the story. The appeal of the main character is his disregard for the official order of things, and his incessant tormenting of the gods, immortals, and celestial creatures that all play by the rules. Apparently the film czars in communist China allowed the film to be made because they saw Sun Wu-kung as a metaphor for Mao, driving the bourgeoisie crazy and thumbing his nose at imperialism. Yet watching the film now, it seems to celebrate many things that the Cultural Revolution would seek to destroy; courtly pageantry, Peking opera, Shaolin martial arts, and, well, fun.

2009-02-14T21:29:00.002-05:00

YET ANOTHER TEST OF MANHOOD THAT I HAVE FAILED MISERABLY

One thing about the neighborhood where I live--the heads of households show a complete mastery of such things as table saws, blowtorches, and cars. When a temperature light kept flashing on the dash of our VW Jetta, I told the wife I'd cross the street to ask our neighbor, the car ninja, for some advice. I dreaded asking this guy--I knew what I was in for. After my first antifreeze question (which was basically, "What is antifreeze?"), my neighbor asks me a number of things about the car, including whether it uses red or green antifreeze. They come in different colors? Who knew?

Apparently there's a lot the average person should know about antifreeze, and was it just me or could I detect a withheld sneer of contempt from my knowledgeable neighbor. So he asked me to pop the hood. Twenty minutes later, when I had accomplished that, he took a look and gave me some advice about what I needed to do. And he didn't say it out loud, but I could hear it like a whisper of the wind among the trees: You dare call yourself a male?

2009-02-05T23:17:00.008-05:00

DELIVER US NOT INTO PENN STATION

Moving from Brooklyn deeper into Long Island has introduced the necessity of two daily visits to Pennsylvania Station, a bizzare hole in the center of Manhattan's least comfortable neighborhood. Having spent so much time there, though, I've come around to some of the strange and compelling sights of the place. Even though most people passing through (or actually underneath) the place tend to keep their heads down and push forward as fast as they can, the observer will note the following:

Sculptor Andrew Leicester contributed some odd and eerie decorations, the most dramatic of which is a relief on the eastern wall of the Long Island Rail Road corridor. It's a depiction of two deities, one representing day and the other night, on either side of a circular void. The images are borrowed from a sculpture that adorned the original and much lamented Penn Station (destroyed in 1963), and rather than beautify the place, their purpose seems to be to remind everyone that the station they now pass through used to be a lot better.

Penn Station is also the greatest concentration of junk food on the planet; it's hard to comprehend how they got so many awful food stalls into such a tight space. One restaurant that's supposed to be better is a place called Tracks, which I've never been to. But I'd avoid any establishment in that crypt that actually boasts serving raw food.

A better place to kill the time is Penn Books, which has become one of the best bookstores in all of New York City now that all of the other independent stores are shutting down. Touting the NYT best-sellers up front, the store also has a pretty good classics section and other oddities that remind you that you're not in the Borders upstairs.

I've bitched and moaned about Penn Station since 1999, when I first moved to an office in Penn Plaza several stories above the train tracks. But it's time to give in and marvel at the station and the truly New York experience that it provides; a whirlwind of humanity in a furious rush, a structure where, anthill-like, little is static, and a warren of corners and alleys offering unusual but sometimes nifty wares.

2009-01-26T23:56:00.003-05:00

PERSIAN SAILOR GOES HOLLYWOOD

While searching through YouTube for something that my household shark aficionado could watch that didn't involve divers being menaced but still had the cool creature factor, I stumbled across trailers for the some Sinbad epics that I had seen as a kid, and it got me wondering what the original source of the character was. To Occidentals, he first showed up in Burton's translations of the Tales from the Thousand and One Nights, but the Sinbad (or Es-Sindibad) stories were already old by the time they had been included in that anthology, and may have originated in the pre-Islamic Sassanid Empire.

Like King Arthur, Sinbad has proved to be a solid fixture in modern pop culture as well as legends of an earlier era; Doug Faribanks Jr. depicted him in 1947's Sinbad the Sailor (where Maureen O'Hara played a Persian princess who couldn't have looked more Irish if she had been a pint of Guinness in the hand of Van Morrison on St. Patrick's Day). The fun really got started when Ray Harryhausen brought his special effects into the mix, and three films made a lasting mark in the geekosphere: 1958's The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, 1974's The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, and 1977's Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (which I remember seeing as a kid--it was rated G, despite a scene with a near-nekkid Jane Seymour). There has also been a Japanese cartoon, and a DreamWorks animated movie. How many more stories can Hollywood et al. get out of this at-least-1,500-year-old adventurer?

2009-01-26T22:36:00.002-05:00

JAWS 1 1/2

The little guy reached the year-and-a-half milestone today, and he marked his newfound maturity with an obsession for sharks. He'll repeat the word until I take down my Audubon Encyclopedia of Animal Life and show him the one photo of a shark in its pages. We spent the weekend looking through the shark videos posted on YouTube, but after the third clip of a great white ripping a seal decoy to shreds, I wondered if this was the best way to bond with my son. Isn't this how axe murderers are formed?

2009-01-03T19:37:00.001-05:00

The Fifty Films Doctor Lao Saw in 2008

THE BEST
The Fall
Milk
Religulous
Diary of the Dead
Be Kind, Rewind
Elegy
Lakeview Terrace
Roman De Gare
The Dark Knight
Walk Hard

THE VERY GOOD
The Mist
There Will Be Blood
The Savages
Harold and Kumar 2
Iron Man
Redbelt
Indiana Jones 4
The Incredible Hulk
The Mummy 3
Ghost Town
The Wackness
Priceless
W.
I Served the King of England
Quantum of Solace
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

THE TERRIBLE
Synechdoche, New York
Blindness
Hamlet 2
Stepbrothers
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Pineapple Express
X Files 2
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Atonement
Cloverfield
No Country for Old Men

THE ENTIRE LIST
Slumdog, Millionaire ***
Seven Pounds ***
Milk *****
Synechdoche, New York (BOMB)
Quantum of Solace ***
I Served the King of England ****
W. ***
Religulous *****
Blindness **
Eagle Eye ***
Choke***
Elegy*****
Lakeview Terrace *****
Ghost Town ****
Burn After Reading**
Hamlet 2 **
Step Brothers *
The House Bunny ***
Henry Poole is Here ***
The Wackness ***
Vicky Cristina Barcelona **
Roman De Gare *****
Tropic Thunder ***
Pineapple Express BOMB
The X-Files: I Want to Believe *
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor ****
The Dark Knight *****
Hellboy 2 **
Priceless ***
The Incredible Hulk ****
Get Smart ***
The Strangers ***
The Fall *****
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ****
Redbelt ****
Iron Man ***
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay ****
Smart People ***
Forgetting Sarah Marshall **
Diary of the Dead *****
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day ***
Be Kind, Rewind *****
The Savages ****
There Will Be Blood ****
Cloverfield *
Atonement *
No Country for Old Men *
Juno **
Walk Hard *****
The Mist ****

2009-01-01T15:36:00.005-05:00

THEY ARE WONDERFUL LIVES

A recent piece in the New York Times about the screen classic It's a Wonderful Life had me entertaining fresh questions about this film, which is one of the wife's favorites. I now share with her the custom of watching it every Christmas season, and while I have become fonder of it than I used to be, I use it as fodder for self-imposed brain teasers. For example, is Ernie the cabbie secretly in love with Bert the cop? Not only does Ernie kiss Bert on the forehead, but Bert makes a point of saying he needs to go home to his wife after spying Violet in a provocative dress. Are there more clues?

The big puzzle, though, is the one that James Stewart's character George Bailey must confront--is the episode in the final hour of the film, where he is shown what his town would be like if he had never been born, really real? George repeatedly tells his "guardian angel" Clarence that he knows he's being hypnotized or otherwise tricked, but is such the case, or if he is being tricked, does George understand the nature of the deception.

I've come up with four theories explaining what happens in the film's final segments, assuming that the prologue in heaven can be discounted (and why shouldn't it be--no one in Bedford Falls is aware of it). Here they are:

One--The Head Wound Theory
This is actually the wife's--when George plows his car into the tree, just before jumping off the bridge, he sustains a serous blow to the head. Everything that occurs until Bert meets George on the bridge is a delusion dreamt up by George as he staggers from his car to the bridge.

Two--The Psilocybin Theory
While drinking at Martini's, before getting in his car, George sips from a bottle that has become infested with hallucinogenic fungus. It really hits when he gets out of his car. The visions he suffers--Clarence, Pottersville, all of it--are akin to a bad 'shroom trip. This theory sounds far-fetched, but it's in fact what some historians have used to explain the initial events of the Salem Witch Trials.

Three--The Truman Show Theory
This is my favorite, but it's also the weakest one. George Bailey has, all of his life, been living on a theatrical set, owned and directed by Potter. All of the inhabitants of Bedford Falls are actors, with the exception of George. Potter and the other actors repeatedly foil George's plans to leave the town, because if he did he'd realize that he was on a set. Concocting ever more frustrating situations for George, and impressed with his resistance to them, Potter comes up with this journey to an alternate history, accomplished with a quick set change and some new scripts for his actors. With this theory, however, I can't explain how George's mouth and ear heal when he goes to Pottersville, or how Zuzu's flower petals get back into his pocket (getting them out would be easy--Clarence removes them when their clothes are drying at the bridge), but it explains Potter's single-minded interest in George.

Four--The Parallel Worlds Theory
In his book Parallel Worlds, physicist Michio Kaku describes the universe as a kind of roiling foam, with dimensions arising like bubbles. Unstable dimensions collapse back into the soup, but stable ones, like ours, continue for a bit longer. In this theory, George visits a "bubble-reality" similar to his own, with a few exceptions, one of them being that he was never born. There are others that speak of a structural instability, namely a heightened uncertainty principle, which allows Clarence to vanish while he's wrestling with Bert. George's ability to enter and exit this reality before its collapse is another sign that its physical laws are a mess. Clarence, the visitor from a higher reality, can explain things to George only in the most enigmatic way, leaving George to fill in the blank spots in his comprehension with talk of heaven. This explains how George, never born in one reality, can appear within it--the bubble-reality is so unstable and so full of logical violations that he can enter and leave it according to the same uncertainty principle that transports Clarence.

Predating The Matrix, this was a movie that urged audiences to ask if, even though their minds could doubt it, if reality as they experienced it seemed plausible then shouldn't they just go along with it? A cerebral tour-de-force indeed.

2008-12-31T23:41:00.001-05:00

ROCKETEER, PASS BY

The death earlier this month of pin-up queen Bettie Page was the second half of a double loss this year; the first half was the death of comic artist and Bettie Page champion Dave Stevens, who I hadn't realized until now died this past March at an unfairly young age. Stevens was the originator of The Rocketeer, an infrequently-appearing comic that became a movie at one point. He had modeled the hero's love interest curve for curve on Page, and by doing so played a significant part in re-igniting Bettiemania. A book just came out celebrating his work. Along with Brian Bolland and a handful of others, Stevens helped to bring a refined, meticulous element into comic art in the late 70s and 80s, and we won't see pages like his again anytime soon.

2008-12-22T22:29:00.003-05:00

KEEP MITHRAS IN CHRISTMAS!

Once I thought of printing this slogan on a bumper sticker; as with any good idea, I did not think of it first. Please remember this holiday season to honor Mithras and the Invincible Sun with the rites they are due. For an excellent article on the Greco-Roman mystery cult origins of Christmas, try this; or go here for Steven Fry's game-show take on the same topic. It continues to amaze how no one really knows where this once-widespread religion originated; Persia, as was commonly thought? Syria? Anatolia, as Ulansey theorizes? India?

2008-12-04T10:12:00.003-05:00

Opinion wanted? Opinion given.

I am thrilled with the look, feel, and news regarding the new Star Trek movie. The writers have said all of the right things, as has the director, who said this...

"First of all Star Trek is an incredibly optimistic world that Roddenberry was basically positing that not only do we live, but we thrive." Abrams said "And not just racially, but inter-species. The idea of ‘Star Trek' is trekking through stars and trekking through space and discovering the final frontier and it is something you take for granted or may think is silly, but when you actually think about that notion it is a very optimistic one. So part of what I love about the world of Star Trek before you even get to this film, I live its optimism."

Right thing to say.

For too long, the essence of STAR TREK has been caught up in mid-to-low production values. Yes, it could be argued, that's part of the charm. Many of us appreciate that. But if you have a good story with good characters, excellent production values never hurt. I think of David Goyer when I think of this. Recently, I watched the NICK FURY TV movie he wrote. Not bad. A relatively faithful whack at the mythos from the writer of DARK CITY, BATMAN BEGINS, and THE DARK KNIGHT. But low production values can sometimes be their own Peter Principle. You're only going to rise so high until you kick in some more scratch. Witness BATMAN BEGINS, on which no expense was spared to bring his vision to the screen.

(Yes, yes, I know. Limited budgets can sometimes fuel imaginations. As a director, let me tell you, having a bootload of money can stimulate the imagination a great deal, and can be more fun than "less is more." Money can't buy creativity, but it can really help release it.)

Now, I think there's room for Roddenberrian philosophy and slam-bang action. The original Trek mixed the two very well, and moments of the subsequent incarnations did, too.

So, there is a false dilemma if someone posits that they can have "Star Trek" or they can have well-funded action.

If this film pulls it off, George Lucas can finally be kicked in the pants. For too long, he (along with Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell) has been pushing STAR WARS as the science-fiction franchise with meaning. It (almost) instantly attained mythic status in the popular culture. It wasn't just science fantasy, we were told, it was important myth.

Bullshit.

STAR TREK, on the other hand, was all about William Shatner impressions and mouth-breathing fans and bad special effects on tiny sound stages.

Well, maybe that's going to change.

The first, best change is the new cast. With a new cast, these characters become bigger than the original actors with whom they have been inextricably linked for forty-two years.

Now, we even get an origin/hero's journey monomyth to get the Campbellites off our cultural backs.

If this approach to STAR TREK gets the same jolt that Bond got from CASINO ROYALE and that Batman got from BATMAN BEGINS, we really can enter a new era. These characters can potentially attain the status enjoyed by characters like Tarzan and Sherlock Holmes. And, now that the dust has settled and everyone agrees that (seasons 3-7 of) DS9 was post-TOS Trek's finest hour, we can come back to the table appreciating TNG, but finally admitting that this mythos is as much about the characters as it is about their universe. This is a story about family. This is a story where one of the high concept special elements is the notion that humanity has shed its prejudices and superstitions. People always approach that idea (because it threatens them out of their lazy pessimism and charges that they, too, have the potential to clean up their act) of an evolved humanity as STAR TREK's weakness. They don't understand that it is as much of a "cool gadget" as the transporter and warp drive. It is the science fiction equivalent of Superman's heat vision. It is the "cool factor."

And better than heat vision, it's a cool factor to which we can actively aspire. It is a call to action. It is a reassurance that, just as we kicked sexism, racism, widespread illiteracy, and slavery out of the pool (in the more enlightened regions of the world), we can do the same thing with our other cultural shortcomings.

With slam-bang action, too.

From interviews with the director and writers, they seem to revere Roddenberry's ideas a lot more than Rick Berman did. Good for them.

And the final reassurance is Nimoy. They asked Nimoy to direct GENERATIONS. Nimoy said, "No. Not with that script."

Nimoy doesn't need money. He's retired from acting. From all accounts, he is very happy taking pictures of naked, fat women.

Nimoy has always been the "integrity cop." Always a thorn in Roddenberry's side when Gene wanted to cut a moral corner. Always a thorn in Paramount's side when they tried to sell off the images of the actors without paying them. Yes, he participated in STAR TREK V, as an actor, but that was to stand by his friend, Bill Shatner, and try to shepherd him through his first movie. And a lot of V's problems have to do with Paramount shortchanging Shatner like they'd never shortchanged Nimoy.

So, when Nimoy approved of things, I felt good. He's the last guy to sell out for the money. And I don't think the writers are sell-outs, either. If they were, they'd have jimmied Shatner in. But they couldn't, so they didn't.

Now, does the new film mess with continuity? Yeah. But Shakespeare had the characters in JULIUS CAESAR talk about clocks, so continuity reverence is nice, but good stories can be told without it.

STAR TREK may finally be getting the respect it's earned. Who's to say that Chris Pine won't be Jeremy Brett to Shatner's Basil Rathbone?

2008-11-28T00:29:00.002-05:00

THE BOOK CLUB (OVERDUE)

Here are the latest selections of the book club. We're already done with Lamb and will be discussing Christine Falls next week.

1. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore

2. Christine Falls by Benjamin Black

3. Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko by Blake Bell

4. Gilgamesh translated by John Champlin Gardner and John Maier

5. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

6. Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as
Literally as Possible by A. J. Jacobs

Other books nominated but not picked:
• Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated Into What America Eats by Steve Ettlinger
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
• The Slaves' War: The Civil War in the Words of Former Slaves by Andrew Ward
• Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan
• Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

2008-11-22T22:23:00.002-05:00

OPINIONS WANTED

I must know what Dr. Lao thinks of the trailer for next year's Star Trek flick. My 2 cents:
1. Looks like a lot of loud zooming through space, laser battles, explosions, and other eye-popping sensational effects--but those are all standard fare in movies nowadays. I would be more impressed if Abrams had stuck with the special effects budget for the original TV series, and come up with something more homemade. What I remember of the show was how unimpressive the future looked--every planet looked like a cramped sound stage or a Southern California backlot--but the strength of the show was in it's message that you don't go to the future for the scenery; you go because you'll meet neat people there.
2. I can't imagine that America is ready to see anyone but the Shatman play Kirk--definitely not some pretty-boy N*sync reject. Kirk and Shatner are one and the same in the minds of just about everyone who knows who Kirk and Shatner are. Kirk played by anyone else is just half a Kirk.
But I'll probably go see it. I might even like it--I can remember how Trekies were all set to hate TNG, but ended up appreciating it. Who knows.

2008-11-22T22:10:00.002-05:00

BACK FROM WHEREVER I WAS

Probably time to come up with a new Web nickname for the offspring; Like the Democrats, he clearly believes in change, but unlike the Dems, my little guy manifests change at an astounding rate.

So the new nicknamapolooza:

--Silly
--Flip
--The Dramatist
--Squealy Dan
--The Divil Himself (in a complimentary way)
--The Gold Medalist in Mealtime Hurling

Instead of a blankie, he raids the hamper and carries my old undershirts around the house.

2008-09-05T11:24:00.002-04:00

New Site (toner -- please add this to the links list to the side)!!

http://hattiesboy.blogspot.com

It's the softer side of Dr. Lao. No fears, the regular ol' Circus of Dr. Lao keeps a chuggin' at the same address!!

2008-09-01T10:55:00.001-04:00

Well, I've seen 35 films so far this year. Since this is my first year to review every film I've seen, it's also my first time to look at all of my reviews. This is a little-over-mid-year report. Keep in mind, some of these were released in 2007. The list goes like this...

Hamlet 2 **
Step Brothers *
The House Bunny ***
Henry Poole is Here ***
The Wackness ***
Vicky Cristina Barcelona **
Roman De Gare *****
Tropic Thunder ***
Pineapple Express BOMB
The X-Files: I Want to Believe *
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor ****
The Dark Knight *****
Hellboy 2 **
Priceless ***
The Incredible Hulk ****
Get Smart ***
The Strangers ***
The Fall *****
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ****
Redbelt ****
Iron Man ***
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay ****
Smart People ***
Forgetting Sarah Marshall **
Diary of the Dead *****
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day ***
Be Kind, Rewind *****
The Savages ****
There Will Be Blood ****
Cloverfield *
Atonement *
No Country for Old Men *
Juno **
Walk Hard *****
The Mist ****

Films I was too tough on:
Iron Man

Films I was too easy on, by a star or two:
Juno
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Redbelt
Harold and Kumar 2
Get Smart
The Incredible Hulk
Hellboy 2
Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Films I only vaguely remember seeing:
Redbelt
Get Smart
Atonement
Smart People
The Strangers
The Savages

2008-08-21T19:15:00.002-04:00

This just came from TV Week. I've been saying it since the format war ended. If you want archival films that are portable and not tied to an iPod-like box, start buying Blu-Ray discs now. Even if you don't have a player yet. If you collect films, you won't regret it.

"Blu-ray will overtake standard DVDs as the primary form of content software within the next four years, accounting for 61% of the U.S. DVDs sold by 2012, U.K.-based consultant Futuresource says. Such growth will easily outpace that in western Europe, where Blu-ray will account for between 39% and 50% of DVD sales by 2012, according to the report."

2008-07-27T14:25:00.026-04:00

Comic-Con 2008!

My 12-year-old daughter and I went to Comic-Con on Thursday, July 24. It was extremely crowded, but still ended up being a lot of fun. The main event for me was the Stan Lee-Grant Morrison panel where they talked about their projects for Virgin Comics (actually, Stan only said that he couldn't talk about his projects with Virgin until later in the fall after Virgin makes an official announcement. Grant was able to talk about his project [a motion-capture video about an Indian myth for the Virgin website] because it's close to completion). The main event for my daughter was the Summit Entertainment presentation for three of their films- "Push", "Knowing", and most importantly to my daughter and thousands of other tweens and teens, "Twilight", based on the series of novels by Stephanie Meyer (my daughter read all three books in a week). The exhibition floor was always packed, and every vendor ran out of the good giveaways after the first hour. Nevertheless, it was worth doing, but so completely exhausting that I can't imagine attending all four days except in small doses.

2008-05-24T00:41:00.004-04:00

Top Ten Reasons Why Paramount's "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the

Crystal Skull" will NOT be #1 at the box office this weekend.

-There's zero buzz about this film.
-SPOILER: Indiana only uses his whip to get better service at a
restaurant.
-Cate Blanchett attempts an Australian accent.
-SPOILER: Instead of snakes or bugs or rats, the overabundant pest in
this film is America On-Line diskettes.
-Shia LeBouf agreed to co-star only if the Transformers made a cameo.
-George Lucas and Steven Spielberg hired M. Night Shyamalan to do a
rewrite of the script.
-SPOILER: It turns out that Shia LeBouf is not Indiana's son but rather
his new butler.
-Although John Williams' "Raiders" theme is heard at the beginning, the
rest of the soundtrack is hip-hop songs.
-SPOILER: When Indiana causes yet another bar Marion owns to burn down
(this one lacking insurance), she goes into a frenzy and stabs him to death.
-Harrison Ford is too old to convincingly play a 65-year-old man.

2008-05-13T00:51:00.003-04:00

"Speed Racer" was expected to make between $30 to $35 million this
weekend at the box office. On Sunday night, it was estimated to have
taken in $20.2 million and come in 2nd place. When the box office
numbers were adjusted on Monday, it turned out that the Warner Bros.
cinematic extravaganza earned only $18.6 million, placing it 3rd behind
"Iron Man" and "What Happens in Vegas".


Top Ten Reasons why "Speed Racer" ran out
of gas this weekend.

-It was based on a 40-year-old cartoon(!)
-It was two hours and fifteen minutes long(!)
-In an homage to the 40-year old cartoon, the actors strived to be as
two-dimensional as possible.
-In an homage to the 40-year old cartoon, the actors to speak
super-quickly, as if trying to match English dialog to Japanese mouth
movements.
-In an homage to the 40-year old cartoon, the filmmakers worked hard to
ensure that gasps from the characters did not match when their mouths opened.
-Susan Sarandon saw this film as a chance to win a 2nd Oscar, thus her
performance is totally off-kilter from all of the others.
-Willy, the monkey playing Chim Chim, saw this film as his chance to win
his 1st Oscar, thus his performance was better than Sarandon's.
-Although they tried to hide it, all of the actors, except Willy, have
tremendous disdain for Japanese cartoons from the 1960's.
-Although they tried to hide it, all of the actors, except Willy, detest
driving cars.
-The writers/directors, the Wachowski brothers, brought in M. Night
Shyamalan to do a rewrite.

2008-05-04T23:52:00.003-04:00

FREE COMIC BOOK DAY

May 3rd was Free Comic Book Day--you either know what that is, or there's no point in explaining. I had circled the date on my calendar last month, and mentioned it to the wife, to her amusement. I'm pretty sure she thought I was joking about the whole thing.

But I really really wanted to pick up some free comics. And when the day came, I was practically jumping out of my skin to get down to Best Comics, maybe a mile away from my house, to get my hands on the loot. Naturally, this being a Saturday, there was a fair amount of housework to be done, and various other errands, but I had it all mapped out. I knew that I could insert the trip between the grocery shopping and the hardware store. And I'd bring Master Blaster along, so that it wouldn't be a grown man scamming free comics--it would be a dad out for a walk with his kid, who just happened to walk into a comic book store on Free Comic Book Day. I mean, crap, I was making up cover stories as if I was going out to see my meth dealer, or my secret other wife.

But by 2 o'clock I was running late with my errands, and the wife made a case for heading to the grocery store with me. Now on the surface this would save me time, but it also meant I would have to insist that we make a stop at Best Comics. Which I did. Some eyebrows went up. Oh, so you were being serious about Free Comic Book Day? My wife was grinning all the way to Stop & Shop. "I hope someone calls," she said, "someone important. So I can tell them where you are." I could hear her formulating the conversation in her head. "Hi Mr. Nobel Prize Committee Chair! I'm sorry, but my husband isn't here right now. He's at the local comic book store picking up free comics because, you know, today is Free Comic Book Day." I felt considerably less authoritative than a man of 36 years should feel.

I brought the Blaster to the store after my wife dropped me off (yes, my wife dropped me off), still planning on excusing this as some QT with my boy (asleep). When I walked in and asked the guy at the counter if they were participating in the promo, he pointed to a table behind me and said, "You're allowed to take two comics." It seems worth mentioning again that I am 36 years old.

The table was full of dreck that the store couldn't sell, plus Rick Veicht's ARMY AT LOVE, an adult title that shouldn't have been on a giveaway table of any store that's heard about the Gordon Lee case. After going through everything, I picked up the Hellboy promo. For this, I endured jabs from the wife.

When Master Blaster and I got home, the wife told me that some ex-girlfriends had called. It was the worst Free Comic Book Day ever.

2008-04-23T07:31:00.004-04:00

http://www.wsmv.com/news/15943624/detail.html

According to the link above, a Columbia, Tennessee woman allegedly killed her husband by
stuffing a ball gag in his mouth, placing masking tape over his mouth and eyes, wrapping his
head in an large bandage, tying his hands and legs behind his back so that he was immobilized,
and then leaving him alone for nearly 20 hours. When she came home, she found he had died.

THE TOP TEN WAYS THIS STORY HAS SHAKEN
UP THE BALL GAG INDUSTRY

-The Learning Channel has canceled an upcoming airing of the new documentary, "Ball Gags:
Made with Pride in the U.S.A."

-Antonio Sabato Jr. paid $1 million to buy out his contract so that he no longer has to appear
in any ball gag ads for Youngston Ball Gags.

-Barack Obama stated that he has never worn a ball gag. Hilary Clinton countered that if a
photo of her opponent wearing a ball gag surfaces, it should cost him the nomination.

-Charles Gibson canceled his upcoming report on ABC news: "Ball Gags: Could They Lead
America Out of a Recession?"

-With tears in her eyes, Heather Mills angrily denied rumors that she bullied Sir Paul
McCartney to wear a ball gag during their brief marriage.

-Youngston Ball Gags has pulled the plug on an upcoming launch of its line of ball gags for
children.

-Former political adviser Dick Morris and former New York governor Elliot Spitzer have been
approached about being the new spokesman for ball gag safety.

-Congress is considering making it mandatory for ball gags to have warning labels stating
that it is not safe for individuals to wear one for longer than 15 hours.

-The ending of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" will be reshot so that
instead of Marion (Karen Allen) putting a ball gag in Indy's mouth after tying his hands behind
his back with his own whip, she will instead put electrodes on "sensitive areas" and repeatedly
shock him. (It should be noted that the fictional character enjoys this.)

-The National Ball Gag Association has issued a new slogan: "Ball gags don't kill people; people
kill people."

2008-04-16T01:34:00.013-04:00

Top Ten Reasons Why "Prom Night" was #1 at the Box
Office This Weekend:

-Having no big-name stars meant that everyone was a possible victim. This kept movie-goers constantly
guessing as to who would be killed next, thus greatly increasing the box office gross.

-Having no plot meant that anything could happen, especially anything inexplicable and/or beyond
credible belief. Movie-goers who hate plot were able to buy a ticket without any fear of being confused
by a story, thus greatly increasing the box office gross.

-Having no budget meant that movie-goers weren't distracted by grand, impressive set-pieces or
eye-popping, award-winning visual effects, thus greatly increasing the box office gross.

-Having no blood meant that those who faint at the sight of blood would be able to buy a ticket without
any fear of passing out, thus greatly increasing the box office gross.

-Having no scary moments meant that everyone could enjoy the movie, especially very young children,
thus greatly increasing the box office gross.

-Having no talent on the screen meant that movie-goers weren't distracted by good or even adequate
performances, thus greatly increasing the box office gross.

-Having no product placement meant that movie-goers could focus on the lack of stars, plot, budget,
blood, scares, and talent, instead of pointing at the screen and yelling, "Look! The killer eats In-N-Out
Hamburgers! Look! The killer wears clothes from the Jaclyn Smith Collection at K-Mart! Look! The killer
found out where the prom was by using Mapquest.com!"

-Having no access to a high school gymnasium or hotel ballroom meant that the film was shot in the
executive producer's mother's basement, thus keeping the budget at zero.

-Having no access to electrical lighting meant that the production had to rely entirely on daylight, thus
the title is actually incorrect (it should have been "Prom Day").

-Having no superheroes in the film meant that there was no one to save the victims at the last second
with heat rays, high-tech arrows, ice spikes, overextended limbs, shields thrown like frisbees, freezing
breath, teleportation, magic spells, or boomerangs shaped like animals.

2008-03-25T11:15:00.002-04:00

LG BH200 Super Blu Blu-Ray HD DVD Combo Player

I've just bought the above and have been very pleased. Not only does it play DVD's, Blu-Ray discs, and HD DVD's beautifully, it also plays jpeg discs with stunning clarity.

I almost went with just a Blu-Ray player, but saw this one at Best Buy for a couple hundred more and made the plunge. It's suited for 1080 screens and uses HDMI 1.3 cables. I have a tube-projection HDTV (both the cheapest and best type on the market) and am stunned at the picture quality.

Now that the format war is over, this opens up two avenues of opportunity. The first is that we can securely buy Blu-Ray discs without any fear of them becoming obsolete any time soon. Secondly, people will start getting rid of perfectly good HD-DVD software like the discs are on fire. Both Amazon and Best Buy have slashed prices by 30% and I predict this will go down even more. Also, my neighborhood used book/media store is getting flooded with cheap HD-DVD's. I'm not *replacing* any of my DVD's with HD-DVD's, and I'll always choose Blu-Ray over HD-DVD. But a player like this opens up a ton of options in the wake of Blu-Ray's format victory.

2008-03-24T22:03:00.002-04:00

CORNED BEEF AND CABBAGE
I should have posted this last week--the wife's made some fine corned beef and cabbage for tonight, which reminded me of one of my favorite traditions started by comics: corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day. Like much about St. Patrick's Day, there's nothing particularly Irish about the standard fare for the occasion. The tradition of scarfing CB&C with your Guinness began with George McManus's comic strip Bringing Up Father. It was the preferred food of the Irish-American noveau riche Jiggs, who didn't realize that it was 'poor' food, a meal born in the ghettos where Irish immigrants and Jews had to share tenements.

Stuff like this makes me wonder what else got started because of comics. Did chocolates on Valentine's Day originate in Blondie? Was driving on the right inspired by Flash Gordon? Were there no white weddings before Little Nemo in Slumberland?

2008-03-20T14:51:00.002-04:00

SPLATTER IN THE ART HOUSE REDUX

I haven't seen the art films you mention, but I have seen SAW's 1 and 2 and both of the HOSTEL films. For me, HOSTEL's 1 and 2 were two of my top five films of their respective years -- and while I wouldn't really put Zombie's DEVIL'S REJECTS into the category, since you mention him, I'll say that it was my favorite film of that year, along with MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS.

Anyway, I feel like an article such as the one below practically jams its hand down my pocket searching for my two cents.

These are all random notes.

AUDITION is a stupendously dull movie. I unfriended the moronic redneck who suggested that I see it. He also thought 300 and 30 DAYS OF NIGHT were the best films of 2007, which shows you the mentality of the idiot I was dealing with. This is a man who claims Jesus and Darth Vader as his personal heroes and sees no inherent contradiction.

I have very little interest in watching unpleasantness. But all of horror deals with a certain degree of unpleasantness. I think what's lurking under the surface of the unpleasantness is what matters. I remember being just as mortified -- if not more so -- by ELECTION and AMERICAN PIE, both of which signaled turning points in American film. Each used intense public humiliation as tools for laughter. I cringed as the audience laughed. So, take that for what it's worth.

Let me limit my discussion to the SAW and HOSTEL franchises. I enjoy any film that gives me an extreme experience. Ebert tags film as an emotional medium. One of the powers of film is to take us to the brink of extreme experiences without pushing us over the edge. (I enjoy films about romance and marriage, but I by no means want to have either experience in my life.) By encountering torture, we explore it without experiencing it. In a world filled with religious nuts decapitating people and showing it over the internet, clearly we're doing something as a culture by using this as a bathosphere.

The SAW films are ones I can pretty quickly discredit because they have such huge logic flaws that make them unwatchable. Every film has the central logic flaw of "this isn't happening," but the SAW movies violate their own logic. Still, the central conceit is an interesting one, and if they would do one more script polish, they'd have good movies. In the SAW films, a dying cancer patient is incensed at how casually his life is treated by his doctors, so he uses his last days and willpower to seek out people who are throwing their lives away. Life that they take for granted. Life that the killer cannot take for granted. He constructs puzzles where they have to mutilate themselves to escape, but they will at least have to value their lives to do so. This is a classic morality tale about taking seriously the most precious of things. Pretty good premise for a movie. Too bad it gets wasted with plot holes.

HOSTEL is an whole other animal. I love these movies. They are true Grand Guignol, and I appreciate them on that level. When *I* have to avert my eyes from the screen, a movie has my respect. When my friend and I saw people walk out, he murmured to me, "Casualties."

The first HOSTEL film is a taut thriller that deals not so much with torture (as with the original TEXAS CHAINSAW, you see less gore than you think you see, due to good editing and sound effects) as with our cultural fears over the fallen remnants of the Soviet Union (the backdrop), the fascination with "extreme" sports (a JACKASS critique, perhaps), and warnings about valuing drugs and sex as an end in themselves. The characters in the first film start off in Amsterdam for the obvious attractions. The need for more-of-the-same-but-better leads them to the town where the Factory is. When humans are used as commodities (such as in prostitution), little does it occur to the buyer that they, too, may be a commodity. Thus, the film's moral compass. It is a cautionary tale reminiscent of the horrible town of temptations in PINOCCHIO. It does this with a fair amount of wit and suspense and is definitely "more than meets the eye." A classic morality tale with the same blood and guts we associate with the Brothers Grimm. Well, a bit more than that. But only a bit.

HOSTEL 2 begins in such a manner that we think it'll be a remake, only with girls. But these girls are looking for peace and serenity... an escape from the type of boys who lead the cast of the first film. Again, Roth tells us to be careful what we wish for. Quickly, though, it turns into a film about the type of men who bid on these victims and then go to be the victimizers. It's a fascinating, witty twist. The path of those men -- and the women they hound -- becomes totally unpredictable. And very, very sly. Frankly, it turned into an out-and-out comedy. Not slapstick with people doing pratfalls in entrails, but genuine character comedy, where the laughs are the logical result of the ironies of who these sadists are and what they're doing. People so immature that they would pay to do this are worthy both of hatred and ridicule. Their cruel myopia undoes them in the end... as does their conviction that their patriarchal power of money cannot be topped. It also becomes an examination of how the business of the Factory operates. In essence, it wisely does everything a sequel can do. It answers the questions raised by the first film instead of giving us more of the same. I felt as if I were watching a logical enhancement of this universe. It was rare for a sequel. A bold move.

When Kubrick set about to make DR. STRANGELOVE, it began as a serious film. But he found that he could only really truly address the insanity of M.A.D. by portraying those who saw the policy it as a good idea in a comical manner. Ditto for HOSTEL 2.

This was a very smart movie. You have to know where to look.

Are they critiques of violence? Sometimes. But more than that, they are cathartic. It's more a question of whether or not that's a fulfilling catharsis or an empty one. I still can't watch DEAD RINGERS because it's too depressing. Go figure.

2008-03-18T21:41:00.002-04:00

SPLATTER IN THE ART-HOUSE

Every so often a new director known for cerebral films comes along with a picture that is or at least features an extended torture scene; then the director claims that, unlike typical torture porn, his film is actually a critique of violence, brutality, etc. He is not entertaining the masses, he is implicating them--his movie doesn't thrill, it educates. The latest polyp in this intestinal condition is Funny Games, by Michael Haneke. As I understand it, the plot is this: two young men torture a family. Thus controversy is born.

This category of cinema probably originated around the time of Straw Dogs, which at least had a story to string together its scenes of carnage and degradation. And it all reached its zenith, still unsurpassed, in Passolini's Salo. Of late, we've seen a bumper crop: Audition, Baise Moi, Irreversible, Captivity, and others. Of course these films make you uncomfortable, the directors say. They're giving you wisdom.

But I ain't buyin'. The defenders can say there's a thin line separating the art-house splatter flick from Hostel and Saw, but I say there's no line at all. At least Eli Roth and Rob Zombie are honest enough to admit that the gore they orchestrate is strictly for thrills. Because, really, there's not a whole lot to be learned from watching someone get their skin peeled off or their fingers pureed into jelly, or their lips sliced apart or their knees pierced with railroad spikes. In the case of the Pettit family, the women of whom actually were tortured to death, what's the lesson to the observer who peers deeply into the killings? What does Seung-Hui Choi's rampage illuminate, aside from the sad (and small) nature of desperate social misfits?

If Haneke and his ilk really wanted to educate their audiences, they would take their camera crews to Darfur, or make a documentary interviewing the survivors of Srebenica. They won't, of course--that would bring them way too close to the reality of inhumanity: a colossal, historical force tearing apart all the art that fails to comprehend it. Even worse, such films would never make money. No one who picks up a camera escapes being a con man and a huckster.

One example of the way such movies are presented and the way they are accurately perceived; I know A Clockwork Orange has been touted as a thesis on violence and audience voyeurism, but do you know anyone who really felt educated by the film? I don't but I know plenty of people who thought it was cool as hell. That scene with the cat lady, that was awesome! You see what I'm getting at.

Big, big disclaimer: I haven't seen a single one of the movies mentioned above.

2008-03-17T23:45:00.002-04:00

I FEEL LIKE JESUS' SON

I read Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson in time for the book group, then had to skip the meeting where we discussed it. Long story. A shame, because I really wanted to find out what others thought of this little book. I thought it was astounding, and I'm not sure why, because it has all the ingredients of a lousy book, the kind cranked out by self-absorbed amateurs: it's episodic, its passive hero bounces from drug-fueled escapade to bleary-eyed hangover and back again with little understanding of what's going on around him, the stories' settings aren't especially memorable, and the stories frequently stop to make a 'deep' point that seems dangerously tacked on. Yet the stories are near perfect gems, surprising and natural. Maybe it's Johnson's skill with language that holds everything together. Maybe its his general refusal, at times suspended, to judge himself or anything else, and thus make a refreshing departure from apologetic junkie memoirs.

Johnson, you may have heard, recently won the National Book Award for Tree of Smoke, a work which some people feel doesn't deserve the honor, or anything close to it; even the critics who praised the book have hinted that it's going to be one of those masterpieces that no one finishes, like Rushdie's Satanic Verses. But Jesus' Son is not even 200 pages, and for people with really short attention spans, there's always the movie.

2008-03-04T16:28:00.003-05:00

You botched, Gary. Hand in your character sheet.

Gary Gygax is dead. And I have to say that I have mixed feelings.

Thank you, Gary, for inventing the RPG.

That’s about all of the good stuff I can say.

I’d have more good stuff to say, but you have left me bereft.

When an RPG is really good, there are few things as engaging and fun. That almost never happens. Because it attracts a number of people dissatisfied with their lives, their illnesses and neuroses get projected to giant size in a bad gaming group, which is to say MOST gaming groups. There was a time when I lauded RPG’s as like “theatre without the theatre people.” Now I can safely say that I’d enjoy an RPG experience without typical gamers, as well.

The list of things wrong with gamers is wild and diverse. None of them always apply to the same person. But get a gaming group together and, in my experience, you’ll inevitably run into many mental and emotional problems.

Now, get a group of ten people together for any reason and you’ll find any number of emotional ills. But there is something about gaming that really puts it all on glorious parade.

At its best, gaming isn’t about dice. It isn’t about statistics. It isn’t about charts. Or maps. Or little lead dolls. Or bean counting.

Dice and stats are necessary evils, I suppose. But what do they ultimately protect under the sheep’s clothing of fairness?

They protect the unimaginative from the imaginative.

Because, at its best, gaming is about collaborative storytelling. And dice/stats should be sprinkled in as little as humanly possible to accommodate that “fairness” fad I keep reading about. And to keep things a little unpredictable. The unexpected is part of good storytelling.

In your heart, you know I’m right.

(In my time, I’ve only known four GM’s who really got that.)

So, what does Gary Gygax have to do with all of this?

Back in 2005, I was playing RPG’s a lot. Close to twice a week.

Anyway, as a storyteller and people manager by profession, I kept seeing many GM’s make weird decisions. At best, their decisions were uninspired and paint-by-numbers, out-of-the-module. At worst, they magically managed to squeeze out all of the fun from what should have been the ultimate version of grownup Cowboys & Indians. Almost, it would seem, on purpose.

The experiences I had were so reliably tepid-to-bad that it almost seemed counterintuitive. How were people involved in make-believe so bad at it? It was like dealing with passionate cinematographers who were totally blind. How was this happening?

And then I read a book about being a dungeon master or gamer or something. It was a book about gaming. Written by Gary Gygax. What a humorless, pompous dolt. This book explained it all. THIS is where all the limited thinking was coming from. I’m not saying that everyone read that book. But I blame Gygax on creating a culture that really encouraged this.

Imagine Disneyland managed by Frank Burns. That’s what we’re talking about.

Gygax. Gygax.

Long ago, separated from D&D. It was a system needlessly complicated yet strangely bland. It was like a wild, sensual Latin dance as interpreted by Lawrence Welk.

Finally, two versions and over twenty years later, we get D&D 4.0. I’ve been reading the reviews on AICN and it seems like the game finally encourages good storytelling and rewards imaginative playing. Finally. I feel vaguely sorry for my old gaming associates, because they – and their style of gaming – are in for a world of hurt. It is D&D for the iPod generation. I say that as a compliment. The iPod is an elegant machine, artfully designed, intuitively controlled, of infinite utility, that makes technology serve even the most technologically uninitiated.

Part of me imagines that Gary Gygax read the reviews and died on the spot.

No, I’m actually not glad he’s dead. That would be cruel.

But it strikes me as ironic that he should die just as D&D evolves past the limitations he seemed to impose upon its creation.

2008-03-03T22:25:00.002-05:00

STILL BLASTIN'
It's been a while; here are some recent photos of the H-bomb of cute himself, taken using my laptop.
I didn't realize it until I saw these photos, but the pictures my computer takes are mirror images--look at the writing on my shirt. Do all cell phones and such do this?

2008-03-02T12:18:00.003-05:00

HEY KIDS! ONLINE COMICS!

And there's this: Marvel Comics has posted in it's entirety the first issue of Jonathan Lethem's Omega the Unknown relaunch. The Web reader actually lets you turn the pages.

In related news, Omega's creator Steve Gerber is no longer with us.

2008-03-02T11:40:00.004-05:00

BOOK CLUB PICKS AGAIN

Here are the books that the reading group selected at our meeting last month. I challenge anyone to find a theme uniting this collection.

Jesus' Son: Stories by Denis Johnson
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
[Complete text here]
Freddy and Fredericka by Mark Helprin
The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq and Gavin Bowd
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Lord Valentine's Castle by Robert Silverberg

Other books we discussed but were not selected:
The Girls of Ryadh by R. A.
In The Wake Of The Plague: The Black Death And The World It Made by Norman F. Cantor
King of the World by David Remnick
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Possession: A Romance by A.S. Byatt
Run by Ann Patchett
Birth of the Chess Queen: A History by Marilyn Yalom

Members of the Toner Nation are required to read these books on their own and rate them in the comments to this post. Note that lengthy titles are no longer appreciated: I wanted to read A Savage War of Peace, until I found out it topped 700 pages. Now I'll never know how the French colonization of Algeria turned out.

2008-03-02T11:27:00.003-05:00

NOTHING'S ON, PART 2

Many thanks to everyone who suggested worthwhile tv shows. A mixed marriage such as mine (geek/non-geek) can present conflicts, but almost all of them are confined to who's holding the remote; and as long as the subject of Kirk and Spock don't come up, the household remains and peaceful one. We just had some friends over last night who face the same challenges--he a loyal member of the Federation, she with no patience for even a single Vulcan proverb or line of Klingon.
It occurred to me that Madame Toner and I might agree on this show, which I've been wanting to re-watch for years. I remember seeing daytime re-runs in the early 80s and thinking it was hilarious; I might not have the same feelings for it now, but it's worth checking out. A similar show was Carol Burnett, a series that I remember as being brilliant, though I don't know if I'd hold the same opinion today. But I can say with assurance that, while many comedians have parodied soap operas and will continue to do so in the future, no one nailed the genre to perfection like Burnett.
I haven't even read this blog of mine in a month, and it's nice to see that others posted in my absence. Keep up the good work, Team Toner!

2008-02-19T23:11:00.007-05:00

Top Ten reasons why Toshiba announced it will no longer make HD DVD players.

1) Once again, the American public won't tolerate a product with more than two Ds in its name.

2) On HD DVD discs, after putting in the commentary tracks, alternate endings, deleted scenes, cast and crew biographies, character pages, making-of documentaries, development materials, games, and previews, there was no room left for the dialogue.

3) The discs melted in temperatures over 80 degrees.

4) The discs cracked and shattered in temperatures under 70 degrees.

5) Because HD DVD is an older technology than Blu-Ray, it never could generate a satisfactory teal.

6) Toshiba's advertising campaign showing that buying Blu-Ray products was really supporting terrorism failed to make any headway in to the hearts, minds, and wallets of Americans.

7) When no one at Toshiba was looking, someone put out "Catwoman" and "Gigli" on the HD DVD format, thus generating a din of negative word-of-mouth.

8) Other than "The Bourne Stimulation" and "The *ucket List", there were no good adult titles available in the HD DVD format.

9) Fidel Castro said he would resign as Cuba's president rather than allow the "inferior" HD DVD discs into his country. Castro later announced that he would not accept another term as Cuba's president on the same day Toshiba announced it is stopping production on HD DVD players. Coincidence? Contacts at the State Department aren't talking.

10) Following Walter Cronkite's editorial report that HD DVD's war against Blu-Ray was unwinnable, Toshiba President and Chief Executive Officer Atsutoshi Nishida turned to Bill Moyers and said, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost America."

2008-02-15T02:38:00.001-05:00

WTF?

1. As noted in a talkback, Dr. Lao's blog is back and active. If you delve through the past month or so of archives, you'll find out why it was dormant.

2. Okay, this just doesn't get any weirder.

So, I'm watching the end of the snowboarding episode of THE GIRLS NEXT DOOR and their theme song plays over the closing credits. My eyes bugged out of my head when I saw that it was co-written by....

wait for it...

this is really weird...

as in, cue: Rod Serling...

William Saroyan.

No shit.

The real William Saroyan. The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE.

William Saroyan wrote about grapes and cakes. What the hell was going on?

The music is by his cousin, Ross Bagdasarian. They wrote it in 1953 for Rosemary Clooney.

Now, guess what Ross Bagdasarian later changed his name to?

Dave Seville.

As in, "The Chipmunks."

Same guy.

This is all so weird that I can barely wrap my brain around it.

2008-02-11T02:44:00.000-05:00

Top Ten reasons why “Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Show: 30 Days & 30 Nights – Hollywood to the Heartland” bombed this weekend (earning only $527 per theater):

1) The plot, like the title, is overly complicated.

2) The character development, like the title, is overly long.

3) The action sequence, like the title, is tedious.

4) The love story, like the title, is cruel and surprisingly violent.

5) The nudity, like the title, is nauseating.

6) The movie was doomed because the Heartland couldn’t care less about Wild West Comedy. Neither could Hollywood, nor any place in between.

7) The screenplay by Tom Stoppard sat on the shelf for over a decade, so the jabs at political figures are extremely dated.

8) Jon Voight’s lame cameo as the same Defense Secretary he played in “Transformers”.

9) 98% of the movie theater audience members are show audience members as well. But as the shows were performed in small clubs or theaters, that meant a miniscule audience at best.

10) Vince Vaughn gave a terrible performance as Vince Vaughn. He was completely unconvincing as himself, especially during the 18-minute monolog about every detail of his relationship with Jennifer Aniston.

2008-02-04T03:57:00.000-05:00

Top Ten Reasons Why "Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour" was #1 at the box office this weekend ($29 million):

1) The plot dazzles with amazing twists and turns.

2) The characters grow in astounding ways.

3) The screenplay by Tom Stoppard contained many subtle jabs against current political figures.

4) The action sequences are electrifying. John Woo did another fantastic job.

5) Jon Voight's hilarious cameo as the same school prinicipal he played in "Bratz".

6) 98% of the movie theater audience members are concert audience members as well.

7) Unlike Tom Hanks in "The Polar Express" or Jean-Claude Van Damme in "Double Impact", Miley Cyrus handles multiple roles with ease. There's no mistaking her performance as the bubbly singer Hannah Montana with her performance as the bubbly singer Miley Cyrus.

8) Not since "The Man Who Wasn't There" and "Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone" has there been a film with a concept screaming to be made in 3-D!

9) Miley Cyrus is a brunette. Hannah Montana is blonde. Thus two audience demographics are satisfied instead of just one. (The redhead demographic will get their fill in the sequel.)

10) All of the hilarious references to "Meet the Spartans", "Epic Movie", and "Date Movie".

2008-01-27T09:40:00.000-05:00

NOTHING'S ON

Dr. Lao recently told me a few months ago that he doesn't watch broadcast television; he buys DVD sets of the shows he's been hearing a lot about, and watches those. It's hit me like a flying brick this past month just how wise such a system is. Whenever the wife and I have the occasional calm evening, we usually spend it surfing through hundreds of cable channels, all of which present tedious, unentertaining crapola, laden with commercials, none of it worth watching. Honestly, the Discovery Science channel has become a contender, partly because of its hilarious infomercials. But more often than not, we just torture ourselves, clicking from one QVC to Big Brother 73 to the Animated Adventures of Ann Jillian, looking for some half-hour module of entertainment upon which we can rest our bruised attention spans.

So DVD boxed sets seem, more and more, like the way to go, but here's another dilemma; Madame Toner and I agree on a very limited range of shows: basically just The Sopranos and The Office. I wouldn't dare suggest to her that we share an evening with Battlestar Galactica; she's not a fan of the geek end of the spectrum, and considers Star Trek to be the reeking ass-end of the TV digestive tract. And I'm not the world's biggest I Love Lucy fan. So, what to watch. If only books were more passive and required less brainpower, I would read even more of those.

2008-01-02T22:40:00.000-05:00

GOING COMPLETELY DENTAL

An update on El Blastero, the real hero of this blog; he continues to come along nicely, developing a range of reactions to all the craziness around him. Can't sit up quite yet, but is holding his head up and swatting at things with a vicious enthusiasm (=becoming a boy). The teeth are starting their march toward daylight, causing frequent cranky spells, cascades of slobber, and a yen for clamping his jaws down on anything handy, especially fabrics.
New nicknames:
--Fave
--Bratwurst Boy
--The Soaker

2007-12-26T21:38:00.000-05:00

MY NEW HOUSE

And I thought the kid was work.
Am a regular Bob Villa these days. You folks should have seen me snaking my kitchen sink drainpipe this afternoon--poise and form meet breathtaking skill. Can also scrape, spackle, prime, paint, sand, glue felt, pry, dismantle, and rewire like a champ. Bring tears to your eyes just to see it. And never took a day of shop.
Generally tired these days. Hence, no blog posts. More to come.

2007-11-20T22:58:00.000-05:00

LAKSHMI TATMA

I confess that I am fascinated, perhaps for reasons I'm not entirely proud of, by the case of little Lakshmi Tatma of India. For those who didn't follow the story, Lakshmi was born conjoined to her identical twin, who didn't develop a head; as a result, Lakshmi appeared to have a second torso attached to her own, with four additional limbs.

If you're going to be born with multiple appendages, make sure you're born in a Hindu country. Some people in Lakshmi's region assumed she was an incarnation of the goddess of wealth (for whom she was named). However, her parents obtained surgery for her when A) it became clear that she would have serious health problems down the road, and B) a circus offered to buy her. The 40-hour operation has apparently been a success, but in keeping with the divine parallels of Lakshmi's story, it took place on Diwali, a Hindu festival that pays respect to the goddess Lakshmi.

Part of me wants to gape at the freak in the photos, but part of me is fascinated by the way human beings come together. In any case, I'm glad she's doing well, even if she's no longer a divine incarnation.

And the final parallel: The day Lakshmi was shown to the public following her recuperation from her surgery, the U.S. Senate passed a measure honoring Dewali. Praise be to Rama!

2007-11-16T23:22:00.001-05:00

I DO NOT LIKE GREEK GODS AND HAM

The millions of visitors to my blog will notice that the Tone-man's brain makes some oddball connections from time to time; the latest association of two not-at-all-related things came this week, during frequent readings of Green Eggs and Ham to the little guy. For those who don't know the story, it concerns a furry, top-hat wearing repressed individual tormented by desires that he can't admit to himself. His appetites take the form of a mischievous sprite, called Sam-I-am, who hounds our protagonist until he indulges in--and enjoys--the things he has forbidden himself from having for so long.

Funny that I should be reading this book just when my mind had been comparing Greek myths to Calvinism. The thing that amazes me about the tales of the Olympian gods is how excessive and unrestrained Zeus & co. are, even when they know that breaking down and giving into passion or rage will cause grief in the long run. For all of their amazing abilities, they lack any kind of control over themselves, and even an eternity's worth of counseling wouldn't make them change. The contrast with the modern version of Abraham's God is striking, especially given the Protestant drive to stifle outbursts and tantrums of any kind.

The ancient Greeks seemed to acknowledge the limits of human nature even among divinities, and accept an idea that strikes me as wiser and wiser all the time; don't get between the heart and what it wants. But bowing to this philosophy means the gods and everyone else gets a blank check from the bank of behavior. The Puritans' stern disapproval and urging to make themselves better has a certain comfort to it--and it also seems a tad unrealistic.

Yet let us return to Dr. Seuss, whose moral is this--it's perfectly okay to consume green meat and poultry products.

2007-11-11T21:19:00.000-05:00

TOUGH CROWD

This past month has been a big one for developmental milestones in the Master Blaster household. Remember how I said that the kid had two modes, staring into space and fussing because he wasn't comfortable? He shot past two modes and is now enthusiastically embracing human complexity, jumping from amused, expectant, restless, dissatisfied, ecstatic, sluggish, startled, observant, and many other moods, all in the space of a few minutes. He's getting better with manipulating things, and keeps his fingers in working order by alternately having one hand touch and pull at the other, in the universal gesture for 'crafty.' He's developed an appreciation for books, and even though he clearly can't understand what we're doing when we read to him, he patiently gives each page his full attention, as if he knows that it'll all soon make sense. And he still lets rip with farts that would stun a bull rhinoceros.

My frequent attempts to amuse him can take simple forms. The other day, I had him in stitches just by sticking my tongue out. The next day, that wasn't flying; but I still got a look of adoration from him for making a noise like a motorboat. But I gotta work on my schtick; the motorboat noise will only work for so long.

2007-11-03T23:06:00.001-04:00

BEWARE THE UNREMEMBERED DEAD

As most folks know, Halloween has traditionally been a time when the dead return to the earth to stir up trouble. Such was the case even back when the day was called Samhain. But this provokes the question: Why do the dead want to cause trouble? Why is it that dead people typically have it in for the living?

When this question popped up in my cluttered mind, I plowed through my conceptual clipping files until I came across two memories, one of the Mexican Dia de los Muertos festival, and the other of Kenyan professor John S. Mbiti's book African Religions and Philosophy. For the Mexican celebration, the dead are depicted as impish, hyper, and numerous. The grinning skulls in Posada's drawings look identical, especially when he draws the dead as mobs of skeletons. Mbiti, writing about African conceptions of the dead, pointed to a similar idea across sub-Saharan African cultures, the idea that if someone living can remember a dead person, than that dead person is not truly dead. According to Mbiti, the recent dead exist as "living-dead," and as long as those who remember the departed continue to pay the soul respects and make offerings, all is well. However, when the last living rememberer dies, the departed becomes truly dead. Personhood is snatched away, and what was once an individual's spirit now becomes a faceless part of the mass of unremembered dead, an IT. These dead resent being forgotten, and, since their humanity has vanished, tend to be vicious to the living.

It's a sad idea, that even if there is an afterlife, we really don't get to enjoy it for very long, because we are eventually transformed into something inhuman and destructive. Don't look to the Bible for solace; Sheol never struck me as appealing.

2007-11-01T22:02:00.000-04:00

MASTER BLASTER'S RULES:

1. The person with the largest cheeks is boss.

2. When Master Blaster smiles, he gets what he wants.

3. When Master Blaster cries, he gets what he wants.

4. Master Blaster gets what he wants.

5. Burping and farting are adorable when performed by someone under 3 feet tall.

6. Henceforth, smears of spit, snot, and milk-barf shall be worn on all articles of clothing, as signs of allegiance to Master Blaster.

2007-10-26T22:33:00.000-04:00

BAT-EXISTENTIALIST

You waited for it, and at last it has arrived: Crime and Punishment, the DC Comics version, courtesy R. Sikoryak.

2007-10-08T23:54:00.000-04:00

WHO BENEFITS FROM PRISONS?

Yesterday I got an education on the U.S. prison system from a member of the faculty of John Jay College of Criminal Justice. When he brought up the subject of U.S. prisons, and how a quarter of all the incarcerated people in the world are in them, I said that such a state of affairs couldn't exist in this country unless someone was getting rich off of it. So who was it--who was raking it in thanks to all the prisons? The John Jay guy pointed out one interesting fact about New York State; the prisons are upstate, and they're populated with prisoners mostly from the New York City area. Now, prisoners can't vote, but they DO count when the Federal government assesses populations for the purpose of representation--they are residents, even though they do not choose to be where they are. With tens of thousands of criminals in upstate jails, the congressional districts would have to be completely redrawn if the prisoners didn't count as residents. Neat trick, huh?

2007-09-20T22:08:00.000-04:00

NICKNAMEZAPOPPIN'

This week's additions are:
--Buddy
--Goober
--Blofeld
--Captain Squirm of the Squirm Patrol
--David Ogden Stiers

It's something new all the time, and the latest development is an ongoing babble, like a DVD director's commentary to our lives composed entirely of hiccups, gasps, grunts, and samples of humpback whale songs.

2007-09-08T18:42:00.000-04:00

ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST

I always wondered about the Islamic prohibition on usury, or charging interest, only I recently learned that Muslims aren't the only ones--nearly every religion has laws forbidding usury, including Judaism and Christianity. Plus, classical pagan thinkers had strong opinions on the matter, with Cato the Elder and Seneca considering it morally equivalent to murder.

Most Americans, as far as I can tell, live in a world where usury is just another fact of life. Certainly the average Westerner doesn't consider interest on loans to be indecent, much less sinful. Strange to think that it wasn't always thus.

But if the U.S. is in the grips of a religious reform movement, one with the full support of the government, then why aren't our leaders and our conservative fulminators voicing their disdain for the evils of usury (and yes, it is evil--the Bible agrees with the Quran on the subject)? Isn't this the issue Bono's been popularizing--the need for wealthy nations to forgive the debts of the third world? Granted, all I know about economics could fit inside a shoe box and leave enough room for the bloated corpse of John Maynard Keynes, and I don't know what getting rid of interest would do to the national economy, but I can imagine that it would be a bullet in the forehead of the credit card companies. Which may be why the religious reactionaries in America stop short of attacking usury. Hey, it's not like it's shrimp or anything.

2007-08-25T19:11:00.000-04:00

NICKNAMAPALOOZA

This week's nicknames:

--Champ
--Gobstopper
--The Incredible Mr. Hiccups
--Kicks-like-mule (his 'Lakota' name)
--His Excellency

He continues to become aware of a world of active phenomena all around him. His responses and reflexes seem promising. The crap pipes are in superior shape. He can do a killer Popeye impression, one eye open and the other squinting.

2007-08-19T15:32:00.000-04:00

LAZY SUNDAY

I was playing around with my MacBook's PhotoBooth application, trying to take a good picture of my chin, and Master Blaster wriggled his was into the photo. Camera hog.

From what I can tell, the kid has four different mental states. They are:
1. Too hungry to sleep
2. Too tired to eat
3. Vaguely frustrated
4. Mesmerized by a corner of the ceiling or something (lasts up to 30 seconds)

He's slowly adjusting to his parents and their bizarre world. Let's all wish him luck.

2007-08-17T22:42:00.000-04:00

THE MAINSTREAMIZATION OF PHILIP K. DICK

The New Yorker has graciously bestowed literary worthiness on Philip K. Dick, with a surprisingly good essay on the man and his 1974 religious freak-out in the latest issue. As usual, the New Yorker is late to the party celebrating the talents of this unique author and announcing his influence. Bookforum was on this one back in 2002, Wired in 2003, Time in 2004. The New York Times also chimed in earlier this year, proclaiming their approval as the Gatekeepers of Literatoor, and yours truly promptly complained about it.

I shall bitch, and I shall moan, but I must admit I am capable of appreciating those moments when a literary highbrow shares his enthusiasm for a writer from the fringes, as Michael Dirda did in the Washington Post about Clark Ashton Smith. Good on you, Michael--doubly heroic since Smith is hardly in vogue like PKD, and triply so because Smith's books are being reissued by a very worthy press.

2007-08-11T15:52:00.000-04:00

THIS WEEK'S NICKNAMES

Here he is, my little boy. I have now fulfilled my evolutionary imperative; I have extended my genetic material into the subsequent generation. In Darwinian terms, I am now free to put my feet up and have a beer--or get eaten by predators. I'm keeping an eye out for lions, alligators, and the like. Probably not a good idea for me to visit the zoo anytime soon.

So Master Blaster's nicknames for this week are:
--Pal
--Hog-Boy
--The Guzzler
--Sultan (look at the photo)
--Dr. Fussenstein
--The Amazing Soiler

We're all adapting here at Casa Toner, though it strikes me that accomodating a new kid isn't the same as adjusting to a new co-worker. For one thing, Blaster is so open about his needs that it doesn't take a lot to figure him out. I've gone from regarding him as this puzzle to be figured out to missing him when I'm at work in no time. I am succumbing to his cute voodoo. Must obey.

2007-08-01T15:03:00.000-04:00

LIFE BEYOND THUNDERDOME

I've been a parent for almost a week now, and every day things are a little less bewildering. I would have been perfectly happy with an ugly baby, but the kid is a real cutie, and while he tends to demand attention during the wee small hours, during the day he's very easy to manage--a little TOO easy. Maybe I'm in for it down the road.
Several shirts and pants of mine now bear the patina of parenthood, those stains and smears of formula, urine, spit-up, and other gobs of crap that stick to fabric more furiously than red wine. I'm probably getting that continually dazed, sleepy look too. My nicknaming reflex has gone into overdrive, and already I've come up with an army of aliases for my offspring, some highlights being:
--Bud
--Big Guy
--The Wriggler
--Master Blaster
--Lord of the Squirm
--Republican Presidential Candidate Fred Thompson

He earned the 'Master Blaster' tag after making the windows rattle when he took his first poop, and every so often he pulls a repeat performance. I occasionally ask him "Who run Bartertown?!?" prompting head shakes from my tolerant wife.

2007-07-24T21:48:00.000-04:00

Time waits for no man. Unless that man is Chuck Norris.

In case you hadn't seen this already:

Outer space exists because it's afraid to be on the same planet with Chuck Norris.

Much more here.

2007-07-16T21:46:00.000-04:00

PAVIC

I am of more than one opinion regarding Serbian writer Milorad Pavic; his masterwork, Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel, was a chic bit of literary weirdness that came to the U.S. in the late Eighties to puzzled acclaim. It was a kind of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure with grander ambitions, a supposed cross-referenced dictonary of the Khazar people and their examination of the Three Monotheistic Religions, starting in the Middle Ages and running up to the present day, written in entries identified as Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. The book deserves praise, not just for its original format, but for its striking language. But it is so clever and original that it comes across as partly obnoxious, and the interviews with the man don't help.
Pavic obviously doesn't see the world as the rest of us do, and this could be a God-given blessing or a tiresome pose. His comes across as one of those European intellectuals lurking through a 1950s American film. You almost expect Gene Kelly or Rock Hudson to show up and put a stop to such yammerings as "The closer we get to something that we are afraid of, the closer we approach the best. Fear leads us to excess, real excess. This is where one can find the truth," which sounds like something you'd say to a liberal-arts co-ed to get into her capris.
But if it is a pose, Pavic has played the part with brio and consistency, refusing to drop the act even when his home nation descended into war. He also illustrates a point about poetry and myth: An author can get away with books written in fantastic language, containing otherworldly events, as long as he grounds it in the history of a little-understood ethnic group. Anyway, as odd as his prose gets, it's never uncomfortable or unreadable. Take a look at some stories he's put on the Web, and his latest book (I think that's what it is).

2007-07-09T23:28:00.000-04:00

RAIDERS: THE ADAPTATION

Another thing I hadn't heard of until just now: In the mid-80s, a group of kids in Mississippi filmed a shot-for-shot recreation of Raiders of the Lost Ark on video, and the result won the approval of Spielberg himself. The account of how these enterprising youngsters did it yields several alarming stories like the following:

[Director Eric] Zala nearly incinerated himself in a "very ill-advised stunt" as a Nepalese barroom brawler who catches on fire. "We naïvely doused my back with gasoline that day," he says. "I was wearing a fire-retardant raincoat under the costume, so I thought, 'Hey, we're playing it safe.' And so we roll the shot, I stand, they light me on fire, I scream, hit my mark, and then I yell, 'Cut! OK, blanket!' Two kids rush by with the smothering blankets prepared, put them on, pull them off—I'm still on fire, and now they're fanning the flames higher and my hair starts to get singed. The smell of burnt hair fills the room." Eventually, a fire extinguisher stopped any serious damage, but "our moms caught wind of what happened and for some reason had a problem with this. So they shut us down for the summer."

Trailer here. The BBC also did a piece on the movie when it played at a Brooklyn film festival in 2005.

2007-07-08T15:33:00.000-04:00

GARTH MARENGHI'S DARKPLACE

I missed this when it ran on the SciFi Channel last year--Garth Marenghi's Darkplace was horror master Marenghi's attempt to save television in the mid-80s with an exciting, insightful, and groundbreaking show. It proved too controversial, and the networks went with re-runs of Who's the Boss instead. Now the first six episodes are available on the Internet, and they are one of the most powerful programs I've seen in years. Episode 2 is my favorite so far, but the others are comparably astounding. Watch it if you dare, and consider yourself warned.

2007-06-07T23:58:00.000-04:00

QUESTIONS WRITTEN IN THE STARS

What do people need to know about the Pleiades? The star cluster, properly known as Messier 45, contains hundreds of stars, though only six of these are visible to the naked eye. Yet throughout the cluster’s extensive lore, it is held to have seven stars. There is now a theory, one supported by Hindu and Mongolian myths, that in the second millennium BC a seventh visible star in the cluster went extinct. In the Rosh Hashanah treatise of the Talmud, the reason for the star disappearing was God’s wrath; by taking the star away, He caused a shakeup in the celestial clockwork of the universe which produced the Deluge. In Celtic festival of Samhain, connected with mourning, the Pleiades reach their zenith in the night sky. Was the disappearance of a star such a momentous event that, millenia later, we still live in a world partially shaped by our ancestors' interpretations of it? Is the Pleiades cluster, and that ill-fated seventh star of legend, the reason why ancient Hebrews latched onto the number seven as a divine numeral? Opinions, please.

2007-06-03T16:44:00.001-04:00

NO FURTHER QUESTIONS

Continuing on the previous theme, my brother-in-law, who's also set to become a parent this summer, has let it be known that he's going to beat the crap out of the next person who tells him, "You know you won't be able to do anything fun once the kid comes along, right?" Yes, thanks to all the people who bring this up, but he and I are both well aware that our late night visits to strip clubs and our massive Oxycontin habits will, tearfully, soon become activities of our past as we take on the cruel burden of parenthood. Without the friendly warnings, we never would have figured it out.

Other questions the bro-in-law's not answering:

When's the baby due?
Do you have a name picked out? (This question doesn't bother me.)
Do you know how to change diapers?
Are you ready for this?

On a distantly-related note, Mr. Nice Guy has posted a list of questions he routinely asks his two-year-old even though he doesn't want an honest answer:

are you ready to take your nap?
haven't you had enough mac and cheese?
how many times in a row can you watch "elmo's potty time?"
can you say "i love you, daddy?"
what, you think i'm scared of you?
haven't we heard enough raffi for one day?
do you think you can take your hand out of your diaper?
are you happy now that you spilled daddy's coffee all over his keyboard?
will you give me a hug?
are you the cutest baby on earth?
you don't really want a bottle now, do you?
well, was that very smart?
we don't have any pear yogurt. isn't peach yogurt good enough?
where did you put mommy's panties?
don't you want to live here with us forever and never grow up?
did you just speed-dial my boss from my cell phone at 5:30 am?
are you done crying?
satisfied?
how badly can you hurt yourself doing that?

2007-05-28T23:06:00.000-04:00

THE NAME GAME

Despite the general air of efficiency over here at Maison Toner, the Missus and I still haven't decided on a name for our impending bundle of joy. Here, not really in any order, are some strong contenders and some obvious choices:

1. Tonerito
2. Theoden
3. Life's-not-a-party (said in a loud voice, with index finger pointing to the lad)
4. Riboflavin
5. Percival James Palfrey Maypother IV
6. Mini-Tone

Doctor Lao once told me ages ago that if he ever had a child, he would name it Quezax or Zarkon or something like that, since in the future EVERYONE will have those kinds of names, so we'll all have to start naming our offspring with such monikers at some point and he'd be glad to volunteer first.

2007-05-25T21:46:00.000-04:00

Greetings! La Gringa here, posting to Toner Low as we have been sorta exiled from our own blog for a while. (Maybe forever. We haven't decided.) But in the meantime, Mr. Low has been so gracious as to invite La Gringa to get her link-dump on over here, so her head doesn't explode from all the Internet crap she wants to pass along to helpless friends.

This one is for the three women who probably read this blog: Eight simple rules for chicks to survive in sci-fi!

2007-05-24T10:00:00.000-04:00

ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING!

Last night at dinner with La Gringa, Cosmogirl, and Hikender*, I brought up the subject of using "-gasm" as a suffix, to indicate... a moment of exuberance relating to the modified word. I believe this started with "foodgasm," the sensation that follows a great meal. I asked if "-gasm" would work with pretty much any word, and "workgasm" was submitted as clear proof that it doesn't, though Hikender suggested that a workgasm was the relief that follows the completion of an onerous, time-consuming project--he was looking forward to such a happy ending at his own job. Gringa submitted a negative example that proved the limits of this newly-christened suffix: Cheneygasm.

*I've used their noms de blog to protect them from google-happy co-workers.

2007-05-16T23:49:00.000-04:00

THE PASSING OF A GREAT AMERICAN

You can heap all the bile you want on Jerry Falwell; perhaps it was his 9/11 comments that bothered you (though they subverted the classic red-state complaint that it's the liberals that always blame America for the world's problems), or perhaps it was his homophobia, or his early pro-segregation stance, or his violation of the law. I have to say that my general contempt for the public leads me to regard Falwell with a touch of affection, the same way I admire anyone who draws the same rubes that he fleeced back to put flowers on his tombstone. Myths and tall tales about Falwell already abound, the biggest one being that his Moral Majority helped get Reagan elected; over at Newsweek, Jonathan Alter neatly deflates that one. The embarassing truth is that Falwell was never the most powerful or influential Christian conservative, and that he did a far better job galvanizing his enemies than supporting his friends. He unwittingly helped re-establish the legality of free speech when he went to the mat with Larry Flynt (who, by the way, wins this year's Take The High Road Award for his kind comments about his former legal opponent).
Yet for all his blundering, Falwell was a sui generis American bad boy, beyond anything any leather-clad, tattooed poser could hope to be. He was endlessly, professionally offensive, and the media showered him with invitations. Presidential contenders strove to win his favor. The Anti-Defamation League praised him despite his anti-semetic (or were they?) remarks. And, oh, the vitriol from the self-righteous, who couldn't stand HIS self-righteousness. NewsBusters, reporting on how liberal blogs were spewing hate at the news of his death, displayed a rare example on their part of accurate journalism.
Some say he belongs in our prayers, and some say he belongs in his own circle in Hell, but where he really belongs is in the same class as Anton LeVay, P. T. Barnum, and a certain Battlefield Earth author. Mark Twain knew that the hucksters and the con artists are this country's golden originals, its masterpieces, and with that in mind, I tip my hat to this monumental figure.

2007-05-13T20:52:00.001-04:00

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA BRAND CHARCOAL

The Human Cannonball and I were discussing BATTLESTAR GALACTICA tie-ins. I said it would be best if it were with products that had no relation to BSG. The packages would not have any pictures of the cast, pun in-jokes, or anything... other than what you'd normally see on those products. This is the list we came up with. They would only exist to perplex customers.

1. charcoal

2. cheddar

3. sensible men's footwear

4. apple juice

5. spaghetti sauce

6. dental floss

7. pool noodles

8. tongs

9. thumbtacks

10. kitty litter

11. flour

12. shoe polish

13. auto wax

14. throat lozenges

Also, here's a link to a story of how the paths of Sammy Davis and Kurt Vonnegut, saints both, crossed.

My browser is being naughty, so cut and paste it. A nice, quick read.

http://www.10zenmonkeys.com/2007/04/12/when-kurt-vonnegut-met-sammy-davis-jr

2007-05-13T11:53:00.000-04:00

RADIOACTIVE SPIDERS MEET RED KRYPTONITE

I thought I could get my review of Spider-Man 3 in before Dr. Lao's. What was I thinking.

As Mainstream Culture (MC) continues to disregard the artifacts of High Culture (HC) and gather its signature works from the world of Fringe Culture (FC), I continue to see fantasias from my childhood become the entertainment fare of millions of adults across the globe. I suppose this is how the whores of Argentina felt after World War I, watching the tango move out of the local brothels and into the dance halls of the moneyed classes.

I made the mistake of seeing the Spider-Man 3 1) in Manhattan and 2) on an Imax screen; the effect was one of overdone spectacle. People in the audience shared their opinions with characters on the screen, as they will, and while I shouldn't have minded, it definitely killed the quieter, more dramatic moments of the movie for me--moments that, as complete suckbag Anthony Lane puts it, "would not pass muster in a TV soap." (I normally disagree with every single world Lane writes, including articles and pronouns, but I have to admit he wasn't too far off with this review).

All was not lost. Rosemary Harris saved the dramatic scenes she was in. Thomas Hayden Church and Bryce Dallas Howard are styled so perfectly as Sandman and Gwen Stacey, respectively, that their makeovers were almost worth eight bucks to see right there (coincidentally, Gwen's signature look, the good-girl bangs, the hairband, and the high boots, have returned as a fashionable look in NYC these days.) Some good action, some good humor (I though the "bad Peter" montage with the funk soundtrack was pretty funny), great f/x, good casting on the character roles. The multiple bad guys didn't upset me, although from what I understand, adding Venom was an afterthought: Raimi had his script ready to go, and Marvel insisted that he put a modern villain in.

But damn if I didn't leave the theater unsatisfied. The action sequences were frequently overdone, and occasionally came close to CGI'd Wrestlemania. And the movie suffers from the "red kryptonite" cliche--in this case, not ONE but TWO characters reverse their personalities, going from good to evil to good or vice-versa. With characters pinballing across the ethical spectrum, coherent drama goes out the window, and actors Maguire and Franco are left with the unenviable option of playing the ridiculous changes for laughs or soldiering on in all seriousness. This conceit hardly seems fresh, since Smallville has done it to death recently on the small screen. Major plot points and character decisions are revealed in unintentionally hillarious scenes (such as Harry Osborne's butler revealing that he knew all about Norman Osborne being the Green Goblin--he just never got around to mentioning this to anyone). Lots of closeups of actors crying kill the fun.

To me, Spider-Man 2 was the best of its kind--exciting action, a playfulness that operated in near-perfect harmony with the more adult drama, characters in sympathetic crises, and a clear awareness of the director recognizing larger cinematic ideas in his story, yet not being bogged down with them. Somehow, the balance is off this time around, and we're left with something like X-Men 3--great special effects, a crowded script, and little reason to care about any of it.

2007-05-09T02:16:00.000-04:00

Top Ten Reasons Disturbia was #2 at the box office.
Yes, "Spider-Man 3" was destined to be #1, but the real surprise of this weekend was discovering that Disturbia, which has already been out for three weeks, only fell to the #2 spot, beating the other newcomer, Lucky You (which came in at #6). Here's why:

-There's no other movie like it. Except for Rear Window.

-Even straight men are attracted to Shia LeBeouf. He's dreamy.

-The title is an incredibly clever combination of "Distribution" and "Suburbia".

-When it was announced that the film won't be out on DVD until spring of 2010,
Shia's fans realized that they have to see it now.

-The film contains a hope-filled message about how teens
should always be believed no matter how outlandish their
claims are. After all, teens never have a reason to lie.

-The film contains a hope-filled message about how
creepy neighbors are always murderers.

-The film contains a hope-filled message about how brutal
murder in the suburbs is inevitable.

-The film supports the universal truth that voyeurism is fun and a great way to meet young, hot members of the
opposite sex.

-The film has a crowd-pleasing Marxist Communism outlook.

-It's the perfect film to watch while waiting for the Queen
to come visit your part of the United States.

2007-05-08T22:35:00.000-04:00

THANKS A MIL, NY TIMES

While it's all good and well that the New York Times has seen fit to pronounce Phil Dick an established mainstream writer and no longer a pulp hack, I find it a little annoying the way the gatekeepers of Literature occasionally select someone who's been popular in cult circles for years and decide that the poor overlooked soul has at last arrived, so masses, take note. They do this to Lovecraft with a regularity that makes me cringe (often around Halloween). I imagine that at some point even the sci-fi porn novels of Andrew Offutt will be raised to worthy belle lettres status, because Chip McGrath or whoever says so. Noble arbiters of textual quality, do not soil the hems of your gleaming white robes whilst you go slumming for diamonds in the rough.

2007-04-24T13:54:00.001-04:00

VACANCY (3/5 stars)

From THE DICTIONARY OF DOCTOR LAO:
"Redneck (n): An individual who chooses a path of willful ignorance and uses this prejudice to fuel hostile and disruptive behavior to interrupt the lives of others. Rednecks are not restricted to any region of the planet, and they can flourish in both rural and urban settings."

The ritual of redneckaphobia begins, again.

There have been so many films in this genre that it’s tough to judge this one on its own merits. While watching horror is a ritual, no one ever complained about an original ritual, which this isn’t. (But that’s not a complaint.) Occultists warn about using the same ritual music too much. No matter how good it is, if you use it too much, it loses its evocative power. That may have been a problem faced by STRANGER THAN FICTION and, I think, this is a problem here. VACANCY’s merits may simply be lost in the over-familiarity we’ve gained with the genre. I can’t even recall all of the films that share this genre, but a few are:

HOUSE OF 1,000 CORPSES
THE HILLS HAVE EYES
TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE
WRONG TURN
SPIDER BABY
HOUSE OF WAX (2005)
PSYCHO

The formula is:
1. City people go to rural areas where they don’t belong.
2. Vehicular trouble, often manufactured by the evildoers, screws up the heroes.
3. Someone who appears friendly leads the heroes into a trap.
4. The heroes are terrorized by rural sadists.
5. The obvious, male hero becomes killed/disabled.
6. The heroine must take it upon herself to escape, often killing the sadists in a grand manner.

These movies all seem to be about our fear of rednecks. That may not be PC to say, but it’s true.

In the cinematic world, rednecks are primal, temper-driven figures who shun using objectivity and logic in their decision-making. They’re quick to anger, superstitious, mix their sexuality with equal parts repression and hostility, and see the initiation of force as an acceptable method of resolving problems. What’s not to fear?

Now, Hollywood could be accused of perpetuating unfair stereotypes. But are they? And if this were simply a matter of smug, liberal filmmakers making fun of “real America,” then these films would not be so successful in “real America.” Maybe these movies are just entertainment, thus explaining their box office.

But maybe these films strike a chord of emotional truth with viewers… at least they represent a concern of viewers, grounded in reality or not. The fact that they often appeal to rednecks can be seen as a function of one of several things…

a) No matter how redneck you are, there will always be someone more redneck than you. This is a very credible theory.
b) Rednecks like to decadently revel in their bad qualities, and take a strange, unconscious, vicarious delight in doing so by seeing them there atheistic city folks get punished real good.
c) Rednecks are too stupid to know that these movies are about how frightening they are to the rest of society.

So, I guess as an open note to rednecks: knock it off. Oh, and by the way, the earth is round.

And it’s not like rednecks are unfairly singled out and picked-on in horror movies. Hello? Mad scientists? There seems to be a bell curve in horror movies regarding the relationship between intelligence and evil, reassuring people to be average. Too dumb? Lunatic killers! Too smart? You’ll be a mad scientist… or, while hoping to help people, you’ll be a good scientist who creates a bad computer, robot, or virus.

About the movie –

The Human Cannonball remarked that it was (for once) about intelligent people who are put in this situation, and that was refreshing. Not just intelligent people, but intelligent people who were not teenagers. This gives the film a real lift above its sub-genre. Add to this a distinct lack of gore, and you wind up with a film that is actually scary for the right reasons. You’re not being manipulated by a moviemaker looking to make you jump at EVERYthing. The movie is about grownups, and you get treated as one.

Of course, the great granddaddy of all of these films is PSYCHO, and VACANCY acknowledges this is a celebratory way. The opening titles are what Saul Bass would have done, were he alive today. (Hell, let’s note that the film has opening titles. We see these less and less, and I miss them.) The music seems to be a riff on the urgent strings Bernard Herrman used to introduce PSYCHO. The movie takes place in California, near Bates Motel country. And the lobby of the motel has lots of statues of birds, which can only be a nod to Hitchcock.

Of course, the logic police can have a field day with this, and it I think it probably should have taken place in the late 1970’s.

The highest praise I can give the movie is that I left it with a nice sense of paranoia about most of the people I saw outside.

The mission of Art has been accomplished, again!

2007-04-17T01:13:00.000-04:00

Marvel's Civil Wars - Uncivil Exploitation

MARVEL ANNOUNCES FULL CIVIL WAR TRADES LIST

Press Release

The biggest comic event of the decade, Civil War, is now coming to you in brand-new collections, compiling the entire war from start to finish! Collecting all the sold out issues and landmark moments of the event that changed the Marvel Universe forever, don’t miss these crucial additions to your Marvel library.

FOLLOW THE WAR IN THESE CIVIL WAR TRADES:

On-Sale Now!
CIVIL WAR TPB …$24.99
CIVIL WAR: THE ROAD TO CIVIL WAR TPB …$14.99
HEROES FOR HIRE VOL.1: CIVIL WAR TPB …$13.99
MS. MARVEL VOL. 2: CIVIL WAR PREMIERE HC …$22.99
NEW AVENGERS VOLUME 5: CIVIL WAR PREMIERE HC …$19.99

On-Sale in April
CIVIL WAR: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN TPB …$17.99
CIVIL WAR: FANTASTIC FOUR TPB …$17.99
CIVIL WAR: FRONT LINE BOOK 1 TPB …$14.99
CIVIL WAR: THUNDERBOLTS TPB …$13.99
CIVIL WAR: X-MEN TPB …$11.99
PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL: CIVIL WAR PREMIERE HC …$19.99

On-Sale in May
BLACK PANTHER: CIVIL WAR TPB …$17.99
CIVIL WAR COMPANION TPB …$13.99
CIVIL WAR: CAPTAIN AMERICA TPB …$11.99
CIVIL WAR: FRONT LINE BOOK 2 TPB …$14.99
CIVIL WAR: PETER PARKER, SPIDER-MAN TPB …$17.99
CIVIL WAR: WAR CRIMES TPB …$17.99
CIVIL WAR: WOLVERINE TPB …$17.99
CIVIL WAR: X-MEN UNIVERSE TPB …$13.99
CIVIL WAR: YOUNG AVENGERS & RUNAWAYS TPB …$11.99

On-Sale in June
CIVIL WAR: MARVEL UNIVERSE TPB …$11.99
CIVIL WAR: IRON MAN TPB …$11.99

The best comment on this thread came from c andrew s:

"Wow! Without discounts, or tax this is $356.78

Great story telling, but an expensive hobby :-)"

But there are some titles that have yet to be put on the schedule, such as:

CIVIL WAR: NOT BRAND ECCHH MASS MARKET PB …$3.99
CIVIL WAR: DEVIL DINOSAUR TABLOID …$2.99
CIVIL WAR: GHOST RIDER 2099 DIGEST…$1.99
CIVIL WAR: STAR WARS STAPLED BROCHURE…$0.99
CIVIL WAR: PETER PORKER, THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-HAM PAMPHLET …$0.09

And I'm sure we haven't heard the end of this uncivil exploitation.

2007-04-16T23:57:00.000-04:00

THE GRASSHOPPER LIES HEAVY

Last week I came up from the subway near my apartment still carrying the copy of The Man in the High Castle which I had been reading on the train and went to pick up some Chinese takeout (the wife was at her painting class). About The Man in the High Castle--I'd been wanting to read this book at least since I was in high school; I read some short stories by Philip K. Dick, though, and I guess they didn't grab me because I kept putting High Castle off. Well, as many of you know, it's a total masterpiece.
So I'm in line behind some other guy at Red Hot Szechuan, and this guy steps aside to let me give the hostess my order. When I'm done, the guy says to me, "I know someone who would appreciate this coincidence." He holds up the book HE was carrying when he walked into the joint, and it's The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch. We talk a little bit while we're waiting for our food; he recommends Ubik, and I point out that it's not really a coincidence at all that we both walked into a restaurant with our Dicks hanging out (come on, you knew the pun was coming). After all, I point out that in recent weeks I'd read a comic making numerous references to Dick, seen that yet another story of his had been turned into a movie, and discovered a Web site where you can find out which phildickian reality you're living in today. He's inescapable, because the world is slowly realizing how utterly prescient he was, perhaps moreso at present than any other writer.
The strange thing about The Man in the High Castle is that it's not really science fiction; the action takes place in an alternate reality where the Axis powers won WWII, but the focus of the book is on the I Ching and the idea that a book called "The Grasshopper Lies Heavy," telling of a reality where the Allies won and England went on to conquer Europe, may be a more valid reality; by consulting the I Ching, the characters slowly realize that everything they understand to be real may be a grand fiction. Borges, eat your heart out.

2007-04-16T15:43:00.000-04:00

Top Ten Reasons Why Absolutely No One Bid on Anna Nicole Smith’s Diaries This Saturday

Two diaries written by A.N.S. failed to sell at auction in Texas on Saturday. An unnamed German businessman purchased them and other A.N.S. mementos on an eBay internet auction earlier this year for $500,000, then attempted to resell the diaries through Heritage Auction Galleries of Dallas. Here are the top ten reasons no bids were received.

-The guy who wrote the Adolph Hitler diaries claimed they are fake.

-A.N.S.’s hand-writing is especially difficult to read on the months she got bombed, plastered, and/or stoned.

-The diaries were written between 1992 and 1994, when A.N.S. was married to oil billionaire J. Howard Marshall II. These are generally considered the boring “domestic bliss” years.

-The only revelation about her marriage to Marshall to be found in the pages is that Marshall preferred old black-and-while films while she would only watch color. Hence, two TVs side-by-side in the bedroom.

-A.N.S. couldn’t stop writing about Marshall’s surprisingly enormous, gigantic, awe-inspiring… bank account.

-Because she could suddenly afford any dish she desired, many of the diary entries are obsessively centered on food.

-The pages are covered with sauce stains, gravy stains, melted ice cream stains, etc. Several pages are stuck together.

-Too much page space is spent recounting the plots to mediocre TV shows (“The Heights”, “Melrose Place”, “Saved by the Bell: The College Years”, “Party of Five”, “Sisters”) she watched while dining.

-A.N.S.’s frequent gushing over actors River Phoenix, Brandon Lee, and John Candy are, to put it mildly, unsettling.

-Analysts agree that the diaries hold very little monetary value, and their sentimental value is even less.

2007-04-10T22:19:00.000-04:00

The Top Ten Prizes Larry Birkhead Will Receive for Being Named the Father of Anna Nicole Smith’s Baby, Dannielynn.

-A t-shirt that says, “I slept with Anna Nicole Smith and all I got was this t-shirt, a child, and control over a multi-million dollar inheritance.”

-The Elmo DVD, “So Your Mommy’s Dead.”

-The legal right to give the baby a name that won’t be cruelly ridiculed by schoolmates.

-The Barney DVD, “Dads Who Make Bad Choices Need Love, Too.”

-The book, “Baby Dangling For Fun & Attention,” by Michael Jackson.

-A lifetime supply of the new baby foods from Jack Daniels.

-The Baby Einstein DVD, “Baby Keith Richards – Psychedelic Cigarettes Made from Me Dad.”

-The legal right to have the “666” birthmark on the back of Dannielynn’s head removed.

-10 cases of Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco treat.

-Kato Kalin offers to stay in the guesthouse and baby-sit on weeknights.

2007-03-28T22:25:00.000-04:00

SECTS AND THE CITY

Another idea for the master's thesis in theology that I'll never end up writing is the idea of YHWH's transformation from a god of the desert to a god of the city. It seems like the first records of the Lord reveal Him to be a desert deity worshiped by nomadic tribes. But before long, God rides His cosmic Greyhound bus straight to the city, and (perhaps with the founding of Jerusalem), the kingdom of God comes to be imagined as an urban center. By the time St. Augustine comes along, the idea that you'd find Jehovah in the wilderness is positively blasphemous--the only deities you'll encounter in the sticks are Pan and his horn-dog kin.
So what else gets affected by this divine relocation to the metropolis? Do the morals of the nomads transform into the justifications of the urbanized? Or do they not change, and are city-dwellers left with an ethical code that has nothing to do with their situation? Do metaphysical concepts and ideas of the afterlife make the leap? Food for thought, my friends, and fodder for seminary discussions.

2007-03-18T22:30:00.000-04:00

I FEEL I SHOULD SAY A FEW WORDS

I would like to rectify my earlier silence regarding the greatest comic book story of the decade, the tragic assassination of Captain America--an event that made headlines across the globe from England to India to Malaysia. After reporting on Cap's death when Marvel announced it over a week ago, the New York Times redeemed themselves with a smart piece on what this all might really mean. Stephen Colbert put aside his righteous rage to accept Cap's shield from Marvel. And, in further examples of dipshittery from idiots who interpret every single thing through the warped lens of their political Weltanshauungs, the National Review wailed about how this is just further proof of comics being used to promote dangerous left-wing ideas, while the American Chronicle (whatever that is) said that Cap's death was overdue, given that he represented an outdated, racist and class-insensitive era of our nation's history.

What's important to remember is that Captain America was the colorful creation of two New Yorkers who earnestly and sincerely wanted to punch Hitler in the face. Both of them, Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, would end up serving in the armed forces, adding a shade of realism to the backstory of their throwaway pop-culture hero. Cap is an aggressive cry of warning from the world of cheap entertainment to genocidal totalitarian dictators everywhere.

2007-03-15T12:31:00.000-04:00

IDES OF MARCH DVD HAUL

The DVD haul this week should have been CASINO ROYALE and the Comedy Central Shatner roast, but Amazon mysteriously decided to mark them for shipping later into the month. I think I’ll survive.

Much has been written about CASINO ROYALE, and I’m not sure I have much more to add. I think I’ll just list them…

1. I still like the David Niven one more.
2. The David Niven one has better music.
3. There’s nothing wrong with this one. The Bond character has always meandered on a triangular “spectrum” between “cad,” “gentleman,” and “killer.” This version favored “killer.” Connery, of course, was more “cad.” So was Lazenby. Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan were more “gentleman.” Craig, in a move to appeal to the testosterone junkies, was very squarely in the “killer” category. The one actor who probably centered himself in the triangle was the underrated Timothy Dalton (who veered away from “cad,” not unpleasantly, and is still the closest “Fleming Bond” we’ve had). Craig, though, had moments of great depth, courtesy of having dialogue written by the author of CRASH and MILLION DOLLAR BABY. The test, I think, for Craig is how well he fares with either the evolution of the character or with lesser screenplays. The Saturn V is off the launch pad, which is more than DIE ANOTHER DAY did. Now let’s get it into orbit, to the moon, lunar orbit, land it, re-dock with the command module, and then make it back to Earth. That’s six more movies. I’m up for it.
4. It was quite a wonder to see Bond allowed to talk and fence words. The knuckleheads who wrote the leaden SUPERMAN RETURNS needed to take a few tips from the Bond producers.
5. In the tradition of many of the Bond films, I only had a vague idea of the plot.
6. I liked an opening credit sequence that centered on Bond, since the film did, too.
7. In the name of ritual, we needed an appearance of Q, if only in the background of the defibrillator scene.

RE: the Shatner Roast. I have a true-blue friend in my hometown who taped a subsequent airing of it, and apparently Comedy Central (how I miss “the Comedy Channel”) cuts the roasts down from their live running time. But I have seen youtube clips of things cut from the videotape I saw, so I’ll soon get to enjoy what everyone else enjoyed back last fall. Two words: Clint Howard.

Shatner reportedly found most of the roast unpleasant and uncomfortable. I like the Shat as much as anyone, but I have simply heard too many stories from too many reputable sources about what a jerk he’s been over the past – I dunno – 40+ years? Haven’t heard those stories since BOSTON LEGAL, but the STAR TREK stories are myriad. Rude to fans. Rude to Roddenberry’s son. Rude to Wil Wheaton. It’s one thing to guard your privacy. It’s another to be unkind. Yes, Steve Martin doesn’t like giving autographs, so he carries business cards that he hands out, affirming that the bearer has met him. I’ve been lucky, and have met a lot of famous people, and they’ve generally been pretty nice. No, make that very nice.

So, is his talk-show gregariousness an act? Or has he found some kind of septuagenarian satori with HAS BEEN, BOSTON LEGAL, and the Priceline ads? Who knows? But a little roasting discomfort might have been a karmic balance. Many people lack a crucial sense of humor – and a sense of humor is simply a sense of perspective about yourself. I think this may have been manifested in the way Shatner was roasted. Had the roast taken place ten years from now, maybe the barbs would have been a bit less pointed.

Or this may simply be manifesting the decay of our cultural sense of wit. As a nation of individuals, I worry that we may be losing our sense of perspective, irony, and, thus, humor. Maybe it’s more fun to live life as perpetually offended. I dunno. I’m probably just as guilty of this as anyone else.

But the decay of our cultural sense of wit is both inner and outer. “Inner” in the sense that we are probably getting too used to getting too huffy about too many inconsequential things too often. “Outer” in that it’s too easy to get a laugh by seeing Andy Dick shocked at hearing that he’s been accused of being gay. Because that’s about 90% of these Comedy Central roasts. As wooden (and racist and sexist and homophobic) as those Dean Martin roasts may look to modern eyes, they were Oscar Wilde by comparison.

I can imagine Shatner’s inner monologue. It probably went, “Well, let me guess. This one will make fun of my age (with the obligatory Viagra joke), then my weight, then my toupees, and then my ego.”

For 90 minutes.

It’s one thing when people you know make these jokes. That was the edge that the Dean Martin roasts largely had. It’s another thing when it’s someone you’ve never met. But, maybe the preponderance of strangers at the roast is a commentary on Shatner’s personal life. Who knows?

Is wit dead? No, not even on the Comedy Central roasts. I fondly recall Bea Arthur… that’s right, Bea Arthur… getting the biggest laughs at the Pamela Anderson roast… that’s right, Bea Arthur at a Pamela Anderson roast. All she did was read excerpts from Anderson’s novel… that’s right, a novel by Pamela Anderson… with a straight face. (As if you’d expect any other visage on Bea Arthur.) That was it. Yes, it was a rip-off of St. Steve Allen’s routine of dramatic readings of rock & roll lyrics, but it was golden.

Man, when Bea Arthur’s the hippest comic in the room, we’re either in big trouble or we’ve achieved something truly magical with American humor. Probably both.

2007-03-01T23:35:00.000-05:00

THE ANTICIPATION BEGINNETH!

These posters are all over New York, once again turning the workaday world into something closer to the dreamscape of my twelve-year-old self's fantasies. I love the kinetic quality, the foreshortening, the cosmic impassivity of this image--pure Kirby. Sure, the movie will suck, but let's enjoy the anticipation while we can.

2007-02-26T19:17:00.000-05:00

Oscar, Oscar, Oscar

For about the past three or four years, the Oscars have been on Sunday nights, and not during spring break. Time was, they were during the March spring break… and on a weeknight. I’d go to my hometown, and Oscar was our version of the Superbowl. We’d gather around a television, eat, drink, cheer, argue, and be merry. But golden lads and girls all must, as chimneysweepers, come to dust. So, I haven’t really watched the Oscars for years. I honor how important they are to Hollywood history, culture, and the future of the industry. But, more often than not, they get it wrong, and those losses really sting. It would be easy to say, “Oh, the Oscars don’t matter.”

But they kinda-sorta do.

And yet, they’ve always been a joke. HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY over CITIZEN KANE… or THE MALTESE FALCON? THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH over HIGH NOON? MY FAIR LADY over DR. STRANGELOVE? OLIVER over THE LION IN WINTER? ROCKY over ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, NETWORK, and TAXI DRIVER? KRAMER VS. KRAMER over ALL THAT JAZZ and APOCALYPSE NOW? CHARIOTS OF FIRE over REDS? TERMS OF ENDEARMENT over THE RIGHT STUFF? DANCES WITH WOLVES over GOODFELLAS? FORREST GUMP over PULP FICTION and SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION? TITANIC over LA CONFIDENTIAL… and BOOGIE NIGHTS, which wasn’t even nominated? GLADIATOR over… well, there had to be something better that year. RETURN OF THE KING over LOST IN TRANSLATION? MILLION DOLLAR BABY over SIDEWAYS or the non-nominated ETERNAL SUNSHINE?

But, I keep coming back, anyway.

Having said that, this year’s nominees were so dreary-looking that I only saw two of them – the magnificent LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE and THE DEPARTED. I wanted to see THE QUEEN, but had zero interest in BABEL (looked too much like CRASH, which I enjoyed… once) and LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA (Clint lost me with the lugubrious, dull MYSTIC RIVER – never again).

Again, this was a year where several outstanding films came out which were stung by the Academy’s short memory. You’re telling me that V FOR VENDETTA didn’t get a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination? You’re kidding me. Elitist assholes. And what about the constantly-shafted Robert Altman’s final film (and the best movie I saw, last year), A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION. Not only did it get great reviews, it was thickly layered with complexities that will keep film students pondering it for decades.

Nothing?

Nothing?

Yeah, which pretty much summed up my interest in the awards, this year.

Criswell predicts that, fifty years from now, Garrison Keillor will finally be recognized as one of the darkest and most deliciously passive-aggressive writers of our time. This film may very well reveal a lot more than people currently recognize.

So, chalk it up to another year of, well, another year.

And let it be said that I'm glad Scorsese won. Not his best film, but as Ebert noted, he hasn't made a bad one. Finally, he has his Oscar. Fair enough.

2007-02-23T08:36:00.001-05:00

GHOST RIDER
It was a movie about a guy with a flaming skull who rides a motorcycle-of-fire and kills demons. If you're looking for a movie about a guy with a flaming skull who rides a motorcycle-of-fire and kills demons, it's a movie about a guy with a flaming skull who rides a motorcycle-of-fire and kills demons.

That's not quite supposed to feel as wiseacre as it reads. It's pretty damned accurate.

So, the question is if you want to see a movie about a guy with a flaming skull who rides a motorcycle-of-fire and kills demons. If you answer 'yes,' then you need to think very carefully about your expectations. I've heard some very peculiar cavils regarding GHOST RIDER. One was that law enforcement officials acted in unrealistic ways. Another concerned the somewhat cartoonish nature of the dialogue. Yet another questioned the ability of a man with a flaming skull to speak.

What were the expectations here? Were these people mistakenly thinking this film was a sequel to GHOST WORLD, picking up with Enid as she rides on the bus at the end?

No, this was a film based on a 1970's Marvel horror comic. It felt like it. The ads in no way mislabel the film.

So, not to reduce things, but if you crave a movie about a guy with a flaming skull who rides a motorcycle-of-fire and kills demons, you'll walk away happy. It's about a B-level Marvel hero, and, as such, it's a B-level movie. So be it. Unlike Lucas' prequel trilogy, it has no pretensions of being anything more than a movie about a guy with a flaming skull who rides a motorcycle-of-fire and kills demons.

As a fan of the comic (circa 1980), it gave me exactly what I wanted: a movie about a guy with a flaming skull who rides a motorcycle-of-fire and kills demons.

2007-02-18T17:45:00.000-05:00

AVE, REAGANUS!

Many people seem to worry these days that the U. S. of A. is not only becoming an empire, but one following the Roman model. Why the nervous nellies see this as a bad thing is beyond me--the Romans were cool, with their civic virtue, comfortable daywear, orgies, sacrifices to pagan gods, and melodic British accents. So why not embrace this trend and start where the Romans would--by deifying our dead leaders, starting with the likliest candidate of the lot, Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Since Congress doesn't seem to have much else to do these days, I think they should seriously consider a measure to officially confirm Reagan as a god of our nation. The bill would contain the following:

An edit of the constitution to alow for the union of church and state in all matters of Reagan's divinity. Federal funds would be earmarked for the construction of Reagan's temples and ziggurats, while Christians--who, it bears repeating, worship a foreigner--would continue to get nothing but lip service.
A re-writing of the First Commandment to say, "You shall have no other god before me, except Reagan."
The establishment of a priesthood to read divine portents and thus learn Reagan's will.
Changing the Pledge of Allegiance to "One nation, under Reagan" (thereby neatly solving that thorny debate).
A declaration of the War on Drugs as a Holy War.
The renaming of the month of September as Reagan.
Switching to the Reagonian calendar, with 1911 as year 0.
The use of "Reagan!" as a standard greeting, replacing "hello!" For less formal occasions, citizens could greet each other with a friendly "Ronald," or just "Ron."

I'll send around an e-mail petition. We can make this happen, people.

2007-02-13T22:13:00.000-05:00

CAN'T BE A COINCIDENCE

Few weeks contain as many notable commemorations as the one we're in. Monday was the birthday of America's most unusual president, the endlessly examinable Abraham Lincoln. Tuesday marked an equally momentous and controversial figure's birthday; I refer of course to Henry Rollins. Wednesday is the day when moon-eyed romantics everywhere express their tenderest feelings over the beheaded corpse of St. Valentine (The day celebrates his martyrdom, not his birth). All of this winds up at one of the greatest holidays ever, the Roman festival that involved dressing in a goat carcass and flogging maidens to make them fertile, the original orgy for "furries," the day from whose implement of whipping the month takes its name, the blood-soaked carnival that the pagans did to perfection, the celebration of Lupercalia. Count 'em, four days of such incredible importance, all in a tidy row. Most weeks would kill to claim a single one of these days as their own. Feb. 11-17's got cuatro.

All this can only mean one thing--some colossal force is pulling the strings. Take out your tinfoil hats, gang, because we are not alone, or if we are alone then we're talking to ourselves and someone's answering back and it's not us.

2007-02-02T23:28:00.000-05:00

NON-HOAX IN BEANTOWN

I am torn when I think of Boston, a city that I once (sort of) called home, a place that now wrestles with its new reputation as the most un-hip burg in America thanks to its freak-out in response to a Cartoon Network marketing ploy (why didn't San Antonio and Seattle lose their shit? Because enough residents in those places watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force to know what a Mooninite is and to recognize their use in a marketing campaign). Yes, it wasn't the smartest or most security-aware thing to put odd-looking devices in locations key to transportation (though I'm not sure where else one would put a promotion for a TV show), but how can the media call this a "hoax?" Who was trying to fool who? There was no intent, and while the initial response of the Boston police may have been appropriate, the lockdown of the city was just giving into hysteria. If you can threaten two guerilla marketers with jailtime for unintentionally fomenting hysteria, what about the news networks? They've long gone past the 'objective journalism' standard and are now 24-hour panic alarms, and well they know it. (Notice how pissy they get when the Interference Inc. guys don't play by the grim, solemn rules of the crisis mode news conference.)

2007-01-24T20:26:00.000-05:00

A GRAND DAME OF COMICS

I recently stumbled across the considerable comic book contributions of the great Lily Renee. Originally from Austria, Renee (born Lily Wilhelm) came to the U.S. as a teenager during World War II and drew for Woolworth's catalogs before getting into comics (Interesting aside: fashion products in ads and catalogs for years were drawn instead of photographed, even into the Fifties when Andy Warhol paid the rent with his drawings of shoes). Lily went to Fiction House when her mother saw an ad in the paper calling for comic book artists, and would become the only woman who drew covers for the company. She depicted ghostly mysteries in Werewolf Hunter, journeyed to an adventurous planet in The Lost World, depicted cheescake-laden adventures in Rangers Comics, and earned some real estate in the history books with Senorita Rio, the daring, clever, tough-talking, spy-hunting piece of ass extraordinaire.

Renee was something of a stunner herself (check out the photo), and would go on to several marriages, the creation of plays, and appearances at the San Diego Comic Con. She recently gave a talk at the Jewish Museum which I could kill myself for missing.

2007-01-11T21:09:00.000-05:00

IDIOCRACY

IDIOCRACY. Wow. The more I google it, the more it looks like Fox tried to bury it. Deep. Opened in September in only 7 cities, none of them NY. I wonder what the conspiracy is? Because, I know the business well enough to know that there's a conspiracy. He openly mocks large corporations. I think they may have agreed to lend their logos, like Taco Bell agreed to be all over DEMOLITION MAN, thinking they'd get great product placement. When they saw how it turned out, they probably went bananas.

Googling it will spoil the surprises, so if you're tempted, don't be. It spoiled them for me, and what was left was a movie more disturbing than CHILDREN OF MEN. I'm not kidding. This may be the most grim dystopia I've ever seen. And in a comedy, no less.

Mike Judge really shows his true colors. In BEAVIS & BUTTHEAD, I suspected he was mocking the MTV audience, but I had no idea he had this deep a contempt for them. We are blessed to have Mike Judge.

When I tried to watch the JACKASS movie, I was made profoundly uncomfortable. I mean, on a deep, existential level. I tried to figure out why. I mean, I watch "tortureporn" like HOSTEL until the cows come home and never feel like JACKASS made me feel. For a long time, I chalked it up to me being too square or old to "get it." Maybe it triggered some nascent homophobia of which I was unaware, I wondered. Maybe I had no sense of humor, or a sense of humor that's "too safe." Given the range of what I find amusing, that was doubtful. I think I just slowly realized that I was living in a world where shit and torture and genital mutilation -- with no context whatsoever -- were found not only acceptable, but funny, by a mass audience. I guess this is how they view the world.

And, you know, if they were viewing the world that way as a purposeful method of giving the finger to a society that treats people like cattle, that would be one thing. But that wasn't in that film, or in the response to it. Even on a subconscious level. Dey just towt dat wuz funnee. This is a selfishness that's gone beyond self-indulgence. This is psychological infantalism of the worst degree. "You just have to laugh at it," the fans say, "It's funny because it's just so stupid."

No, it's stupid because it's so stupid.

As the Wicked Witch of the West aptly mused, "What a world. What a world."

And that's what I thought when I staggered out of JACKASS. I was feeling dread on an apocalyptic level. This is a movie that made the Three Stooges look like Samuel Beckett.

BORAT made a very convincing case that redneckism still permeates America. Basically, we're Borat's homeland with a better dental plan. And, just as Borat's comrades are capable of surprising sweetness, so are we. He dealt with redneckism on one level. Mike Judge kicks it up a notch.

Mike Judge holds up the most unflattering mirror to America I think I've ever seen. We don't stop and think enough about who we are, as a culture, when even our best critics, in an orgy of if-you-can't-beat'em-join'em, begin apologizing for JACKASS. I feel as if Mike Judge similarly staggered out of JACKASS, but was smart enough to know what was going on, and do something about it.

IDIOCRACY is that something. And maybe that's why Fox buried it. It would be incendiary to so many people who would see it, that riots would break out in theaters... if only they could get past laughing at the fart jokes and realize that the joke's on all of us. And it should be. We should be ashamed of ourselves. That's what IDIOCRACY made me feel. Intense, intense shame. And that's the point.

I've never seen our potential intellectual apocalypse taken on like this. You know, usually it's just some fuddy duddy like me longwindedly pontificating... like I'm doing, now. But this is using the JACKASS audience's ammo against itself. It is a revolutionary work, in the truest sense. And to paraphrase THE FOUNTAINHEAD, mankind will never destroy itself, nor think of itself as destroyed. Not so long as it produces work such as this.

2007-01-02T13:11:00.000-05:00

The Top Ten Best Remembered Things about the late President Ford:

-His potato salad with sliced pineapples.

-Regarded balding as a sign of dominance.

-He slipped down a staircase when disembarking from an airplane.

-Considered Jim Morrison a close, personal friend.

-He slipped on one of Spot’s “little presents” when visiting the White House in 2002.

-Frequently gave copies of “The Illustrated Kama Sutra” to his in-laws.

-He slipped on a pool of vomit at the quarterly “I Hate Chevy Chase” support group meeting in December, 1983.

-The worst thing he ever said about a movie was, “There was too much dancing.” He was referring to Showgirls (1995).

-He slipped on a puddle of blood at Goth-Fest 1999 in Vail, Colorado.

-Worked hard to find his spiritual center. Found it much easier to stay away from his wife’s Center.

2006-12-27T15:29:00.000-05:00

Top Ten Reasons Night at the Museum ($30.8 million) beat new movies Rocky Balboa ($12.6 million), The Good Shepherd ($10 million) and We Are Marshall ($6.6 million) at the box office this weekend.

-Ben Stiller’s whine is much more crowd-pleasing than Sylvester Stallone’s, Matt Damon’s, or Matthew McConaughey’s.

-Thanks to the defeat suffered by the neoconservatives in the recent election, knowledge is back in vogue! Museums rule!

-Too many moviegoers thought WAM was a sci-fi film about several people placed or trapped in the body of “Hollywood Squares” game show host Peter Marshall, much like Being John Malkovich.

-R&B singer James Brown saw all four films shortly before his death. He remained silent about RB, TGS, and WAM, but when asked his thoughts about NATM, he said, “So good, So good.”

-It is completely unbelievable for Matt Damon to be more committed to his job in the C.I.A. than to romancing Angelina Jolie every night and thanking some Supreme Being every morning.

-Owen Wilson sang the David Soul song “Don’t Give Up On Us” on camera in the film, Starsky & Hutch (coincidentally co-starring Ben Stiller). Owen Wilson sings another David Soul song on camera in NATM, the ironic “Let’s Have A Quiet Night In”.

-The CGI special effect of 60-year-old Sylvester Stallone back in the boxing ring just wasn’t quite as special (or believable) as a dinosaur skeleton walking around a museum.

-The talking Easter Island head in NATM was voted People magazine’s “Sexiest Statue Alive,” beating out Matt Damon’s performance in TGS.

-TGS and WAM are plagued with the confusing conundrum of too many Matthews: McConaughey, Damon, and Fox. Moviegoers felt “lost”.

- Ricky (BBC’s “The Office”) Gervais’s comedic turn as the museum director in NATM was viewed much more favorably than his dramatic turn as a CIA assassin in TGS or as the heavyweight contender up against Sylvester Stallone in RB or as a West Virginia college-aged quarterback in WAM.

2006-12-22T22:19:00.000-05:00

INSENSITIVE BUT BRILLIANT Pt. 342,654

Over at Reason.com, the Web site that I want all to myself for Christmas, a ferocious wit left the following zinger on a blog concerning China's issuing of new restrictions on the international adoption of Chinese babies:

"The problem with Chinese babies is that if you adopt one, you'll only want to adopt another one in a half an hour."