Yap Yap, Bang Bang

I'm trying to decide whether James Joseph Cialella is a crusader with a poorly developed sense of scope or a complete criminal idiot. It may be a bit of both.

Cialella was attending a Christmas day showing of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" when the family in front of him started talking. He argued with them, threw popcorn (much further than I would ever go, in reality) and then, after a period of escalation, approached the father of the family and shot him in the arm.

I'm of two minds on this. Part of me figures it was just a matter of time before the casual, psychic violence of the movie theater turned into actually puncture wounds. I've been involved in a few altercations where that peculiar sort of unreasonable rage takes over, and the punishment you want dolled out really does not fit the crime of being obnoxious in a movie theater. I've wanted folks to burn alive for throwing candy at me, in other words.

But the other part accepts the fact that when you go to a movie, you are there for a communal experience and every community has its fair share of idiots, loudmouths and young people who couldn't sit still if you dangled free college tuition in front of them. I've come to sort of accept this because it no longer depends on the subject matter of the movie. I've had to tell people to calm down during Oscar bait, been scolded for cheering Sam Jackson during "Snakes on a Plain," had to tell adults to quit kicking my seat during animated children's fare and had candy thrown at me during "Singing in the Rain." People are rude everywhere you go and if you go to a movie theater, you must, MUST expect rude behavior. A movie theater is not a santuary, it's a place where people congregate. It's why I haven't been to a movie in two months and when go, gravitate toward the screenings when no one will be around.

Still, there's a sick sort of schadenfreudeistic thrill out of reading a story when a theater goer actually capped a motherfucker for talking during a movie. That's why the story (as of 1:44 p.m. on Saturday, Dec. 27) sits on the top of CNN.com. It's the story they find the most imporant out of all the things happening in the world right now.

I don't find it odd that CNN gave it this much weight, as it seems most people have their awful movie theater experiences list. That's sort of sad, but if the violence keeps escalating, I'm either going to have to go to more movies or fewer of them, depending on what sort of thing I want to see.

Christmas Downer

You know, I may not have a lot of money or powerful friends or great achievements or I might not be "good" at anything in particular, but I do have this.


Some days, that's enough.

Dumb Doesn't Take A Holiday

I'm not a journalist anymore, but damn it if this reporter from WBIR in Tennessee didn't perfectly capture a perfect moment in time during a report. Here's the story.

(CNN) -- A wall holding back 80 acres of sludge from a coal plant in central Tennessee broke this week, spilling more than 500 million gallons of waste into the surrounding area.The sludge, a byproduct of ash from coal combustion, was contained at a retention site at the Tennessee Valley TVA spokesman Gil Francis told CNN that up to 400 acres of land had been coated by the sludge, a bigger area than the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Tragic and awful and all that, but...wait for it...the reporter finds a woman directly effected by the sludge dump and drops this amazing little gem:

Some of the goop spilled into the tributary, but preliminary water quality tests show that the drinking water at a nearby treatment plant meets standards.
"I don't want to drink it. It doesn't look healthy to me," Jody Miles, who fishes in the Clinch River, told CNN affiliate WBIR. "Do you reckon they can bring all this life back that's going to die from all this mess?"

Pardon my directness, but no shit you don't want to drink it, it's ashen sludge you idiot. The rest of the ashen sludge you regularly ingest looks a little healthier to you, does it? When you fish in sludge-filled lakes and lay down by crap-filled streams, that's perfectly normal?

But it's the second part that really makes me happy. Any sentence that starts with "Do you reckon" has only gold on the other side. To read the whole sentence, I can just picture Jody Miles, trying to come up with something profound and instead finding an inquiry into whether toxic, ashen sludge might kill fish tumbling out of her mouth. Do you suppose she felt the interview went well?

I think Mrs. Miles should be a standard at other events.

At the scene of a house fire:
"Do you reckon their furniture is burning up too?"

At the scene of a shooting
"Those are some nice shoes. It's a cryin' shame they got blood all over 'em."

Nice work, reporter!

Picture Monday - Hulk Love Chzbrgers

All right, brother. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "the Hulkster is selling out, putting his name on any kind of crappy product that comes down the line." We'll that's not the truth, brother.

You see, brother, these bulked up sliders are JUST what the Hulkster needs after a long day of training, sayin' my prayers and takin' my vitamins, brother. They knock out hunger better than my BIG LEG DROP.

And I've got news for Mrs. Paul, Fit and Fancy, even the Jolly Green Giant...what are you gonna do when the salmonella from the Hulkster Cheeseburger drops on YOU?!

Christmas Toast

I got melancholy yesterday watching Iron Man.

Given the bright sense of fun infused into the middle two reels of Jon Favreau's ode to cool stuff, that's not a common response, but it is a common response to become reflective around the holidays. And I saw "Iron Man" with my little brother, a kid named Jordan who had been part of my life for more than five years.

Every week or so, the wife and I met with Jordan and did all sort of activities I'm sure an 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15-year-old boy found somewhat dull, but the kid endured and I think eventually got something out of us hanging around. Since the match was through Big Brothers/Big Sisters, they tell you "you've made a difference in this child's life." I don't know. A "difference" is such a nebulous term. Still, for better or worse (probably for better, to be fair) the kid was a part of my life for a good chunk.

When "Iron Man" came out, my favorite moment with Jordan came when Tony Stark drove his hot rod car to a private air hanger. The license plate said "STARK3" to which Jordan informs me "that means he's got at least two more" with this great sense of kidly awe in his voice. To not only have one hot rod, but three, that was a dream that kicked the ass of other dreams.

Then, shortly after we saw the flick, he moved. As is common with these matches, there wasn't a lot of warning and bugger all we could do. We didn't get to say good bye, it happened so abruptly. And poof, a five-year fixture in my life was now gone. Hence, the melancholy.

To put that in the parlance of the holiday, it highlighted for me how right now is the time we appreciate being around each other. We like getting stuff and buying stuff, we like eating and traveling, we like the pictures and the sweets, but being around each other when all this good stuff happens, that's something that should make one smile and tear up at the same time. It's special, even if you can set your calendar by it.

So onto the toast:

I am so happy you are in my life
Being around you makes me a better person
Though I am not great at articulating it
Being together keeps me alive
It keeps me moving forward
In the end, it's what I have that matters

Thank you so much
Because when you're gone I will miss you
And though the end can come at any time and in any form
What you've given me is already irreplaceable

To happiness
To joy
To prosperity and safety
But most importantly to us being together
And the love that means

Merry Christmas.

Why is it...

...you only know what you want for Christmas when it's too late to ask for it?

Picture Monday: Where ya been?

Oh, you know, here and there. Gondor mainly.

I'll spare you the "I'm returning to blogging" post and say it's been a real interesting month or two. There was the Alaskan trip, icebergs and all, that was flat out legendary. It was hard not to hum the LOTR theme while sailing around mountains like this, for some reason.

There's more keeping me busy these days, but the less I write the more I dread completely sucking at it. And, there's a lot going on, so expect more pretty pretty pictures on Monday.

Bad Horse...sort of

I thought it was cute beyond all rationality.

Voyerism at its Best

I'm not one to pass along sites a la Buzzfeed (hey, go to Buzzfeed.com!) but on that site I came across this little gem: http://hntgl.com/

The premise of the site, which is an acronym "How Not to Get Laid" is to serve as a message board for stories of sexual humiliation and botched courtship. It's an easy thing to click on but once you get into the guts of the thing, I found some of the stories both sad and sort of brilliant. It's also, once you get into it, a dark subject presented in a light way.

Anyways, I thought I'd pass it along.

Why I Haven't Been Posting A Lot

I'm currently teaching two college classes, which is beyond bizarre given the fact I don't have much of a mind on me. I'm working on it, but I was always the guy who knew a little about a lot instead of a lot about a little, which is sort of what they look for in academia. I'm teaching a journalism class and an intro to film studies class at two different local colleges in this area.

It takes some time, so blogging suffers. At the same time, I think teaching an adult set is something I'm really kind of falling for. Why you ask?

1. It's an ego trip to be the guy who knows the most about a particular subject in the room.
2. It's an environment ripe for experimentation. I consider it a challenge and a mission to keep students from nodding off. So far, so good thanks to a mix of media, movie clips, the occasional curse word, personal stories and an animated teaching presence.
3. The pay and the hours spent make this a pretty kick-ass part time job.
4. Teaching is, in some respect, is the act of transferring enthusiasm and knowledge. In my short time I find the two to be different but equally important.

It's also cool to tell people you're a professor. There's something to that.

An Appeal To Stewart Shepherd

To: Mr. Stewart Shepherd
Focus on the Family

From: Norman 5875
Lapsed and Failing Christian

Mr. Stewart,

A few weeks ago I happened to catch your video, via the "mainstream media," where you asked your viewers, in a playful way, to pray for rain over Denver the night Barack Obama accepts the Democratic nomination for President. I understand, though do not respect, the idea that you intended this as a joke. Needless to say, I didn't find it funny.

But, in doing research for this blog I found your rebuttal video to the "mainstream media," where you read from the "knee-jerk Liberal dictionary" or some such, quoted Sean Hannity about Keith Olbermann's ratings (what's his obsession with that? It's not healthy) and basically made a tongue-in-cheek apology for making a joke that wasn't very funny. Or, as I detected, further made fun of those who don't think like you by implying they're too full of hatred, blinded by ideology or stupid to understand your extremely well put together and funny joke.

I'm pretty sure I hate you.

Let's back up, since that was a little strong and you are a man of God, which probably entitles you to a bit of leeway. See, I was shaped and molded by many "Men of God," and found a large majority of them to be true followers of Jesus Christ - forthright, honest, fair and compassionate. Very few of them were snarky, even fewer of them out and out hated and if they did so, they did it on the inside where it was dealt with spiritually. I presume you've undergone most of the same training, read some of the same books and studied the Bible in the same ways as most of these men and I wonder where the disconnect comes in. You see, the men who shaped me were influential and caring and drove me closer to God, or so I felt. When I watch you and your sarcastic, partisan, self-centered comments, it makes me want to burn down a church.

I don't think you realize you have that effect. I truly believe you have good intentions, or did at one point. I'm sure you talk big about love (truthfully, I don't know that much about you). But here's what I do know - love is always about sacrifice, and Christianity has the biggest, most gaudy example of this in the known universe in the form of Jesus Christ. When you love, you often overlook, care, reach out, embrace and sometimes hold your nose or tongue to make love possible. What you're doing, Mr. Shepherd, is calling me an asshole.

See, I'm voting for Barack Obama because I believe he's the better man for the job. I believe he's smarter, more capable of mobilizing the public and genuinely believes in people. He served in lower class communities for years - there's that pesky sacrifice thing coming up again. I like the guy, even though I've never met him. And you made a joke about God pouring "Old Testament" rain on the guy. Let's say you were really not joking and wanted this prayer chain to form and for God to hear and disrupt Obama's speech. That's pretty terrible in my book because you're using God, overtly and without wiggle room, to advance a political agenda and that makes me want to cry for the state of the faith in which I was raised. But, let's say you were joking and just have no ear for comedy. The implication then is you'd joke about God's overt action into politics. Joking about God usually isn't smiled upon too much by you folk. Ask Kevin Smith. That makes you a hypocrite, pretty much.

But then, the coup de grace - your response video where you overtly mock anyone who called you on your shit for either a) being a partisan right down to the cross around your neck or b) not being funny while making fun of God. By pulling out that "funny" Liberal handbook or through any of the other ham handed jokes you attempted, you called me an asshole. And I don't like to be called an asshole. In fact, if I were called an asshole in church, I would leave that church, which is sort of what's happening.

See, when you people at Focus on the Family mix your politics and your religion love is never a bi-product. Hate comes out, intolerance comes out, stubbornness (which, our Bible tells us is not a sign of love) comes out, but not love or compassion or caring or anything like it, and it makes me want to go away from you. And while I find myself running away from you and what you stand for, I also find myself running away from everything you and your ilk are connected to, right down to the wafer placed on my tongue Sunday mornings. You and your people are not the only reason but you are part of the reason I feel myself losing my grip on what I thought God was and who he was to me. By calling me an asshole for voting for Obama, and implying that I will get wet while you are dry makes me so angry it breaks bonds that true Men of God spent decades creating. And I feel it happening and it makes me want to cry.

Even if you were funny, I'd find you sad. As it stands, you're not only a bad evangelist and bad Christian in terms of outreach (again, I don't know your soul) but you're a lousy fucking comedian and a political hack piece of shit in my opinion. And I'm not going to waste one prayer, however many I have left, on someone like you.

Blessings, douchbag.

Norman

Two Quick Videos

This first one is brilliant. That's the only real word for it.



This second one has many more words such as "ooooh," "ouch," "oh my gawd," "yowza" "that is so mean," "holy god" and "what the hell is wrong with you for promoting this sort of video."

Here ya go.

Maximus The Goat Boy

At this point in my life I feel like Bill Hicks and his comedy was one of the low level building blocks responsible for the man I've become. Every time I get really pissed off because others are being hurt, every time I tear something apart and go two or three steps too far, (mostly in my mind, never outside of it unfortunately), any time I'm really really drunk or overindulgent for the sake of the soul - that's Bill Hicks.

So to hear Russell Crowe is considering taking on the lead role in a Bill Hicks bio pic...I'm kind of sad and nervous. And curious.

Hick's story is amazing and if you don't know it, pick up "American Scream" by Cynthia True or the superb DVD simply called "Bill Hicks" put out a couple years back. The dude was unique and powerful but his story of comedy from an early age, rage from an early career, excess upon excess, spirituality upon spirituality, cancer upon pancreas and a departure well before the aliens came to pick us up is rife for adaptation, actually. I'm just firmly of the mindset that I don't want to fucking see it.

Would Crowe be good? Probably. I don't care. I've honestly never thought about a bio pic, never cast it in my head, never considered plunking down $8 to see the movie. And I'm not stupid, if they made it I'd see it. But the fact it will get made as Oscar bait makes me sad. Russell Crowe has Oscars and chops but there's not an actor alive I'd consider for the part. It's just never been an option.

Hicks means a lot to me and I would sacrifice body parts to listen to him do a set on the last 8 years. But his life and work was never a movie...never entertainment. That, and he never hit the mainstream because he never sacrificed his pure material. Don't believe me? Spend 7 minutes with the guy below.

I hope this doesn't happen. I won't be outraged or angry, just sad. Very sad.

The Body(ies)

I was lucky enough to be able to attend the "Bodies Uncovered" exhibit in Kansas City this weekend, and for those who don't know what "Bodies Uncovered" is, it has nothing to do with burlesque or stripping. To its possible detriment.

No, "Bodies Uncovered" is an exhibit that tours the world in which dozens of human bodies are dissected and preserved using a special polymer process that stops decay, preserves size and the illusion of moisture and allows for some seriously in depth looks at actual human bodies. Some people are skinned and kept in one piece, others are sectioned (in every way you can imagine) and others are used for organ specimens or other various exhibits.

I'm not squeamish, by and large, but I had heard some good questions raised about this exhibit...like where do you get your hands on more than 40 human bodies. Rumors swirled but it's mostly accepted that the bodies came from volunteers. I find that odd, because among other pieces on display there was a dead woman with a dead fetus inside her dead womb kept in one piece for my viewing and supposed enhancement of my appreciation for the human body. It makes one wonder.

Still, it's undeniable that by spending time with perfectly preserved human bodies I DID walk away with a better understanding of what's going on inside me. And a desire to never eat anything again. From a scientific viewpoint, I'd never seen the body as a whole and it truly is awesome how all these little bones and cartilage and veins work together to create something else, something bigger than the sum of its parts.

But, and this is a big but...EWWWW. And HOLY SHIT. And GLUPGT.

Example: There was a dude (and we knew it was a dude because he was anatomically correct..why wouldn't he be?) who was cut into around 10 sections vertically from face to back. Then a different dude diced vertically from side to side. Then, and this was the coup de grace, a dude cut into fillet Mignon-looking sections from toes to head which covered nearly 10 feet of display space, or as Ron Popiel would put it, "more than 9 feet of genuine diced human." It's amazing and it's educational but then you get to the section with the eyes and next thing you know this isn't "random diced guy" but "diced guy who had a mother and father and probably people who loved him." If he was there of his own free will, it doesn't make it any less disturbing for me. If he wasn't, I feel like I'm aiding a crime or at the very least an act of perversity.

But then there were pieces of incredible beauty. At one point, the veins and arteries in a human hand lay suspended in liquid - literally thousands of individual strands making something we all recognize at the end of our elbow. It was breathtaking.

So the question is "does something with scientific and possible artistic value yet undeniable controversy merit appreciation, further study or both?" I think it's both, with a healthy dose of EWWWW on my part. I believe we're even more than the some of our physiology, and whatever that might be weighed heavy on me as I saw the raw elements that make up humans. My head said "this is good and important" and whatever spirituality I have left was pulling back hard. Either way, it was worth stepping into the display. Very worth it.

Wiener Dog Blog: Ouchee

Hey Cole.

Whats.

My paw hurts.

What?

My paw. The thing I walk on. It hurts.

Oh.

It's why I yelped just now.

You just yelped just now?

Yes.

Why?

My paw hurts, you skinny bitch. I just told you that.

Is it because you had something to eat?

No. I have an ingrown claw.

Is that something you can eat?

No. It's the thing that comes out of your paw. You scratch with it.

It sounds like it's yummy.

It's sticking into my foot. The fat guy says I need to have something surgery tomorrow.

Surgery?

Yes. I think it's a yummy food. Maybe a doughnut or a bear claw.

See! I told you you could eat it.

I can't wait for my surgery tomorrow.

Can I come with you?

No. It's special for me. I get a surgery because I have an ingrown claw.

You're so lucky.

Maybe you can smell my breath when I come back.

I'm leaving. You're a jerk.

OK. I'm going to lick my paw for the next 7 hours until they take me to get my surgery.

I'm shaking my ass at you.

(slurp slurp slurp)

Updates to come.

Everybody Takes A Hit

I'm not much of a debater (certainly not a master...debator...) but one of the biggest knock down drag out verbal altercations I was ever in involved the basic concepts of comedy. My friend was arguing that all comedy, no matter what it was, involved a certain level of schadenfreude. To put it another way, there wasn't a laugh to be had in this world that wasn't, at least in the abstract, at the expense of a person or object. I ran the list - knock knock jokes (the joke is on you for being surprised), George Carlin routines, especially his language stuff (the joke is often on those who use the language incorrectly) and many others. The only headway I made in the argument was puns because puns are "clever" comedy and don't really hurt anyone. I was then informed the pun is usually at the expense of a subject. Not always, but often.

I remembered that debate, which I lost, today when I read about the new movie "Tropic Thunder," and how groups who work with the developmentally disabled are complaining about a part of the film where Ben Stiller portrays a special needs person. They feel assaulted, which they have every right to feel. They want to organize protests, which they have every right to do. But as someone who has been laughed at and the butt of a great many jokes (deservedly so), I don't understand how this group doesn't realize that 1) they're picking a bad target at a bad time and 2) if they've ever laughed at anything, anytime, they're complicit in mocking. All we're talking about is a matter of degree.

First off, "Tropic Thunder" is a film with a lot of good buzz behind it and one white actor, Robert Downey Jr., portraying a black man. This movie, straight ahead, says "we're probably going to do some offensive stuff" which doesn't justify doing offensive stuff. When you make a statement as strong as putting a white man in blackface, you're either an idiot, a racist, or pretty damn sure you have something satirical to say. In this case writer-director-star Stiller is lampooning Hollywood conventions. In the case of Downey in blackface, it's an actor making a "transformation" into a different character, something ripe for lampooning. It's the same concept behind "Simple Jack," the character (played by Stiller) who is offending the developmentally disabled advocates.

Again, having something to lampoon doesn't quite equal intent - you can't say "President Bush is an idiot so I'm going to make an art exhibit simulating baby rape." In that case, the intent of your art would widely be misconstrued. But in the case of "Tropic Thunder" there's a long history of people playing developmentally disabled characters for the purpose of winning Oscars, and it's that convention being made fun of. As I understand it, he's not making fun of the developmentally disabled, he's making fun of people who profit by portraying them, which could be called a despicable practice.

Strangely, I also see exactly where the protest is coming from. Politically, if I supported a cause and saw a high level actor making fun of my cause, I might see it as a chance for some publicity. Or I might honestly be indignant and feel that "this is too much" without caring about the context. Again, this is fine. You have a right to ignore context and I have a right to see Tropic Thunder, as the artist intended, free of guilt because I disagree with your position.

Final idea - While Stiller is probably doing this parody in a good way, there's the fratboy mentality of calling someone a "retard" or making fun challenged folks in a mean way that I don't find acceptable. I don't think "Tropic Thunder" is part of this subculture which is truly treating the developmentally disabled in a despicable way. Then again, posters on the Internet are not easy to fight and a $100 million movie starring three recognizable actors is. Again, I understand it politically, I just don't agree with it.

On Fire!

I may not know much about stoner humor, but I know what I find funny.

For example, I know that the meandering, PHC soaked breakfast-after-the-action scene at the end of "Pineapple Express" went completely over my head, not eliciting one grin out of me. I also know that watching some poor projectionist try to beat out a fire in the projection booth with a rag before "Express" began was one of the funniest damn things I've seen in a long time.

Today is my birthday and by way of a present, my wife said "go catch a movie." I'm a fan of Judd Apatow in general and kinda sorta a fan of Seth Rogen, so "Pineapple Express" it was. Not to get too into a review, but the movie was fun and goofy with an uneven sense of action and characters that thought they were much more interesting than they were. Subplots went nowhere quickly and at the end, it was kind of a middling success. I'm not sorry I saw it, in other words, but I probably don't need to see it again.

When I got to the theater for my Sunday afternoon matinee, the theater was about 1/5 full. The designated start time came, the lights dimmed, the pre-movie show began and then promptly stopped. The lights came up and the 40 or so folks in the theater looked back to see what the hell. We were treated to the site of the projection room filling with smoke and a dude trying to put out the film stock, which was visibly on fire. It wasn't a big fire. It wasn't an "oh God we need to get out of here" fire. It was just enough to see the orange and just enough panic the poor dude in the booth.

I don't know if it was the way he was beating the film spooled out on the platter or what, but pretty much everyone started laughing. The dude in the booth gave us the "thumbs up" sign after the danger had passed and shortly thereafter we smelled the burning film stock. It smells like if someone had poured Kool-Aid into some sort of acid.

It took about 10 minutes for the movie to start, and even then the film was a little "streaky" with white light reaching to the top of every frame. No matter. It wasn't a bad flick and now I know what burning film smells like.

One more word on "Pineapple Express:" It has my favorite fight scene of the year consisting of three white guys destroying a house, beating each other and then apologizing for it. -Punch- I'm sorry dude. -smack- Oh, that might have been too much. It struck me funny, but not as funny as the rapid beating of a rag against burning film.

Vote for Me!

A couple days ago I posted a picture of a sign I found at a book sale and submitted it to Failblog.org, a fantastic little site.

Turns out they liked it enough to put it up for a vote. I'm on the top of the second page labeled "Science Fail."

You could go to www.failblog.org/vote and vote for me...if you wanted to...

Picture Monday: Butter Princess

Is it the subject or the media that makes this butter sculpture so...off? Since I've never met the subject, it's hard to say, but Ms. VanderKool's butter rendering had my stomach doing flippies when I first saw it. It's as if a David Lynch town came alive, held a state fair and carved Laura Palmer out of a buttery spread. -shudder-

What I found was Minnesotan's take great pride in their butter sculpture. When I was in Minneapolis I asked people about it and they all smiled and spoke in a manner which said "we're not ashamed of our ridiculous sculpture." Then I spoke to some Minnesota ex-patriots and they did the same thing.

Weird. On several levels.

The Last Witness

This is a story of a piece of furniture, a couch to be exact. It was multicolored, contained more than one stain and, at the end, had springs sticking straight out through the back and into the wall. That's how it found itself in my garage for a couple years, and at the dump this weekend.

Let's back up to the summer of my junior year of college. I meet this girl, much to the distress of the girl I was dating at the time. This girl was grown up at a time when I was not, and for some reason, interested in spending time with me. One night, I got a call from this girl telling me she wanted to talk to me at her house. I had never been to her house, and in a long walk to my car, during which I turned around three times, I eventually found my way to her duplex. And we sat on her couch.

We talked about our situation and how we wanted to be together. And after a while of pacing around her house, during which I turned around more times than I cared to count, I sat down on the couch and kissed her. One of my favorite topics when I write (especially the short ficlets I've talked about on this blog) is the moment when people get together. I find that exercise fascinating, and while I might come off like a cheap romance writer, I think the dynamics of people taking a step into something, especially if they've known it's coming for a long time, is ripe with possibility. I also really like the topic because I suck so bad at that moment. I don't have one witty, interesting or good story about that moment, except on that couch. Please forgive me, but I'm going to keep it private as the girl I kissed on that couch is now my wife of 8 years.

There's much more to that story that I also don't care to discuss, but I soon got to know that couch very well. I remember one Saturday a couple months after we'd gotten together, we woke up at noon, ordered pizza and sat around watching a Daria marathon on MTV until dinner time when we decided maybe we should get out of the house. Then we didn't.

That couch survived a few trips - from college to the trailer we moved in when first married, to the new house we now live in, but the spring sticking out of the back and scratching the wall did it in and it sat in the garage for a good two years. Mice got into it and by the time we cleaned the garage this weekend in a 10-hour whirlwind of trips to the dump, grisly discoveries involving vermin and heavy lifting which left vertebra in places vertebra should not be, it was out of the garage and in the dump.

The couch was the second heaviest thing we moved, and I managed to get it end over end into a pile of debris. I hadn't given what that couch had meant to me a second thought until, as we drove away, my wife said simply "bye old friend," to the couch.

Oh yeah. That couch is where my family started.

And now its in the dump, replaced by a formerly white couch where my dogs have shredded one part of one cushion and where stains from markers and squash baby food will never come out. It's not a matter of needing to move on, it's a matter of remembering a place where you used to be, acknowledging it and feeling the weight of time at bit. It feels like an eternity ago and yesterday. The emotions are still vivid as hell - the fear, the excitement, the fear, the arousal, the fear, the spinning of the head, the fear.

That couch was where my family started.

Bye, old friend.

My Own Fail Find

I sent this to my new favorite site, failblog.org, and haven't heard back from the yet. I find it pretty funny.

The funny thing about this was I can totally see why this odd label was created. I spotted this at a book sale a couple weeks back, where surplus books from libraries are gathered in one place for folks to ravage. I found a 90 page pulp novel where Sherlock Holmes teams up with Tarzan.

But a few of the labels contained literary brick a brack (in fact, the entire thing seemed as if it were organized by someone with a cursory grasp on the language and the Dewey Decimal System) that was somewhat hard to label, hence the UFOs lumped in with the sciences. It's still funny,though.

Pretty Pretty

At the Minnesota Institute of Science, they had an exhibit on light and color which featured a bunch of colored strings hanging in a shadowy space. It's not a hard thing to make a pretty picture out of.

It's pretty enough, I think, to earn a limerick in its honor:

Oh tightly wound pieces of string

With colors that jump, pop and sing

The kids come and look

Instead of reading a book

And I'm not sure they learn anything.

Thank you.

My Ficlet Evolution

I know some of you don't go to Ficlets a lot, but it's a cool site full of pretty cool folks. The premise is people show up and write stories of an amazingly restrictive lenght, I think just over 1,000 key strokes. It's confining yet liberating at the same time.

Anyways, tonight inspiration hit and I wrote a three part story I was kind of proud of. Here it is without the pain of linking over to Ficlets.com. Which you should.

Monkey Versus Robot Part 1

They say monkeys have no memories. They are wrong.

Monkey remembered the sound his mother made as the robot drug her off into the jungle 8 years ago. Her eyes pleaded with him to run, while expressing the fear of the pain that was to come. She knew her fur would soon be ripped from her hide. The Monkey never forgot that sound, never forgot that look.

He used that look to become stronger and faster than any other monkey. He had that look in his mind when he destroyed BoBo, breaking his skull open with a rock to become the leader of their tribe. The look inspired him to swing further in search of the infernal machine that haunted his dreams.

And at last, he had found the machine alone and unmoving in the jungle. None of The Monkey’s tribe had been strong enough to follow. It was he alone that would fight. He alone that would destroy.

He was strong, broad chested and fast. He could kill the machine.

His battle cry was long and shrill. The robot stirred. The Monkey’s life had built to this moment.

Monkey Versus Robot Part 2

They say robots have no memories. They are wrong.

The robot remembered each and every monkey crushed by his mechanical hands. He remembered their cries as he strangled them, remembered their desperate attemps to claw and scratch. He remembered their faces, stored deep in his memory banks and kept for further replay.

Ever since a lightning strike had given him a semblance of awareness, the robot hated monkeys. They were filthy, they were unpredictable, they threw their own poo at the robot. They needed to be destroyed.

The robot worked methodically, clearing monkeys from the north, then the south. He would kill those who attacked quickly, drag the women off for a slower death and then return for children not smart enough to run. One kill had been particularly memorable, as a child had watched the robot pull the clawing mother into the underbrush.

All scans indicated that monkey had returned and wanted to fight. It mattered little to the robot. If you have killed one monkey, you’ve killed them all.

Monkey Versus Robot Part 3

After 10 minute of battle, both The Monkey and The Robot were facing defeat.

The Monkey’s left paw was smashed and unusable, making escape through vines impossible. His left leg gushed blood from a perfectly circular wound in his lower thigh. His left cheek featured a bruise with an alarming radius, but he felt strong and capable.

The Robot was equally damaged, his right arm gone as The Monkey had ripped it off and beaten him with it. The Robot had not anticipated that The Monkey would use weapons, and had been ill prepared. Still, he had landed some crushing blows to The Monkey, and his power level remained high.

As the two rushed at each other again, The Monkey bellowing, The Robot silent, a strange but unmistakable sound in the underbrush struck fear into the hearts of the two warriors. They looked skyward, as if willing the battle to go a different way.

But neither warrior, no matter how skilled or bent on revenge or thirsty for blood or oil, was any match for the giant right foot of Godzilla.

Why I'm Not Jesus

In church today, the focus was on the story in the gospel where Jesus tells his disciples the parable of the wheat and the weeds. Jesus said (and I'm paraphrasing):

"Wheat is growing some place, yeah, and there are weeds growing too. A slave, which isn't cool but a reality at this day and time, tells his master, 'master, look at all these weeds. You wants me to pull them?' And the master says 'no, don't do that because it will hurt the wheat. We'll wait until harvest and then burn the weeds and put the wheat in the barn. Cool?' And the slave said 'whatever you say, my agricultural overlord.'"

Again, I'm paraphrasing. But then the Bible drops this fun little nugget, and this is actual scripture.

"The disciples asked Jesus to explain the parable. And Jesus said to them 'what, are you fucking stupid?'

Ok, that last part was not scripture, but it's what was going through my head in neon letters. The parable is about as clear cut as could possibly be - evil and good will grow together until God's divine judgement. Jesus couldn't have been any more clear unless he had said "evil and good will grow together until God's divine judgement" and then what would he say to the crowd for the next hour?

It's like if I were to tell a story today about a chicken who, after watching a fire destroy the farm's barn, started evesdropping on other chickens to make sure they wouldn't burn down anything else. Then that chicken was hated by about every other animal on the farm and left in disgrace for another ranch in Midland, Texas. What might I be talking about?

I guess we'll never know the context and whether or not the disciples had never been exposed to the idea of a parable or if they were oggling some of the hot women in the audience (or men. If you've got 12 guys following Jesus chances are good one is gay). But either way, it struck me as delightfully thick in a book about illumination.

My Thoughts on The Dark Knight

Writing a review of "The Dark Knight" is somewhat pointless given the glowing hyperbole flowing from the keyboards of nearly every movie critic on the planet. Instead, a mere 25 minutes after walking out of the theater, I have a few thoughts on the film.

On the relationship to "Batman Begins" - The flick sort of dispenses with the first film early on. The Scarecrow is locked up in the first 10 minutes, the Batman As Ninja thing is all but gone and very little is referred to. With a few tweaks this could very well have been the first film in the Batman reboot, but this divorce from the first movie doesn't hurt the film as a whole.

On Heath Ledger's Joker - Well, everything you've heard is true. It's a great performance. It's one of those rare performances where writer, director and actor all "get" what's going on and move in the same direction. It's the same sort of thing we saw with Robert Downey Jr. playing Tony Stark in Iron Man, all pistons fire and the character flies off the screen. I fell officially in love with the character the second time he told the story about how he got his facial scars, and the movie so underplayed this pivotal point in the character's psyche that it was hard not to love. He's flushed out, fully explored but not inaccessible and Ledger is pitch perfect in this film. The Joker was truly frightening and this version perpetrated my favorite magic trick, probably ever filmed.

On the film's flaws - Christopher Nolan still can't stage a coherent action sequence to save his life and Batman continues to swallow actors whole. It's not that the acting is bad (it's not), but what the character calls for is so empty, which is kind of the point, that you can lose an actor inside it. If it wasn't for his almost annoying snarl, Christian Bale would have been swallowed up. The movie also didn't "click" in a few places, meaning while the acting all movies in the same direction all the plot points do not. Some pieces of the movie feel random. It's not a perfect film by any means.

On social relevance - However, what "The Dark Knight" does better than any other movie of its post 9/11 brethren is create relevant social allegory and tie it into the story as a whole. The Joker is a terrorist, plain and simple, though a genius terrorist in white face. The idea of symbols and their relevance, what revenge does to "nobility" and what fear can do to bring out the good in people - it's all relevant without slapping you in the face, which is a tall order for a comic book movie. Most effective is what happens when you cross lines, and how you can't go back.

On guts - Oh how people die in this film. Major people. People whose names are above the title. I turned to my wife about 2/3 of the way through the movie and said "The Joker's going to win, isn't he?" and in a big way he does. That's not so much as a spoiler as it is a conversation after the film. This movie goes directions that would scare major studios out of their $3,000 suits. The film's biggest praise, aside from the acting, need to go to the Nolan brothers and David Goyer for pushing these ideas and characters in directions they normally could not go. As a result, this flick plays more like a crime thriller than a superhero movie, and it's unique in that way.

On Aaron Eckhardt - This movie would not work without Aaron Eckhard as Harvey Dent. It just would not. It's easily a roll that plays strongly on his natural acting strengths, and he is the rock in which "The Dark Knight" builds its church. Ledger is flashy and fun and scary, Eckhard is absolutely necessary.

In Conclusion - Great stuff. "I'm not crazy, I'm just ahead of the curve," is my new favorite saying. The scene with Tim "Tiny" Lister actually moved me. I was tense and enthralled through the entire thing. Great stuff.

Pictures!

I figured out how to get the pictures off my phone, so I'll be posting a bunch of them in the next few days.

For starters, here's my dog snuggling up to a beer bottle. If that's not high comedy, I don't know what is.

Books, for Good Or Bad

The family and I attended a mass book sale this weekend, and ended up walking away with a shopping bag full of kids books for basically the price of hauling them away. It's splendid, to have the freedom to buy books you otherwise wouldn't give a second glance to, but it's a pleasure that's not without its risks.

Going through the stack this evening, the oldest kid hands me a book. Being four and unable to read (though she's darn close. We can't spell things around her anymore without her getting wise), she plops in my lap and hands me a book. It's called "My World Turned Upside Down" and had a kid hanging from a jungle gym on the cover. OK. I open the page and read "After my father died, I felt like my world had been turned upside down."

Next.

Luckily, she wasn't too hot on the idea, so we went with a book called "Christmas in July." Pretty safe, right? I thought so too until page 5, where Santa lost his pants and ended up a beggar on the street, begging for pants. Santa versus homelessness, vagrancy and public indecency!

Next.

Then we went to a book called "Herman the Worm" based on the popular camp song. As many of you will recall, when Herman gets bigger you ask, in a loud voice (this is key), "Herman, Baby, what happened?" But you really yell it. She caught onto that pretty fast. Then he burps and gets smaller. The kid asked me if that meant he threw up, then proceeded to make gagging noises up until dinner time.

Next.

Finally we landed on The Emperor's New Clothes. Yes, public nudity was involved but I figured it was a pretty good story. I like the lesson. She wasn't' interested.

Next time I'm reading the books before throwing them in a bag.

An Unmovable Force?

I've been saving this story for a few weeks, thinking that somehow it would come full circle. Today it did.

I was in Minneapolis a few weeks ago and had the chance to catch the "Star Wars" exhibit at the Minnesota Science Museum. Basically there were a bunch of props from the movie (the original droids, Darth Vader's mask, etc.) some retrospectives and other attractions. It was an extra $8 past the admission, plus a 45-minute wait.

A bit of background: I've spent a good 20 years of my life in the firm spell of George Lucas' "Star Wars" movies. I saw Jedi 7 times when I was 7 (see how that worked), I watched the OT whenever I was sick during grade school and in college I ate Taco Bell until I puked collecting those damn disks that came with their value meals containing characters from "The Phantom Menace." Even after that turd was deposited (and yes, you could dig up my apologetic review in the pages of the Kearney Hub if you MUST, but I've since come to see the light), I made it to a midnight screening for each of the new trilogy. I might still defend "Revenge of the Sith" while damning the entire new trilogy if you get a beer or two in me. Then there's the LEGO Star Wars games, the Little People Millenium Falcon set...I own a shirt or two. If 1 is someone who's seen the movies and forgotten them and 10 is that guy in Michigan who changed his name to Obi-Wan Kenobi, I'm about a 3 or 4.

But somewhere along the line I made a decision: George Lucas had enough of my money. I think it was the glut of interviews I've read where he basically shows no regard for the people who love his property. His faux apathy borderlines on disgust as far as I can tell. It was cemented this year when he did an interview for the latest and lamest Indiana Jones movie, and said (and I'm paraphrasing), "people are going to hate it no matter what it is. It's only a movie!"

No long Internet rant needed. He just doesn't get my money anymore.

And, the Science Institute was my first real test: See the C3-PO used in one of my favorite movies of all time or save 8 bucks, $45 minutes and see the rest of the museum. The decision was surprisingly easy. Mr. Lucas didn't get any more of my money.

But the decision sort of bothered me because I hadn't drawn clear distinctions in my mind. Was Lucas simply banned from my wallet for being a hack who wasn't able to pull off a three movie ark while at the same time disrespecting those who made him famous, or was Star Wars dead to me on a whole? If Star Wars was dead, what about all that time we'd spent together? What about all the midnight screenings, the late night quotations, the times I was comforted when sick by the Imperial March? What about puberty being explained to me in terms of Luke Skywalker's maturation process or that time my girlfriend was over and we watched "The Empire Strikes Back" and...

No, it couldn't be "dead," could it? I decided to find out.

The best way to do this, I figured, was to filter out all the stuff that killed Star Wars for many movie goers, namely the shitty dialogue. The best way to do this, I've found, is to play this amazing little special feature that came with the soundtrack to "Revenge of the Sith." Basically its a series of 20 or so music videos covering the major themes of Star Wars (the Republic, the Empire, the Rebels, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, etc.) with visuals from the movies, dialogue nowhere to be found and John Williams beautiful theme heavy score playing over the top. I decided to give it a spin when I was jogging to see if I felt anything.

At the end of the 37 minutes and 24 seconds (4 miles on a speed of 6.4 miles per hour), I can say my worst fears on the subject were not realized. In fact, I think things are OK. I don't feel nothing when confronted with Star Wars imagery and a swelling score (on a different note, I'm kind of a bitch when it comes to a swelling score. It can make totally hollow or unearned emotion connect with me in some odd way. See the end of Dragonheart and tell me the score doesn't make that thing work. Anyway) but I don't feel great either. Any time the New Trilogy showed up, there was considerably less emotion. During a couple of scenes replayed to music, it seemed I had forgotten scenes from the New Trilogy. "Oh yeah," I said to myself. "There was a big Jedi battle at the end of "Attack of the Clones." The neural dent it made must have been very small.

But, Han Solo, Princess Leah and Luke Skywalker still do it for me, at least on a small emotional scale. I'm not saying Star Wars was ever like The Elephent Man in terms of emotional bombs, but what can I say? I have a history with those movies and I think that history is keeping me a fan for the time being. I'm not going to check out the new "Star Wars" movie coming out this summer (coincidentally, I felt nothing but dread at the LucasFilms logo that used to invoke such unabashed joy), and I have no plans to purchase anything Star Wars stuff for a while, but it's nice to know that initial connection is still there.

At least for now.

Picture Monday: MY WRATH IS TOTAL!!!

Again, I go back to the idea of who designs, prepares and manufactures pieces like this? I don't know, but if anyone can explain to my why this is aesthetically appealing (or, for that matter, why those "tree nymph" faces you can put on a tree are aesthetically appealing) please let me know.

Other than that, does this give off a wrathful feeling to anyone else?

A Cinematic Misunderstanding

A couple statistics from the "Get Smart" movie I finally got around to seeing this afternoon.

Number of times Steve Carell directly quotes Don Adams: 4

Number of times Anne Hathaway shows her underwear: 3

Number of lines Terrence Stamp has: 20 or so

Number of lines deserving an actor of Terrence Stamp's stature: 0

Number of kicks/slaps/paintball pellets to the nuts: 5

Number of staples to the head: 2

Number of fat jokes: Lost count

and finally...

Number of people Steve Carell kills: 5

Huh? Yeah. Steve Carrell guns down four people and sets another character on fire before a train hits him. Is it just me, or is this a major misunderstanding of the basic premise of the movie?

No one says action and comedy is easy, and all in all "Get Smart" was a decently entertaining if extremely light weight piece of summer fare. But the first time Maxwell Smart draws his gun and SHOOTS A GUY, I was a little shocked. I didn't know this movie was prepared to go that far, but that's the thing - it's not. It doesn't push any spy conventions, doesn't go anywhere unexpected or do anything to threaten the goofy aesthetic except have Steve Carrell casually gun down some bad guys. Given he spends the first fourth of the movie trying to get his superiors to understand "bad is what they do, not who they are" concerning their enemies, the movie betrays itself with a hero murdering in the line of duty.

It makes me think that audiences don't give that sort of thing a second thought.

Rotten Wish Fulfillment

I'm about 20 minutes out from seeing the movie "Wanted" and can't get a certain bitter taste out of my mouth.

A word about the movie: As a brain dead piece of summer entertainment, you could do a lot worse. The action "kicks ass" as it were, completely with flipping cars, bullets that travel in a round pattern and Morgan Freeman as an assassin. James McAvoy proves an extremely capable lead and Angelina Jolie is monosyllabic and shows her butt (I'd prefer she had more dialogue and her butt more screen time, frankly). Like I said, you could do worse.

But there was an element to the film that, the more I think about it, I find flat out despicable. The movie opens with a quick introduction to the life of Wesley Gibson (McAvoy), an office droan whose boss yells at him, whose girlfriend cheats on him with his best friend and who thinks about how he can't "feel anything" all the time. He calls himself a loser, a nothing, a nobody. Then he's recruited by a fraternity of assassins (except for Jolie who cannot be in a frat, can she?) and begins extensive assassin training and begins shooting a bunch of people.

Wesley is involved in an initial shoot out before he decides to leave his life as an office droan and undertake killing people in the name of a magic loom that spits the names of people who need to be killed "in the name of fate" in binary code (that's the plot, I swear to God). After the shoot out he goes back to his office and feels "different." His vulgar boss, whose girth is played for laughs, pushes him to the breaking point where he swears at her and informs her everyone would feel sorry for her if only she were nicer to them. Instead they hate her. His best friend, the one who's boning Wesley's girlfriend, goes in for a high five only to be smashed in the face with Wes's keyboard. Letters fly off the keyboard and spell "Fuck You" with one of the man's tooth substituting for the second "u." Attention to detail and all that.

In the context of the movie as a hypstylized fantasy about shooting people, it's completely in line with the rest of the movie. Things started to go south for me when folks in the crowd started to cheer the in-office violence. A couple people whooped. The dude in front of me (the one with his baseball cap on backward) stood up and pumped his fist like his inner monologue had FINALLY been expressed in celluloid, like the director had reached into his soul and expressed his deepest longing.

I have to admit, I grinned. Like I said, in context it fits in a movie where you flip your car in order to shoot a guy through his sunroof or where a curved bullet goes in a circle and kills half a dozen people on its flight. But no one cheered any of those scened. They cheered the use of violence to deal with something they could relate to (betrayal, office boredom, a feeling of powerlessness).

I was ready to let it go until the last scene in the movie where Wesley provides a voice over as a bullet flies an impossible distance through his best friend's energy drink can, through the hole in his boss's doughnut and into the head of the big bad guy. He says "this is me taking control of my destiny. What the fuck have you done lately?"

Well, I haven't saved the world from an evil syndicate of killers, but I've resisted the urge to punch people I disagree with on a fairly regular basis, so lets call it a wash.

Here's my problem - people responded to fixing a situation they relate to with violence instead of any of the other guilty pleasures in the movie. I remember when I saw "Knocked Up" people cheered when Seth Rogan finally stood up to Leslie Mann's nosy sister, who was trying to force him out of the delivery room. That was an instance where a man took control of a situation and firmly (but with great vulgarity) asserted himself. He didn't knock her teeth out. I love that scene in the flick and I clapped when I first saw it in the theater. I was the only one. Maybe if he's punched her in the boob...

The thing is we WANT to be violent. It's in our DNA to resolve things by hitting them, and it's why society has created laws saying if you do that, you go to jail. That's something we've always contended with. But I've noticed this sort of post Office Space hatred for the day to day work we all do that is rooted both in entitlement and ego. If someone gives us shit over the course of our day, as happens to absolutely everybody, we've gone from fantasizing about destroying the copier to kicking some ass. It's on the Internet in major proportions. It's spoken aloud in bars after work. And now guys are standing up and cheering when it happens in our pop entertainment.

Part of it stems from ego but another part stems from the awful corporate cultures cultivated in this country. When it's made clear to you that you're either expendable or not appreciated you feel powerless and when you feel powerless you want revenge on those who have the power. That's as human as dwelling in houses.

But it's a shift toward violence as a solution in the name of sophistication that bothers me - it's the worker saying I'm brilliant and misunderstood and deserve to be treated like royalty and if not I reserve the right to fucking kill you. That's the mentality that manifested in that reaction to the first 20 minutes of "Wanted." It's ego to a massive degree, and if research and trends are holding true it's going to get worse before it gets better. I just hope, for the sake of keyboards and dentists everywhere, we have less hitting and more, I don't know, talking.

A Gem Uncovered

I ended up working just shy of 12 hours today, so as the fireworks pop basically right outside my window, I had no desire to go see them. My skin is crispy and my brain is fried and I wanted to veg on something decent but not too challenging. I picked "In Bruges," which I had wanted to see for a long time and never got around to.

What a fooking brilliant movie.

I use "fooking" because In Bruges is about an Englishman (Brendan Gleeson) and an Irishman (Colin Ferrell) who both kill people for a living and both affect accent so thick they darn near drown in them. After a hit goes horribly wrong they are sent to Bruge, a tourist enclave in Belgium and told to lay low. Gleeson loves it. Ferrell is too itchy to appreciate anything much less the quaint charms of an old city. Plots twist, women and dwarfs are involved and what was meant to be a casual movie watching experience turned into full throttle yelling at the screen.

In Bruges is absurdest to a high degree...maybe absurdest isn't the right word for the first two acts. How about gleefully strange. Example: Ferrell meets a drug dealer and they go out on a date. Just when things begin to get thematically heavy, the Irishman blurts out "oy, they're shooting midgets over there," or something like it. Turns out there's a movie set with a dwarf on it and it's his favorite thing in Bruges. Like everything else, it turns out to be essential to the plot.

Speaking of the plot, this sucker gets very twisty without ever once for a second betraying characters. I guess that's what's most enjoyable about the movie - the way it ties everything together but never strays from the characters it loves.

It's not often I come across a gem like this anymore, as my movie going has dropped off considerably in the past few years. Even though I'm fried and am not articulating it well, this movie is fantastic and worth the view. Maybe more than one.

He's a Good Guy. Congratulations.

So my sister Katie is getting married next year.

The news broke last week as I was driving back from Minneapolis where I had been at a conference. I was in the middle of a conversation about the philosophic mission of museums when my dad called and broke the news. To call me "taken aback" doesn't cover it. I was floored.

A little bit of background is necessary, so please indulge me. My sister and I are five years apart and sometimes it feels like a generation. I think she's agree that we're not overly close for a number of reasons - mainly me being a jerk for large parts of my teens. I never really "took her under my wing" so to speak, because I'm just now realizing I didn't have wings back then and am just now grown them. We never really fought, but never really shared, you know? I always got the feeling that if I weren't her brother, she wouldn't have hung out with me.

I'll site one example and move on - in Junior High I got the crap beat out of me a bit (just like a lot of people) and got bitter and hateful toward certain groups at a young age. At one point when I was ranting about something (I forget what) she cut me off with "when did you start hating people." It said "I'm sad for you" and "shut the hell up" all at once and she was exactly right. But that's kind of where we were.

But I think things have changed as we've both gotten out on our own. I think we like each other. I like her. She's beautiful and ambitious and more "adult" than I was at her age. She's got a really tough road going - job and school (and now engagement), but something inside me knows she's going to handle it. Somewhere out there, she found some pretty amazing strength and it doesn't take long to see it. She's no nonsense yet warm and I love her.

Flash forward to her getting married. I don't want to go too much into the topic of the guy she's marrying, other than to say he's a guy with his poop in a group. I like him, though I get the feeling he wouldn't hang out with me if he didn't desire my approval on some level. So it is. But not being the kind of brother who calls all the time, I guess I wasn't aware of how deep their relationship was.

But it's strange the feelings that come rushing over a big brother when his little sister gets engaged. For the first time in a long time I want to be protective. I want to sit her down and say "do you really want this" even though she's even tempered and smart and I'm positive she knows what she's doing. I wish I'd been more up front with her about how I messed up with women so she won't make the same mistakes. I want to tell her how great it is to have someone but how miserable it can be if you play it wrong. I want to tell her this commitment is one where pride swallowing is daily, and sacrifices can be great but the rewards greater.

I suddenly want to be the big brother I never have been for her. Ouch. I read that sentence back and my chest constricted, but it's the truth.

Then, there's happiness. Her wedding is going to be great. She's going to be beautiful. They'll be great together but she won't be one to back away from a challenge or a fight.

I'm so happy for her.

Movie Review: Hancock

There are a couple ways you can frame Will Smith's "Hancock." One way is to call it a mess of irredeemable proportions, a movie with so many half-baked ideas, so many different moods that fluctuate at a whim and so confused with its own identity that it dies a thousand deaths in its 135 minute run time.

If you're the type who comes to praise film instead of bury it, you could call it a bold move on all involved, a real risk that doesn't quite pay off, a well acted ensemble piece that suffers from a script that could of used another pass, a movie that tries so hard to please the audience you can see the veins bulging and hear the grunts.

"Hancock" is all these things, but not more. It's a whole lot of everything that equals a big nothing, unfortunately.

The premise: Will Smith is a superhero with amnesia named Hancock, who is an a-hole. The people he saves call him an a-hole. Children on the street call him an a-hole. Even his new friend Ray (Jason Bateman), a PR rep and "good guy" calls him an a-hole. Using broad comedic strokes, director Peter Berg spends the first 20 minutes of the flick making sure the audience feels the same way. Then, the first of many radical tonal shifts kicks in and it's established Hancock is an a-hole because he's lonely. He lives in a trailer a la Riggs from the Lethal Weapon movies. He drinks to kill the pain inside, you see.

Then it's back to the funny, as Ray persuades Hancock to go to prison for being an a-hole in order to rehabilitate his image while Ray's wife (Charlize Theron) looks at Hancock so long and hard that a neon sign flashing "THEY HAVE A HISTORY" every few seconds on the bottom of the screen would have been about as subtle. Hancock goes to jail house AA. He sticks one inmates head up another inmates a-hole. He stays in jail even though he could break out at any time. Ray's kid loves him and gives him a plastic dinosaur.

The third act I won't reveal other than to say THEY HAVE A HISTORY and that history has holes big enough make an average movie goer cringe. The tone shifts from a comedy superhero fight to actual heroics to sacrificial drama and ends with a good old fashioned axe murder played for laughs. Seriously.

I'm honestly not sure if "Hancock" wreaks of studio interference, star ego or what, but when the filmmakers can't commit to a tone, an audience can't commit to laughing or cheering for the hero or any emotion other than casual interest. It's amazing how this movie kills momentum. Whenever the laughs start to roll, the flick gets morose - whenever it builds dramatic intensity, there's a fart joke.

The shame of "Hancock" is if the flick had found a tone, most of the ingredients to deconstruct the superhero genre are right there on the screen, waiting for someone to come along and harness them. Smith gives it his all and Jason Bateman transplants his "Arrested Development" dry wit into the proceedings. He's good, but it doesn't help. Charlize Theron is hot and vapid. If they'd been on the same page, watch out.

But "Hancock" misses and misses big. The flick isn't without it's pleasures, but it's more of a mess than anything else.

Picture Monday: Bad Garbage

Here's what I think about when I see something like this:

-Someone had to create the concept "a trash can shaped like a clown would be great."
-Someone else had to design it. They had to do the research into clown color schemes, materials, and functionality. It probably took a while. That person than created the design.
-At some point it had to be fabricated, picked up from the factory and delivered. Three more people at last.

All for a garbage can that scares me when it should produce joy. I wonder if anyone in that chain of people think about that.

I'm an Entropy Fan, Too

At around 5 p.m. last night, as George Carlin was drawing his last breath in Santa Monica, I was having a debate with a co-worker about the future of the human race. Her contention was technology will save us. My argument was we're pretty well doomed.

I blame George Carlin for that.

Without getting long winded, I've heard every word Carlin said over the air on HBO. I read his books, studied his CDs, saw him live and recited him in front of my grandmother about this time last year. "Back in Town" is the single finest stand up performance I've ever heard (I've said that for years). He was the only artist I know who was rewarded for being uncompromising. I mourn him.

The thing most people who knew Carlin and his seven dirty words (tee hee, dirty) was that he was a fatalist. He believed institutions wrecked us and made fun of them as they gave others comfort. Religion was a target, government and home was a target. One of my favorite quotes to define the man had to do with Harley Davidson once represented "burning schools, raping women and killing policemen, all necessary functions by the way." Yet he didn't hate the teachers in the schools, the women being raped or the men inside the uniforms getting shot. It was the way the world is.

As he said so many times, he was a fan of entropy, of how things ended, which is decidedly unfunny unless you adopt the guise of a pissy old man. But it was the creative young man that seemed to stick in people's minds, the man who challenged authority in a cool "un PC way" that so many people admired. The rebel. Carlin was not a rebel. Carlin was not the "soul voice of reason crying into the wilderness." He enjoyed the heat from the riot and was able to crack a good joke about it.

The end of "Back in Town" sums the man up. He believed in "The Big Electron" but ceded no idea into how anything worked. The planet, he said, is not in danger because it will shake us off like a bad case of fleas. But we're here. For a little while. Entropy dictates systems break down and we will break down but not now. It's not a life affirming "carpe diem" thing. Like everything he did, it was just the way the world is. We're here. Someday we won't be. And he's right.

From a comedy standpoint Carlin changed two things - He pioneered the idea of a special program for comics (along with a few others) in the format we now know as the "HBO Special" and he was an absolute master of momentum, rhythm and, of course, language. If you don't believe, check out his bit on football versus baseball, or the language section from "Back in Town" or his oft copied bit on airlines or basically anything he did since 1989. It takes amazing craft to package his ideas to a mass audience.

But I loved his inane human qualities. I loved his two albums right after his wife died, where he hated everything and spewed bile to a level that left some fans scratching their heads. I loved how he started his shows with something to knock you on your ass. I loved that he gave up on us. He looked around, he saw what was happening, and with all the hope gone, all he could do was laugh at how we still clung to what we thought was important. "Come on Dave, let's go look at the bodies!" Indeed.

If there's one aspect to his death that stings me right now, it's how we'll not have his voice as we go through our times anymore. With Bill Hicks, another comedian who has long since kicked it, I find myself thinking what he would say on certain subject - how he would perceive and tear apart. I have a feeling over the next few months I'll read a lot of things and wonder how GC would have felt. I'm doing that now, as he would have hated his own death. All the bullshit obits like this one. All the analysis from people who didn't know about him...like this one.

One last thought. GC was misquoted more than most. I remember reading a quote attributed to him that said "life isn't about how many breaths we take but about the moments that take our breath away." Don't believe that shit. Don't ever remember GC as someone who loved life or who wished you well with some sort of dime store sentiment. He looked at us and decided to go another direction, not out of hate but out of rationality. That was GC.

And I mourn him.

Picture Monday - Equally Yoked

Hey Cole, this harness sucks.

Yeah.

A question of motivation

Unlike most of my blog posts, I did some research for this one by typing "sexual abstinence programs" into Google and wading through the 13 pages of studies and articles saying abstinence only education DOES NOT WORK until I finally hit on a pro-abstinence only page. It's something called the "Silver Ring Thing" and wouldn't you know it, they had an image gallery from their events. And in that image gallery? The picture of a dude in a Michael Meyer's mask hacking up wood with a chainsaw you see above. No shit. Check it out yourself at http://www.silverringthing.com/.

One would be hard pressed to imagine a scenario in a "concert" promoting sexual abstinence to teenagers where a dude would reenact a butchering from an iconic horror film. This is the best I could come up with:

Youth Leader: OK kids, kids, settle down. Let's imagine this box...OK...this box...is your purity. (kids cheer) Then imagine you let SEX (kids boo)...no, come on kids, let me finish. Imagine you let SEX into your life.

-Man in Michael Meyer mask comes out and chainsaws the shit out of the wooden box-

Youth Leader (over the chainsaw roar): Girls, your hymen will be wrecked for life! Boys, your diddle will rot off from an STD. And even if it doesn't, imagine what GOD will do to you if you have SEX!!!

-kids break into Pentecostal glee, being slain in the spirit, speaking in tongues and praying for God's salvation to come into the gym.

That's the best I could come up with. Sadly, while I can come up with that far fetched scenario, I cannot come up with one that would cause parents to actively lie to their kids, their teachers and themselves to promote something that hurts their kids. Yet, that's exactly what's happening when abstinence only education is pushed by parents, and in some spots in our grand old country, it's pushed really hard.

I received this alert from a board I'm on recently:

"The National Abstinence Education Association, a Washington-based advocacy group, said that it sent e-mails last week to about 30,000 supporters, practitioners and parents to try to recruit participants and plans to e-mail 100,000 this week as part of the first phase of the $1 million campaign. The e-mail is promoting the Parents for Truth campaign, which the group hopes will eventually involve 1 million parents nationwide to lobby local schools to adopt sex education programs focusing on abstinence and to work to elect local, state and national officials who support the approach.

"There are powerful special interest groups who can far outspend what parents can in terms of promoting their agenda. But we recognize that parents more than make up for that by their determination and motivation to protect their own children," said Valerie Huber, the group ' s executive director."

Yes, powerful and evil special interest groups like scientists, those in the medical field and parents with one quantum of common sense. The story goes on:

The campaign comes as Congress is debating whether to authorize about $190 million in federal funding for such programs, which have come under increasing criticism because of a series of reports that concluded they are ineffective. Such criticism has prompted at least 17 states to refuse federal funding for such programs.

The group hopes to counter that trend, in part with a provocative video that asserts that comprehensive sex education encourages sexual activity by teenagers and a Web site that offers advice to parents about sex education.

The three-minute video depicts a mother of a 13-year-old girl becoming alarmed after learning details about sex ed curriculum being used in her school, including suggestions that teenagers can take showers together and give each other condoms.Proponents of comprehensive sex ed condemned the campaign as misleading, noting that the "Be Proud! Be Responsible!" curriculum cited in the video was developed to reduce the spread of the AIDS virus among African American males ages 13 to 19. Showering was cited as an example of a behavior that entailed a low risk of transmitting the virus.

Wow. Just wow.

First, do you believe for a second that, in this culture that values victimization, if parents learned their children are being told to shower together, the video wouldn't be on YouTube and legions of right wing loonies wouldn't be jumping up and down on every street corner in America, pointing at the video as proof their cause is valid. As it turns out, they had to find a video from a sex ed video IN AFRICA that talks, for the briefest of moments, about showering as a way to be intimate without spreading HIV, which kills one in every three goddamned people in that country.

But, when confronted by cold, hard, irrefutable fact that these programs do not work, you'll grab at anything you can. Even if it's a chainsaw.