Picture Monday - New Fiction

What's wrong with this display? First person to spot it wins a puppy.

Sex! Now That I Have Your Attention Part 2

Through a stroke of luck, I was part of an informational fair today for the museum I work for, and was seated next to two very smart and dedicated ladies from the Central Health Center, where I'm on the board. One traveled and tested folks for HIV, the other worked the front lines at the CHC. She called herself a condom pusher.

During lulls in the fair, we talked about issues pertinent to CHC business, but then I got curious. Like many, I read the recent study from Florida that talked about the number of young people who believed ridiculous things about sex, such as a shot of bleach could cure a STD or that Mountain Dew served as a prophylactic. No kidding. http://www.local6.com/news/15773787/detail.html

I started to ask them about the urban myths in Florida (our most f---ed up state, thank you Tim Henson) and it turns out things are just as bad here. Among the myths these front-line employees reported hearing from girls right here in central Nebraska:

-AIDS is transmitted through toilet seats, but only in Africa.
-Douching with Coke (and only Coke) after unprotected sex will stop pregnancy. It has to do with the acid in the world's most popular cola, so she heard.
-Oral contraception for women can be shared with no change in the pills effectiveness
-You cannot get pregnant the first time you have sex (this is a pervasive one, they said)
-Women can't get pregnant if they have sex on top of the man.
And finally, and most terrifying
-You shouldn't wear condoms because they don't work.

That last one is really scary. Really really scary.

It's scary because it's what's taught in abstinence only education classes. There are many curriculum and many documented instances of this line of thinking going from our educators mouths into the heads of children. And, God love them, they're listening. And instead of using condoms, the one product that's worked more in my life personally than just about any other product, they just aren't using them at all. They're having sex, they're just not using condoms.

We can go on and on about how it's unconscionable that we're teaching our children information that is wrong and recommending action that is unrealistic. Your average young person loses their virginity before the age of 16, and that's factoring in those who make it to college as virgins.

And they're being taught not to use condoms. And they're listening.

If this administration has been scared of anything, it's been information. They desperately try to control the flow of information to fit their world view, and so far they've been remarkably successful at it. This is a fairly minor issue in the grand scheme of things, but any time, ANY TIME you have a large portion of the young population believing that Mountain Dew prevents pregnancy, it's time to move that priority up on the list. We are beating our children with silence and rank, partisan stupidity. And the front liners are dealing with it.

The woman who tests for HIV said, thankfully, there's not many cases in this area and those who have it tend to know. But, by and large, bad information led to their infection.

Imagine that.

Likes on Wednesday - Bad Religion

For the past few months, I've been collecting Pepsi caps because you can redeem them on-line for free music. It's worked pretty well, with the exception of there being no criteria for what songs you can buy with Pepsi Points and which you have to pay for via Amazon. Get your shit together, Pepsi Stuff.

Browsing the list this evening, I came across a name that instantly drew me back to the summer of 1994: Bad Religion.

I scroll the list. "Infected." That's worth 99 cents.

Gawd almighty I love this song. I remember it was my sophomore year of high school when I was just learning that love and sex was a contact sport. This song turns contact into combat.

It's guttural and great, the best song of this genre. Bad Religion went on to other fantastic songs, but pound for pound, nothing touches "Infected."

It's strange how you put together top 10 lists at one point in your life and then forget about them. I always thought "Stranger Than Fiction" was on my top 10 album list of all time, but I swear it's been 5 years since I've listened to Bad Religion.

In honor of their rediscovery and remembered greatness, let's deconstruct "Infected."




Now here I go
Hope I dont break down
I wont take anything
I dont need anything
Inauspicious. Nice groove. Moving on.


Dont want to exist
I cant persist
Please stop before I do it again
The existential malaise kind of takes hold here, but the song is so damn catchy at this point, it's hard to take it seriously as a piece of "poor me" songwriting. The last line hints at where the song is going to go from here.


Just talk about nothing, lets talk about nothing
Lets talk about no one, please talk about no one, someone, anyone
I love this line. The contradiction is fun from a lyrical standpoint, but the first phrase says a lot about relationships, from my experience. How many times have you told a friend "we talk about nothing," as a compliment. They talk about nothing, so please talk about something, for the love of God. To me, it hints at incompatibility, but attraction has taken hold...hence:


You and me have a disease
You affect me, you infect me
Im afflicted, youre addicted
You and me, you and me
It's easy to see why these lines are so damn catchy. Affect and Infect are nice halves of a whole phrase, but the "I'm afflicted, you're addicted" hints at something more. The whole song at this point, a phrase or two aside, is from the guy's POV. She's got him doing things against his will, which is why I love "I'm afflicted, you're addicted." Addicted to making him say "how high" when she says "jump"? Addicted to the feeling of power a woman has over any man at certain points in a relationship? Addicted to causing him pain? Ooooh, that's a good one. Next verse.


Im on the edge
Get against the wall
Im so distracted
I love to strike you
The violence rears it's head. This song has a lot of violent images, but this particular one works really well from the guy's perspective. He's backed into a corner, and what do desperate creatures do in a corner? Is the strike actual or metaphorical? Works either way (although I never condone violence against women).


Heres my confession
You learned your lesson
Stop me before I do it again
This line kind of reinforces the idea of physical violence on one level, but on another level you've got this idea - he did something to reveal his true nature. This could very much be about love. Exposing love is an incredibly vulnerable moment, so he confesses his love and she learns from that. Stop me before I do it again. It seems like a stretch, but the rhyme is really good. Onto the bridge.


Youre clear - as a heavy lead curtain
want to drill you - like an ocean
We can work it out
Ive been running out, now
Im running out
Dont be mad about it baby
Ah, the truth comes out. The situation makes him run, but it's complicated. How complicated? Onto the best part where the lead singer echos the chorus with these little gems:

I want to tie you, crucify you
Kneel before you, revile your body
You and me, were made in heaven
I want to take you, I want to break you
Supplicate you, are incurable
I want to bathe you in holy water
I want to kill you,
Upon the alter
You and me, you and me
Tell me that's not an honest declaration of love. Pain and pleasure just inches apart. Soul-sucking sacrifice and immeasurable joy. Chemicals going ape shit in your body, throwing thoughts no sane person would think into the front of your head. In inability for dispassion. A propensity for stupidity that seems completely rational. These lyrics are lovely.

Great song.

Summer Movie List No. 10

It occurred to me the other day that I haven't really written about movies recently. I used to quite a bit and am completely out of practice, so drop your expectations and maybe this will be fun.



I've decided, since the always interesting Summer Movie Season begins the first day of May practically, we'll spend April counting down 10 movies I'm fairly interested in seeing. Please excuse the mainstream nature of the list, but we're not going to get much by way of independent cinema. Movies that get a wide release, they come here. Movies that begin in New York and LA never come here unless we're talking 6 months down the road and it's a major "sleeper." Either way, it's major studio stuff. Enjoy.




No 10: Tropic Thunder

If the recent screening of "Animal House," as part of the film festival I'm involved in taught me anything, it's that I'm kind of hungry for the semi-smart ensemble R-rated comedies. You can watch gross-out R-rated comedies every day of the week and retire before you see them all, but the great ones like "Animal House" are hard to come by.

A little easier to find is the hard R action/comedy, a hybrid that's been done extremely well but never really settled as a genre. Beverly Hills Cop is a great example, but I tend to find movies like "Predator" funnier than most movies that try to be comedies, especially after a few beers.

Which is why "Tropic Thunder" barely made the list.

Don't make the mistake of thinking this movie is a sure thing. The potential for a high degree of suck is there, but so are the seeds for greatness. Robert Downey Jr. as a method actor who dyes his skin black for a role could go down in flames, yet the "what do you mean you people...what do YOU mean you people," line is probably one of the more clever jokes I've heard recently. Jack Black is hit or miss, all the time. And Stiller? The dude was brilliant once. I own The Ben Stiller Show on DVD and some of his work is spot on great, and should be used as an incantation against movies like "The Hearbreak Kid" or "Night at the Museum."

But the potential is there. And, if "Tropic Thunder" is headed for greatness, here's what it will need.

1) A slight touch on the high concept jokes and a fearlessness with the offensive ones.

2) Characters we don't want to see shot (I'm looking at you, Black!)

3)It can't get too inside baseball.

Should "Tropic Thunder" pull off this balancing act, this could be fantastic. There's greatness in the trailer. Take a good look.

"Tropic Thunder" comes out the second week in August.

Picture Monday - Nebraska Weather

A couple weeks ago, if you saw a guy in a 98 Pontiac Grand Prix going east on I-80 yelling what appears to be the F-word in loud, long bursts, that was me. This is why.

I've never been a car guy, but this was pretty sad. The negligence of basic car maintenance led to me not cleaning off the windshield wiper fluid spigot, and when dirt was kicked up, in my line of site it stayed. Fun stuff.

I didn't panic, exactly, but if I had gotten into an accident my annoyance level would have verged on panic. I hate little things like that.

What do you go for?

Nichole Kidman has never really done it for me, but there was this great scene in "Moulin Rouge," where she's discussing with her pimp (in the form of Jim Broadbent, the most amazing pimp eva!), what kind of woman the rich man upstairs is looking for. In Baz Luhrman's frenetic style, she bats her eyes and lifts her cheeks to denote "sunshine and bubbly," and furrows her brow for the "smoldering temptress." The rich man upstairs wanted the temptress. I would have gone for a bit of the bubbly, myself.

But the lust for the bubbly got me into hot water, at least in my own head, a couple days ago.

As a precursor, I'd like to explain that I'm basically a vanilla guy when it comes to sexuality. I'm not terribly shy about discussing it, but I'm not into BDSM, have never DPd and try my best to be GGG. If that's TMI, sorry. I've get predilections like anyone, but I'm not the type of guy who will draw pictures of the girls from Sailor Moon au natural or pressure my wife to wear a gold bikini a la Carrie Fischer. I'm nerdy, but I'm not nerdy.

The reason that needs noting is the movie "Enchanted," which was widely well received by critics and lavished with hundreds of millions of dollars by worldwide audiences. In the flick, princess Gisela (sp?), played by Amy Adams comes from the cartoon world into the real world thanks to some manner of plot device sorcery. The princess arrives in modern day new york with all her charms, fashions and naivete in tact.

There's a fatal flaw in the flick, as far as I'm concerned. When Gisela is a cartoon, she's a finely drawn piece of innocence in the Disney tradition. Once she comes to the real world, she's hot. Really hot. Bubbly hot. Can't take your freaking eyes off her hot.

Don't think for a split second I don't feel like a gigantic cad. But, like I said, I'm not shy about discussing these things, and this is truth that I think a lot of dads are denying. Amy Adams is hotter than the hottest hot thing in hot town. She's hella hot, which is amazing because I cannot stand the word hella, and yet I use it because it's what she is.

With that information in mind, let's move forward through the movie where Gisela starts learning about the world outside of instantaneous, romantic love she dubs "Happily Ever After" and starts asking about kissing and dates and what men and women do and...and suddenly I'm in a frame of mind I don't want to be when watching a kids movie in general, or with my daughter in specific. Call me old fashioned, but I like my live-action Disney heroins in the mold of Angela Landsbury or a prim and proper Julie Andrews (though she was smokin' in her day).

What I came to realize, as the movie went on, is that the Gisel character was the alpha-bubbly, the be all end all of a particular type that I happen to find very attractive. Was this on purpose? I don't want to blame Disney of anything other than wide-eyed innocence themselves, but this is a group that made over $145 million last year off hotel porn in their Disney resorts. I'm just saying they're not above selling sex, even in disguise, if there's a buck in it.

Since I've spent the entire post being a pig, I'd like to atone by suggesting this fantastic piece by Peter Segal of Chicago Public Radio:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89318829

The End Of A Road

Sentimentality is a big part of who I am, as much as I might try to fight it. I'm not a "manly man" anyway (aside from running 3-4 miles a day), but certain emotions in the right launch code sequence and all of a sudden I'm fighting for air. Sometimes it's one or two emotions at once and I'm done.



Like tonight. Today during dinner, I found a piece of paper saying registration for Kindergarten was this Thursday, and my wife and I need to decide whether or not to sign up my oldest daughter. Tough decision, we seriously have not made it yet.



That's emotion number one. Emotion number two came not that long afterward, when we went downstairs to watch "Enchanted," which I haven't seen. On a side note, the chief problem with bringing Disney princesses to life, is I want to have sex with them. Amy Adams is hotter than hot in that movie, even though sex is the last thing on her mind. Maybe it's because sex is the last thing on her mind and she's corruptible. I'm digressing in a major way.



So during the show, the kiddo grabs my size 9 1/2 booths and starts walking around in them. I joke that I'm going to push her over and she waddles/runs as fast as she can away from me, tripping over a blanket and giggling like a loon. We proceed to do this six or seven more times, giggling more and more each time. I laughed, then fought back tears as hard as I could.

This part of her life is almost over, isn't it? I don't feel like I missed it, by any means, and I'm not one of those "it went so fast" guys. It's a cliche because when I think back to the times she's been in my life, it seems like a long time. So long I don't remember life without her, and kind of don't want to. She changed not just the way I acted ("a baby changes your life"...well no shit, it's a baby), but she changed the entire prism of how I look at things. How many more Friday nights are we going to hang out and giggle? How soon before she's got friends and dates and all that? How long before things get really hard and she breaks my heart like all kids break their parents hearts in some form or another? Not long, I imagine, but it all seemed limitless before tonight.

It's not limitless. And the end of this road feels really close tonight, I guess. Again, I'm an emotional light weight and the universe hit the right combo of buttons, but it's almost like I miss her already.

Then again, it's not like I don't have things to do...