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July 9th, 2011
06:10 pm - Welcome! Now get out.
This journal is homies only. Deal with it.
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November 21st, 2009
03:56 pm - The Worst Kind of Film
While Hollywood has done some pretty wretched things in the name of making a dollar, The Fourth Kind is pretty low even for them.
I generally hold alien abduction stuff to be generally bogus. I think most of the people who claim to see UFOs are largely like most of the people who come into my job every day, which is to say they are genetically stupid on a molecular level or clinically insane. Some worse than others to be sure, but generally not the kind of people I want knowing where I parked. What I guess I’m saying is, I’d exercise more patience with UFO witnesses if they didn’t have library cards.
While I believe there must be life on other planets (I’m not against God. I just believe in math too) I do not think much of it is aware of our pitiful existence. If they are I wish they'd just come and invade us already so I’d have an excuse to not go to work every day (“Can’t come in today: fighting with the resistance”). Talk about calamity pay! I wonder how many days I’d get CP if we were invaded by aliens? They’ve GOT to give you at least a couple of days. If I can get a day if a water main breaks, I can certainly get two if we’re invaded by Scientologists' gods.
Anyhow, films about alien abductions are generally lame unless they just go full monty with it. When it's "based on a true story" it's almost never good. These films always try to creep you out with the idea that the events portrayed might have very well happened because, well, it works. Why? Because nobody actually wants to meet an alien. We have to change too many history books and planetariums, and plug our asses with cork.* Seeing a UFO would be scary, but seeing an alien would probably fuck you up for life. And being abducted by one? Well, let’s just say that if you weren’t already living in a trailer home, toothless, wearing aluminum foil on your head that being abducted would likely make even the biggest-dicked Master of the Universe on Wall Street start spreading out jelly sandwiches.
Think about it:
Close Encounters of the Third Kind – Not based on a true story, very good movie.
X-Files – Not based on a true story, ate up America’s brains for 9 years-awesome.
V (the original series) – Not based on a true story, rocked even for the 80s.
The Forgotten – Not based on a true story, not a half bad film. The abduction “yank” was pretty sweet.
And the rest?**
Incident at Roswell – “True” story, sucked dick
The average episode of Monster Quest – “True” story, sucked demon dick
Communion – “True” story, sucked Satan’s dick
Fire in the Sky – “True” story that gave us the kind of thing you want to see in an abduction movie – you know, ALIENS, probes and general cosmic debauchery – but it still sucked, so it still belongs on the second list anyway. So it sucked balls.
My point is that when Hollywood doesn’t HAVE to convince us that what we’re seeing might have any basis in reality, they give us a good movie…sometimes a great movie. But when they try to sell us on the human, “real” side of the paranormal, they drop the ball. Monster encounters in general that are supposed to be based on true stories are lame. The Mothman Prophecy sucked so much ass I thought someone dropped a black hole in my toilet and flushed. But Alien and The Thing? Completely untrue and completely scary. It’s like the same weird dynamic that prevents Hollywood from making good movies out of superheroes who, for all intents and purposes, they shouldn’t be able to fuck up because they should be easy to shoot due to a lack of flash (Batman, Daredevil, Punisher).
All of which brings me to the horrendous crime of The Fourth Kind.
This film, prior to release, was being sold to audiences as featuring footage from real psychiatrists sessions featuring people who believed to be abducted. We were led to believe this was the case because the lead actress came to us baring it all plainly, stating without a blink that the film was based on the realest of the real shit. During the film the actress and director gives us the same spiel and all of the characters are introduced as being played by actors like Will Patton and Elias Koteas. You know, so we don’t confuse these reenactments with shit that actually happened. The movie even goes so far as to juxtapose the original source footage with the fictional footage so you can gauge how closely the film is portraying the facts.
Turns out the whole thing is a mind-fuck: the source material isn’t real, and the spiels given by Milla Jovovich was part of a marketing campaign. The company even got sued by a media source over the matter…and settled.
See, that’s fucked up. You can’t do that.
You can’t come to audiences and say, “This is based on real shit” and then proceed to give us un-real shit as a source. You can’t go online and create fake obituaries and try to build a case to suspend belief for a movie. You can say “based on a true story” or “based on actual events” and then fuck the movie up every which way to Sunday, sure. We’re all used to that. Nobody thought that Whitley Strieber actually high-fived an alien. When we saw it in Communion, we knew it was a liberty (and bile inducing). We get that. But you can’t just flat-out LIE to us to sell a ticket. That would be like me going up on the mic and saying, “This poem I’m about to do is based on true events,” do this gut-wrenching poem, then come back and say, “Sorry guys. In the interest of investing you emotionally in my art, I lied about it being real.” There is something wrong with that, and just because it happens to be a science fiction film and about dumb-ass alien abductees doesn’t make it okay or not worth discussing. There is something criminal in the act – they got sued and lost, for God's sake – and there is something artistically abhorrent about it as well. The movie would have played just fine if they had simply said “based on true events” and then never tried to push (and push and push) its “reality”. We wouldn’t have held it to any higher standard than anything else that’s “based on a true story”.
I get that there are some directors out there who like to see how far they can push an audience. Funny Games is a film designed expressley for this purpose and it's another "exercise" that pisses me off. I don't go to movies to be a lab rat.
Hollywood, don't do this again. I'm warning you.
NOTES
* The one Planet 51 joke I chuckled at.
** Before anyone says “Signs”, recognize that no one had been abducted. As far as we know Mel Gibson’s kid was just collateral to get out of the house. No one actually disappeared or was taken and brought back. Also, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” is technically cloning, not abduction, but I guess you could make a case for it. No one to my knowledge is suggesting they’ve been taken away and brought back as less or more than human. Cloning is not abducting…that’s erasing. Also, I recognize “Taken” ended up sucking. Also, anybody who says “Men In Black” can just get un-friended right now.
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November 16th, 2009
11:28 am - All Davis, all the time
An all-Miles Davis station is almost enough to get me to buy Sirius.
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November 13th, 2009
08:06 am - 2012, Monster Quest, shutting up
If any of you believe that the world will end in 2012 per Mayan predictions or universal alignment, please speak up now so that I may exorcise you from not only my friends list but my life. Also, if you're a sneaky holdover from the Y2K mania of NINE YEARS AGO, WHEN CIVILIZATION DIDN'T EVEN SNEEZE AT YOUR DUMB ASS, feel free to step out of the lecture hall as well. Woods 200 is not the class for you.
Why, why, why does Chris Cuomo always get the stupid GMA beats? Why does he have to sell the dumb shit? I think he likes it. Chris, there is no earthly reason for you to cover an ancient Mayan calendar. You generate more stupidity than you debunk.
This is also why, after having watched a season of Monster Quest - which I sorely wanted to enjoy and be mesmerized by, I was left with the taste of bogus in my mouth. I want to become a cryptozoologist, not so I can track down legendary creatures or phenomenon, but so I can PRETEND to track down legendary creatures and phenomenons while actually sitting in my basement playing video games and eating cheese curls. And grow my hair in weird patterns like crop circles on my head. And stop shaving. And go to distant lands on some idiot's grant money. Or get interviewed by the History Channel when I'm not going for the high score on Guitar Hero III.
And what does my older brother have to say about this? See for yourself:
http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/watch/interview/2009-02-04-world-will-not-end-2012
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November 12th, 2009
08:41 am - Little Jimmy, son
I didn't catch this on the Country Music Awards last night because I was out commiting grievous acts of poetry, but if I had this would have had me jumping up and down on the couch.
(Okay, I might have missed it anyway, but you get my drift, pardner.)
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November 10th, 2009
09:03 pm - Stephen King To Go
While picking up some dinner to go at Peking Palace, I took The Tome with me to kill time while waiting for my veggies.
A family walked past me out the door, with the matriarch remarking, "Wow, look at the size of that book." I also noted that my meal came out at record speed, no doubt in an attempt to get the guy with the big fucking book making them look slow out of the building.
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03:27 pm - Stephen King and the Chamber of Doctor's Scripts
So my doctor was taking my blood pressure today and noticed the boulder of a book taking up half the examination room and said:
"So what's Under the Dome about, a small New England town covered by a big dome?"
Stunned, I said, "Exactly."
"Wasn't that a Jim Carrey movie?"
Again stunned, I said, "Why yes, it was! The Simpsons too."
"Huh," he said.
I'm looking at you, King.*
.
Seriously, anyone who thinks that Stephen King MIGHT have been inspired by a film that came out a couple of years ago and pounded out this monolith of a document based on such a premise hasn't seen this book in person yet. It's the kind of thing you take 30 years to write (and apparently zero years to edit).
* I maintain that every person inclined to creative thought has, at some point in their development, thought of a story involving a city under a dome. My brother Stephen had such an idea when I was a kid and Megan, my co-worker, had a similar idea. Domed cities are just another trope that makes its way around the communal campfire with anyone who has more than a fleeting scrap of imagination.
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11:45 am - King's book from the front lines
A patron just came up to reserve the book.
I had my copy fresh from my field test handy, so I allowed him to look at it.
He showed it to his buddy. "Look how big it is!"
His buddy: "Eh, The Stand was 1100 pages. I could knock that out in ten days."
Oh, sure, you could knock it out in ten days...if you have no job. And you order in all of your meals. And no one loves you.
I almost used a Special Forces throat chop on him.
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11:01 am - Stephen King "Dome' Field Test #1 - The Drop
I just did a field test of the new King novel.
At random, I pulled a typically sized book from a library shelf. Turns out it was Homer's The Odyssey (the McCrorie translation), at 416 pages...a very typical hardcover in every way.
I dropped The Odyssey onto our fake-mica counter and it made the sound a novel makes when tossed onto a countertop. It is the solid "clump" that makes people fall in love with books and libraries and literacy.
By contrast, the sound of "Under the Dome" by King is the sound of a body falling from a great height, a dead wieght, surely a suicide.
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10:18 am - Dear Stephen King: Really?
Dear Mr. King,
Really?
Your new book, Under The Dome, comes out and it's 1072 pages long? Are you fucking kidding me?
In your "Author's Notes" in the back (p. 1074) you state:
"Nan Graham edited the book down from the original dinosaur to a beast of slightly more manageable size..."
Really? This book sits next to me on the computer counter at work and my fucking computer is leaning. I had to put a smaller book - The Bible - under the keyboard to level it out. On the same page you state:
"I tried to write a book that would keep the pedal constantly to the metal."
Though I have yet to open it in earnest, I find it hard to believe that you "kept the pedal to the metal" for 1072 pages.
You know I am a fan. I go way back. You have received more of my money than I am willing to post here publicly. I supported you when I had no reason to. And when Cell came out, I trumpeted your way back to the top of the bestseller lists where you belonged. But now you ask too much.
Even you hold that your best book was probably The Stand, as many of your legions of fans have proclaimed. This book is a mere 79 pages shorter than the "complete & uncut" version of The Stand. It is only 69 pages shorter than the paperback uncut version. It is 255 pages longer than a 1981 printing of the original version.
In short, this better be the best fucking book of your career, and it better be feeling like it might be at around page 536...the halfway mark. This is as much as I am willing to concede to you in this day and age, well past the peak of your prowess, many years since the perfect King novels you used to churn out with such spot-on efficiency.
You got 536 pages. I will not stop short of that. At 536 pages it is longer than most novels anyway. If you cannot make me believe in it halfway through, I am under no obligation to finish your masturbatory exercise. Maybe my frustration with my NaNoWriMo novel this year is aiding this diatribe in unhealthy ways. Here I am struggling to break the 12,000 word mark and you just dropped a 1072 page brick on my desk in the middle of what most people consider a Sisyphean task. I have tried to exorcise that prejudice from my consternation here. Being a hater does neither of us any good.
I still love you. I still respect you. I still turn people on to your work. But this? You ask too much. It better be the best fucking book I've read all year. You got 536 pages of my trust in your hands. I hope we can still be friends.
Sincerely, your black friend in Ohio,
Scott Woods
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08:31 am - BBQ alert!
Cook Shack - which has a shop in Hilliard and a shop Downtown during the week - has apparently opened shop on James and Broad, in the old bagel shop. Smackies had a BBQ cart here off and on the last few months, but has opted out of the area. The Cook Shack is now open there on James.
I really like this place downtown (and hope it stays open despite the expansion). I see no reason why the one on James wouldn't be of the same quality. I highly recommend the pulled pork and ribs on most days. Also, their sides are VERY good. The mac and cheese has an interesting dill taste to it.
If its quality holds up this could replace City BBQ as my new eastside BBQ spot, son.
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October 22nd, 2009
05:54 pm - C'mon son.
Ed Lover was always that dude, but this series of videos makes him supreme.
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October 16th, 2009
07:58 am - Subways and balloons
No Chris, you didn't show us that footage of a baby stroller rolling off a platform and under a subway train because the baby was fine after all. You did it because it's footage that looks like a baby was crushed by a subway car.
And people wonder why we laugh at balloons that might have children in them that will fall out on live television. Okay, why I laughed.
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September 22nd, 2009
09:16 pm - Seven 70s Horror Flicks Better Than The Crap Out Right Now (well, 6 anyway)
Rachel posted a plea to whatever crazy Mexican gods her people pray to for Hollywood not to go through with the remake of the awesome vampire flick Let The Right One In, which you can find me raving about a few months back in the archive. Her heathen prayer got me to thinking about some of the horror movies I grew up on and how cool they were...relatively speaking, of course.
It's not that any of these movies were good films; none of them are. The acting is over the top, the plots are ludicrous, and I could have done better special effects with an egg carton, some Elmer's glue and a crazed baboon scratching my balls with a cheese grater. God knows (my god, the good white Christian god, not some beady-eyed Mexican god) I don't typically allow nostalgia to gauge my appreciation of a thing. At the same time, these were movies that had the right IDEA, and an original idea goes a long way with me. If they had been made now or back then with a little more panache, we would be talking about some serious filmmaking. As it stands, we are not. Conversely, do not expect me to talk about them seriously.
I offer these few gems, trailers of the paramount horror films of my youth (a period which can be easily gauged by the bell-bottoms, porno moustaches and the color of William Shatner's hair contained therein). A couple of them can even be found in their entirety on YouTube, but keep that on the downlow. Also, this post is loaded with spoilers...though I fail to see how shit can spoil. I mean, it's waste already. So what, it goes meatloaf on you a few days later. It was still shit. Shit don't spoil.
Come, let us step into the basement of my childhood. The stairs creak, but the stuff in the big cardboard box next to the life-sized Mr. Spock standee? That's where I keep the gold.
In no order...
1) It's Alive
This film was basically a statement about, of all things, the environment. Not the soft-ass shit we call environmentalism now, but the hard stuff: pesticides, prescription drugs, out-of-control sewage...stuff you worry about when you've spent the weekend in a discoteque wearing flares and showing off the taco meat that was your chest hair. The premise was that a couple give birth to a mutant killing machine that proceeds to kill its way through town. They threw some serious familial tension on top to give it meat, but really: it's a killer baby that looked like Orca's fetus. Do you really need any good reason to want to kill it besides it might embarass you at church picnics?
True story: this film's original preview was so bad...
(The owner of the video has disabled embedding it was so bad, but it's worth clicking to see.)
...that they replaced it with this one a couple of YEARS later...
...and it made 1,000,000% more money than it did before. Do you see the irony? The trailer that showed 3 full minutes of actual scenes and action and carnage from the film itself made millions of people not go see it than a rotating crib with a voiceover. That's how bad THAT movie is. To actually see it is to commit ritual suicide.
Did I mention this movie ONLY got a PG rating at the time? If they didn't change a single frame of film and released it now, it'd get at least a PG-13. Not because it's so horrific, but because we have turned into a country of pussies scared of even the un-realized, corny effect-laden IDEA of anything remotely horrific.
Speaking of remakes, this one is the only one on this list that's been officially remade. Some of them have been ripped off, but not remade. The remake was relkeased abroad in theaters, but not in the U.S. It's due for DVD before the end of the year here, so you an see it then if you like. Based on the preview, it's GRUESOME...and I might even like it. The box cover for it is chilling, too.
2) Magic
Come on, you remember this one! It's the one with Anthony Hopkins when he was 12 running around with a ventriloquist dummy that killed people! Of course, how hard could it be to kill Burgess Meredith? The guy was old at birth. He was fucking Benjamin Button. Abe Vigoda type shit. How hard could it be for even a dummy to get its little wodden hands around Mickey's neck? Seriously, this one was pretty scary when it wasn't plodding along trying to be an actual love story. One of Hopkins's best acting jobs, if we're honest. If your'e scared of clowns you'll hate this movie.
3) The Hand
I remember seeing this one on HBO at my aunt's house. This was back when HBO was the only channel you could catch a movie on before it's primetime, completely edited release. I thought it was awesome, and it has one of those Psycho-ripped endings like Magic does, but still leaves enough wonder to make a good argument over pizza and D&D miniatures about whether or not there was a hand. I'd have to see it again to make a grown decision, but my decision as a kid was, of course, that there was a hand. And that the screaming ending was hilarious.
If they remade it today there wouldn't be any argument: killer hand all the way. Why? Because Hollywood thinks we can't handle suspense.
Now my list starts to get into my favorites.
4) Kingdom of the Spiders
Captain Kirk kicking spider ass, son! The cool thing about 70s horror was that Man didn't always get to win (see Planet of the Apes), so when Spielberg ripped this off to make Arachnophobia I was kind of salty. After a while, you're like "How ARE they going to get out of this jam?", and then it ends awesome.
Funny line in the trailer: "Why did they come? What do they want?"
Really? They're spiders, dog. Mostly they just want to eat you. Even if they're mutated by the environment (see a theme here?) that just means they want to eat you in larger numbers and will blow up both a station wagon and an ambulance for the privilege.
5) The Swarm
This one bordered on good, but was mostly treated like a typical disaster ensemble movie (which really just made it even more awesome). And who would have guessed that the environment(!) would be the culprit? When this came out it actually got the news buzzing about killer bees for a minute, which just amde it even more scary because it's always been implied it could happen. That, and michael Caine showing up at your door to burn your house down. (Note: Michael Caine now appears twice on this list.)
Please note that the best actor in this film is none other than Slim Pickens.
Most hilarious scene in a horror movie: When Katherine Ross opens the door to a human-sized bee hallucination and slow-falls to the floor. I had to rewind that shit ten times.
6) Demon Seed
Holy shit, the best premise ever. It's almost inconceivable that this is based on a Dean Knootz book (which he wrote TWICE, once from the perspective of the victim, then years later from the perspective of the murderous computer). This movie has an awesome effect: the folding metal boxes that wind around a basically rip shit up. It puts you in the mind of the beach ball from The Prisoner, but in this instance actually kicks ass. There is some diabolical stuff here that will really get the sensitive mind working, like computer rape or the constant bondage, but it's supposed to be frightening and creepy. It works on that level, but a number of philisophical ones as well. What does it say about sexual violence when the victim isn't the only one treated as inhuman?
Deep stuff.
This may be the only genuinely well-done movie on this list. Why it's not been remade, I don't know. Probably because of the heady sexual themes. Fortunately the old film is good enough to be watchable even by today's standards.
7) The Car
Probably my favorite film on this list. No build-up, no explanations...this film was Predator quick: the car shows up and just starts killing people. You're trying to figure it out alongside the characters and it really adds to the suspense in an otherwise blatant action movie. Everyone always called it Jaws with a car, and they were right.
Trivia: Seven of these cars were made (it's a rigged-up Lincoln), 6 destroyed while making the film. The last one is in a private collection.
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Well, that's it for me. Those are my go-to horror films of the 70s. Sure, I saw almost every horror film from that period eventually, but these were the ones that really had an effect on my worldview and creativity...whatever that implies. All of them deserve to be seen at least once, if not for the same reasons.
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September 16th, 2009
07:41 am - People of WalMart
When I started this personal journal it was so I could post stuff like this, which I love:
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July 21st, 2009
04:51 pm - The White Boy Stays in the Picture (and I Don't Care): Anime white folks
If you rock anime or manga (the pronunciations of which I can only get right when I remind myself that "anime" starts with a "Duh" sound, like "Duhnumay", and "manga" has a sound like "mangey"...which, oddly enough, fits the sentiment in each case) you will save both of us a lot of grief if you just go to the next journal on your Friends list.
Okay, are they gone? Good. Let's rant.
I hold a couple of pieces of anime up as truly great art. 99% of it we can use to scrape boogers off the bottom of school desks for all I care. Regardless: if you are one of those people who gets mad when Hollywood (in an attempt to create a live-action version of your favorite piece of four-colored Japanese garbage fantasy) casts the characters as white people, then you should lobby the relevant Japanese artist to not draw them that way in the first place.
Hollywood isn't spending a lot of time delving into the settings of these penis-firing fantasies. They don't know (or care) if a story takes place in Japan or Earth XII or another dimension altogether. And neither do a lot of people who watch anime. They just see a bunch of animated white boys wearing aviator goggles and their big tittied girlfriends beating the shit out of each other while making stupid faces. Much of anime looks like this and has for years. So don't get mad at Hollywood for sticking to the script, so to speak.
I don't know about you, but when I find myself accidentally watching five seconds of Pokedung or Pumpkin Scissorshits or [pick your piece of shit pretentious cartoon from Japan] I don't see a bunch of Asian kids. I see this:
That's right: some white kid with fucked-up hair. And when they're sad, I see this:
Complete with animated tears flying off of one's head!
It's not like they're taking characters' identities and making them look other different than what they do when they're cartoons. As far as I'm concerned, Dragon Nuts Z and Yu-Gi-No and [insert bullshit male teenage soft porn cartoon here] is filled with people who look like this. It'd be different if someone decided to re-shoot Roots and make half of the slaves white, or make Sense and Sensibility's frigid debutantes Japanese.
(And while I'm pointing out black people, what is the token black blonde in half of these shitty cartoons supposed to be if not a black person with blonde tressels? I mean, besides another shade for titties and long prepubescent legs to be?)
If they were making a movie based on some anime or manga that took place in feudal Japan and shot it with a bunch of white folks, I'd have a problem with that even if the cartoon didn't. Even a whiff of this kind of condescension tanked The Last Samurai, and it wasn't even particularly guilty. (No more than Shogun anyway, which was like the ultimate white boy-kung-fu fantasy.) I am sure that this is part of the reason why I can't sit through half of these shows for more than five minutes: it's one thing to have demon sex or telekinetic school children or vampire-slaying ninjas in mini-skirts hopping all over the roofs of Tokyo; it's another thing for me to accept that these are white people doing the same in Tokyo. Not that white people can't have sex with demons (Dracula), have telekinetic kids (Firestarter), or be ninjas that kill vampires (American Ninja).* I just have a hard time processing a whole cast of them doing so in Tokyo. It's bad enough they're dubbed in English.
And before someone tries to geek-out on me about the traditional forms and motivations for anime and Japanese animation in general (like I care), don't bother; I've researched/lived as much of it as I care about. Specifically, If traditional Japanese animators wanted to make the characters look Western so they could expand their market, fine, but this only supports my point. Hollywood is essentially carrying Osamu Tezuka's torch. So shut the fuck up when they cast Goku from Dragon Nuts as some kid from the suburbs with more mousse than Alaska.
Freeze frame happiness ending, everyone!
* Just kidding. Ain't no white ninjas, son.
** Big-ups to my girl M - ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) tahmthelame - for posing as, I don't know, half of the chicks in anime and about 20% of the guys. But not the black ones. She doesn't look like any of the black ones.
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June 30th, 2009
12:24 pm - Can I Borrow Your Tardis?
Amidst all of the ballyhoo concerning the state of the library world and the death of music's biggest star ever, Megan and I had this conversation on the desk here at The Grind:
Megan: Scott, can I borrow your Tardis?
Scott: (pause) What do you want it for?
Megan: (guilty) ...To go places...
Scott: Like where?
Megan: ...
Scott: Well, I'd lend it to you, but mine only goes through black history.
Megan twists her mouth.
Scott: You know we invented everything right? You go back in my Tardis, you'd see that.
What are you rolling your eyes at? You should want to go back in time in my Tardis: the further back you go, the more stuff you'd own. You'd just get richer and richer...
Megan: ...and I'd feel more and more guilt.
Scott: That's right! It's a black Catholic Tardis, son.
People we've determined we'd see, in no particular order:
Michael Jackson, Jesus (who would surprise her with his dreadlocks), Prince, my high school self...oh wait: these were all mine.
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June 19th, 2009
09:31 am - About that whole slavery thing? Sorry about that. - The Senate
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20090618/pl_mcclatchy/3255365_1
The Senate passed a resolution Thursday calling on the U.S. to apologize officially for the enslavement and segregation of millions of African-Americans and to acknowledge "the fundamental injustice, brutality, and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow laws."The resolution, sponsored with little fanfare by Sen. Tom Harkin , D- Iowa , passed on a voice vote. It now moves to the House of Representatives , where it may meet an unlikely foe: Members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
- - -
This event is historic, but it wasn't particularly fascinating in the Age of Obama until I saw the CBC might protest it.
The apology is important. It's long overdsue and in official capacities, it's a good thing that it's finally being done. Even if I believed that blacks should receive reparations (however "blacks" and "reparations" are defined for the purposes of the work needed to realize reparations) I'd still want the apology to go through, with the point (not a caveat, but a clarification of intent) in it or not.
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May 11th, 2009
11:49 am - Because mail went up 2 cents...
To: Golf media
Re: Trying to frame Tiger as wack
Really? Already guys? You want to paint his near-misses from winning the last few tournies as a potential limit to his prowess? Despite the fact that he has already racked up a win this year?
I like a little soap opera now and again too, but come on. If he weren’t making cuts, okay. If he were coming in the low half of the top half, fine. But the guy has some top 10 finishes and he’s washed up? Shame on you.
To: Wanda Sykes
Re: Your routine at the D.C. Press junket
I thought you were very funny. Not as funny as Obama, but very funny.
The Palin shot was a little low (but not by much).
To: Wolverine
Re: Your pitiful cinematic offering
You’re the best at what you do, and what you do turns out like that?
Did you kill anybody? I mean, anybody that wasn’t already indestructible? Sure, you blew a chopper up, but by sparking your claws against dirt? I am sighing at you.
And really, a Deadpool spin-off? I can see the title now: Elektra 2: Deadpool Boogaloo.
To: J.J. Abrams
Re: Your awesome Star Trek film
I had my doubts about you. Your track record with me on television is Scott - 5, You - Suck. This film, however, has redeemed you for me. Thank you for knowing when to say when, and when to say “Give McCoy another syringe.”
To: Miami Vice
Re: My coma
I received your second season on DVD this week and could scarcely wait to hold you in my arms again. I was effectively in a Miami Vice coma yesterday and, like any good coma, I came away refreshed if somewhat disoriented. Your second season rings more true (in a cop fairyland sort of way), and I love your palette of pink and sky blue on everything from drug dealers’ curtains to Miles Davis. Paint me sick with your neon ways, you Floridian whore…I’ll not stave off your love.
To: Prince
Re: Guitar Hero
Sir,
While I commend your desire for music appreciation in children, you should be aware that by denying the makers of Guitar Hero the rights to create a game featuring the genius contained within your remarkable catalogue you have proven that you are sorely out of touch with the times and, if I may be so base, counter-intuitive.
I, too, would love to see children “actually learn how to play guitar” as you put it. By the same token, I think even you would acknowledge that an appreciation for music must lead the charge through such scholarship. No one desires to learn painting and then learns to like art. Reported widely is the rise in the sale of real musical instruments in the last few years. And why is that? Because of the palette-spreading, appetite whetting of games like GH and Rock Band. It certainly isn’t because of a dying music industry that continues to promote pabulum against all reason, and it most certainly isn’t due to uber-virtuous The Rainbow Children.
I know you don’t need the money. Such an argument is beneath the both of us, and I have spent enough on your music to buy at least two pairs of the custom-made, purple suede steel-heeled boots residing in your closet. This is about principle – and music, of course - and the religion you have built-up around the marriage of the two that only you worship.
I have played Guitar Hero with the youthful, ghetto miscreants at my local library. I always let them pick the songs. They love playing old Black Sabbath and Ramones songs. These kids’ parents don’t even know some of these songs, and here is a generation that may very well keep those songs alive well into another generation thanks to the advent of a video game. And we’re not talking “might”; we’re talking people getting their kids guitars for Kwanzaa (or at the very least making them out of broomstick handles and such. Imani and Nia may very well get some of them through a guitar lesson some day after that).
By effectively punishing people into learning how to play a real guitar by holding back on the wealth you possess you are being counter-productive to the very goal you suggest should be in place.
And hey: maybe I wanted to be Wendy and not you. Now we’ll never know and both of our lives are sorrier for it.
Good day, sir.
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March 9th, 2009
08:32 pm - MEME: And then it hit me...
...I've written over a hundred songs. I'll use myself!
MEME: Using only song titles from one artist, cleverly answer these questions.
Artist: Me as composer under various pseudonyms
1. Are you male or female: "Coffeehouse Bachelor" - breath
2. Describe yourself: "Moroccan Casanova" - Sayso Madrid
3. How do you feel about yourself: "It Will Be Alright" - Tiki Cocoa
4. Describe your ex boyfriend/girlfriend: "She Loves Me So Much She Can't See Me" - Tiki Cocoa & "Kissing Andromeda" - Scott Woods
5. Describe your current boy/girl situation: "Domestics" - Diva Baby
6. Describe your current location: "Coming Home" - Tiki Cocoa
7. Desribe where you want to be: "Sunshine in the Rain" - Black Air Poets
8. Your best friend is: "Sub-Zero (You Should Want Me Now)" - Black Air Poets
9. Your favorite color is: "Coffee Cloud, Mocha Rain" - Ispee Luscious
10. You know that: "I Will Miss You Forever" - Ispee Luscious
11. What’s the weather like: "Ocean in the Trees" - breath
12. If your life were a television show what would it be called?: "The Comforter Veldt" - Tiki Cocoa
13. What is life to you: "Happenstance" - Donielle Monique
14. What is the best advice you have to give: "How To Get Laid" - Chocolate Karate
15. If you could change your name what would you change it to: "Einstein's Socks" - Ein Stuck
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