The High Horse Blog

South Park Two-fer

2010-10-24T22:55:00.000-07:00

I didn't write about last week's South Park not because I hadn't the time, but because, frankly, I was a little nonplussed by the episode. So, today, we get a South Park two-for-one, because this week's episode was far better.

Last week's episode, “It's a Jersey Thing”, was less of a brilliant piece of satire than a simple pop culture spoof. The subject? Everyone's favorite dysfunctional reality show: Jersey Shore. The episode featured loads of greased hair, heavy tans, and near-unintelligible cursing (muff cabbage being my personal favorite). There was also a Gollum-like Snookie stalking around, humping everything in sight.

If you like poking fun at pop culture, and are familiar with the trainwreck that is The Jersey Shore, you might have a good time with this episode, but other than that, there really isn't that much commentary there. At least not that I found. I, of course, generally prefer South Parkepisodes that are heavily grounded in political satire, and overall, that's just not what this episode was about.

But I would argue that non-political episodes like “It's a Jersey Thing” are critical building blocks to South Park as a whole. Not only do they typify the kind of broad humor that is generally accessible to those who haven't seen the show before (these are the kinds of episodes that surely help recruit more viewers), but they also ground it as a subversive playground where the idols of pop culture can be quickly cut down to size. This is also the reason that celebrities are constantly present in different episodes of South Park. By constantly reinforcing the notion that these people can be made fun of with impunity, South Park positions itself in opposition to the established powers that be, and readies itself to lob grenades at more substantial targets: i.e. the financial crisis, religious hypocrisy, government arms races, etc.

This week's South Park, "InSheeption," was also heavily concentrated on pop culture critique. It, however, feels much more significant and successful that “It’s a Jersey Thing.” The episode begins with an outbreak of “hoarding” (the inability to throw things away as shown on the popular [and in my opinion trashy] television show of the same name), infecting Stan and Mr. Macky. The cure, apparently, for hoarding is to go deep into the Unconscious of the subject, and find and destroy the source of the trauma that began the hoarding. So, Stan, Mr. Macky, and a hapless sheep herder (brought in for hoarding sheep) are hooked up to electrodes, hypnotized, and somehow flung into the childhood memories of Mr. Macky.

Entering into one’s dreams, of course, is a conceit of the recent Inception, and it is what happens surrounding this dream world that the episode is really about. For instance, those who are outside of the dream world question the logic of going into the dream world in the first place, a backhanded questioning of the basic logic of Inception’s premise. As those in the dream world wander aimlessly about, doing little but highlighting Macky’s lifelong geekiness, the cast of characters from Inception burst into the therapy room and announce that they just have to go in to assist. Now, there are about nine people in Macky’s dream world, and more are soon added with firefighters going in to rescue those who were trapped inside as well as a pizza delivery man who has an order for someone inside.

The episode is finally resolved when Freddy Kruger, the king of all dreamgoers, destroys the source of Macky’s hoarding by killing a Smoky-the-Bear-like mascot that molested the man while on a school field trip in his youth. Stan’s hoarding is solved as well (as he learns that it’s simpler to just get over a hoarding tendency than to go through all the hubbub of entering one’s dreamworld again), and all is well, save for the sheep herder who was killed in the dream world. Oh well, casualties happen.

What I love about this episode, and about South Park in general, is its way of undermining pop culture by questioning its relatively high stature in society. Inception is a perfect target. It is a cultural object that entered the public sphere largely by placing itself within the field of high art. Seeing (and appreciating) Inception garnered one a goodly deal of cultural capital. In fact, one joke made in the South Park episode has a character saying condescendingly, “You just don’t get it because you’re not smart enough” after explaining the same complicated plot that makes upInception. What the South Park episode attempts to do is knock Inception off its pedestal and remind us that the movie is not in and of itself “intelligent,” but is created as that through the conversation that is waged around it.

One way that they do this is by reducing the complicated logic of the movie to ridiculousness. For instance, in the episode, when we first hear the premise of entering into one’s dreams, as one character explains the logic, another provides the “background”, that is, an a capella rendition of the dramatic music that peppers every scene of Inception. This functions to remind the viewer that the “intelligent” premise of the movie gains much of its power through the use of other dramatic elements and cannot necessarily stand on its own ground.

Later on, as more and more people have to hear the explanation for the dream world (and how there can be dreams within dreams and such), the explanation becomes increasingly reductive.

“It’s very simple, you see, when the dream experts go in, they attempt to take inception to a dream within a dream.”

“Like a taco within a taco?” asks a confused fireman who’s for some reason being asked to go inside a dream. “Like a double-decker taco supreme!” exclaims another.

Finally, the logic of Inception is utterly destroyed when the architect of all the dream-entering shenanigans says, “Look if we can get the fire department in the dream [. . . ] it will be like a taco inside a taco within a Taco Bell that’s inside a KFC that’s in a mall in your dream!”

The South Park episode reminds us that the seeming smartness ofInception is actually quite arbitrary. It is defined as intelligent based on the conversation around it and other dramatic elements that operate on top of the logic.Inception isn’t a movie that’s inherently smart, but rather one that tellsyou that it’s smart – or that is constructed as smart by the discourse surrounding it.

One reason we needSouth Park is to be able to pop the cultural balloon every now and again. Culture and taste aren’t essences that one can achieve if he or she is smart enough, but rather artificial representations built by a myriad of political, economic, and social factors.

So, if you didn’t like Inception, not to worry. You’re not stupid – in fact, you may be smarter for saying no to cultural elitism. Yay you! Now let’s go get high and watch an episode of Hoarding.

South Park is Back!

2010-10-07T21:04:00.000-07:00

So... yeah...

If you've ever heard a graduate student complaining over and over about how much work they have to do for school, it's probably because it's true.

Try as I might, I can't seem to tear myself away from my homework to keep up with this blog thing on a regular basis. However, I think I've found a possible solution. Instead of writing about sports, play reviews, movie reviews, and politics as often as I can, I'm going to try to write just one blog post a week on just a single topic. And since it takes a great deal of willpower to write a single word more than is required of me for class, I'm going to make it a subject that I care deeply and passionately about: South Park.

So here we go. The High Horse Blog is going to try (at least for the next 8 weeks) to be a South Park blog. These essays will likely be part critique and part structural analysis of each episode - that's graduate-speak for "what is the episode trying to say?" Let's see how this works. Hopefully, this will be a small enough endeavor to keep me writing from time to time.

And if Deidre can get her ass back in gear, we can include her column too.

Oh, and before I begin, I just want to say a brief word about the Reds: Fifteen years, guys. Fifteen years. It's not that I'm mad at you, I'm just very disappointed.

And now, on to season 14, episode 8 of South Park - Poor and Stupid.

Sad to say, this episode was not particularly funny. What gives, South Park? I waited four months with bated breath to take in your scatalogically-charged politically-savvy satire, and this is what I get?

But after the dust settled from the underwhelming comedic experience, I was left with a startlingly satisfying aftertaste. Because it's not the kind of episode you can sit down and watch over and over again, Poor and Stupid will probably never be high on my list of favorite South Park experiences, but it was still a very good episode that has very important subject matter.

To explore what I mean by this, what I'll do is take you through the episode. We begin with a rather disconcerting image: Eric Cartman is crying. When questioned as to why, he responds (something to the extent of): "It's always been my dream to race NASCAR, but I'll never be able to do it because I'm not poor and stupid." Ho, ho. Chuckle, chuckle. NASCAR is for ignorant, impoverished hillbillies. Very funny. Nothing I haven't heard before. And for the first fifteen minutes of the episode, this is the only real joke made. Over and over, Cartman states that he needs to try to get "poor and stupid" to be a NASCAR driver.

It's not really a funny joke, and this is what accounts for making the episode somewhat boring to watch. But hold on to this, because this overdone, unfunny bit is actually intentional and important to the overall message of the episode.

So, for the majority of the episode Eric tries to become a NASCAR driver. He meets with failure (in one case by sneaking on to a NASCAR track and being involved in a horrific car accident) due to the fact that, in his mind, he's not poor and stupid enough. This, of course, offends his friend Kenny who is himself a NASCAR fan and resents being characterized in such a fashion by Cartman.

Then, another (seemingly random) thread comes in. After seeing a commercial for Vagisil (a product which promises to cure feminine odor) and noting that one of its side effects is short-term memory loss, in order to become more stupid Cartman goes to the store and ingests as much of the product as he can. After the NASCAR accident, the spokesman for Vagisil visits Cartman and exclaims that the boy's stunt his given their product lots of great publicity. He makes a custom NASCAR (sponsored by VAGISIL) for Cartman to drive, so the company will continue to get great press. He also mentions that he invented Vagisil for his wife, Patty, who has had troubles with feminine odor for some time.

So now we have two threads: NASCAR, and Vagisil. The two collide when Cartman races the Vagisil car at a NASCAR event, with the Vagisil owner one of the announcers for the event. Cartman, doing his best to impersonate the stereotypical hillbilly that he believes typifies NASCAR, drives around like a maniac, knocking his opponents off the track until he is the only car left in the competition. Meanwhile, as he announces the event, the Vagisil owner constantly takes time to humiliate Patty for her odor. "We want women to know that Vagisil is safe and effective for use every day - every day. Every. Day. - and is available nationwide," he says for instance.

Just as Cartman looks like he is going to win the race in the Vagisil car, out of nowhere, Patty jumps into a semi-wrecked car and proceeds to race against Cartman. Long story short, Patty wins.

Ok, so what do we have here? On the surface level, Patty is simply fed up with being humiliated in public by her husband. But the genius of South Park is that it shows that the issue goes far deeper. What they're really showing is the way in which the power structure within a society creates both pressures and preconceptions about different social groups. What is Vagisil but a product invented by a man to cure a feminine odor that he deems offensive? And worse, he makes her take it "diligently. Ve-ry Diligently" despite the fact that it is known to cause memory loss.

In our other plot thread, we have NASCAR and its being for the poor and stupid. What is the significance of this being repeated over and over again throughout the episode, despite the fact that it is not very funny? Well, by the end of the episode, it shows that the discourse surrounding NASCAR defines the way in which it is viewed. Cartman acts stupid and poor in a NASCAR outfit (even going so far as to tape a bigoted anti-Obama video), and by the end of the episode, the national news is saying, "This proves that NASCAR really is for the poor and the stupid."

Certainly, there is in certain circles a preconception of NASCAR being only for a "certain sect" of the American populous; what the South Park episode shows is that this preconception is not based upon any logical conclusion, but rather shaped through the dominant discourse. Similarly, our views of what constitutes regular female behavior is also shaped through this discourse. When Patty jumps into the NASCAR, it causes bedlam. "It looks like a woman is trying to take over for Jimmy Johnson's car," says the announcer with surprise. Another man says (as if talking to an eight-year-old) "Ma'am, you are on an active racetrack. This is very dangerous." The preconception exists that women cannot be involved in certain sports.

Finally, we must turn again to the Vagisil. The Vagisil owner says, "Patty, did you forget to take your medication? You know how you get when you don't take your Vagisil." He speaks to her like a child that has a disease that must be controlled, when in reality, he simply wants to make Patty more desirable to him.

Women are made to use certain products to please men despite the fact that the product is dangerous. Women shave their legs and armpits, put on makeup, and "freshen up" not necessarily because they want to, but because society deems it necessary. All this is done under the guise of "normal behavior," but whose "normal" are we talking about? The episode suggests that "Normal" is constructed by men who are in power. And if we remember the NASCAR thread, we realize that "Normal" is constructed by upper-class men who are in power.

So, though the episode wasn't a comedic success, surely many merits can be seen in it. How many shows talk about these kinds of issues today? Poor and Stupid is perfect evidence of how Trey Parker and Matt Stone are writers of the most pointed and poignant satire on television.

We're Back - Politics Sunday

2010-08-15T08:56:00.000-07:00

Greeting HHB devotees! Yes, I've been terribly off the ball for about a month now, and since I'm about to start grad school, you can probably expect things to just get worse. But I promise that slowly and surely I'll finish detailing the trip to Bonnaroo, and periodically chronicle movies I've seen, political issues that irk me, and, of course, the Reds' pursuit of the post-season (first place baby!).

But today, I have to address an important political issue:

Firstly, for the last year or so, we have been hearing debate about the Mosque that is planned to be erected near 9/11 Ground Zero in New York. Commentary has intensified over the last month or so as plans continue to be pushed along, and came to something of a head on Friday when President Obama jumped into the fray stating, "... Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances." As one might expect, Conservatives were quick to decry the remarks, Sarah Palin using a sassy tweet to vent her ire.

Now, the issue itself is thorny and complicated, but what's wholly depressing about the situation is the way that the media has covered the President's remarks. I was first made aware of them by an AOL news headline titled, "Obama slammed, praised for backing Ground Zero Mosque." Though it did its job of making me aware of what the President said, the problem with this headline is that it immediately takes the emphasis off of the actual issue at hand (whether or not to build the Mosque) and places it in the context of political debate. The article focuses less on the debate of whether building the Mosque is the right thing to do, and more on whether it was politically expedient for President Obama to comment.

Cable news coverage (both Fox and MSNBC are culprits - I can't bring myself to watch CNN) was similarly bent. "Should the President have gotten into this mess?" one reporter asked an analyst. The real question is, "Is the President right about this?"

The answer is a resounding, seemingly obvious, "Yes!" But, the debate politicized (I thought we weren't supposed to politicize 9/11), Obama was forced to walk back from his comments last night, saying, "I was not commenting, and I will not comment, on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding. That's what our country is about." Sure. What really happened, of course, is that Obama faced pressure from Liberals who felt that his position was untenable in addition to the usual Conservative opposition to anything the President does or says.

For a President whose campaign was run on a platform of honesty and principles, this issue has certainly shown that politics trumps morality. The GOP playbook is to say in effect that the President is disobeying the will of the people, with polls showing that nearly 2/3 of Americans do not believe that the Mosque should be built. Newt Gingrich has even ludicrously called for a moratorium on building the Mosque until Saudi Arabia allows for churches and synagogues to be erected. "Enough with the double standard," he said, and it's refreshing to know that there are those who think America should be on a moral par with Saudi Arabia.

Gingrich and Sarah Palin are both on record saying that they have no problem with the building of Mosques in general, and claim that the American people feel the same way. Yet all over the country we've seen numerous protests whenever a new Mosque is erected anywhere. The danger of continuing to let this intolerance progress is that America will go the way of Switzerland, outlawing Mosques altogether. That may sound absurd, but Americans are uniquely touchy regarding Islam because of its relatively small practice in the country and the lingering memories of 9/11.

But this issue is an example of why the will of the people should sometimes not be followed. People in large groups occasionally behave irrationally, and taking the easy path to intolerance instead of working to understand a perceived "other" is an example. President Obama's remarks on Friday were a courageous sacrifice of political capital in order to make a moral stand, which is why it was all the more depressing to see him walk them back on Saturday. Obama followed his abovementioned remarks on Friday by saying, "This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable." His own commitment to this issue should have been similarly unshakable, and not prone abandonment at the first sight of political turmoil.

If President Obama was going to get into this issue at all, he should have been in all the way. As it stands, he's himself allowed politics to cloud morality.

If interested, ABC's This Week had a pretty good round table that discussed it at length.

Bonnaroo - Day 2

2010-07-03T19:15:00.000-07:00

I had predicted that I'd be asleep until nine or ten in the morning - you know, the usual time - but with the sun up early cooking our tents like a casserole, it was impossible to stay in "bed" past seven AM. I awoke and stumbled to a port-a-let about fifty yards away. One thing to know about Bonnaroo going in: port-a-lets are used often by many people and are the only repositories available. Be prepared to hold it.

My companions and I had a hearty breakfast consisting of hot dogs and granola. These, along with a handful of fruits would be our main foodstuffs for the weekend. It was going to be heavy.

Of the many artists we had come to see, none piqued the passion of one my companions as much as an appearance by Conan O'Brien as part of his Legally Prohibited From Being Funny on TV Comedy Tour. The original plan was to get up to the campgrounds a couple hours early to wait in line so as to have a good seat for the show - after all, if we were sitting far away, how could my friend's dream to be hugged by Conan be realized?

Upon getting to the festival grounds, however, we realized the foolishness of our plan. A line as imposing as that to get into the campgrounds led up to the Comedy Tent where Conan was performing. We had no chance. Our only alternative was to relocate to a stage that was showing the live taping on a giant screen. We set out a blanket in the field overlooking the stage - it would be nearly an hour until the taping commenced and the Tennessee sun was looming overhead. Completely baked after nearly fifteen minutes, we split into two groups with half of us tasked to reserve our spaces for the show, and the others to seek mystical "water-filling stations" for our empty water bottles that supposedly existed but were difficult to find without the maps we were supposed to but never did receive as we entered the festival.

On our way, we stumbled upon Trombone Shorty & Orleans Avenue, a funk band with one seriously charismatic front man blasting on the 'bone. We momentarily passed them by, finally eying the water station that was currently being mobbed by a crush of overheated rockers, and after another long wait (are we developing a motif?) started back towards Conan. But we were unable to pass by Trombone Shorty a second time. As the 'boner wailed a solo, a huge audience cheered him on. Orleans Avenue sports a classic Louisiana jazz sound but with a funk sensibility. Heavy drums and impressive soloing.

But a quick glance at my watch reminded me that, *gasp*, we were late for Conan. We made it back just in time to deliver some much needed water to our sweltering friends, and catch the end of Conan’s opening band headed by Max Weinberg of E Street Band fame – this was a Bonnaroo miss, with their version of “Move On Up” continuing to haunt my dreams.

And on came Coco. His set was clearly geared less towards comedy and more towards hating on NBC for “destroying his life.” But by now, Conan’s ordeal of hitting a life low, seeking psychological help, and growing a beard were familiar to me, so it felt a little too much like rehash. I would have rather heard a straight up comic set from Conan, but instead, it felt more like a variety show, with other comedians and musical numbers featuring Conan himself (he’s worked himself into a pretty decent guitarist) periodically interrupting the stand up. The one highlight? Conan’s patented Walker Texas Ranger lever was featured, with the infamous Haley Joel Osment clip making an appearance - I don’t know what I’d do if Walker told me I had AIDS.

Finally, Conan was over. And a couple hours in the heat had nearly done us in. We were able to stagger over to a nearby stage where there was tree cover from the sun. Though the trees themselves had been the main draw, Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros were playing at the stage, and we were able to catch the tail end of the concert. Though I didn’t know them and though that type of indie rock is generally not my thing, a stupendous rendition of “Home” charmed me into having a great time.

When they finished, we decided to move forward and get a good setup for Dr. Dog, another group that I hadn’t heard before. They put on one heckuva show, featuring dynamic indie rock with good stage presence. Not much to describe with the show other than the fact they brought an energy boost to what was fast becoming a lethargic day.

But I couldn’t stay too long for Dr. Dog. On the other side of the festival, one of the biggest draws was taking stage: Damian Marley & Nas. The son of reggae master Bob Marley, Damian’s music is much more confrontational than that of his father’s. His political lyrics combine with a hard beat that still keeps a reggae sensibility. Though I like Marley’s music on its own, the combination with Nas’s wordplay and flow made for a hip sound that kept things upbeat for the listeners in party mode. Definitely a Bonnaroo highlight.

Something that did become painfully obvious during Marley & Nas’s set was that there was little chance I would be up close for any featured group at Bonnaroo. For that concert, I was located about a football field’s length away from the main stage, and though the sound quality was still stellar (surprisingly stellar in fact) there was little stage visibility. Luckily, a bevy of large video monitors allowed for a visual experience even for those of us in the back.

While several of my companions ventured off to a variety of groups (She & Him, The National, OK Go, Steve Martin & the Steep Canyon Rangers), I elected to stay put with another featured group and one of my favorites: Tenacious D. Jack Black is one helluva performer (er, I should qualify that: one helluva musical performer. I could deal without some of his movies [I’m looking at you The Holiday]), and Tenacious D is one helluva rock show. Part of the beauty of the music is its irony, making fun of rock with songs like “Tribute” while at the same time creating considerably good rock music.

The concert itself mixed actual music with little skits between Black and Kyle Gass, the self-deprecating straight man and gifted lead guitarist. One, for instance, featured a cartoonish Devil in red spandex with a cape attacking the duo and being defeated by the power of Rock! They struck a great balance with just enough comedy to engage the audience, backed up by a backbone of solid rock tunes.

Though I would later be somewhat jealous that my friends got to see so many groups while I was watching DM&N and Tenacious D, both were excellent concerts that I consider Bonnaroo highlights. But by the end of Tenacious, the heat had done me in, and I needed to regroup at the campsite with the gang. There would be some food involved, but mostly, we rested up for the big night ahead of us.

That’s right. The day still wasn’t done…-

We're Back!

2010-06-25T15:11:00.001-07:00

Ugh... Fine!

A writer writes, so the High Horse Blog returns after a month-long hiatus. What was I doing for the past month? Well, for starters,

BONNAROO!!!

There's an unwritten rule that the name of the 4-day music festival in Manchester, Tennessee can't be said without blasting it at the top of your lungs in the same way that someone would say, "ROAD TRIP!!!" or "VEGAS, BABY, VEGAS!!!"

For those of you who might not be familiar, Bonnaroo (not written in all caps to maintain some semblance of professionalism) began nine years ago as an attempt to recreate the un-recreatable musical orgy of Woodstock '69. To do so, they cordon off about a square mile field in the middle of nowhere for people to come, camp out for a few days, and listen to dozens of the country's most diverse and popular music groups.

What will follow is a series of articles detailing each day at Bonnaroo - both the music that was seen and the experience as a whole.

We start with Day 1:

Having slept over in Cincinnati the night before (so as to make for a shorter drive to the campgrounds than from our native Chicago), we hit the road at about seven in the morning, the same time that the grounds opened. Our plan was to arrive in Manchester around one in the afternoon, and we braced ourselves for a three-to-four-hour wait in line before actually getting to the grounds.

When we finally arrived in Manchester, our jaws dropped at what we saw: an immense line of cars stretching further than we could see. We knew from our directions that we couldn't be more than fifteen miles away from the place, but it was going to be an almost literal standstill until we got in. Then, disaster struck. We realized we were running so low on gasoline that we would likely run out before getting into the grounds. Begrudgingly, we left the line for a quick fill-up.

Turning around, we hoped and prayed that there would be another route that we could take, that we wouldn't be forced to the back of a line that we'd already devoted an hour and a half to. Our prayers seemed to be answered when we were diverted onto a country back road where traffic was moving pretty steadily. But, alas, traffic was eventually snarled there as well, and we had no choice but to wait it out.

Our prediction of a three-to-four hour wait was shattered, and our patience was pushed to the limit. Time passed, the sun set, and we could only creep forward, inch by inch, towards our destination. Nothing to be done... nothing to be done...

We thought that we were headed towards a separate entrance to the grounds, but at the end of our backroad ordeal, we were diverted onto the same highway we had originally come from, a mere eight hours after we first got there. But by this time, we were elated to just be able to see the campgrounds. As we made our way to the check-in point, we could taste the sweet victory of escaping our four-wheeled prison. A young man and woman came over to inspect the car. They greeted us and peaked into the vehicle. We were worried and intrigued about how thorough an inspection would come - we were packed in pretty tightly and after an eight-hour wait, were not about to start rearranging anything.

"If we open the trunk," said the woman, "Will a ton of stuff fall out?"

"Probably," replied our driver who had, heroically, taken the wheel for the entire day (thanks again, bud).

"Ok. We'll let it go, then," she said.

On the other side of the car, the young man poked his head in and said, "I'll just hang out here and pretend to inspect you a little longer. What're you coming to see?"

Well, that was easy. The "authorities" were likely more irked by the car next to us where they found an air-handgun in the glove box. Or perhaps the car pulled over to the side where a load of marijuana had been discovered. You can do almost anything at Bonnaroo. Almost.

But we were in. We pulled the car through the entrance gate and saw a magnificent image: a sea of cars and tents as far as the eye could look. Row after row after row, an incalculable number vehicles and, ergo, an incalculable number of people. Estimates would later show that over 80,000 people were in that vast field (Bonnaroo takes place on a converted farm).

We were ushered through the mass to a small plot of grass. This would be our home for the next three days, and, eager as eager can be to escape the vehicle, we piled out of the car and quickly put up our makeshift camping area. Our claim confined to about a 20x10-yard area, we had just enough space to throw up two tents (one big and one small) and a rain tarp under which we kept a group of folding chairs. Despite how packed-in the campsites might seem when looked at from afar, my companions and I (we numbered 5 in total) never felt crunched for space.

By this time, it was about 11:00 pm. We had anticipated being unpacked and ready to rock by about 6:00 pm - the best laid plans of mice and men...

But, the beautiful thing about Bonnaroo is that there's almost always music to be seen, so after a quick snack at the campsite we headed off to the festival area. Our fear was that since we had gotten into the grounds so late, we would be located terribly far away from the stages, but turns out we got lucky. Our site was only about an 8-minute walk away, child's play for a car-less Chicagoan. When we got to the gate, there was yet another inspection to get through - our bags were checked, again not very thoroughly, and finally, we were in. BONNAROO!!!

We had made it in time to see The XX - Thursday was jam band day as the festival didn't want to waste headliners while people were still funneling in. The XX put on a solid show, and were a perfect band to unwind with after a long day in the car. But we could tell that though it was going to be a decent show, it would be unmemorable, and so we decided to see what else was out there.

What we found was Lotus, a badass group of jammers with one helluva light show. We had found our destination for the evening. The music was exciting, even as it put you into a trance. And as a prototypical stoner band, we weren't surprised to see a bevy of people lighting up in the middle of the field. After a loooong day, we were relieved to be able to rock out all of our frustration.

And that did it for day 1. We started with incredible optimism, descended into a seemingly never-ending melancholy, and ended up rallying back. But the roller coaster had worn us out, and all we could manage to do was stumble back to our campsite and soundly pass out...

Sports Saturday - The Call

2010-06-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

Everyone is talking about it - even the non-baseball heathens.

I speak, of course, about Jim Joyce's blown call that cost pitcher Armando Galarraga baseball's holy grail: A perfect game. But I'm not going to hem and haw and rail against the lack of precision in umpiring - baseball is by nature an imperfect game where even the most basic elements (balls and strikes) are judgment calls with human error playing a big part. After playing the game for years and years, most ballplayers have an understanding for this imperfection and realize the futility of arguing calls. And ultimately, how often does one call by the umpire actually decide the fate of the game?

But, almost despite myself, I find myself annoyed by Bud Selig's decision not to overturn the call. There are three main reasons:

Firstly, the impact of the decision. It cost someone a perfect game, what would have been the 21st in MLB history. That's roughly one every 5-10 years, which might be surprising given the recent spate of PG's within the last month. This is basically the rarest event in baseball, one that brings even uncelebrated pitchers (like Galarraga) instant fame and immortality. Part of the beauty of baseball is the way individual moments can shine through the sea of unfeeling statistics to be remembered into posterity - Merkel's boner, Bobby Thompson's home run, Bill Buckner's epic cock-up (trademark), these moments are immortal despite careers that may not have made them so. And any perfect game pitcher gets to be a part of that immortality. Most bad calls can, at worst, decide an individual game, and while this is upsetting, it's just a different number in the W and L columns. Joyce's call decided immortality.

Secondly, Joyce acknowledged as soon as humanly possible that he had gotten the call wrong. I'm sure he wanted to reverse the call, but knew that it was impossible to do in the heat of the game without ruining the integrity of the umpires. It's one thing to accept the imperfection of baseball umpiring, and another to adhere stringently to it when all parties involved agree that a mistake was made.

Thirdly, and most importantly, the correct call would have automatically ended the game. In most cases, disputed calls happen in the middle of games, even in the middle of at-bats. These are impossible to retroactively change because by the changing of just one part of a game, one would be unable to tell how the rest of the events would be affected. Take, for instance, the dispute two years ago over C.C. Sabathia's botched no-hitter: a close play on a ground ball was ruled a hit, and not, as some believed, an error. This ended up being the only hit in the game, meaning that had it been ruled an error, the game would have been a no-hitter. But making the game a no-hitter would rely on assumptions. For instance, how could we be sure that if Sabathia knew for sure that he still had a no-hitter the pressure wouldn't get to him and force him to err later in the game?

Had the blown call occurred with even 1 out in the ninth inning, I would be completely against changing the call since we never know what would have happened on the next out under the new circumstances. But since the real call would have actually ended the game, there are absolutely no what-ifs to argue. We know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that it would have been a perfect game, and therefore, it would be fair to retroactively change the call.

But while Galarraga's lost place in baseball lore is sad, the real travesty here is that this ordeal is surely to result in more instant replay in baseball. Generally, the human error in baseball is beautiful, and keeps the game more pastoral and relaxed than the rigidly ruled game of football where replay is commonplace. And wouldn't instant replay ultimately weaken the umpires' authority, the very thing that Selig's decision is meant to protect?

Joyce and Galarraga have handled this whole situation admirably, and as gentlemen. They behaved with tact from the moment the error occurred up through when they shook hands as they exchanged lineup cards the day after. Bud Selig is the only one who isn't with the program - by so stringently adhering to the dogma of baseball, he is ultimately weakening the rule of law in the sport. Selfishly, he has let Jim Joyce bare all of the wrath of the fans, and refused to make a controversial but just decision that would have relieved some of that burden. Sure, it would have brought criticism to his doorstep, but Jesus-like, he should have taken the sin upon himself to save the men involved. That's, to me, the commissioner's job.

A trip to the Symphony

2010-06-03T09:21:00.000-07:00

While it's nice sitting comfortably in my house all day sipping beer and listening to whatever I feel like hearing at the moment on Grooveshark.com (greatest. website. ever.), last night I had the occasion to hear my first world class symphonic performance with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

My hometown of Cincinnati is not without its own orchestra, but the Chicago Symphony is quite a step above, arguably one of the top orchestras in the entire world. It's a special treat to be able to see such a fine show of musical talent, and in some ways, amazing that I've waited until now to do so.

As I await attending the Bonnaroo Music Festival next week, perhaps the polar opposite musical experience of the CSO, I find myself pondering the significance of actually attending a symphony. Certainly, the programme was not the only draw - after all, I'd heard most of, if not all of the pieces before (Beethoven's 8th Symphony, the Overture to Beethoven's Fidelio, and for the finale, Beethoven's immortal 5th Symphony), and done by world class orchestras in their own right (perhaps I'd even heard a recording of the CSO doing some of the works). And surely, the recordings must have been a better sound quality after going through the rigor of a studio editing session.

But as I sat in a seat and awaited the start of the evening, I realized that I was about to not just hear music, but to experience it. The conductor or principal violin player comes onto the stage and the audience gives unsolicited applause, before even a note of music has been played. It's as if they are clapping not for the music itself, but as acknowledgement of the lifetime of practice and study spent in preparation for this one moment.

That's the key to what I took away from my trip to the symphony. I expect that next week, when I go to Bonnaroo, despite a massively larger audience, and hundreds of thousands of dollars being poured into creating elaborate light shows, costumes, and stagings, the emphasis will not really be on the music. People will be cheering for the musicians, but at the same time holding beer bottles and toking on reefers. This doesn't compare to the near-holiness that symphonic audiences seem to put on what they listen to. Symphony halls are like cathedrals, and audiences have a stringent adherence to etiquette, even refraining from coughing until the end of a movement so as not to spoil the melody (it's amazing fun to see how the auditorium turns into a hospital ward between movements as patrons try to cram their coughing into a minimal five-to-ten-second space). This seeming stuffiness may be why classical music is so unpopular amongst younger, diverse audiences, but it's also what makes the symphonic experience so special. Here is perhaps the one instance where a person is asked to just listen to and respect the music being played. It's not like having music on in the background while you have a good conversation, or even like attending a rock concert where your concentration is more on the party than the sound (not that there's anything wrong with that).

What the symphony does is command that those who attend study the music attentively, listen for subtle colorings and counter-melodies and transitions that add complexity to music. And in this way, one comes to better appreciate all music in general. While one can still enjoy modern music like, say, Jurassic 5 based on the catchiness of the beats and the flow of the rhymes, being able to latch onto nuances in the rhythms or appreciate a solid composition makes it a transcendent experience, and for me, the entrance into that kind of appreciation came from classical music. It's a mistake to think that all music is not interconnected. Old audiences who dismiss rap as an "other" and young audiences who blindly dismiss classical music as boring, are both missing worlds of musical experiences that inevitably enrich the soul (now we're really getting high-falutin').

The key is forcing oneself to really pay attention to what you are listening to. Symphonies acknowledge that you can't really appreciate what you're listening to unless you are just listening to it. To be sure, there's a non-auditory element of performance to a symphony - it's exciting and mesmerizing to see all the bows moving to and fro in unison, or to watch a conductor as he calls for a particular kind of coloring to the notes played - but for the most part, it is nothing more than an acknowledgement of the importance of music to our lives. There's something beautiful and primal about that.

As a seller of classical music subscriptions, I often encounter old ladies who are frustrated by the informality with which some people attend the symphony. For them, polo shirts, khaki shorts, and Birkenstocks have no place in their musical Church. To many people, that might seem uptight and ridiculous, but one can't argue that they have some founding in their sadness at the decay of an experience that, for them, is holy. And you also can't argue that deep, deep appreciation for the classics brings some sort of Enlightenment to their lives, in the same way that deep appreciation of rock or techno or jazz does to others. Music is a universal language and I would argue that a trip to the symphony helps one learn to speak it.

Sports Saturday

2010-05-29T06:14:00.000-07:00

Let this blog be a haven for Chicagoans looking to escape Blackhawk mania. Hockey has no place in the national conversation except for the Olympics.

Right now, there is nothing more important in the sports world or, barring a pesky little oil spill (can’t we clean that shit up yet?), the real world than the first place Cincinnati Reds. At the time of this entry’s writing (Friday morning) the Reds hold a one game lead over the Cards, meaning that no matter what, the Reds will still be in first place tomorrow. This weekend brings the foundering Astros into town, so hopefully the lead will hold at least until the Reds play the Cardinals at the end of the weekend. That series will end a streak of 20 games without a day off, finally giving the overtaxed bullpen a much-needed respite.

Even though the Reds have risen to first by beating some very bad teams (You know that when Roy Oswalt can’t beat the Reds Houston is playing poorly), there are a few reasons to be upbeat when considering the team’s potential for the rest of the year:

1) Starting pitching has been phenomenal and looks like it will continue to be. Cueto and Bailey have both sustained minor injuries, but nothing that should continue to cause problems throughout the season. Even better, unlike years past, if the Reds have an injury to a pitcher, there is a coterie of men in waiting who can make the jump to the Bigs, including this one guy named Chapman. Bronson is proving as able as ever; Aaron Harang is doing OK, and finally seems to be getting some run support; Cueto and Leake are both performing like BAMFs (but we should expect both to let off the gas a little bit as the season goes on, particularly Leake). Bailey is the wild card so far, but as said before, there are plenty of people in waiting if he goes haywire.

2) Scott Rolen. I thought it was a terrible move for the Reds to pick him up last year, and now I’m eating my words (or thoughts, rather, because I didn’t have a blog back then). He’s on pace to hit about 30 homers and has been batting a solid .280-.290 all year. Having him to hit behind Joey Votto has proven invaluable. It’s let Brandon Phillips move back to the 2-spot where he belongs. Oh, and by the way, can you say Clutch?

3) The Reds have been winning the type of game that they lost in years past. Asides from the 9th inning meltdown in Atlanta, the late innings have been good to Cincinnati. Something that I think is telling is that the last time
the Reds blew a 6-run lead in the 9th (April 27th, 2004 with the loss going to everyone’s favorite Rufio look-alike but least favorite closer, Danny Graves), it was the start of a 5-game skid. This year, the Reds were able to bounce back and win 5 of their next 7. They also seem to have snapped their club aversion to extra inning wins.

Now, all that said, there are also some very worrying aspects to this ball club.

1) The Reds’ wins have been coming in May, which continues to follow my adage: Bad in April, Good in May, OK in June, Abysmal in July. Couple that with the fact that the Reds are 9-11 against teams over .500 and you begin to see why there should be some worry. The boys take on some tough teams heading into the All-Star break, and I think we’ll know by then if they can really hang.

2) For all the depth the Reds have at pitching, there is relatively little of it for position players. If Scott Rolen, Joey Votto, or Brandon Phillips get hurt, that’s pretty much all she wrote. The outfield has a little give with Laynce Nix and Johnny Gomes both performing admirably, but let’s just hope the team can stay healthy for once – especially Rolen who is 35.

3) The Bullpen. Coco has been frighteningly spotty this year, only rarely getting the 1-2-3 ninth that he was designed to get. Masset and Herrera have also been giving up runs in spots where the team can’t afford it. The only guy who’s been an absolute Oak is Arthur Rhodes, who is ancient and has been over-performing like nobody’s business. But after those four guys, the bullpen gets pretty abysmal, so Dusty has been leaning on them pretty hard. I have a feeling that logging all the innings will catch up to them come August and September – why put in Coco with a four-run lead against Pittsburgh? Of course, it all has to look bad during this 20-game stretch when nobody is getting the rest they need.

But, for now, let’s enjoy the nice part of the Summer. It’s not too hot out and the Reds are in first goddamn place. They’ve looked good all year, and not “good for Cincinnati” but “major league good.” Aroldis Chapman is going to dominate when he gets here, and Joey Votto has the potential to be as consistent as Albert Pujols. If both those things happen, this team could contend not just this season, but for years to come.

2010-05-28T07:03:00.000-07:00

Blockbuster hasn't a chance in Hell. That's the conclusion I came to after making a deal with a friend of mine to take advantage of her Netflix account's Instant Watch capabilities. The sheer volume of feature films, TV shows, and documentaries just available to stream instantly (not even counting the zillions of titles available for rental) is far more than enough to overwhelm the rental giant's modest in-store collection.

So far, Netflix has allowed me to satiate a few of my niche interests: Ken Burns documentaries, music rockumentaries, and currently... dare I say it... Anime.

For whatever reason I've always had a penchant for those cheaply made, highly stylized animated sagas. I began my foray into the genre in my youth with, don’t judge me, the Pokémon series. Yes, painful as it is to admit it, I was briefly attached to the story of Ash, Misty, Brock, and all of their little furry friends. It’s not a period of my life that I like to relive, but I contend that I was less interested in the show itself than I was brainwashed into liking it by what is still the best Game Boy game of all time, and arguably the best theme song of all time.

But it's great in any language!

http://swedishpoke.ytmnd.com/

But after I grew out of that phase, some time went by before I rediscovered Anime again, this time with the legendary Dragon Ball Z series. That show more than any other turned me on to the genre as a whole. I was wowed by the creativity of the storyline, its fusion of fantasy and reality, and the expressiveness of the animation style. At the same time though, the show was hindered by a childish tone, very short and occasionally unsubstantive episodes, and overly drawn out power-up sequences in which characters moaned and grunted for about ten minutes in preparation for giant attack sequence.

Asides from Pokémon, DBZ was arguably the first Anime show to make it big in America, and it helped launch the wave of similar shows on Cartoon Network’s original Adult Swim like Gundam Wing and Cowboy Bebop. Though I peeked in on these shows on occasion, I never got into them the same way I got into DBZ. Now in college, I was starting to become keenly aware that though some aspects of the shows were very cool, others were very childish. Not to mention that the genre seemed to have a sort of geekifying aspect to it, turning people who paid a great deal of attention to it into nerdy Japan-aholics.

Once again, though, I was able to come back to Anime, this time through a show called Samurai Champloo. “Champloo” is (apparently) a Japanese word that means a fusion between past and present, and the world of the show is utterly fascinating. It technically takes place in early 19th century Japan, when the country was still made up of rural villages, but peppered in are touches of the 20th century. My favorite example is this beatboxing baddie:

Tune to 1:35, or just wait till after the opening credits

Champloo also features some really ballin’ fight sequences. It should be noted that some of the people I know most interested in Anime are stage combatants who enjoy both the creativity of the fights and the fact that they use classic weaponry such as swords, daggers, and bow staffs not often found elsewhere.

But even Champloo suffers from some genre drawbacks. Chiefly, Anime shows have an aversion to the subtlety and pacing that is expected in Western culture. Creators adhere to a simplicity in dialogue and storyline that often devolves into a simple good vs. evil trope, or has an explicitly stated moral lesson attached to each episode. This makes the genre feel childish even as it depicts mature or even lurid content. I think this is mostly due to the divide between Eastern and Western traditions, and xenophobic as it might seem, I’d like to see the art form take on more Western characteristics, that is, put emphasis on character development, find more complexity in the plot arcs, make dialogue more realistic.

Which brings me back to Netflix. I’ve recently found that Netflix Instant Watch allows one to stream the entire Avatar: The Last Airbender series. This Anime show, which originally aired on Nickelodeon, was actually developed in America, and it keeps a Western sensibility in regards to things like plot arcs, transitions, and comedy (some of the jokes are actually quite funny for a kids show). At the same time, the world of Avatar is heavily Asian-influenced, with martial arts, Buddhist iconography, and Eastern clothing and design found throughout. Avatar is about a boy named Aang, a scion that must master the four elements (air, water, earth, and fire) in order to stop a hundred-year-old war. The premise is primal, and the fantasy world that is set up functions much like Tolkien’s Middle Earth. All in all, it’s a pretty darn good show, and a terrific kid show (it should be noted, by the way, that I first saw the show when babysitting 10-year-olds and was waaaay more into it than they were).

Though, in my opinion, Avatar takes quite a step in the development of Anime for Western audiences, it still suffers from a lack of depth, subtlety, and maturity typical of many TV shows meant for children. But thematically and in terms of setting, the show is brilliant. It represents a meeting between Western and Eastern forms of creativity, combining the expressiveness of Anime with the logistical prowess of Aristotelian writing.

In looking at Anime, there is a tendency to dismiss the genre altogether by focusing on its negative aspects (there certainly are some). Though Western culture has been exposed to the dramatic power of Anime, most notably through works by Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle) and Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira), it has also witnessed its downside– perhaps most pronounced in what is called “hentai,” that is, pornographic and sexually perverted animation. The misogyny of this type of animation, as well as that in many movies and TV shows (the potential rape of women is an Anime trope) has, to some extent soured our culture to the art form.

But I think that the story of the 21st century will be about the joining of East and West, artistically as well as economically. We’ve already started to see some examples of this in the movie industry, most notably with Slumdog Millionaire, and as time passes, transplants from East to West and vice versa will become more numerous and better developed. I believe that Anime will play a big part in 21st century culture, and artists should open themselves up to understanding and appreciating it as a creative form.

One of my all-time favorite Anime moments. Check out the lighting and the seething anger depicted on Edward's face. Just because it's a cartoon doesn't mean it can't be dramatic.

A word for Rand Paul

2010-05-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

It's a rarity indeed when the High Horse Blog comes to the aid of a Republican candidate, but today's post will take a look at the much conflated and overblown issue of recent Kentucky Senate primary winner Rand Paul's remarks about the Civil Rights Act.

Maddow is a great interviewer, and even though she's a member of the 24-hour newsarazzi, she should be given credit for setting up such a long interview so to really give Paul a chance to explain his views on the subject. I do think after she's made her point, she continues to dig into him to score some political points, but overall, she gives him a chance to speak. In fact, at one point she says, "I'm sorry to interrupt you, go on sir." Can you imagine O'Reilly doing such a thing?

But, I think that she has helped make this issue far bigger than it has any right to be. Rand Paul has said that he fully supports 9 out of 10 points of the Civil Rights Act from over 40 years ago. The point that he expresses mixed feelings about (not, as some would have you think, disagrees with) is the one prescribing that businesses desegregate. Such problematic views are the reason that people like Rand Paul and his father Ron Paul will never be palatable enough for the Presidency, but that's not to say that there's absolutely no value in them. Why else would they cling to such beliefs that are obviously going to hurt them at the polls?

The point that Paul is trying to make is that by having laws that impede on private business in the way the Civil Rights Act does, you are inherently limiting freedom of speech which could potentially weaken the power of the first amendment. Granted, back in the '60s the risk to the first amendment was massively overpowered by the problem of widespread racism, but I think that what Paul is after is getting our country to see past the tangible effects of legislation and look into the future jurisprudential questions that such legislation brings up.

The Health Care Bill is a perfect example: About 20 states (all with Republican leadership I should point out) are bringing cases to court regarding the Constitutionality of the mandate that people buy insurance or face a penalty. I think this is another case where the need for health care reform overpowers the objections based on murkiness to the legal system, but the opponents are not without some reason. Does the government really have the right to insist that we purchase a particular product, in this case insurance?

Now, that debate is also colored by the fact that the cases raised against the health care bill are all done to score political points for the Conservative bases of the states in question, but Rand Paul is doing no such thing. I think that he has a very honest concern for the language of a particular law, and wishes that people could see how it makes for confusion. As he said about 400 times in the Maddow interview, he abhors racism and I think he is very supportive of the way that the Civil Rights Act changed the world for the positive. Rand Paul is not a racist.

I know an awful lot of people who would support banning the KKK from marching through cities, which is frightening because when public opinion is massively against something, there is a danger that politicians could give in to it and pass legislation that, though popular, overreaches on the rights of Americans. The KKK should be allowed to march through our cities, and in fact, I feel a sense of national pride that we allow such things to occur, as abhorrent as I believe their views are.

Mr. Paul's point, as I see it, basically asserts that we should allow racists to be racist. If they want to open a Whites Only diner, they should go ahead, and the overwhelming public dissent would make it go out of business. I think that he's incorrect in that line of thinking - in some instances, the government's intrusion on private lives is necessary for the maintenance of a stable country - but I don't think that his heart is in the wrong place, as liberal pundits would have you think. Rather than attack his character, they should be attacking his logic. His view is incorrect, but not malevolent.

And since I was so impressed with Maddow's interview, I thought I'd reward her by showing some embarrassing footage of her rival.

And even better is this remixed version. A good example of how sampling does nothing but enrich our experience of the original. If anyone's interested in seeing a good documentary about sampling (Featuring one of the HHB's favorites, Girl Talk) check out RiP! A Remix Manifesto, currently available on Hulu (for FREE!!!).

Quick Addendum: Here's Ross Douthat's column in Monday's NY Times. I think he discusses the issue pretty eloquently:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/24/opinion/24douthat.html?th&emc=th

The Bourne-a-thon

2010-05-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

My neck still hurts from Jason Bourne. And no, it wasn’t from one of the amnesiatic assassin’s patented choke holds, but from being stuck in a craned position for the majority of a five-and-a-half hour epic Bourne-a-thon in which I finally was able to fill the gaping hole in my movie-watching oeuvre: the Bourne Trilogy.

Almost universally beloved, I was hoping the triumvirate might reduce my aversion to the action genre – perhaps it’s a sign of my premature aging, but all that blasting and intense background music gives me such a headache. No such luck. I found Bourne to be just as commonplace as Transformers or even (dare I say it) The Core.

But we’ll get to my own hang-ups with Action later. Let’s start by discussing the movies themselves.

If you’re one of the ten people on Earth who haven’t met Jason Bourne (Matt Damon), the story begins when a fishing boat stumbles upon a mysterious body floating in the ocean. Though shot four times, the floater clings to life and heals up aboard the ship. The man, who we soon learn is Bourne, can remember nothing, absolutely nothing of his past, but for some reason has a penchant for lethal mayhem. The trilogy revolves around Bourne seeking the knowledge of his past, wandering continually further into a rabbit hole of vaster and vaster government conspiracy.

By the end of the first movie (The Bourne Identity), through the hackneyed use of memory flashes (see for example: every amnesia movie ever made), we find out that he was a secret agent hired by a secret agency for a secret mission to assassinate a renegade militant. The mission went haywire when Bourne’s conscience got in the way of executing the man in front of his family resulting in the “sleeping with the fishes” situation that he found himself in at the beginning of the movie.

Bourne failing to pull the trigger while aiming a gun at the head of a defenseless person would become the first annoying action trope of the trilogy. It wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t happened SO often. At least twice a movie. “Don’t worry guys,” I assured my friends while watching a similar situation in the final chapter, “If we’ve learned anything about Jason Bourne, it’s that he doesn’t pull the trigger.” The action, or lack thereof, is indicative of the trilogies’ general G-rating as far as action movies go. Though Jason Bourne may rack up a hefty body count, he lacks the ability to make a substantive kill, to actually dispatch one of the top players.

That’s not to say that nobody “important” dies in Bourne. The beginning of the second movie (The Bourne Supremacy) sees the sudden and brutal death of Marie (Franka Potente), the second-billed lead of the first movie. Poor Marie had been pulled into the whole affair when Bourne randomly entreated her assistance as he fled government agents chasing him in Geneva. Though initially irked by his homicidal tendencies and inability to remember his past (who could blame her?), she soon begins an affair with the man, making her move as he seeks (for her safety) to alter her physical appearance in what must be the most sexually charged haircut scene of recent memory.

But ultimately, Marie didn’t add all that much to the story itself, so she was the perfect fodder for audiences hungry to feel that the trilogy was “edgy” and could keep you on your toes. The Bourne Trilogy follows the prototypical rule for movie trilogies – a first movie full of mystery, where the hero emerges, a second movie where the hero must experience defeat and suffering so to grow stronger, and a third movie where the hero ultimately triumphs - see Star Wars or the The Matrix for other examples. Perhaps this is why I found the Bourne Trilogy to be so tired. In the end, there was no real suspense to be had, since I knew that Bourne would have to stay around for the next two movies.

At the same time, each movie follows a similar general arc – Bourne starts to snoop around for information into his past, a government agency puts up its best efforts to quash the upstart, and Bourne emerges supreme and proves he can outsmart the unlimited resources of his opposition. Clean and efficient indeed, but also, simple.

Note: It’s been a busy week, so I haven’t had much time to really craft this posting, so my apologies if it feels disjointed. Contrary to popular belief, segues are not so easy.

One conceit of Action movies is that the audience is willing to accept a lack of realism in exchange for an exciting journey. This perhaps gets to the crux of my problem with the genre. In real life, we all know that one Superspy would never be able to outclass an entire network of superspies (there are no James Bonds in real life). Therefore, each action movie has some sort of Transcendentalist bent to it. That is, it perpetuates the idea that by finding some sort of mythical knowledge, wisdom, or key, a hero can essentially outshine the world. Nobody can touch him or her. If that’s true, then the way that we should read each action movie is by finding the key that allows him or her to triumph. In The Matrix, for instance, Neo learns to trust in himself and his friends that he is “The One,” which allows for him to accept his destiny and conquer the technoscape. In the Bourne Trilogy, I just couldn’t find the key. Bourne doesn’t have to learn anything to gain his power, he just has it, and the movies are less about finding oneself than about finding the right person to kill.

Caspar David Friedrich – Wanderer Above the Fog, 1818

Here’s a painting, by the way, that my 12th grade Modern European History teacher chose as a representation of the Transcendentalist philosophy. (Thank you John Morra) I think this is a perfect case where a picture can say a thousand words.

But, I have to admit, I think that Transcendentalism is pretty much bunk. While I admire the idea that wisdom and intellectualism do grant one a degree of power over the world they live in, I think that it also perpetuates the idea that one can “conquer the world,” or at least shut it out and live a solitary but self-assured existence. And overall, I just don’t care about the journey of one man, but about the way that he influences other people and vice versa. Most action movies boil down to One Man vs. The World, and I just don’t find that particularly interesting to watch.

What I’d rather see is people interacting one another, affecting one another, changing one another, constantly shifting in relativistic positions rather than representing binary absolutes. Good vs. Evil? Please. How often do we really confront issues that plain in real life? And that’s really why I think the Bourne Trilogy failed, and why most action movies fail.

Before I sound too negative about the whole genre, I should indicate that there are actually Action movies I do like, such as The Matrix (the first one). But I would argue that The Matrix is vastly different from Bourne in ways. Primarily, though it is somewhat formulaic in that it is solely Neo’s journey that we are asked to concentrate on, we get to see how he is affected by characters around him. While Morpheus and Trinity provide positive reinforcement, we also see him influenced by Cypher (the Negative Nellie on the ship) and The Oracle, whose enigmatic message ultimately proves a red herring. There’s actually quite a bit of substantive stuff that happens.

Take that in contrast to Bourne, whose chronicles are like watching a little boy play video games on level 1, then a harder level 2, and then an even harder level 3. Instead of the complex layering of different messages by different characters who represent different influences, we get a twenty minute car chase through Central Europe (Oy! Who knew being a secret agent was such a schlep?). Yes, I know that The Matrix has many drawn out action scenes as well, but in that movie the action is an irreplaceable element of the script. It actually helps tell the story about how the Matrix works, and what Neo’s role actually is. I suppose you could similarly justify the action of the Bourne movies as a description of how the world of the secret agent works, but I really don’t think it takes a straight hour-and-a-half of heart-pounding suspense to see that.

Perhaps my problem is that I feel action movies should be on the television screen. Their pulpiness is perfect for when you’re sitting around killing time, but isn’t the sort of thing that should be featured on a silver screen, where it commands that you pay it attention. If I have to pay attention to something, I feel that it should have some sort of meaning. Something other than: Jason Good; Government Baaad.

Maybe I’m completely off here. But, considering the popularity of the movie series, I really have to ask, “Did I miss something?”

Dear Deidre

2010-05-17T15:52:00.000-07:00

Deidre is back from hiatus and Pete has been sacked.

Dear Deidre,

I was at a movie with a friend of mine, slightly (heavily) intoxicated by a certain controlled substance, and she offered me an Altoid out of her hand. Knowing how curiously strong they were I couldn't resist their Siren's call, and reached for one. In my stupor, I knocked the newly purchased candy tin out of her hand, spilling precious minties all over the carpet. I, of course, apologized and offered to buy her another pack, but after thinking about it, I started to consider the possibility that I really don't owe her a replacement, right? Knowing my state of mind, and taking into consideration that accidents do sometimes happen, shouldn't she make me culpable for only a percentage of the total cost?

The friendship is intact and the whole case is now moot, but I'd appreciate your opinion for gloating purposes.

Sincerely,

Clutz McGee

Dear Clutz McGee,

At least it wasn't movie candy because if it was, you would surely owe her a new pack, and you would be reponsible in full. Those movie sized candies are inappropriately expensive, and I would be quite irate knowing that a whole box was wasted on someone's frivilous hand malfunction.

But, seriously, is this for real? Is someone really insisting or expecting that you buy her a new pack of Altoids? Was this even an actual conversation? Maybe she should have realized that after consuming intoxicating substances, you may not have the best hand-eye coordination. Not to mention, it's dark in movie theaters. Without proper lighting, it's presumably hard to see and detect the small Altoid lying within someone's palm. And, as we all know, no good deed goes unpunished. Why share in the first place? She bought the Altoids, she should have kept them for herself, and therefore, the only person to blame for spilling all of the precious "minties" onto the floor would be herself.

At the same time, you should try and be respectful of other people's possessions. Even if it is just a few Altoids, remember that not everyone has an extra dollar to buy a second pack. And, since you don't really want to buy a replacement, you probably don't have a ton of extra cash either. If it would have turned into some sort of real argument, I would have suggested that you just suck it up and buy a new one. Be the bigger person. Thankfully, that was not the case. Try to be more careful next time, Clutz. And, check your breath... maybe she was trying to tell you something.

Deidre

Politics Sunday

2010-05-16T03:14:00.001-07:00

There was no Sports Saturday because following the Reds' loss to St. Louis Friday - runners on 1st and 2nd with one out, down one run in the ninth, the Reds hit into a double play. A double play, for God's sake! Talk about going out with a whimper - I was far too distraught to do any kind of clear-sighted competitive analysis. And, yes, yesterday's gem was able to right my mood, but now it's politics Sunday. Sigh. Sometimes the timing just never works out. But let's celebrate yesterday together, and root hard for the Redlegs, who once again can take sole possession of first place with a win today.

For today, I'd like to speak briefly on Elena Kagan.

Yikes. Can't anyone snap a decent-looking picture of the woman?

But, really, it's not so much her that I'm interested in speaking about as the conversation surrounding her. Now, I feel somewhat ashamed to admit (not really) that among the first comments I made about Ms. Kagan was, "Who's this Jasper that Obama nominated to the Supreme Court?"

- A Jasper, of course, is a slang term for a particular type of middle-aged lesbian -

Do I feel bad to have used such a base vernacular term in reference to a would-be High Court Justice? Meh. It was innocuous enough, and meant more as a joke about her disheveled appearance than her sexual orientation. Little did I know that the entirety of Ms. Kagan's confirmation process (the only real 15 minutes of fame a Supreme Court Justice gets) would revolve around similar comments made by media sources.

Now, the High Horse Blog enjoys only a modest readership, giving it leeway for being lax on certain ethical standards (i.e. Pete's column last week, or perhaps when I called Liz Cheney a dirty, dirty tramp), but news networks and papers are a different story.

The trouble stems from the Wall Street Journal's decision to post a picture of Ms. Kagan playing softball 17 years ago (when she was a law teacher at the University of Chicago) on the front page of the newspaper. The picture immediately ignited a flurry of conversation surrounding the nominee's sexual orientation because of the popular stereotype that women who play softball are often lesbians.

Court Nominee Comes to the Plate

For the moment, let's forget about the complicated and thorny issue of why people make this association in the first place (it gets into zeitgeist theory and how stereotypes are formulated, which are far too complicated for this humble post to tackle), and ask the question, "Why would the Wall Street Journal, one of the nation's most vaunted news outlets, publish a picture of a Supreme Court Judge playing softball on the front page?"

The byline for the picture, "Court Nominee Comes to the Plate," does not carry in it any substantive significance, and is really just meant to be a witty attention-grabber. It appeared in the May 11th Wall Street Journal after Kagan had been nominated on the 10th, so this was really among the first pictures of the potential Justice that would be published.

So why choose this picture? Why not something befitting the gravitas of the position of Supreme Court Justice? For instance, here is the picture the supposedly Liberal New York Times published the day after the John Roberts nomination:

Certainly, the picture promotes a more dignified image of Justice Roberts, one befitting a future Supreme Court judge. I think, then, that we can see that the Journal is using at least one irresponsible tactic, and inserting subtle bias against Ms. Kagan by using a picture that portrays her as laid-back and folksy as she is nominated for a court that is considered far more grave.

With such a disconnect, the Journal must have known that many people would wonder why it was this picture that was chosen for the front page. What makes playing softball front page news? News people, whose lives revolve around learning how people consume and interpret media, must have been able to predict that people would put together the association of softball's link to gay culture and Ms. Kagan's single status.

So I think that to call the Journal's softball picture an insinuation of Kagan's sexual preference is fair. And I think the issue's insertion into the general conversation around the nominee was intentional on the Journal's part. It's interesting to consider that, in addition to the Wall Street Journal, Conservative news mogul Rupert Murdoch also controls the New York Post and Fox News, organizations integral to controlling the national dialogue. Colbert did a pretty good segment highlighting how calculated interaction between those three sources of Conservative media can bloat a small idea into a national issue. It's very intelligent, and I highly suggest you check it out.

But I think that we should be comforted by the use of these sorts of tactics for Kagan's nomination. Obviously, if we're grasping at straws like the "gay card," as a means to stall the confirmation, it means her chances of getting through are pretty high. What we know so far about Ms. Kagan is that, though she may not have a long paper trail so that we have her registered opinion on EVERYTHING, she is considered one of the most brilliant legal minds in the country. She's not, as Conservatives would have you think, Harriet Myers (and isn't it odd that all of a sudden those who supported Myers's nomination are now suddenly using her as an example of a potential Supreme Court fuck-up?).

By the way, thus far, Miss Kagan has taken the high road and not responded to the calls that she confirm her straightness, but many trustworthy people have confirmed her heterosexuality. I think that questioning one's sexual preference when they obviously don't want to speak to it is one of the rudest things that people can do. Whispering about it in the privacy of your home is one thing - I whisper about how hideous Renee Zellweger is every time I see her squinty pancake face on television - but I hardly think that kind of conversation qualifies to be put into credited media.

So is she? Isn't she? Forget about it. Can't it just be a fun inside joke?

Searching for the Meme

2010-05-14T11:18:00.000-07:00

Man, isn't the internet cool?

As I sit here listening to Jurassic 5 (via grooveshark.com), blogging to whoever in the world wants to listen, and watching live sports updates for the Cubs game (not that I actually care about that when the Reds are 1/2 a game out), I am also searching into the past to solve a mystery so trivial to everyone else in the world that I'm almost embarrassed to tell you what it is. But I will:

There is an easy listening song called "Adiemus." Have a listen.

Now, for whatever the hell reason, this is a song that I've loved since my childhood. I fondly remember that it was one of my very first Napster downloads, and it's been a part of my music collection ever since. So, yesterday at work, for some strange reason, the song comes on the classical radio station my boss forces us to listen to. I, sarcastic cretin that I can sometimes be, said to my boss, "Now, I don't mean to quibble with your 'classical' radio station, but they just played a song by Enya."

I returned to making telephone calls, grinning smugly at myself, when a coworker piped up to say, "What are you talking about? This isn't Enya."

The mystery was afoot!

I could have sworn that Enya had written "Adiemus." Napster told me so. It was as if my coworker was taking one of my most treasured nuggets of knowledge and crushing it into oblivion. And he had information to back up his claim: according to him, "Adiemus" was written by Welsh composer Karl Jenkins.

Well, now I just had to know. I couldn't have the origin of one of my favorite songs, a tune that I've had memorized since I was ten years old, in question. Luckily, Google.com was there to help me navigate the rabbit hole of history. Here's what I found:

According to Wikipedia, "Adiemus" was indeed composed by Karl Jenkins as part of a series of albums entitled (fittingly) "Adiemus." Mystery solved right? BUT, why in the world would I have thought the song was composed by Enya? Normally, that easy listening mogul doesn't even register on my radar. There must have been a reason that I thought she was responsible for this strangely addicting and somewhat (somehow) popular piece.

Apparently, too, I was not the only one in the world who thought that "Adiemus" was credited to Enya. Typing "Adiemus" into Google yields just as many results that credit Enya with the song as Karl Jenkins, possibly more. There are youtube hits that have Enya as the composer as well. But Enya's Wikipedia page doesn't list "Adiemus" as a song on any of her albums.

Now, fairly certain that Karl Jenkins was indeed the composer of "Adiemus," I searched Google for the phrase, "Who wrote 'Adiemus'". After swimming through a sea of chat boards, I finally found one where somebody said, "I could have sworn that I saw that Enya wrote the song on the Pure Moods CD or something."

The light bulb moment!

I remembered Pure Moods - an easy listening CD that was marketed ad nauseum on television when I was a kid (probably on Nickelodeon since that's all that I watched). Yes... it was all coming back to me - some commercial where they also played that song from Exorcist. And there was this part with a bunch of candles...

A quick trip to youtube yielded this:

Yes! That's it! That was the commercial! I call this the "Rosebud Moment" where I recover a touching little memory from my childhood.

The commercial does indeed accurately credit the song "Adiemus" as being by Adiemus (the name of Jenkins's album series). Hmm... here's what I think happened:

Both the first song on the commercial and the song that plays just before "Adiemus" are written by Enya, so I'm guessing that someone, some IDIOT, who was among the first people to post the song online on Napster (five years after Pure Moods came out) made a mistake and credited "Adiemus" to Enya. Now, over ten years later, because of the millions of downloads the song must have had (through Napster and other sites) the original mistake has been disseminated all around the internet until, finally, Enya and "Adiemus" are inseparable. Poor Karl Jenkins will go through the rest of his life getting only a partial credit for what is, to me, a very fine song.

Though the whole episode illustrates a danger of the internet (that is, that its information is often perceived as exact yet is prone to falsehood), it also demonstrates the unbelievable beauty of the availability of information on the web. How exciting that we live in a time when, in a matter of minutes, I can search swaths of information in order to find a tiny mistake almost 20 years old! Even 25 years ago, such trivial misinformations were relegated to the dumpster of history. Tiny mysteries like this surely were not important enough to warrant making even a couple phone calls to solve (and perhaps even more work would have been required).

And I, personally, would have been driven CRAZY not knowing the truth. How often does one get acutely bothered by a song in your head that you don't know the name to? Well, as the saying goes, there's an App for that. There's a proverbial App for everything, and they provide more than just a simple service. They provide reassurance that for any, ANY desire that gnaws at oneself, by spending just a few minutes on the information superhighway, we can move past it and return (unstressed) to a relaxed quietude.

Dear (Deidre)

2010-05-10T07:08:00.000-07:00

Deidre had to take this week off, so we were forced to field all incoming questions to our substitute spokesman. Sorry, I haven’t had a chance to check his credentials. We’ll hope the column turns out ok.

Dear Deidre,

Lately it just seems like the magic in my relationship is gone. My boyfriend always used to buy me flowers or surprise me by bringing lunch to my work and things like that, but lately he’s seemed more and more distant. We only rarely go on dates anymore. I don’t think I’ve done anything in particular that would upset him, but every time I try to bring the issue up, he just says, “I don’t want to talk about it,” and walks out of the room. I can’t keep going on in the relationship like this, but I don’t want to push him away by suffocating him. What should I do?

Sincerely,

Confused in Columbus

Dear Confused,

Jesus, what’s a guy got to do to please you people? It’s like every time we do something nice for you, you want to us to do more and more and more. So you only rarely go on dates, huh? Did you ever think that maybe it’s because he’s the one who has to pay every fuckin’ time you go to the movies that he doesn’t want to go out?

And do you know what it costs to buy a large popcorn? It’s like seven bucks – not to mention that you always want to load it down with salt, and then in the middle of the movie you make us go and buy you a soda because you’re so thirsty. By the end of the night, it’s like a $40 evening. And then you go back to your place – always your place, even if I have to work at seven the next morning – and you just go to sleep since you’re so tired from eating the entire tub of popcorn, leaving me to sit on your uncomfortable bed wide awake and spoon you.

And let me tell you something, spooning is not a comfortable position for the guy. All the weight is on your shoulder and every time we need to adjust the position you make this annoying little moan like we’re causing you such an inconvenience by adjusting our position, even though I didn’t want to go to bed in the first place.

Let me ask you something, do you ever do anything nice for your guy? Hmm? Like, I don’t know, maybe a nice blow job every once in a while, where the guy can just sit back, relax, and admire the top of your head. But, NO! You’re perfectly content to let us spend a half hour trying to get you to an unattainable climax, but if we ask just one time for you to let us film it, you turn colder than a Woman’s Christian Temperance Union member.

Fine, you want a suggestion? Here’s a suggestion: instead of worrying so much about whether your man is showing his love enough, why don’t you show some love by getting into the kitchen and cooking a fucking pie. After all, any time you do want to cook, it’s always some vegan shit that looks like it came out of someone’s nose. And, so you know, we may tell you we like it, but we never mean it. We’d much rather just hit up Bdubs or even the K-Fried-C for a double down. It may cost a little extra, but it’s worth not having to feel like such a phony asshole having to compliment every piece of shit you make just to keep you from bursting into tears like a little whiny 10-year-old.

Allright, you know what, that’s enough. Just thinking about you and your pathetic problems has completely harshed my buzz. Your boyfriend’s not being attentive enough? Shit or get off the pot. Either suck it up, or just dump the guy, because seriously, it would be so much easier for everyone to just end this thing than have to pay for another Sandra Bullock movie.

Sincerely,

Pete (fuck this stupid nickname bullshit.)

Myth, Reality, and Immigration

2010-05-09T09:34:00.001-07:00

If you get to the end, there's a treat...

As the controversial Arizona immigration law brings the subject of immigration back to the forefront of the national conversation, it's worth taking a moment to recognize that this thorny issue is one where the rhetoric and reality often diverge from one another. Take, for instance, the prevailing idea that a strong border fence is necessary to keep illegals from entering the country. While both Democrats and Republicans seem to have latched onto the idea that most Americans are for closing and sealing off the borders, any plan to do so butts up against logistics that are overly complicated and expensive. A border fence sounds nice, but is it really feasible to make a fence along such a large distance? And even if we could, would the type of fence we can afford be enough to actually keep immigrants out of the country? Fences can be cut through with wire cutters, can be leaped over, can be dug under; and considering the speed with which road construction occurs in this country, I can't imagine that a concrete barrier could be built with any kind of timeliness.

Such is the problem of the immigration issue. The two parties realize that Americans don't like illegal immigration, and so have to keep the rhetoric tough so as to not seem "soft" on the issue. But on the other hand, any kind of strict enforcement of the issue runs into logistical trouble. The Arizona immigration laws are an example. The lawmakers of Arizona seem to be saying that the importance of finding and deporting illegal immigrants trumps national privacy rights and guaranteed protections against Draconian tactics. By now, most people are aware of the new law requiring all legal immigrants to carry paperwork on them confirming their status, and allowing law enforcement officials to stop anyone they have a "probable cause" to believe may be illegal - actually, the law requiring legal immigrants to carry paperwork on them is over 40 years old. On paper, perhaps that actually looks somewhat fair (and to be sure, the news media has not cast the measure in a very good light) - if you are a legal immigrant, you really have nothing to fear as long as you carry paperwork on you, right?

But in reality, it's not feasible that this will allow those who have obtained a legal status to be treated with any kind of fairness. Even if you had all of your paperwork on you when you were stopped, the new authority police have been given allows for any kind of situation to happen while being stopped. For instance, a friend of mine was once carrying on him medicine that was not prescribed to him - which is a situation many people find themselves in as one cannot always afford the proper medicine, or may be looking to see if a particular course works for them before officially going on it - and was stopped by the police. Under the new laws, the authority given policemen may allow them to use the "probable cause" stamp to snoop around the car and find the medicine, which is illegal and can result in the deportation of a legal immigrant if reported.

Or perhaps more simply, what if a legal immigrant just forgot his paperwork? How many times have I forgotten something as simple as my driver's license? Well, instead of getting to work on time, what likely would happen is the man or woman would be taken to the police station and held until legal status was determined. This is more than a simple inconvenience, it is treating our immigrant brethren (mostly model citizens) as inferior.

The real debate on immigration seems to come from the problem of what to do with illegal immigrants that are currently here. The mythical approach favored by Conservatives is that immigration reform should include measures to deport illegal aliens currently here. Yet even the most tyrannical approach could not possibly sniff out the millions and millions of illegal aliens living in the country now. Not to mention that if, for some reason, everyone in the country illegally just came out and admitted their status, it would prove unwieldy to actually transport such a large population back to their homelands.

And the emotional tenor of immigration rhetoric stems from perhaps the ultimate myth in immigration. What I like to call the "They took our jobs!" myth.

Overall, the work that illegal immigrants do is for such small wages that no American would really have a desire to do such work. The typical jobs that illegal immigrants are able to hold down because of their status are those in manual labor, the sort of thing that American citizens don't generally aspire to anyway. In fact, perhaps the most complicated part of the immigration question is that Americans capitalize on the cheap labor done by illegal immigrants (cheap restaurant food, or low-cost gardening services for instance) because they don't pay them the type of living wage that their work deserves, taking advantage of their precarious situations. How hypocritical, then, to blame them for problems in American society, when indeed the problems are caused by capitalism, greed, and consumerism themselves.

And one final myth to dispel is that of the "security risk" from illegal aliens. OK, yes, theoretically, having undocumented people in the country is risky considering the sort of world we live in Post-September 11th, but in reality, illegal immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than legal immigrants. There are occasional horror stories to grab onto - the illegal immigrant drunk driver who kills someone in their car, for instance - but generally, the risk of being deported outweighs any impetus for crime.

So, as the immigration debate takes its place on the national stage, consider this a reminder that the rhetoric surrounding the issue is often hyperbolic and unrepresentative of reality. Democracy must start with decency, and if we can't see through a blind rage at the mere act of coming into this country illegally (really, it should be seen as quite a compliment that someone still believes in this country while so many want to see us destroyed), then we will act on the issue with a plan that is both needlessly oppressive, and a possible black hole for cost.

Thanks for listening everybody, and for getting to the end, go see this treat from the Onion.

Deidre is off tomorrow, but maybe we'll find someone to fill in for her...

Reds - The movie - Review

2010-05-08T12:59:00.001-07:00

No, contrary to what most Cincinnatians believe, Reds is not a documentary about the formation of the first major league baseball team. Actually, it's a sprawling period piece starring Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton chronicling the Russian Revolution through the eyes of reporter and activist Jack Reed.

Or rather, think of it as an American Dr. Zhivago. That Boris Pasternak epic was remarkable not just because it was a clear-eyed depiction of the events of the Bolshevik revolution (an accomplishment in and of itself considering the lengths to which the Communist government went to excise historical accounts critical of the regime), but because of its intense focus on the uncontrollable disruption of individual lives caused by great (read: important) moments in history.

Substituted for Pasternak's doctor and poet Yuri Zhivago is Jack Reed, an energetic voice of progressivism whose writing skill is matched only by his ability to unite workers and educate the masses. Instead of Pasternak's Lara, the tender nurse that is the love of Zhivago's life, we have Louise Bryant, an empowered yet loyal wife and top-rate reporter in her own right. Both stories depict the disillusionment of the Russian Revolution's initial promise of social justice and subsequent degeneration into a Draconian tyranny.

Reds, as with Zhivago, begins and ends as a love story. Bryant, a quintessential flapper and promising writing talent, leaves a small town life for literary capital New York after beginning an affair with Reed. Though the relationship is able to flourish, Bryant's adjustment to life in the big city proves difficult, especially in the shadow of the mercurial and influential Reed. Clearly, Jack's interest in chronicling and aiding the labor movement in America trumps that of all else - even his eventual wife. The two go through a period of rockiness which includes an affair on Bryant's part with writer Eugene O'Neill (played with a quiet cynicism by Jack Nicholson). After a brief period of separation, the two eventually find their love for one another again as they travel to Russia on the eve of the Revolution. Reconnected, the future looks bright for Jack and Louise, and the world seems to be on the precipice of becoming the Utopian Eden promised under Communist theory.

But this bucolic outlook gives way to the practical difficulties of maintaining a relationship and fueling the reorganization of an entire economic system. Jack is continually drawn into the action of the flailing American labor movement, allowing his literary potential as well as his relationship with Louise to wallow. Eventually, after disagreements splinter the American Socialist Party, Jack decides to smuggle himself into Russia to gain official recognition of his faction through the Commissar. He gets more than he bargains for, being detained indefinitely by the Russians as a party spokesman, despite repeated pleas to be released so he may reconnect with his wife. Though his leaving for Russia frayed the relationship nearly beyond repair, Louise takes off to recover her husband, and the final phase of the movie depicts the attempts of the two to find each other amid the murk of the great historical turmoil.

Despite the length and sweeping nature of Reds, Beatty's steady direction (yes, he directed, starred in, and actually wrote Reds as well) is able to keep things from feeling bogged down - not an easy accomplishment with a 3.5-hour-long movie. This is also a credit to the script, which, though containing an awful lot of talk (much of which on the decidedly un-engrossing subject of Communist theory) moves steadily forward and draws vivid and fascinating portraits of Reed, Bryant, and their relationship.

Reds approaches the complicated question of whether individual human beings can actually steer the course of their own history. Even in his earlier years as a supposedly objective reporter, Jack cannot help but take part in some of the revolutionary activities that he covers, and as his life progresses, he seems to completely disregard any notion of journalistic distance. Louise insists that he has done far more to fuel the revolution through his writing than any of his actions, yet, he is unable to ignore the impulse to try to take some sort control over the future. By the end of the film, the Gods have proven (as they have so many times before), that fate has far more control than one man ever could. Reds seems to assert that rather than look to take hold of the reins of history, the best people can do is stay true to their ideals and to one another.

The ending to Reds does seem truncated and to some extent (and in my opinion, to its detriment) takes the focus off of this overarching question and on to the comparably simple matter of Reed and Bryant's relationship. Still, it reminds us that though so much of what happens to us is completely out of our hands, our ability to connect to one another transcends even the most powerful forces of the universe. Just as with Dr. Zhivago and Lara, the love of Reed and Bryant is able to pierce through the fog of the Russian Revolution and prove that the humble divinity of mankind can occasionally overpower fate, if not drive it.

The Deidr'

2010-04-26T06:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Deidre,

Here's a question for ya: Who should say I Love You first? Boy or Girl? Or does it matter?

Sincerely,

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Dear person who declined to use a pseudenym but out of my ethical duty of confidentiality, will be called "which came first, the chicken or the egg"

“Why are you calling me ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg’," you ask. Well... there really isn't a specific reason. My point is... Who cares! Who cares whether the chicken came first or the egg came first, regardless, we all love chickens and eggs. This is very similar to your situation. It doesn't matter who says "I love you first" as long as that person feels that it is right and he OR she is genuine in saying it. If he says it first or if she says it first, the bottom line is that there is something really special going on. Hopefully, you both feel the same way. And, if one of the partners is feeling the love, chances are, the other person is too.

If you are one of those traditional, do-it-by-the-books people, then I suppose you could wait for the guy to say it (unless you are the guy, then you could say it first.) Also, if you have a really sensitive ego and are just terrified at the idea of not hearing a mirrored affection in return, you might be inclined to wait for the other person. But, really, what is there to lose by saying it? It's not like you're telling the person something bad. We all like to hear reassurance and if someone is really into us. If the other person isn't necessarily on the same page, he or she will maturely and politely let you know. If he or she doesn't react in this way and gets all weird about it, then the he or she probably isn't worth it in the first place! But, most likely, you wouldn't be attracted to that type of person anyway.

So, say it or don't say it. It will happen eventually if the relationship continues. And, remember, it is just three words. If you both really do love each other, then it's really not a big deal when or by whom it's said first. If you know you love him... or her... just go for it. Gender is really immaterial, as is, which came first... the chicken or the egg.

Best of luck and get lucky,

Deidre

Politics and South Park Sunday

2010-04-25T06:22:00.001-07:00

After the 200th episode of South Park, I, giddy with excitement from the show's well-crafted and intelligent take on the "anniversary episode," began writing a two-part column called, "South Park: TV's Best Satire Ever," intending to publish the second part of the article after the airing of the second part of the show's anniversary special.

That's when the trouble started.

Normally, I don't kill myself to watch the first airing of a South Park episode because I know that there will be a re-airing but a few hours later, and that show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, in their infinite wisdom, allow one to stream any episode on their website (for free). It's a good thing I didn't wait, because the episode was NOT available at a later time slot, was NOT available online, and canNOT be accessed by any alternative means as of now. If you were to go to the website, southparkstudios.com, and try to reach the episode, this is what you'd see:

There's a lot to this story. After the airing of the 200th episode, which, as I discussed in my previous South Park article, revisited the issue of Comedy Central's censorship of Muhammad, Parker, Stone, and Comedy Central started to receive veiled death threats from a group called Revolution Muslim. The group published the address of Comedy Central's offices as well as the studio offices where South Park is filmed, and published sermons calling for the "assassination of those who defame Muhammad."

(Now, what I really want to concentrate on is the censorship controversy, so rather than explain what I think of Revolution Muslim, I'll just put this picture up instead)

This, of course, is Kurt Vonnegut's drawing of an asshole.

To continue: So I found myself one of the lucky 3.5 million viewers who got to watch any form of episode 201 so far. That 3.5 million number beat out every other television show in that time slot, which should indicate to some extent both the quality of South Park, and its prominence in the national dialogue.

But what I saw was not the 201st episode as the show's creators had written it. Comedy Central inserted many, many, more bleeps between receiving the episode from the creators, and the episode's airing. Some, (myself included) thought this was some sort of meta-joke, an attempt by Parker and Stone to lampoon Comedy Central's censoring of Muhammad's image in episode 200. And as a meta joke it worked... sort of. But because the censorship was so prominent, rather than being able to actually concentrate on the episode (featuring such shocking revelations as the fact Eric Cartman's father was actually his nemesis Scott Tenerman's father as well [devoted fans will remember that Cartman killed Tenerman's parents and fed them to him]) I found myself wondering what was actually supposed to be happening in this episode.

In episode 200, while Muhammad's image was censored, his name was not. This allowed the show to dress Muhammad up in a silly bear mascot costume and use the substituted icon for depicting the prophet. Part of my former article was going to praise this use of iconology in order to sidestep censorship issues.

Yet it was all for naught, as in episode 201, even the bear costume was censored (and, oddly enough, it didn't even turn out to contain Muhammad, but rather, Santa Claus) as well as any utterance of Muhammad's name. If you didn't see episode 200, there is no way you would have known that Muhammad was involved in episode 201 (currently, episode 200 is not showing on Comedy Central and cannot be streamed until May 15th online). Also, the show's final monologue - fans know that South Park likes to sum up the lesson of every episode with one clear, concise explanation - was censored in its entirety, with about thirty seconds straight of bleeps. Apparently and ironically, the monologue did not mention Muhammad at all, and according to Stone and Parker, "was about intimidation and fear."

So that's the story behind the storm. It's quite amazing that a cheaply made cartoon about little boys who like to curse has become embroiled in such a national controversy. All the major news outlets took time to cover the story, and Jon Stewart even editorialized on the subject for about ten minutes on Thursday's Daily Show.

Take that in contrast to Bill O'Reilly's view of the issue.

Though his commentary doesn't exactly condemn South Park, what he sort of says is that the show is playing with fire. Unlike Jon Stewart, who, while acknowledging that Comedy Central would be in a precarious position if they aired the episode (it wouldn't be fair to put other Comedy Central employees at risk), editorializes with a condemnation of the intimidation tactics that ignited the firestorm surrounding the episode to begin with.

And I think the contrast between Stewart's and O'Reilly's takes on the issue is important to understanding the implications of this censorship. Onus falls to the victim in O'Reilly's case, while with Stewart, it is clearly the attacker that is condemned. What O'Reilly says about South Park is akin to saying that if a girl gets raped, she is at least partly responsible if she was wearing revealing clothing. In other words, the show got what was coming to them.

This has dangerous implications for free speech. Some people (like O'Reilly it would seem) would have satire sacrifice subversiveness in favor of comfort and safety. It's understandable why he would take this position. After all, the function of satire is to be a check on the powers that be. Fox, with its establishment as the head of the cable news community, is one such power. And this isn't the first time that O'Reilly has lashed out at satire. Just this week, the Factor aired a lengthy segment that featured criticism of the Daily Show by both O'Reilly and Bernie Goldberg.

What O'Reilly and Goldberg are doing, that is, trying to marginalize the most influential voices of satire, is protective of Fox's power, but in my opinion, unprotective of America. Without checks on the national discourse, people become more and more emboldened to one particular political view. In this country, that leads to more and more polarization. In de facto fundamentalist societies, it leads to mindless adherence to religious dogma.

And that leads to things like this

The censorship of music in Somalia only underscores the poignancy of South Park episodes 200 and 201, and the need for the show to continue to push the envelope as it always has. When the show originally began, it was about putting fart jokes on TV. Then they pushed the envelope on insulting celebrities. Then they pushed the envelope on televised cursing (Anyone remember the Sh*t episode?). Then they pushed the envelope on religious intolerance. Then they saw how far they could push Scientology (daring them to sue the show). If we think about where we are now, versus where we were 13 years ago when the show came on air, we come to realize the enormous forward progress that we have had in terms of freedom of speech.

But think about this: In 2001, just a few months before September 11th, South Park did a show entitled the Super Best Friends, in which they imagined the leaders of all the world's biggest religions as a team of evil-fighting compatriots. And, gasp, Muhammad was pictured. Then, Six years later, in the episode Cartoon Wars, Comedy Central censored his image. Now, his image, and any uttering of the prophet(Peace Be Upon Him)'s name has been bleeped. Should we not be alarmed by this backward slide?

Here's what, for me, is the crux of the situation: Trey Parker and Matt Stone are not "shock artists." They're not defecating on a canvas, or dousing themselves in blue paint and running naked through the halls. They are skilled craftsmen that are trying to advance the conversation. Whether or not you agree with what they say on a particular issue (and South Park has criticized both the Right and the Left) they have earned the right to have a voice. And the forces trying to hold back, stifle, and silence them, whether by intimidation tactics or marginalization, are the enemies to both the first amendment, and indeed (I'm on a soapbox now) human progress.

So, Trey and Matt, my hat's off to you. And to show my support, here is their depiction of good ole' M. (Peace Be Upon Him [lest we forget that in reality, Islam is a peaceful and good-natured religion]).

Thanks for reading everyone. If you're interested in hearing Parker and Stone talk about their work, here are links to parts 1-4 of a really good interview on Fresh Air.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRUb74vfIOo&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSZdF-ZlfIQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ezb2RPiJUpw&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHMvTo18wK0&feature=related

And if, for whatever reason, you can't access the Daily Show clips through the embedded links, here are links to the actual website.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-april-20-2010/bernie-goldberg-fires-back

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-april-22-2010/south-park-death-threats

More lighthearted fanfare tomorrow. Deidre!

A very quick Sports Saturday

2010-04-24T15:10:00.001-07:00

When the Reds are on a skid like this, the last thing I want to do is talk about sports, but we live in a world with responsibilities, and so I will venture to make a brief offering today, starting with this glorious clip:

Ok, I saw this on Monday, and it killed me to have to wait all week to put it up. The play capped off a comeback from a 9-1 deficit, which only adds to the fact that this is coolest thing I've ever seen on a baseball diamond - yes, it even beats The Catch. Sorry Willie.

Reminds me of a time when I randomly came to a Miami game. By the time I got to the ballpark, the team was down 10-1. Game over, right? But I stayed, and by the bottom of the 9th, it was 12-2. And then, the most amazing come back ever occurred right there. 11 runs in the bottom of the ninth for Miami to win. Can that actually happen? Apparently.

Though college baseball is relegated to the very back burners of sports talk, some of my fondest memories of Miami University are of pastoral afternoons at the diamond. A college is actually ideally suited for baseball, where the leisurely action of the game is uninhibited by gaudy scoreboard graphics or the heightened intensity of large crowds. One can learn to understand the unique baseball phrase, "I'm going to take in a game."

Plus, you can sneak in rum and Cokes.

Which reminds me of something else I wanted to gripe about: If baseball parks would lower the price for a beer to like $4.50 (which is certainly not cheap for a Bud Light), I would consider actually buying it. Its current price of, what? Like $7.00 a brew (at least) means that to get any kind of buzz over the course of three hours, I'm going to have to spend like $28. Screw that, I just won't drink. Now, if it cost me $18.00 to get buzzed, I would probably take advantage of that. In fact, I might actually spend the $30 to get plastered (as opposed to just tipsy). Plus, people would probably go to more ballgames if drinking were affordable.

Chances of ballparks actually lowering prices? Nein.

...

Ok, did anything else happen in sports this week? Oh, yes! The hockey playoffs.

Quoth the Onion: NHL Playoffs Remind Area Man That NFL Draft Is Soon.

...

So did anything else happen? Basketball playoffs - please. Call me in a month... when they'll still be going on.

...

I guess I should say a word or two about the draft, even though I rarely put any stock into it (mostly because the Bengals picks have a tendency to get injured or otherwise foul up before they ever get on the field). I'm extremely pleased with Cincinnati's choice of a tight end in the first round. Preliminary reports seem to say that Jermaine Greshem is a good pick with lots of potential at the key position.

I don't understand why the Bengals took so long to realize the value of having a passing game underneath. That's why Peyton and Big Ben have so much success. They are confident that if they get to a Third-and-Five or better, they have reliable options to pick those few yards - or to at least get close enough for a viable fourth down attempt.

But here's the thing. Now Carson has no excuses. Since '05, he's been able to blame injuries or lack of weapons. He has neither now, so if no. 9 can't hack it this year... yeesh. It's back to the drawing board for the Orange and Black.

Allright, let's call it a day on this. Politics Sunday should be a big deal this week, with the South Park controversy a central issue. Lots to talk about.

Tah!

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

2010-04-23T17:27:00.000-07:00

Shakespeare would have had appreciation for this offering from Korean director Chan-wook Park (Oldboy, Lady Vengeance), a revenge thriller every bit as poignant as the under-appreciated classic Titus Andronicus. I never understood why Titus has not secured a more prominent place in the Bard's canon. Its complex (if problematic) story is every bit as technically brilliant as Romeo and Juliet, and its creepy imagery was certainly ahead of its time (Shakespeare had Tamora eat her children, Chiron and Demetrius, long before Scott Tenerman feasted on his parents in South Park), and it's perplexing why fewer people are not versed in this classic.

Perhaps it's because the "revenge thriller" has become such an overpopulated movie genre. Nearly every comic book movie has vengeance as a prominent theme, and, as opposed to the message of Shakespeare's work, it usually is given a positive connotation. Think about it. "My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." We celebrate revenge. Shakespeare? Not so much.

And neither does Mr. Park. Though Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance lacks the fierce poeticism of his more famous Oldboy (a brilliant, brilliant movie, but definitely not for the squeamish), its melancholic examination of "an eye for an eye" still resonates with force.

The events of the film are set in motion when Ryu (Ha-kyun Shin), a deaf and mute factory worker, visits an underworld organ harvester to seek a kidney transplant for his sick sister. Having exhausted legitimate means for a donor, Ryu decides to volunteer himself, relying on the unlicensed surgeons to do the operation (and paying an exorbitant 10 million won). The episode results in Ryu being left naked, abandoned, broke, and down a kidney, and to make matters worse, the real doctors have just found a matching donor and need only (you guessed it) 10 million won to do the operation. At the urging of his anarchist lover Cha Yeong-mi (Doona Bae), Ryu sets off to kidnap and then ransom back the daughter of his old boss Park Don-jing (Kang-ho Song), the wealthy owner of an electronics corporation. Though there was never any violent intent, the kidnapping goes horribly wrong (as tends to happen), leaving both Ryu and Park seeking retribution from one another.

Unlike the typical revenge thriller, the story of Sympathy refuses to devolve into a simple mano a mano brawl with a clear-cut victor and vanquished. Rather, we see how the path of vengeance leads not to catharsis, but to hollowness, for both parties. Grudges grow like a cancer, clouding judgments, eclipsing the cares for loved ones or the self. Rather than celebrate retribution, we are asked to look at the effect a vengeance murder has on those who cared for the deceased. Violence begets violence begets violence until the spiral is completely out of anyone's control.

And in the final moments of the movie, we find ourselves wondering what caused all the senselessness in the first place. What spur pricked the side of Ryu's intent to make a good, hard-working man hatch a plan to kidnap a little girl? Though the answer is only subtly suggested, it's enough to make us reflect on the nature of violence in our social and political discourse.

*And speaking of social and political discourse, be on the lookout for a very special Politics Sunday, featuring an analysis of the South Park controversy.

Dear Deidre

2010-04-21T18:41:00.000-07:00

Will try for the South Park piece Thursday, and reviews for Kick-Ass and Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance by the end of the week. For now, enjoy Deidre...

Dear Deidre,

I'm a single ready to mingle, but with one big caveat. I've recently decided to relocate at the end of the summer and so will be unable to sustain any kind of long-term relationship. Never one to burn down one-night stands, I usually tend to get to know someone before getting intimate, and it's unlikely I'd find someone new to get to that point with when they know I'll be lamming soon. I'm in a no-man's land, where I can't start something long-term, but am not looking for a one-and-done kind of thing either. I know a few months of abstinence doesn't sound like much to get through, but it's summertime - beautiful people are out in full force, hormones are raging, and I'd like to be able to enjoy this wonderful time of year.

What's a guy to do? Look for a sex buddy? A hooker? Anything?

Sincerely,

Not-a-wham-bam-thank-you-man

Dear Not-a-wham-bam-thank-you-man (at least not yet),

Ah yes, the sun is out and the raging testosterone of young men everywhere is bubbling to its brink. As soon as the female population decides it's warm enough to show some skin, mating season is in full force. I completely understand your frustration. After all, you are only human, and humans are only mammals, and mammals like to breed. Well, maybe not "breed" as in pop out a mini Not-a-wham-bam-thank-you-man, but I get your point.

Now, let's talk about the options you have laid out for yourself. A hooker? Chances are you will feel dirtier than ever after giving in to a night of paid-for sex. A sex buddy? Could work. But, you said yourself that you like to get to know someone first, and you don't want to get into anything too serious. So, unfortunately, you're in a bit of a tricky situation. But, not a completely unfixable one!

Do you absolutely have to get a home run? Is it imperative that you have SEX with someone? Or, would you be able to get your kicks from a less-than "going all the way" hook up? I think it would be much easier if you set your sights on something a bit more attainable for what you are looking for right now. The way I see it, if you don't want a girlfriend, don't want a one night stand, don't want to get attached to anyone, etc. then sex might just not be feasible, and it may actually end up causing you more harm than good. I don't think you would have any trouble catching a make out buddy... or even a first or second base buddy. And certainly attachment wouldn't automatically come into play like it potentially could with sex.

You might just have to realize that this is a very transitional time for you, and transitional times don't make for very good love times. There are only a few more months until you move on to your new destination, and I suggest holding out for someone who might actually be worth it. But, if you absolutely can't keep it in your pants, then at least try to find someone who is 1) clean and 2) is looking for the same non-commitment, non-relationship kind of deal.

Hope this helps!

(Try a cold shower if you absolutely can't control yourself)

Deidre

Kick-Ass Review

2010-04-18T11:16:00.000-07:00

Deidre only got to be up for a few hours on her own (or is it HIS own?...) So if you read this, please give that a skim as well. It's only fair.

The previews for Kick-Ass make it seem like a teen-superhero spoof, simultaneously ripping on both comic book films and coming-of-age comedies. Perhaps the most memorable sequence in the trailer is when Christopher Mintz-Plasse (best known for his iconic portrayal of McLovin' in Superbad), clad in prototypical superhero spandex, jumps from the top of a dumpster in a dark alley, and upon landing grabs his ankle as he winces in pain from the modest feat. Such a sequence functions mainly in two ways: pointing out the implausibility of superheroes in general, and also poking fun at the seriousness with which young people too often take themselves. Point made.

But Kick-Ass as an actual movie (and it should be noted that the film is based on the comic book of the same name by Mark Millar) functions in neither of these ways. Its objective, rather than subversively spoofing, is to create a superhero-teen comedy hybrid that entertains in both respects, but comments on neither. Once expectations are readjusted, Kick-Ass manages to be a pretty decent movie, but even so, throughout the film you get the feeling that it could have been so much more.

This is particularly true in one of the final fight sequences of the film, when the main storyline has virtually run its course and all that's left is to plow through a mob (literally) of enemies to get to the inevitable final boss. Hit Girl (Chloe Moretz), a perky yet violent 11-year-old costumed hero, blasts through heavily armed men three times her age and size with startling speed and creativity (the sequence starts with her firing a gun through the mouth of one unfortunate security guard into the head of another... how cool is that?!) while Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation" rocks in the background. Such an inspired scene, bloody, brutal, and bad-ass, is a glimmer of what Kick-Ass could have been throughout - a pop-superhero fantasia that rocked as hard as it socked.

Alas, the resulting story is far less interesting. It follows Dave Lizewski (Aaron Johnson), a dweeby comic-a-holic who wishes his own impact on the world was as forceful as Batman's. Disgusted by the apathy seen all around him, he costumes himself and sets off to take on the city's crime by his lonesome. Dubbing himself Kick-Ass, Dave's crime-fighting career begins inauspiciously, hunting for lost cats and the like. But as he moves on to more impressive exploits, videos of which quickly going viral, Kick-Ass becomes a national phenomenon. The stakes, however, are raised as well. Kick-Ass befriends Hit Girl and her vengeance-seeking father Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage whose presence helps keep things light), real deal crime-fighters who aren't afraid to go the full distance in dealing with the city's scum. Bodies start racking up and Kick-Ass becomes inextricably entangled in Hit Girl and Big Daddy's grudge against crime boss Frank D'Amico (Mark Strong).

Ms. Moretz's performance as Hit Girl is astonishingly fresh, easily standing out among the rest of the characters, which could find themselves in any serialized superhero saga. No 11-year-old should be this violent, bludgeoning gangsters as if skipping down the street, mercilessly murdering their uninvolved associates trying to escape. The frivolity with which she enjoys the mayhem is both entertaining and unsettling, and when compared, the other characters in Kick-Ass feel like cardboard cutouts.

That's probably due to the fact that they are involved in what appears to be a spoof that could never quite get off the ground. Kick-Ass contains the setup for a Shaun of the Dead-style subversion of the superhero genre, but instead falls into the very traps it was poised to expose. The hot girl falls for the invisible nerdy kid when she finds out he's a superhero; the hero contemplates throwing crime-fighting away for a carefree existence, but is pulled back by the allure for one last adventure that should only take a minute (I'll bet that'll go well); the ending (SPOILER ALERT) is a cliffhanger showing the vanquished villain's son (Mr. Mintz-Plasse) ready to take up the mantle and seek revenge*. These are all things that can be seen in any old superhero movie, and Kick-Ass suffers from a lack of imagination in integrating commentary along with cliche.

However, imagination is the last thing Kick-Ass is short on when it comes to the fight sequences. Finding creative paths in the choreography of and transitions into the combat, one forgets about the weaknesses in Kick-Ass's script and feels free to just enjoy the ride. Fights double down on stylization and camp (see Hit Girl's aforementioned combat sequence for a case in point) never feeling repetitive. If only the rest of the movie could follow suit. At present, it is caught in a no-man's land between spoof and homage.

*Yes, I did just give away the ending to the movie, but the script's lack of complexity leads me to believe that you (like me) would have seen it coming anyway. It sort of shows off my point that this movie was utterly predictable if you have any knowledge of the superhero genre.

Politics Sunday

2010-04-17T20:41:00.001-07:00

Let's start off with the good news - that is, President Obama's memo allowing gay couples visitation rights at hospitals.

This is one of those, "Well, duh," executive actions that should have been taken at least five years ago (I mean, in reality, it should have been done thirty years ago) and to which it will be hard to find any opposition. Even if the country hasn't reached broad agreement on gay marriage, who could be callous enough to declare that gay couples should not be allowed to see each other in a hospital? What possible reason could they find to deny this basic and innocuous right to anyone?

I use the term "innocuous" because I can't find any way in which this right could be misconstrued into infringing on the rights of anyone else. Somehow, you see, our country was hoodwinked into allowing a Defense of Marriage Act to go forward under the false argument that by allowing gays to be married, it would somehow lead to the dissolution of marriages everywhere. Well, guess what, it's 14 years later (14 years!) and marriage has only become less concrete.

Among my generation, marriage is a strange word. Ask ten people what they think of marriage and you will likely get ten radically different answers. I've known people with open marriages, people who were married but don't live together, people who have been separated but not divorced for over a year. One friend of mine says that he won't live with his girlfriend until he gets married. Others (like me) would never even consider marrying someone until they have lived with them for some period of time. The point is, if we're going to allow marriage as a concept to continually evolve in the above ways, but not allow that evolution to include gay and lesbian couples, then it's clear that DOMA is not protective of marriage, but rather prejudiced against homosexuality.

Ok... I strayed from the subject at hand. Sorry.

The main thing that I wanted to say about Obama's memo allowing visitation rights is that it is a good, but safe action. At least it's a step in the right direction, but our President needs to do much more. He could repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell right now if he wanted to, but my guess is that won't happen until after the 2010 election. And it was never part of Obama's platform to rally for gay marriage. I see us moving slowly towards gay rights in everything but name. Our government is taking soft actions towards progress, but still keeping themselves shielded from being labeled, "pro-gay."

So let's end the ruse. Democrats, come out and fight hard for gay rights. You may perceive that it will hurt you in the polls, but truth be told, public opinion (especially for people under 40) is overwhelmingly for gay rights. Other than marriage (which will take only a little more time to bring people around to), people are ready to embrace gay rights in a big way, and my opinion is that if the Democratic party can do it, they will make continued inroads among the younger population.

But for today, let's celebrate the hospital visitation rights. It means the world for people with sick or injured loved ones, and it is a positive step.

Next... Nukes.

This has always been my position on nuclear weapons: They're bad.

But they're also a necessary evil that are not going to ever go completely away. To be perfectly honest, as irresponsibly as our country acts from time to time, I would feel uncomfortable if we had no nuclear weapons as a deterrent. It's inevitable that nukes will fall into the hands of evil madmen at some point, and the threat of mutually assured destruction at least makes them think twice about using one.

Still, there are far too many nukes in the world, which is why President Obama's agreement with Russia to slash nuclear arsenals in half is such a positive step. Our arsenal is going from about 20,000 nuclear weapons to about 10,000. Those numbers should scare you. We have 20,000 nuclear weapons and in all of history, only 2 have been used in combat. What's the point? By the time we used all 20,000 weapons, wouldn't the world have ended about 30 times?

And it seems to me that the concurrent nuclear summit this week was a little bit of a farce, leading to little tangible action other than agreed sanctions against Iran and North Korea (let's see if that works). But at least talk against nuclear arms buildup is again in the national dialogue.

Here's my plan (and feel free to comment): Let's cut the world's nuclear arsenals down to just enough to destroy the world one time. Wouldn't that be more logical? Isn't destroying the world enough of a deterrent to keep from using that last nuke?

Ok, lastly for politics Friday, I get to revert to a 1950's little boy as we talk about Space!

Golly-gee do I love space. It's so cool - so dark and mysterious. I wish I could be an astronaut. I want to go to the moon just like Neil Armstrong back in 1969... 1969? Gosh, that was so long ago. Why haven't we gone back since? Oh, well. George W. Bush says that we will start developing new spacecraft to go back to the moon by 2020 - and by then, maybe I'll be old enough to be an astronaut. I'd better do well in school. I'll learn all about math and science and then I'll go work for NASA and become an spaceman (or at least a well-paid engineer).

Wait, what's that, pa? You say Obama's not going to go back to the moon? But... (sniffle) but... I wanted to land on the moon and be a cool astronaut. Aw... shucks. I guess I'll cut class and smoke some non-filtered cigarettes.

... Yeah... that part didn't work as well as I thought it would. Sorry. I'm rushed as I write this.

I guess these are my real thoughts on the space program: as NASA goes, so goes math and science education. The last time we went to the moon, we invested billions of dollars in engineering and education that paid off exponentially in our country's productivity and technological capability. Kids looked up to NASA, and wanted to emulate astronauts. So they were eager to learn math and science because they felt like one day they too could take part in an amazing project like the Apollo program. Most of them did not, but still ended up getting a good education and good jobs as engineers, researchers, and computer programmers. The Apollo program was kind of a long term economic investment.

Obama's announcement that we will be bypassing the moon and heading straight for Mars is at once inspiring and foolhardy. He's basically asking that we throw a Hail Mary to get to the Red Planet and at the same time gutting all of the space infrastructure we have in place. For the next decade, the country will rely on commercial and foreign spacecraft to get astronauts to the space station while we create the new technologies to blast us into deep space. While I indeed think that going to Mars must be the ultimate goal, don't you think that heading to the moon just a few times would be similarly inspiring?

Think about it, we could shoot footage of the moon in HD and show it on the Discovery Channel right after a marathon of Planet Earth and Life. It would be called, simply, Moon.

In the end, I think Obama's plan to go to Mars is really just a punt to another administration on creating significant space exploration. Real progress towards reaching the planet will require a huge investment, which the current policy does not have.

Well... I feel this was a lot of ranting and overall a little boring. Sorry everyone. My mind is trained on the Reds who have dropped 4 straight. Here's a fun video to make up for it.

But Deidre's tomorrow, so chin up.

Sports Saturday

2010-04-17T06:35:00.000-07:00

Ok, so a silly admission before today's column: I have been using html to do all of the old blogspot columns because I didn't realize that they had a non-html tool that I could use. So these posts have been taking me about 15-20 minutes longer than needed so I could work my voodoo on html to do simple things like italicizing (which I just did today super-quickly by using the simple ctrl+i). So now look what I can do: Have you had your break today?

So, long story short, I'm an idiot. But it looks like the HHB will soon get a more entertaining makeover, and that it will be easier for me to post more. Huzzah!

This week in sports...

The Reds enter today on a 3-game slide, during which they've scored an average of 2.66 runs a game. I didn't get to see any of the games, but from the box scores, offense has looked pretty miserable. The Reds have 5 wins on the season, all of which have come in the last at-bat, which says to me that they are lucky to have the 5. The bats need to get started earlier, and I think it goes back again to what I said in last week's column: Stop trying to hit homers.

Pitchers are simply overpowering Reds batters because they are looking to drive balls rather than have good AB's to try to get on base. Ready for a frightening early-season fact? The only players on the Reds roster hitting over .300 are Mike Leake, Ryan Hanigan, Chris Dickerson, and Homer Bailey. What?...

I've always theorized (to varying degrees of success) that the Reds season follows a general cycle: April starts off slow, with the Reds usually about 4 games under .500. Then, in May, there is a surge that brightens the hopes of Cincinnati. The team usually ends up in first place, or perhaps, 1 or 2 games out. There is a lot of talk about this "young team" and this "great pitching," and the one or two prospects that, if they keep on pace, will make the team into a powerhouse. But then the Summer doldrums begin. June sees about a .500 record, still keeping the Reds in the race, but only tenuously. Then... July. The team usually slides a couple games heading into the all-star break- Cincinnati Enquirer columnists say, "Well, if the team can just have a quick start after the break, they'll be right back in this thing." The quick start never happens; the team gets worse and worse until by mid-August they are generally out of the race.

And, ah, September. With the Reds having no prospect of winning the season, September call-ups produce grand hopes for next year. The team usually gets on some kind of streak (when it's too late to matter), and some guy gets hot (i.e. David Ross, or Chris Dickerson) so that the Reds will offer a lucrative contract for him to stay, build a team around him, and then fall apart in the vicious cycle the next year when he can't sustain the numbers over a full season.

Lament...

While sometimes there are variations to this formula, usually the result is the same: The Reds are out of it by Mid-August. So far, this season has shown no reason to believe differently.

That's about all I have to say about sports this week. It's been a slow week. What else is going on? NHL hockey playoffs? Couldn't care less. Basketball playoffs are starting? Gag me - or just tell me about it again in a month - there will still be plenty of time left. How the Hell can a sport support playoffs where exactly half of the league's teams make it in, and that last over the course of a couple months?

In the words of Shakespeare, "Whate'er."

Took a copy of George Will's Bunts with me on a trip this week and am about 2/3 of the way through it. A very good book. Highly recommended. It is a series of essays on everything baseball-related, ranging from laments about his beloved Cubbies' losing ways, to tirades against the DH (touché), to celebrations of the triumph of the MLBPA. Will's style may be high brow and distant, but he has an astonishing wit, incredible command of the English language, detailed knowledge of the history of baseball, and a passion for the game.

I also read his book Men at Work, which analyzes the management style of Tony LaRussa, and the play of Tony Gwynn, Cal Ripken Jr., and Orel Hersheiser. It is extremely detailed, to the point of being tedious, but celebrates the virtues of day-in, day-out work ethic that I find to be the cornerstone of what makes baseball players great. Though Will may be a Conservative and a Cubs fan, he is a thinker that I greatly respect. His political opinions (even if I disagree with many) are always clear-headed, and he doesn't feel that he has to side with Republicans on everything. And in baseball, he values the guys who give the sport their all each day they come to the park. He'd prefer guys who get on base a ton to the guys who hit a lot of home runs. He appreciates the guys who hit .300 over the course of the career but never have a championship. Most of all, he seems to understand what really makes baseball great: Its history and its habitualness.

South Park: TV’s Best Satire Ever (Part 1 of 2)

2010-04-16T23:32:00.000-07:00

For those of you who know me, you may think that the title of this essay is a heresy against my idol Jon Stewart, host of the Daily Show and TV’s most consistent and morally clear-sighted funny man. Of course, I would never want to downplay the enormous effect that Mr. Stewart has had on myself, the country, and the national discourse (his legendary tirade on Crossfire got that ignorant program cancelled), but another Comedy Central show has been going on for longer, proven just as pertinent, and exceeded all its peers in originality…

South Park is the subject of today’s Film Friday – which, as of today, is also expanding into Film (and Television) Friday – having just produced its 200th episode this past Wednesday. And boy was it a dandy! Unlike the majority of TV shows that rest on their laurels and produce trite look-backs for their anniversary specials (see: Seinfeld and Friends) South Park, as usual, went above and beyond the call, producing an episode that was original and relevant in addition to being a rehashing of the show’s major themes.

To synopsize: After Stan insults Tom Cruise (who inexplicably works in a fudge-packing factory), the celeb gathers together all of the Hollywood stars that South Park has insulted over the years and devises a plan to sue the town into bankruptcy. The only way Cruise will withdraw its suit? Have South Park deliver the prophet Muhammad to the celeberati - in the whacked out universe of South Park, you see, Muhammad is alive and tangible just like Jesus, Vishnu, and the rest of the religious Super Best Friends. Still, this is no easy task. The last time South Park tried to show Muhammad, they were met with fierce opposition, both in-episode (Muslim extremists threatened to destroy the town) and out (Comedy Central eventually did censor the image of the prophet). The celebrities are after a mysterious “goo” that is unexplained but appears to be some kind of life force that allows for Muhammad to have immunity from any kind of insult (Tom Cruise wishes he were that lucky).

But they’re not the only ones chasing Muhammad. A contingent of Ginger Separatists (what?) want the prophet for themselves, and threaten to blow up South Park if he is not given to them. Begrudgingly, the South Parkians give in, delivering Muhammad to the Gingers in a U-Haul truck so we don’t see him. Enraged, the celebrities resort to drastic measures, activating a new and improved Mecha-Streisand, the season 1 super-villain, to run rampant on the town.

Note: This picture is from a different episode. I just put it up because I thought it was funny.
Meanwhile, Cartman joins the celebrities with his classic hand-puppet-Jennifer-Lopez (it’s kind of impossible to explain this if you haven’t seen it before), who, it turns out, is actually Mitch Connor in disguise. Puppet-Connor hints to Cartman his mother (an intersexual) who was previously thought to be his father, may not actually be his father.

And that’s where it ends… till next week.

Ok, where to begin, right?

The amazing thing about this episode is that it makes very little sense unless you’ve followed South Park since the beginning. Just look at the lengthy, convoluted plot synopsis I had to give – it’s longer than what I write in most movie reviews, and this was just for a twenty-three minute show. To me, what separates the 200th episode from other TV shows’ anniversary episode is the same as what separates South Park from all other satire on television: It continues to build on itself.

...
...
...

That will have to be part 1. I'm quite tired.
Part 2 will be so much better. You can expect it Tuesday.

Sports Saturday, Politics Sunday, and Deidre await. Will probably not get a Wednesday article out though. Sorry.

Theatre Thursday - What’s an Actor Anyway?

2010-04-15T20:01:00.000-07:00

Today's post is long, and I couldn't think of any pertinent pictures to include, so I put in a bunch of kitty pictures to keep you entertained. And there's a special treat at the end...

I had a really interesting conversation with a friend the other night about the artistry involved in being an actor. She, an actor, was explaining to me that she didn’t consider herself an “artist,” ceding that title to the writers whose words she interprets, and the directors whose guidance she follows.

It’s a perfectly valid viewpoint, and I know from personal experience that even if she doesn’t see herself as such, she performs with the quality and expertise of one who might readily call himself or herself an “artist.” But I think the question, “Are actors artists?” is an interesting one, with more complicated an answer than one might imagine.

I, myself, felt similarly to my friend just as I was entering college. For me, an actor’s job was to show up and do what a director told him. Of course there was outside work that I would do - research my character, break down a scene, hunt for insight into the play’s meaning, etc. – but I regarded this effort as more or less a duty, the tedium of an actor’s work similar to filling out TPS reports as an office manager. How good an actor was depended on his ability to fulfill the requests of playwright and director.

Speaking personally, this was a huge impediment to my development as an actor, leading me to become lazy and disinterested in the actual work of acting. I started to approach roles as if solving a math problem: How do I make this line fit into this scene score? If I modulate my voice here, will that make me come across as more authoritative? I worried less about creativity and originality, and more about whether my beats were organized cohesively.

And it led to acting becoming thoroughly boring for me.

But as I meandered my way through my undergraduate degree, something happened. I started to realize that I had more freedom as an actor than I had imagined. I found that good directors were less interested in my geometric calculations of how a scene should progress than in exploring and making discoveries of what worked and didn’t work. They were actually interested in my ideas and concerns about my role. Putting on a play was no longer about adhering dogmatically to my original perception of the words on the page, but mischievously deviating to find that there may indeed be (gasp!) more than one way to approach a text.

How silly I felt! All of a sudden, I realized that the technical skills of acting that I had striven so hard to learn (cheating out, comic timing, vocal training, presence, physical work) were being trumped by the ability to think differently and innovatively. Artistically, perhaps…

But is an actor by definition an artist? Dictionary.com seems to think so. They are specifically mentioned in its definition for “artist,” alongside the overarching definition, “a person who produces works in any of the arts that are primarily subject to aesthetic criteria.” And do we think of actors in the same way that we think of musicians, dancers, creative writers, painters? For the most part, the answer is, of course, yes.

Yet something still holds me back. Though technically an actor is an artist by definition, what we’re really after here is the answer of what separates true artists from the rest of the pack. What distinguishes the Beatles from a cover band? What turns Johnny Depp into Johnny Depp?

Here’s what I think the answer is: A desire to work.

An actor-artist not only has the ability to illuminate words on a page and follow a director’s orders, but also an unflinching drive to make his or her performance the best it can possibly be. Great actors can not only portray a character, but also explore the infinite ideas that can be brought to a performance. They are not satisfied with a good performance or even a great one; they hunger for the ability to dig deeper, find a new angle, see with different eyes.

After all, actors are hired for all of the skills they bring to the table – not just their looks and their technical ability. A director of Shakespeare will want someone who can come up with creative solutions for those oddly-scanning lines; a director of devised work will want an actor with amazing improv skills to fuel the potential script.

It’s a rookie mistake to believe an actor’s job is to become a character – to play a role so convincingly that an audience member actually believes that you are Willy Loman. It will never happen. Always conscious that they are in a theatre, no audience would ever actually believe that what is on the stage was real. Instead, actors are meant to find ways to better tell the story being told. There is no perfect fit – no actor can simply plug into any part and do it perfectly. My recent time as a director has shown me that regardless of how you imagine a role to be played, the actor will never be able to do it the same way as you envision in your head. But this should not be looked upon as an actor letting a director down. Rather, it should be seen as a mutation (or, perhaps, adaptation) in the production, with the end result being a collaboration different from what any one creator has envisioned, but hopefully pleasing to an audience.

There was a time when directors weren’t even needed. Actors alone were able to perform the words of Shakespeare and Moliere, unaided by a clear overlord. With the rise of film, the director has somewhat diminished the perceived stature of the performer, but ask anyone in the world, and they’ll quickly be able to name their favorite actor. Favorite director? Not so much.

Although the act of being onstage is in itself creative and artistic, I think to an extent that my friend is right. It’s unfair to simply call an actor an artist based on the nature of his work. Acting is a profession not too terribly different from being a businessman or hairstylist, and we do not by definition refer to these workers as “artists.”

But the crème de la crème of businessmen have an uncanny passion for making deals and bolstering profits that regular businessmen don’t have. In their field, they are artists. Some hairstylists have an incurable desire to do the perfect –do, bringing forth hair that is truly beautiful. They are artists.

Some actors can’t help but constantly improve their work, never feeling that a role is complete or a play perfected. It’s this zeal for continuing to explore and create that makes an actor an artist, rather than simply a professional. And if an actor is an artist, he or she should be viewed as a partner of the director and writer, not just an employee.

Dear Deidre

2010-04-14T19:57:00.000-07:00

Sorry to post Deidre so late - I'll make sure to post Theatre Thursday late too so the column gets its proper time in the spotlight.

Dear Deidre,

I'm taking a trip this week from my home in Chicago to a university I might attend in the fall, and am feeling very anxious about meeting all of the new people. I always have a hard time remembering names, and even though I've already been accepted into the school, I feel a bit like I'm auditioning for the favor of professors that I might work with in the coming years. Since I've been out of academia for a little while, I worry that my skills are a little rusty and that I might say something dumb or look like I don't know what I'm talking about. But while I want the faculty to be impressed with me, I don't want them to feel like I am trying to brag or one-up them. It's a tight rope to walk.

I'll also be speaking with current students, and am worried that I will act either too distant or too familiar with them, giving a bad impression to people I'll be working closely with in the next few years.

Any friendly words to relieve some of the pressure?

Sincerely,

Shy-town

Dear Shy-town,

I have to admit, I was excited to delve into some witty, sarcastic banter this week, but this topic deserves my utmost seriousness.

Now, I don’t know you personally, of course, but the sheer fact that you are anxious about these things tells me that you are a really genuine and enthusiastic person. Those are the only qualities you will need to succeed in your new environment.

Now, Mr. Shy-town, the admissions people at this university would not have accepted you if they didn’t think you could handle the workload. And, I’m getting the sense that you are into theatre (I’m very intuitive). You would not have been chosen to participate in this program if the professors thought that you were going to be “rusty or say something dumb.” (Just to be clear, it is OK to say dumb things once in awhile. Most of the sentences that come out of my mouth are what I would consider “dumb,” yet I continue to function in my daily life.) Everyone is human, and you can’t expect to be perfect. I guarantee you that the other students, and the professors, are just as nervous as you are.

And remember, the human race is overall a pretty selfish one. We mostly think about ourselves, whether we want to admit it or not. So, while you’re talking to someone else, that person thinking about how he is coming off to you. He could care less if you say something stupid, he just doesn’t want to say something stupid himself. (Kind of like when you have a ginormous zit and you think that everyone else notices. Well, they don’t. They are too focused on their own faces to notice anything different about yours [keep telling yourself that, Diedre…]).

One of the qualities that people tend to overlook and underestimate is niceness. If you are just a really nice person to everyone you meet, you will be on the right track. Think about things before you say them and ask, “Would I want someone to say this to me?” If not, don’t say it. Try to refrain from making a ton of jokes until you get to know everyone a little better. Some people are less easily entertained than others.

Think about the friends that you have now. Have you always been best friends with these people? Probably, not. It takes awhile to develop real, strong bonds with people. But, it DOES happen. People are extremely resilient and adaptable – we find a little clan wherever we go because it is what we need to do to survive.

Lastly, the most important piece of advice I can give you is to just BE YOURSELF. Cliché, I know. But, most of us walk around day to day with some sort of façade – “I’m going to be the funny guy today,” or “I’m going to be the smart kid in this group.” I’m sure you have tons of amazing qualities, and those are inherently ingrained into your personality. They will come out naturally, and everyone will grow to love you just as I’m sure your group of friends that you have now loves you.

Follow the golden rule, Mr. Shy-town (which I’m sure you will have no trouble with.) And remember, you are not alone in this situation; there are other students feeling the exact same thing. It might help to think of yourself as part of a group rather than an individual facing this alone. And, even when you fly to your newfound destination (which, I’m intuiting is a warm and sunny place) remember, you have a family here in Chicago that will always love their Schm… Mr. Shy-town.

Good luck! (but, you won’t really need it)

Deidre

(500) Days of Summer Review

2010-04-13T11:35:00.000-07:00

Before I launch into this, I wanted to let you all know that I will be out of town for the next few days, so the blog may end up resting for a bit. Hopefully, Deidre will be able to get us some words, and I have a couple half-written columns that I may or may not have time to finish and upload. We'll see. For now, enjoy...

There used to be a time when the word “indie” referred to the process by which a film was made – that is, low budget adaptations that contrasted the Hollywood establishment. Such films featured shaky handheld cameras instead of tripods, B-level celebrities instead of stars, dim lighting instead of the bright Hollywood illumination. In that sense, (500) Days of Summer is a bit of an oddity – a film that uses fixed shots, A-list actors, and bright lights, but that somehow still manages to ooze indie vibe throughout.

One can’t deny that indies have evolved heavily in the last decade or so. Where once the genre was typified by movies like the family drama Pieces of April, tonally sullen but with a strong emphasis on storytelling and realism, now, it is possibly better represented by Juno, or Chumscrubber, brighter films where conceptualism often trumps the narrative.

Don’t be alarmed, though, if (like me) these “Hollywood Indies” (trademark) are generally not for you. (500) Days of Summer may display many tropes of the genre, but it is able to avoid falling into the field altogether because of the unflinching truthfulness of the story.

(500) tells the chronologically shuffled tale of Tom Hanson (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a passionate greeting card writer who falls hard for his new coworker Summer Finn (Zooey Deschanel).

- Indie trope #1 – the quirky yet thematically significant job title. See also: Garden State’s armor-clad lad who works as a knight at a local Renaissance fair.

After a few weeks of drooling over her, Tom finally gets close to Summer at an office party. Though he tries (as so many of us do) to play it cool, hiding his feelings so as not to appear too desperate, Summer can see through the charade and instigates a romance.

But there’s a catch: A perfect incarnate of the free-spirited modern day Flapper, Summer refuses to label the relationship, much to the chagrin of Tom’s inner romantic. It’s clear that the relationship will operate according to her rules, and falling in love does not seem to be a realistic possibility.

As I said earlier, the story is chronologically shuffled, but a ticker identifying which number day (out of the 500) we are in makes it easy to understand. And, as in a similar movie about relationships, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, juxtaposing the different phases the couple goes through (the beginning as well as the end, the good times as well as the bad) allows the viewer to really feel close to the protagonists, understanding how the couple functions for better and for worse.

Though he has clearly been told that they are not boyfriend and girlfriend, Tom falls hard for Summer almost in spite of himself. Just how hard he falls is made clear by some non-realistic sequences…

- Indie Trope #2 – Throughout the movie, surreal sequences give us an insight to the main character’s feelings. A song breaks out after the couple’s first hook-up; on a bus, everybody looks exactly like Summer because he can’t stop thinking about her. Compare this to, say, the rose petal sequences in American Beauty (admittedly not an indie, but a movie most people are familiar with), or, say, Chumscrubber, where a woman screams silently to herself so that you, the viewer, know that she is in pain.

Perhaps sensing that Tom is starting to feel too close to her, Summer ends the relationship, throwing Tom into a funk so acute that he cannot even find a positive phrase to write on a greeting card (resulting in his demotion to the bereavements department). While the rest of the movie follows Tom trying to get Summer back, an unexpected (and, perhaps, out-of-character) twist complicates any attempt at a further relationship.

- Indie Trope #3 - the girl’s name is Summer, so we in the audience know that she exists as both a character and a concept. This allows for the characters’ actions to have a deeper meaning (i.e. Tom has to “get Summer back”… get it?). Sort of like naming the protagonist John Everyman -

But for all the indie-tastic distractions of (500), the story itself is poignant and truthful, perhaps one of the best depictions of the modern-day relationship that I’ve ever seen. Unlike many of today’s romantic comedies, it eschews the steady progression of relationship milestones leading up to the altar (first kiss, first intimacy, buildup of trust, survival of a challenge, and… voila! Marriage!), showing that truthfully, coupling is messy, organic, and subjective. What looks like love to one person may feel like suffocation to another.

Most importantly, though, relationships are often about finding oneself. For instance, it is only after Summer breaks off relations with Tom that he is able to rediscover his love for architecture, growing in a way that could have never happened without both the relationship and the heartbreak. Summer grows from the relationship as well, perhaps even more radically than Tom.

Don’t expect to glean a clear message from (500) Days of Summer, but you can anticipate finding numerous nuggets of wisdom in this smart, funny, and honest look at love in Generation Y. As in life, meaning comes only in small bites of truth taken one-at-a-time, rather than a meal eaten all at once. As Tom and Summer show, it’s these small bites that slowly feed our sense of purpose and allow us to develop.

Politics Sunday

2010-04-11T06:33:00.000-07:00

Before the politics, a quick addendum to Sports Saturday: Aaron Harang looked pretty good yesterday, giving up only 3 runs in 7 innings, all on home runs (thank you very much Great American Smallpark) – while the Reds offense did not. Some early firepower fizzled out in the later innings, with Cubs pitching holding the Reds to only one or two hits after the 4th inning. Oh, and Reds hitters fanned 13 times (striking out more than twice times as the White Sox had all season going into yesterday).

You cannot have a team that strikes out this much. It makes it impossible to have any kind of rally, forcing the Reds to rely almost exclusively on home runs (which only rarely come when needed). Teams are throwing first pitch strikes to nearly every Reds batter, because they will either take the pitch or swing for the fences and whiff. Come on, guys. We’re starting practically every AB in a 0-1 hole. Shorten up the swings and try to poke a single. It’ll eventually pay off and pitchers will start having to throw some balls to start an AB.

Now onto Supreme Sunday!

John Paul Stevens announced earlier this week that he’d be retiring, and boy will I miss him! I’ll miss that snappy little bow tie, his ancient jowls, his liberal disposition. But, he’s 89 years old. It’s time.

From what I’ve heard, it appears that the liberal members of the court – er, ahem… Democrat-appointed members, have a plan to retire one by one each year of Barack Obama’s tenure in office. This is less a good plan than it is a necessity. It’s clear that the Republican-appointed members of the court will nearly always be unanimous in supporting the conservative side of a decision. That much was clear when they decided to allow corporations to spend freely on elections, a ridiculous decision that one could only come to if seeking to support conservative interests over a proper reading of the law.

(Fine. I am not a lawyer, and I have no real law experience, but I think it’s pretty clear that corporations should not be given the same spending rights as people. I also think it’s clear that giving them that right will certainly help Republican election chances more than it will help the Democrats [although unions can spend freely now as well]. But mostly, the decision puts politicians further into the pockets of special interests, and makes elections more about money than ideas)

So now the liberal members of the court, some of them hanging on by a thread (Justice Stevens was 89. 89!) are planning to retire one by one so Barack Obama can replenish their stocks. It’s unofficial, but seems to me a very calculated plan.

Sadly, the Supreme Court - a body that was meant to be mostly apolitical (which is why there are lifetime appointments) - has become a reflection of the current political landscape in this country: staunch and partisan.

Here's something interesting to think about: Justice Stevens, considered to be the leading liberal on the court, was confirmed 98-0 by the Senate. Antonin Scalia, the court's most mega-conservative, was confirmed 97-0 by the Senate. We'll talk more of Scalia another time (boy, can I talk about Scalia...) but something should strike you by those two facts. It's impossible to imagine even the most centrist of justices being confirmed without any "nays" today, and it's disheartening to see that we've moved into a time when the process of even approving a Supreme Court Justice has become such a divisive matter.

Another interesting thing about Stevens is that he was not considered a liberal at the time of his appointment. Roe v. Wade had just been decided, yet he was asked no questions about the decision during his confirmation hearings (and debate on his confirmation lasted only 5 minutes or so). Rather, it was his support of the death penalty that was looked on as the most important acid test at the time. He was originally for it.

One thing that I really like about Stevens is that he showed the ability to evolve. Serving 34 years on the country's highest legal body, you would expect that one would learn something here and there, and eventually experience change. Stevens, originally thought to be more of a centrist, would become ardently liberal, even changing his opinion on the issue that got him to the court in the first place: the death penalty. Flip-flopping has become a heresy in this country, but I would think that the most intelligent minds are those that are able to adapt to changing circumstances. It takes great courage to look at oneself and realize that you were wrong about something - it takes even more to admit it through actions.

It was just two years ago, in Baze v. Rees, that [Justice Stevens] renounced his support for the death penalty in an opinion grounded not in abstract principle but in years of sorrowful observation of how the death penalty was actually being administered under statutes and Supreme Court opinions that cut off avenues of appeal.

- NY Times

I guess it's not exactly admitting that he was wrong before, but it's still a significant contradiction of his previous self. To me, this represents the epitome of what a Supreme Court judge should be. It shouldn't be about finding someone who adheres to the Democratic or Republican dogmas, but rather, finding someone with a brilliant legal mind and an ability to be moved by good argument. How many of the current justices do you think go into each case already knowing which side that they will take? Scalia for sure. And this is damaging not only to the evolution of the law, but also to the spirit of our legal system.

Now, what are the chances that Barack Obama will appoint someone without thoroughly vetting where they stand on every major Democratic issue? None, whatsoever - and again, this is a necessity with the current political landscape (if you replaced one or two liberal justices with conservatives, it's possible the court could overturn Roe v Wade, and who knows what else), but we need to acknowledge that there is a problem with the high court's polarization. We need to make sure that it is justice and not politics that defines our legal system.

Here's a good article about Stevens and his evolution while on the court.

Sports Saturday

2010-04-10T07:58:00.000-07:00

First I’d like to start off by celebrating myself for completing my first 10 mile (or so) run outdoors. I’d done it once before on the treadmill, but this was quite a different experience. A perfect day to go running: cool temperature, not many people on the lake shore, lots of sun. My midway point was the end of Navy Pier – which is a great view of Chicago's skyline that looks even better when you’ve had to work to get there.

Running is so new to me and something that I’ve never felt like I could do before. I don’t think I’d ever run more than a couple miles in one sitting before this year, but it’s amazing what you can do if you have some determination and free time to devote to something.

Lots of knee and lower back pain though. I definitely will be out of commission for tomorrow – but I feel much less wiped than after I did the first 10-miler. Also, I think I’m attending a friend’s fitness workshop thing Sunday, so if you see me this weekend, just assume that I’m in a lot of physical pain.

Now, to the sports!

Ah, Opening Day, a tradition unlike any other...

It’s especially great if you’re from Cincinnati, for we were the inaugurators of professional baseball. In 1882, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, made up entirely of paid athletes went undefeated, and from then on America was hooked on pro baseball.

And how does America show thanks for the Queen City’s contribution to our culture? By continuing to allow the Cincinnati Reds to host the first game of the year (well, the first Opening Day game – I’m not counting the bullshit Red Sox–Yankees orgy that took place the Sunday before), and broadcasting it on national television. It’s really the least they can do.

So there I was, a member of the Cincinnati Diaspora living in Chicago on Opening Day of baseball season. If the Reds aren’t playing the Cubs, usually the only way to see a game is to go to a bar… and I’m poor. On occasion there is a nationally broadcast game, but those are rare and don't really happen until midsummer. But no matter what, like clockwork, the Reds will be on TV on Opening Day, so I made myself a large plate of spaghetti, settled into my couch’s ass-groove, and started to take in the first few innings – feeling the renewing life forces of spring flow through me. Then, just as Aaron Harang readied himself to throw yet another hanging curve over the plate.

“A tradition unlike any other… the Masters.”

All of a sudden, I’m not in Great American Ballpark anymore. I’ve been transported to some strange world where baseball is played not in a ballpark, but in a press room. And the players are not so much ballplayers as they are news reporters and a single, very downtrodden-looking man at a podium.

That’s right. They cut the Reds Opening Day broadcast for a press conference with Tiger Woods. No golf would be played at the Masters until Thursday, yet so important this press conference was, on Opening Day (a Monday) no baseball could be found anywhere on ESPN until it was over.

Well, I assumed with a press conference this important that Tiger Woods might be admitting that he used HGH or something. But, no. “Tiger, why didn’t you come back to golf sooner?” “Tiger, will Elin be joining you at the Masters?” “Tiger, how have the other golfers behaved towards you since you’ve been back?”

Ok, it’s time for the High Horse Blog to take a stand. It was one thing when the news media was blatantly destroying a man’s life to jack some television ratings – it’s another when it interferes with me watching the Reds. This is all that can and should be said about the whole thing: almost every married couple has some kind of problem at some point with fidelity. The percentages get even higher when one spouse lives in a separate residence for much of the year. If you cheated on your significant other, it would probably be a bad thing to do, but you wouldn’t expect it to mean anything to anyone other than your significant other, your families, and maybe some close friends.

If every athlete that had cheated on their spouse came out of the woodwork, and was tarred and feathered in the same way that Tiger Woods was, nearly all of sports would completely crumble. Except for Tim Tebow – that all-American goody-two-shoes – we should at the very least not be surprised at marital infidelity.

But either way, it’s just plain rude the way that the media, sponsored corporations, and fans have broken down Tiger. It’s not like this guy was a politician campaigning on “family values” and then was caught cheating. All he did was hit golf balls. For all I care, Tiger Woods could be into mutant lesbian bondage porn (I think that exists) and as long as it doesn’t affect his golf swing, we shouldn’t bat an eye. His kind of celebrity is different than that of, say, the Kardashians, whose fame stems from asking the public to care about them. Tiger never asked us to care, we just did.

So it’s good to see that he’s doing well at the Masters. I hope he wins, frankly, and we can get this whole stupid episode behind us. Tiger will continue his march towards Nicklaus’s 18 major victories, and probably will face sexual relapse within the next two years. Oh well. As long as I’m not friends with Elin, and as long as his exploits don’t get in the way of my Reds again, I’m over it.

Speaking of the Reds, opening week thoughts:

The Reds are a very fortunate 2-2. Neither their defeats nor their victories have looked very pretty. Johnny Gomes's walk-off homer on Thursday was the only thing that saved a brilliant day by Bronson Arroyo, and prior to the Stubbs Slam Friday, the Reds offense was looking absolutely anemic. As usual, the Reds offense has been playing only to the level of its competition - they seem to only get runs when the other team has already scored a few, and if Reds pitching is good, their batting usually is not.

This is not the way to win games. The bats really need to come around for Brandon Phillips and especially Jay Bruce. Right now, it's strikeout after strikeout in the heart of our order. Bruce is really trying to muscle things rather than try for good contact. Phillips, I think, is being affected by that 4-spot in the lineup. He's perfectly designed to be a 2-spot hitter, by batting him cleanup, it's forcing him to try to become a home run hitter, which he can't sustain for a season.

Think about this order:
Stubbs
Phillips
Votto
Bruce
Cabrera
Rolen
Gomes
Hernandez
Pitcher

That's a pretty potent team with good power and run-scoring potential all throughout. The key to making it happen is having Jay Bruce mature as a hitter.

By the way, so far, Drew Stubbs and Orlando Cabrera have looked great this year. They are having real quality at-bats, making it tough for pitchers even when the end result is not a hit. Stubbs's power is nice, but much more important to the team is having someone who has the potential to get hits in the leadoff spot. If we can get some early scoring opportunities, I think it would help pick up the pitchers, who at moment probably feel like they have to go out and pitch a perfect game every time to even have a chance.

Speaking of pitching, I'm starting to worry about Aaron Harang. He looked real poor in the opener - he's pitching today so I'll get a good chance to take a look at him. He keeps saying that he's retooling his mechanics, but I think he might just be washed up (Oh! Don't say it!). Cueto and Bailey were shaky, but I don't think their outings tell you much in terms of trends. And how about Bronson! A dandy of a game Thursday, and even after being injured, he'll be ready to go Tuesday. It's rare to have the type of Iron Man pitcher like Bronson, but it's an asset. No matter what, you can count on about 13-15 wins, a lot of innings, and no health problems. Hat's off to you Bronson.

And a quick and final addendum about the bullpen: Asides from Ondrusek's debacle on Wednesday, and, of course, Masset's shelling on Opening Day, it's looked pretty solid. A good mix of pitchers - a few power arms, a few crafty guys, some wily veterans, and (though he gave me a heart attack last night) a proven closer. I'm not too worried about it.

Allright, hat's off. Tomorrow is politics Sunday and we've got a Supreme Court to discuss.

Film Friday

2010-04-09T08:17:00.000-07:00

I think it's a good thing that Clash of the Titans is being remade. Because, as Jon Stewart said (or maybe Colbert, they both run together so often), even bad movies deserve to get remade.

The first Clash of the Titans starred Lawrence Olivier as a toga-touting Zeus that spoke with a trippingly light, slightly effeminate air. Alongside him was a who's who of classically trained actors who probably spent most of the filming process wondering, "what the Hell is this movie? Why am I in it? Why was it ever made? And how am I getting paid this much money to do it? The special effects in the original Clash of the Titans can only be described as 80's-tastic. Remember how corny the ghosts looked in Ghostbusters, but how it was sort of a jokey kind of bad that worked for the movie? Well, Medusa looks exactly like that in this misguided epic - except that it wasn't meant to be a joke.

But the original Clash of the Titans really is a joke. Literally one of the worst movies of all time - the kind of movie that you would only pull out if you wanted to make fun of how awful it is. Which begs the question, "Why does it get a remake?"

We are approaching a point of critical mass, where one day 51 percent of all movies made will either be a remake, a sequel, a biopic, or based on a book. There is already a stranglehold on the epic genre. The biggest movies currently at the box office are Alice in Wonderland (remake) and Clash of the Titans - but if we look back at the biggest moneymakers in 2009 the trend is clear: Transformers (sequel), Harry Potter (sequel), Twilight (sequel), Star Trek (remake [sort of]), The Blind Side (Based on a true story), Alvin and the Chipmunks (Squeaquel), Sherlock Holmes (based on a book), Ice Age (Sequel), X-men Origins: Wolverine (Sequel).

In fact - I never thought I'd do this - I have to take my hat off to Avatar and 2012 for being the sole big-budget movies to use an original script (using the term "original" loosely).

The future is clear - I can see it now. There will be remakes upon remakes upon remakes - can you see it? Are you already imagining the next incarnation of the Rocky series (starring Gerard Butler, I'm sure)? If we reach the critical mass where more movies that come out are sequels and remakes than originals, then Hollywood will start a vicious cycle of consuming itself and then regurgitating itself until it finally is unable to support its own voracious rate of reconsumption, and collapses under its own bloated weight.

Like a dying star.

It's not like I don't understand why this whole sequel/remake/based on/biopic craze happened - I get it that when big money is being thrown around for this movie and that, an executive has to be sure that there is a built in fan base for something before he gives the OK. That means, stuff like Twilight will get the funding because - even if the movie is silly and makes no sense - it is nearly guaranteed not to lose money.

Ok, fine. But that doesn't explain Clash of the Titans. Almost nobody under the age of forty really even knows about the original movie (made in 1981), and those who do know it use it as punchlines to jokes. It stars Lawrence Olivier for God's sake. You know, the stage actor from the black and white version of Hamlet. Yeah, there's some real star power to fuel this epic. It would be like casting Kevin Kline in Troy... hmm... ok that could be pretty entertaining.

But here's my belief: I think it might be possible that Clash of the Titans got a sequel simply because of its title. Admit it, it's a pretty cool title for a movie. Those words, "Clash," "Titans," they have such an epic feel to them. They bring you right into that netherworld where fantasy and reality mix together so harmoniously. Nevermind the fact that in Clash of the Titans there are no Titans. It's all about the title having zazz, putting butts in the seats based purely off how the movie sounds.

There's a Kraken too. If you've seen commercials for the new Titans you probably knew that already. "Release the Kraken" is basically the tagline for the multi-million dollar advertising blitz on the movie. America has a new obsession with Krakens ever since Pirates of the Caribbean 2 came along. I think it has something to do with that weird tentacle porn from Japan, but anyway...

If you're looking for this posting to have any sort of coherence or deep meaning, I'm sorry, but you'll be quite disappointed. This is just my version of muttering to myself like a cantankerous old man whose matzoh ball soup was a little too cold. I just don't get why Clash of the Titans gets a remake - it's terrible. Then again, I suppose Troll 2 (even more terrible) is getting a remake as well. So it appears that Bad is en vogue.

Want proof that the original Titans is really that bad? Check out this 8-minute clip from the climax of the movie.

Theatre Thursday

2010-04-08T12:41:00.000-07:00

Before today’s gab, big thanks to a friend who was very complimentary of yesterday’s Precious review. It always feels nice to hear things like that.

Also, Yahtzee! I appear to have found a way to pirate Reds games online. Do I feel bad about skirting the law? Hell no! I wouldn’t have to do this if MLB would allow 700 WLW to Broadcast online during game time. How else do they expect me to follow the team from Chicago? ESPN gamecast? – well, it wouldn’t be so bad a thing to do if my computer actually had a decently long battery life so I could watch something else at the same time.

Baseball is the only sport that I think might be better to listen to than to watch on TV. The broadcasters are much better (in Cincinnati anyway). For my money, one of the best summers of my life was just after senior year of college – I had no cable and my pal and I listened to every game on the radio each night while playing video games. And, I was working as a pizza delivery man, and could listen to the games in my car. Nothing better.

By the way, as I speak, the Reds are holding on to their first lead of the year. Can they keep it? I don’t know, Pujols is up. We’ll have full analysis of the Reds’ first week as well as Masters coverage on Saturday.

But it’s Theatre Thursday! And here’s today’s essay, entitled:

Am I One of the Infected?

If you’re into low-budget, but highly artistic theatre, you should check out Ozma and Harriet at the Side Project in Chicago. This Tympanic Theatre offering will run you only $12, and was one of the most entertaining and intellectually stimulating nights of theatre that I’ve had in a long time – an example of the caliber of creative work that can be seen with only a minimal budget (running through April 18th, so hurry).

Ozma and Harriet is science fiction in the vein of the Twilight Zone or an Isaac Asimov novel. Taking place in 1991, it’s mostly the world as we know it, with the exception of the presence of a highly realistic android named Ozma built by workaholic scientist Frank Younger. We know that we are in 1991 because Frank’s shut-in wife, Harriet has nothing to fill her lonely Friday nights (Frank is off working, of course) but sitting and watching TGIF - the titan of ABC’s early 90’s Friday night lineups, featuring such classics as Full House, Dinosaurs, Family Matters, and Boy Meets World.

Though Harriet has been warned by Frank against interacting with Ozma (Frank wanting sole control over what the humanoid is taught), curiosity gets the best of her. She activates and befriends Ozma, teaching him the joys of human existence (laughing, friendship, relationships) in contrast to the purely analytical knowledge that Frank gives him. Mostly, they sit and watch a lot of TV. Ozma learns to perfectly ape all of the TGIF lineup, and Harriet starts to feel close with him as her husband becomes more and more distant.

Eventually, the relationship of Ozma and Harriet takes a romantic and sexual turn. Frank discovers what has happened and, blinded by jealousy, sets a deadly trap for his wife if anything ever happens a second time. When it does, Ozma is left confused and friendless, with his only remaining connection to the world being TGIF. In the play’s second act, we see his mind wholly consumed by television – so strongly does it have a hold on him that he can hardly distinguish between a show and reality. If he were to smack someone in the face with a frying pan a la Dinosaurs, he would hardly know whether it would cause pain or uncontrollable laughter.

Though Ozma is an android, how different is his plight from that of a real human being? One of the reasons that Ozma and Harriet works is that the constant presence of TGIF tropes is recognizable to us and, in fact, meaningful. How many twenty-somethings of today remember sitting and watching TGIF every Friday – reruns or no. We knew all of Steve Urkel’s eccentricities as well as we knew those of our best friends. We felt closer to Uncle Jesse than we did to our own siblings. And this extends to all of the major television shows of our youth – I spent countless hours watching and rewatching Nickelodeon (Doug, Hey Arnold, Ren & Stimpy) and Disney (Animaniacs, Pinky & the Brain) – taking in as much from television as I did in my school classes.

But was this a double-edged sword? As Ozma & Harriet points out, television does indeed teach valuable lessons of morality, and familiarizes us with the ways of the world. At the same time, overexposure can be a type of infection, skewing one’s mind into thinking that all of life can be wrapped up into neat little stories, simple lessons, clear morality.

This led me to wonder, am I one of the Infected? Did I watch so much television in my youth that I’ve intrinsically warped my view of the world? And if so, is there a way for me to “wake up?”

I think of two examinable cases: Firstly, I look at my view of the world as an artist. After recently directing a comedy, how much did TGIF affect my choices? The answer is, quite a bit. My inherent understanding of comic rhythms was taught by and will forever be informed by TV episodes. Just like taking a poetry class teaches how different styles of verse work (their uses, advantages, disadvantages) constantly viewing Family Matters and Hey Arnold teaches the way that different types of jokes affect an audience, and how art communicates with viewers.

Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. As an artist, one needs to find ways to gain that feel for how to manipulate audiences – just as a basketball player needs ten thousand hours of practice to learn the feel of the ball, an artist needs ten thousand hours of viewing and watching the affects of other art - that’s why watching theatre is considered a business expense for theatre artists. Of course, true artists branch away from the establishment, but in order to do so, they need to have a knowledge of what the establishment is.

Case number two: Getting the babe.

One undeniable trope of Disney, TGIF, and Nickelodeon is for the main character to get the girl by the end of the episode. Cory has his Topanga, Urkel has Laura, and every single Disney hero is rewarded for their exploits with a relationship of some sort (see Hercules, the Lion King, Aladdin). I think that an unsaid but clearly visible theme of all youth programming is that morality is rewarded with sexuality. Steve Urkel eventually gets Laura not because he learns how to be attractive to her, but because he constantly proves his worth as a person through moral acts.

It’s nice that we are trying to teach our children morality on television, but it is also problematic. It teaches adherence to an absolute creed, which any adult knows is not useful in analyzing the complexities of a decision to be made as an adult. And moreover, associating relationships with such morality warps the way we think of ourselves and our sexual lives. That is, if we’re not getting any, it would appear to be a judgment of not just a person’s attraction to you, but of your actual worth as a person. I don’t have a girl? I must not be a moral person – all of my decisions must be wrong.

Nobody really thinks consciously about this, but I do believe that these seeds exist in many of us because of the prevalence of a certain type of TV when we were young. To answer my original question, yes, I do feel like I am one of the Infected, and I feel that part of becoming an adult is learning to cure oneself of these wholly powerful, but wholly misguided assumptions about how the world works. When you are young, and everything is new, you try to learn as much about the world as fast as possible, without any regard to evaluating the quality of the teacher. Growing up is about critiquing not just what you learn, but the sources of that learning.

TGIF may not be the Rage Virus of 28 Days Later, but that doesn’t mean it had no ability to zombify us in our, as F. Scott Fitzgerald described it, “…younger and more vulnerable years.”

Precious review

2010-04-07T12:03:00.001-07:00

For me, a review of Lee Daniels’s Precious, based on the novel “Push” by Sapphire, has to start not with the protagonist – an obese sixteen-year-old living in inner-city New York named Claireece “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) – but with her mother, Mary, whose haunting and brilliant portrayal by Monique is certainly, for me, the most memorable aspect of this dark picture.

When I say that Mary is Precious’s mother, I am using the term extremely loosely. Though technically this abusive, bile-spewing woman did birth Precious and does keep the house where she lives, certainly she does not resemble the sort of loving figure that most of us think of when we use the term “parent.” Rather, Mary is dangerous and vitriolic, only showing any kind of tenderness towards her daughter when there is a social worker present to keep her in check.
Assaulting Precious in a myriad of ways – a frying pan to the head, an abusive spoken tirade, complicity in her husband’s rape of the young girl – Mary inspires fear even while seeming broken-down, slow-moving, and perpetually tired. When Precious hands her mother her newborn child (Precious’s second begotten by her father – the first suffering from Down’s Syndrome), we cringe knowing that something so tender can be so easily broken by such a demonic loose cannon.

But for as much as we hate Mary, a final monologue in which she attempts to explain her allowance of her husband’s rape of Precious gives a stunning vision of humanity to this monster. “Who else was gonna’ love me?” she stammers, fighting through tears. In this one, incandescent moment, Monique is able to show how the quicksand of depression, loneliness, and poverty can rip away one’s soul, sap away his or her humanity despite even the best efforts.

Such a dynamic performance is key to making Precious work. The film is not, as many critics have said, about bludgeoning the audience with the uber-grotesque imagery of life in the inner-city slums (although, be warned, there is a LOT of painful imagery) – rather, it is about one girl moving to conquer her past, breaking loose of the shackles of pain and pessimism that would seem to push her towards becoming just like Mary.

The main arc of Precious concerns the title character switching from an inner-city public school system (in which she is still held back in junior high) to a special teaching program called Each One Teach One. At her new school, she falls under the wing of Ms. Rain (Paula Patton), an encouraging and relentless teacher who pushes her students to write and write and write on a daily basis, knowing that literacy is the only way to truly open the minds of these troubled kids. None of the stereotypes of the “How do I reach these kids” movies (e.g. Sister Act 2, Stand and Deliver, Take the Lead, and SO many more) apply. Ms. Rain feels very real, and her crusade to help Precious – which, by the end of the movie, goes far beyond the call of duty – seems heroic, but not pandering.

Even while in her new school, Precious remains under Mary’s roof, still taking in the raw hatred that seems to come trippingly off her tongue. But a horrific event in which Mary attempts to murder Precious’s newborn child prompts the girl to seek safety. It is when she is finally away from Mary that we really see Precious take strides forward towards being able to have an active life. She finds love in the arms of Ms. Rain and her classmates and we actually see her smile from time to time (I don’t think she smiles once in the first hour of the movie). But Precious will be tested further, and must choose whether to give in to her painful past and settle for the continued spiral into spiritual decay, or to break the cycle once and for all.

What I really liked about this movie is that it refuses to let the audience judge the characters. When you see a random person on the street as obese as Precious, you may think, “Geez, she should just lay off the junk food.” But when you see scenes in which Mary forces her child to constantly cook greasy, fried foods and then eat the leftovers whether she wants to or not, it becomes impossible to make such judgments (would you really want to tell someone who hits you with a frying pan that you aren’t going to cook what she wants).

But, likewise, when we hear Mary’s gut wrenching speech at the end, we must think twice before condemning her outright.

What Precious is really trying to do is use this horrendous story to depict the complexities of our broken down welfare state. Like in season 4 of The Wire (probably my all-time favorite season of television), we see that the seeds of violence and abuse are sewn from an early age in ways that are uncontrollable and oftentimes leave one powerless to break away from it. Precious is punctuated by vivid musical sequences in which Precious visualizes herself as a Broadway singer, or imagines herself on the cover of a magazine. We also see a real scene in which Mary dons a blond wig and dances around the living room while watching tv – for me, the vision of a similar dream that had died and left nothing but vapors. Monique’s frightening portrayal of what Precious could become makes the girl’s struggle to break away from that predestination vital and earnest.

To an extent, I did think that by the end of the film, each new trouble that befell Precious started to read like a laundry list of horrors, but I think that this is just a result of some clunkiness in the screenplay, and didn’t seem to me like overkill thrown in to gain the audience’s sympathy as some have suggested. Surely, some people will think that it’s just too much to take, but for me, a story this real, this deftly written, and with such vivid performances is one that needs to be told and heard far more often.

HHB Comes Roaring Back!

2010-04-06T06:23:00.000-07:00

Hello to all you HHB devotees. Let me express my apologies for the lack of material in the last two weeks - your humble (a lie) narrator has been off dilly-dallying with other important matters, but he's back now and intends for this week to show a whole flurry of articles. So pay attention because more really is coming.

Before I leave you with Deidre, is it just me, or was there a pretty good basketball game on last night? One of the best finishes to a national championship game I've ever seen, except, oh yeah, Duke won. But it was a terrific game, heavy on the defense, with Butler fighting all the way. Can you imagine if that last shot had gone in...

But no, it was not to be. In the year of great upsets at the NCAA tourney, a number 1 seed (Duke, at that) still won. Evil reins this year. Duke and the Yankees are the national champions.

By the way, look closely in the background when the last shot misses and you'll see one of the coaches fall down onto the ground. Hilarrrrious!

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

I had already promised some friends I would use last night to watch Precious, so I had to have the game on in the background while taking that in - not recommended. It's sort of like Jerry Seinfeld making out during Schindler's List. If you're going to see Precious, plan to devote all of your focus to it - not the type of movie that's conducive to multitasking. Review tomorrow.

And heeeere's Deidre:

Dear Deidre,

I've recently become interested in a person that I work with and am not sure if she likes me in the same way. She's seemed flirty with me from time to time, but I'm not sure if she's actually interested or just a flirty person in general. I'm doing my best to try to show her I'm interested, but since we usually only see each other at work, I can only take it so far. I'm worried that if I ask her out and she's not interested, it'll get around to all my coworkers and be very awkward for me. What's the best way to proceed?

Sincerely,

Workin' Hard's Hardly Workin'

Dear Workin’ Hard’s Hardly Workin,’

This is a toughy, and a situation that a lot of people find themselves in. (Myself included!) Good thing it is still legal to ask a co-worker out! I’m sure your fuzzy, lovestruck mind wasn’t too concerned about legal liability, but just as a word to the wise, sexual harassment in the workplace law suits are on the rise! You’ll want to make sure that your company doesn’t have a specific policy that forbids employee dating, especially if this chick is a superior.

Unfortunately, there is that type of woman out there who is just innately, constantly, and annoyingly flirty. It’s just in her nature. Maybe daddy didn’t give her enough attention or something and now she seeks it out from every male in sight. But, a good way to tell the difference between Miss I want Everybody and the real deal is to observe her interactions with your other male co-workers. Is she just as flirty with John or with Bob? If so, then maybe she’s not specifically interested in you. However, if it appears to be that she only acts this way around you, maybe it’s the real deal.

How much do you like this job? Do you imagine yourself with this company for the long-term? If so, you may not want to risk it. The awkwardness that could follow a potential rejection might get in the way of your career goals. On the other hand, if you’re not totally committed to the place or the position, then I say go for it. Girls like guys that show they are interested (granted, don’t show up with balloons and flowers and candy and cry whenever you see her), so give her some sort of signal that shows your interest. I wouldn’t suggest a one on one date request right off the bat. Tell her that you and some of your friends are going out for drinks at so-and-so bar and ask if she would like to come along. If the two of you end up attached at the hip all night, then bravo! If not, feel out how awkward it either was or wasn’t and decide if you should ask her out again.

If you do start dating her, remember that you are not on a “date” at work. Don’t act overly flirty and touchy-feely while you’re on the job. No trysts in the employee coat closet or feel ups behind the water cooler. This can get VERY aggravating to your co-workers; not to mention, you’ll probably gross each other out and find yourself without any time away from this love nest.

Bottom line – ask her out casually. If she says no, and her excuse sounds legitimate, try again in a week or so. If she says no while saying something like “oh, well my cat needs me to spend more time with him this Friday night, so sorry,” then take the hint. (Note to all of my friends – I really mean it when I say that). Go out in a group and have a good time.

Good luck, workin’ hard (and hopefully, workin’ it)!
Deidre

Politics Sunday (Healthcare, baby!)

2010-03-21T07:41:00.000-07:00

We start off one of the most important politics Sundays with a quote by Walt Whitman, which I saw in the current Vonnegut essay collection that I’m reading, Fates Worse Than Death. Though the book itself has many good nuggets of brilliance, it’s not as good as Palm Sunday, Vonnegut’s other autobiographical essay collection (which is gold, Jerry! Gold!). But on an important day like today, this tidbit from Whitman seems particularly apt.

"It is the fashion among dilettantes and fops (perhaps I myself am not guiltless,) to decry the whole formulation of the active politics of America, as beyond redemption, and to be carefully kept away from. See you that you do not fall into this error. America, it may be, is doing very well upon the whole, notwithstanding these antics of the parties and their leaders, these half-brain'd nominees, the many ignorant ballots, and many elected failures and blatherers. It is the dilettantes, and all who shirk their duty, who are not doing well. As for you, I advise you to enter more strongly yet into politics. I advise every young man to do so."

If, indeed, the House votes on and passes health care today, it would give “every young man” a very good reason to have with in the politics of America again. The current bill would be the largest and most important piece of legislation to be passed in the law in the last decade for certain, and possibly in the last thirty years. It will come after a year of debate in which every potential roadblock has been reared its ugly head. The slow economic recovery; the town hall meetings (sponsored by Fox News); the Tea Party movement (sponsored by Fox News); the loss of a special election; the obstruction tactics; the constant threat of a filibuster…
I could just go on and on and on.

And, if you’re like me, you probably feel like this whole Health Care thing has just dragged on and on and on. It’s literally been a damn year that we’ve had to hear about all the tedium of this very unsexy bill. Is the public option in or out? What’s the latest CBO estimate? Which Democrats are wavering? Oh, my God!

Any rational person would want to gouge their eyes out whenever the words Health Care are uttered. Of course, I’m a political junkie; this stuff’s like porn for me.

As we speak, I’m watching This Week (sadly, no longer with George Stephanopoulus) and the Democrats are saying that they officially have the votes. I’ll believe him when I see it. First, we thought it was going to be done in August; then by November; then by December; then by the end of February. Now, it’s March. If the Democrats don’t have the votes now, they will never have the votes. Ever. (Or at least for the next decade)

And it will prove that the party has no real ability to govern whatsoever.

There will be much more on this later, but I have a busy day and someone challenged me to put up a posting by noon, so I'll leave you with this fun little nugget that says something about how crazy this whole issue (and the opposition in particular) has become:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-KGukuety0

Sports Saturday—Welcome to the Dance

2010-03-19T21:08:00.000-07:00

We missed theatre Thursday and film review Friday, but maybe we can have make-up columns for those early next week. Don’t hold your breaths, though. The next few weeks are going to be incredibly hectic for your humble (a lie) narrator. I am still committed to getting a Chumscrubber review up soon, though, so look for that. And it looks like we’re headed to a House vote on Health Care perhaps as soon as Sunday, so of course I’ll have something to say about that.

But today is Sports Saturday. Huzzah!

Gosh, am I the only person who picked Ohio to beat Georgetown? Day 1 was chock full of thrillers that I sadly didn’t get to watch. I was too busy trying to make money and, you know, not starve. Day 2 was not nearly as exciting, but all told, this year's early round upsets have been numerous and epic. Awesome. That’s what the tournament is all about — too bad I didn’t get to fill out a bracket.

Quick article from the onion. Is anybody going to win their office pool? http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/entire_nation_picks_same

And I saw this on Paul Daugherty's blog (another HHB favorite) and couldn't agree more.

http://tourney.si.com/?eref=sihp
To the powers-that-be at the NCAA who are considering a 96-team bracket: Consider this day a powerful message that the current format must be preserved. You don’t want to be responsible for preventing something like this from happening again, do you? Tacking on an extra round would make matchups like Georgetown-Ohio and Vandy-Murray State less likely to happen. Please, please don’t ruin this.

I have to say that this year, I’ve felt very little attachment to college ball – no real star presence in the likes of J.J. Redick or Tyler Hansbrough. This one-and-out rule, or “the Lebron Rule” is really ruining the sport. If someone is talented enough to play in the pros right out of high school, he should be able to just go, instead of risking injury playing as a man amongst boys in college for a single year. Plus, college sports is all about getting to know the stars and watching them contribute over a few years’ period of time. Tyler Hansbrough may never amount to anything in pro ball, but he was legendary during his four years at UNC. Guys like Greg Oden (Or Greg Wotan if you like the Norse pronunciation – he looks Nordic, right?), who are around for a single year and then take off for the pros, are completely forgettable to fans and don’t help in the building of a team.

The thrill of college sports is getting to see kids mature and the team finally start clicking as they grow over time. This one and out thing is ridiculous—it doesn’t help the colleges (who need time to have the team grow around a star player), it doesn’t help the pros (who want the best players available as soon as possible, even if it’s right out of school), and it doesn’t help the players (who risk career-ending injury while playing for none of the millions of dollars that they should rightfully be earning).

But, that said, college basketball in March is still very cool. The tournament is definitely the best postseason of any sport. The thrill of the upset; the Cinderella sleepers; the complexity of the seeding system; and it all happens within about three weeks. If the whole basketball season meant as much as all the games in February and March, college basketball might be my favorite sport. But, sadly, most of the season feels like it matters very little, and it’s still hard to justify tuning into a basketball game before the second half.

Still, college basketball absolutely crushes pro basketball in terms of the quality of the game itself. I don’t even count pro ball as a sport anymore. They’ve officially allowed you to take two-and-a-half steps between dribbles. Really?! We all knew that refs were looking the other way on the two-step rule before (so as to allow those big-hops stars to get more chances to do a ridiculous jam), but to officially sanction it seems like quite a step. Soon we won’t have to dribble at all — games will be decided by a dunk-off, similar to the shootouts of hockey. Kobe and Lebron take turns doing their most creative slam and the game is decided by the loudness of audience applause.

By the by, my Dad and I have always bonded over watching the Dream Teams of the 90’s play against the Latvians or some other country consisting of small, pasty Europeans. It’s hilarious. Hakeem Olajuwon would intercept a pass and then run down the court and do a monster slam home, screaming in ecstasy as the ball punched through the rim while the Latvians would just stare in wonder. They looked like Foghorn Leghorn in Space Jam after getting trounced by the Monstars, “Would you like original recipe or extra crispy?”

Oh, and here’s one more thing that annoys me. Have you ever seen a college basketball team fail to get the ball across half court in the ten allotted seconds? I’ve seen them stupidly give away the ball, I’ve seen them call a timeout when they get into trouble (one of the twenty timeouts that they are given), but I think I might have seen an actual violation only once or twice in my life. Why don’t they just give you 8 seconds to get across half court instead of 10? At the very least it would make teams use more timeouts so that they can’t save all of them for the final two minutes of the game (which currently take 40 minutes to play out).

Ok, that’s about all I have to say about basketball.

Two and a half weeks until Opening Day! It should be a national holiday. I’m so busy right now, I’m not sure if I’ll have time to continue my yearly tradition of watching Ken Burns’s “Baseball” documentary to get in the mood for the season – although I guess that will save me having to hear any more about Merkel’s Boner...

As a Cincinnati boy whose conscious awareness of sports doesn’t go back further than the year 1991, I’ve gotten used to disappointment and have learned not to get my hopes up. But I have to say, I’m pretty excited for this season. Pitching looks like it could be sweet. We have hard-throwing Cueto, who continues to grow, hard-throwing Bailey who finally seemed to turn a corner after learning a sinker (in a small ballpark like GABP, why don’t all the Reds pitchers know a sinker?), and the harder-throwing Chapman who has been astounding this Spring. Chapman has to make the team, if for no other reason than to let us have a lefty in the rotation. The problem is, all of the starting pitching have big questions surrounding them – none moreso than Harang, but last week’s column was about him so…

And I have to say, I’ve been up and down and up and down on Bronson Arroyo (mostly because he’s been just as inconsistent as well), but he’s always been able to give the Reds the innings they need from him and the amount of wins they need from him. He may not be the Ace that he looked like during the all-star first year when he came to the team, but at least he’s always proven steady over the course of the season. Those 10-run first innings don’t look good, but maybe it’s better to know you’re out of a game early than to have a pitcher melt down in the sixth.

The bullpen looks solid. Let’s hope Coco can stay strong, and Rhodes, who's already over the hill, doesn't start tumbling down it.

By the way, it’s just come to my attention that David Weathers is still a free agent. What gives? Couldn’t we pick him up dirt cheap right now for a one-year contract? The guy has been consistently good for this team for most of the last decade. Again, there are occasional meltdowns, but his ERA has hovered around 3.0-3.5 for a long, long time. And didn’t he break some awesome record or something last year, like most games pitched in relief, or something like that?

Ok, ok. It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to sign him again, but, damn it, I’ve come to like David Weathers. I like those guys who quietly perform. Here’s to you Stormy

Final Fantasy Nation, Part 2 of 2 (Get ready, it's long)

2010-03-17T07:35:00.000-07:00

A movie that I recently saw, Chumscrubber(watch for the review later this week), is framed at both the beginning and end with sequences involving the building of a suburban neighborhood through the cell-shading technology of a video game world. The main character of this digitized suburbia is a headless man who totes his own noggin as he walks aimlessly about.

“Who am I?” he asks in the movie’s final line, “I am the Chumscrubber.”

Though the movie is decently complex enough for that line to carry several meanings, one of them must be a suggestion that gentrified America is a fake land, as unsubstantial as the walls that hold up a home in The Sims. To take the suggestion even further, we are as video game characters, walking through a 2-D world that we’ve somehow convinced ourselves is reality.
This got me thinking about the importance of video games and digital culture in defining who we are as a people. And that, of course led me to Avatar– a piece of digital media that has unified nearly everyone in the country in the last several months.

That’s not to say that everyone has unanimously liked the movie. Many, myself included, thought it was a piece of shit (if the most beautiful piece of shit ever put on screen). But the fact that we’ve all seen it brings us together, giving almost everyone in the country a conversation piece that they can use when speaking even with a perfect stranger.

Though, of course, the incredible visuals and gazillion-dollar marketing campaign must be most responsible for creating the global Avatarphenomenon, there must be something about the story itself that also makes the film at least watchable to everyone in the country (or the world for that matter). It’s my belief that that something is what famed scholar and story collector Joseph Campbell calls the monomyth. In his book, Hero of a Thousand Faces, Campbell analyzes every culture throughout history and comes up with a unifying “hero’s journey” that informs the heroic myths of each and every culture in the world. Though Campbell breaks down the hero’s journey into various distinct steps (which, if we wanted, we could certainly apply to Avatar), it basically boils down to this: Every great heroic story in human mythology is a reaffirmation of the contiguous circle of life: Life, Death, Rebirth. A character destroys his old self only to be reborn wiser and stronger than before.

Odysseus creating the Trojan Horse is Life; him being lost at sea is Death; him returning to his wife, wiser and more noble, was Rebirth.

Or take Tommy Boy. Chris Farley destroys his old selfish, slacker, alcohol-addled self and becomes a mature, street smart CEO.

It doesn’t take much to see how Avatar follows the same path. A disabled soldier starts off as a grunt for an evil world-killing military; he loses his old self as he bonds with the nature-oriented Na’vi (which I think is Spanish for Lanky Blue Person); he ends up a noble, courageous leader. And, he can walk again.

Ok, so I get why everyone can identify with Avatar. There’s just one problem. We’ve heard this same story told before (Fern Gully), and told better (Dances With Wolves). James Cameron (and many critics) would say, “Well, sure, but nobody has ever really let you become a part of this monomyth like Avatardoes. When you put on those 3-D glasses, you enter into the story in a way that has never happened before.”

But is that really true?

I call your attention to the great Final Fantasy VII – as I’ve said before, perhaps the best RPG ever made. Though Avatar was the culmination of a decade of work, FFVII (and, really, the rest of the Final Fantasy series) was treading the same waters a few years before production on Avatar even began (it came out in 1998). It would take too long to go into the intricacies of the game’s plot, but here’s a general overview:

You play as Cloud Strife, an ex-soldier with a troubled past, who teams up with a band of rebels trying to stop the evil Shinra Corporation from mining Mako energy, the precious lifeblood of the planet (Hmm… this Mako energy sounds a lot like Unobtainium. Which do you think is the better name?). Over the course of the game, Cloud moves from a Han Solo-like rogue to a rebellion-leading environmentalist. There’s a climactic battle at the end in which the naturalist good guys beat the technologically superior baddies, and (get this) the final fight takes place mano-a-mano between Cloud and Shinra’s hired gun, the legendary Sephiroth.

Oooh, what an intimidating name! Sephiroth. Gives me shivers just saying it. Much more frightening than Avatar arch-boss Colonel Miles Quaritch, who serves literally the exact same function.

So you can probably see it: Avataris just like the skeleton of the story of FFVII. And all that stuff about “Seeing through the eyes of another” or “Becoming part of the monomyth” by putting on those ridiculous-looking glasses? Well, what could bring you into the myth more than actually playing as the lead character? And, of course, the word "avatar" is itself a gaming term referring to the character that you become.

In fact, FFVII has it over Avatar in nearly every aspect. Its story is much longer and richer – like watching a whole season of The Wire over the movie Training Day. It avoids falling into the trap of painting the naturalistic denizens of the planet as primitive beasts (Ha ha, look at those stupid Blue People shooting bows and arrows at the metal spaceship), thereby watering down the power of a nature-oriented lifestyle. And it’s far less predictable too – don’t bother leveling up Cloud’s love interest, Aeris, she won’t last long. Can you imagine James Cameron being ballsy enough to kill off Neytiri halfway through?

But most important: Final Fantasy VII allows far more room for the human imagination to take hold. Unlike modern FF games, the characters of FFVII were still unvoiced, communicating through dialogue boxes that you had to internally put sound to. As I said earlier, its cinematic sequences were state-of-the-art at the time, but they still lasted for only thirty to forty-five seconds at their longest. Only a few key plot points were actually communicated through movie sequences, and since these sequences featured no talking, all back story had to be gleaned from read dialogue between characters which ranged from major and to eminently dismissible.

This is one of the most incredible elements of the storytelling of Final Fantasy VII, again trouncing Avatar in terms of technique. If you wanted to know why the Na’vi are so attached to their land, you had to rely on a few blatantly expository lines to tell you. “Those trees hold all of the memories of the Na’vi ancestors and if they’re destroyed, then the memories disappear.” That’s not a direct quote, but the actual line was no less straightforward. Compare that to the journey you get to take in FFVII, coming to understand the Mako energy of the planet through stories told to Cloud by elders, through missions you go on that launch you directly into the planet’s core, even through random nuggets of information gleaned by optionally talking to random people on the street.

That’s what makes Final Fantasy so fun. You have the option of following the story laid out for you, or you can go even deeper down the rabbit hole, talking to every single person you see, taking on every side mission available, even choosing to find all of the optional characters (yes, you heard me right. The makers of FFVII created two playable characters [each complete with their own in-depth back story] that you don’t even need to find to complete the game). And since it is a video game, you are in control of everything that happens. Saving the planet is a conscious choice you must make, not just a passive action that you get to watch unfold without lifting a finger.

Why is allowing for imagination so important in the first place? Because no matter how powerful computers become, no matter how realistic Pandora can be made to look, our minds can always create something more realistic and impressive all on its own. Think that the Na’vi’s giant treehouse was huge? You can always make it bigger in your head. (Whoa! I just did. Would you look at that?)

And furthermore, we are all different in the way that we consume information. Some people like to concentrate on the big picture, and some enjoy the little details. Having the option to customize – if not the general story, then at least the level of depth you look into individual aspects of that story – makes it easier to connect to the monomyth overall.

Ok, ok. Sure. But what does this have to do with America?

Well, America is a nation that was never really connected to its land. Unlike Native Americans, the vast majority of U.S. citizens have no roots that link back to a time when we depended on the generosity of the planet itself for survival. By the time we arrived here, we had already sufficiently learned how to tame the wild and thereby assured our superiority as the Master Species on the planet. And as the masters, we had no need to connect to the land.

But perhaps this isn’t such a good thing. Perhaps this has left us out of touch with the circle of life on which Joseph Campbell’s monomyth is based. In The Hero of a Thousand Faces, he conjectures that perhaps the reason that we are so dependent on drugs and psychotherapy for balance is because we no longer have the assurance of our connection to the ever-flowing cycle of life, death, and rebirth that was provided by the shamans and storytellers of ancient days. Instead of living on an endless sphere, as the natural world exists, like the Chumscrubber we walk about on a constructed plane. 2-D instead of 3-D. The societal rules that we’ve set up are like the walls of the computer screen… flat and concrete, rather than rounded and never-ending. And when we die in this world, where do we go? Our disconnection with the earth makes imagining our return to it, and subsequently, our discovery of eternal existence through the perpetual circle of life, nearly impossible.

Does taking a trip to Pandora cure us of the alienation we feel for a primal connection to the land? Or does digitizing the most idyllic imagining of a life-bearing planet only weaken our link to the one that we live on right now? If we can make an even more beautiful Earth out of zeros and ones, what incentive do we have to harmonize with our current terra firma (Version 1.0 if you will)?

It’s all very disconcerting. But I think that we should remind ourselves that the natural power of our imaginations far outweighs even the most powerful supercomputers. We don’t need Pandora in order to imagine nature at its most pristine. Though this may be real life, our minds are always aglow with fantastic new possibilities. We are always living in a final fantasy.

Final Fantasy Nation, part 1 of 2

2010-03-16T12:04:00.000-07:00

Happy Tuesday HHB nation! (Well, not so much a nation as a tribe… or maybe a collective…) We sure loved Dear Deidre yesterday and are excited for more and more. Mail any life question you may have to deardeidrehighhorse@gmail.com. Today, the worlds of politics, movies, and video games collide in part 1 of a two part series. Today is all about reviewing Final Fantasy so people can get context and tomorrow we’ll get to the meat of what I really want to say. We start with a brief discussion about – (happy band! That’s it. We’re a happy band. The High Horse Blog Happy Band. I like the ring of that)

Sorry. Back to business. We start with a brief discussion about Final Fantasy XIII, the blockbuster game that came out last week and which I have experienced for about two hours. Experience is certainly the correct word to use. The series distinguished itself from other RPG’s back when cinematic sequences were first introduced in Final Fantasy VII (quite possibly the greatest RPG of all time) for the original Playstation. Twelve years and two system generations later, FFXIII (which I played on the Xbox 360) sets a new standard for the opening cinematic. Lasting about six minutes and featuring a battle sequence that looks like it could come straight out of episodes I-III of Star Wars, the prologue heralds a new era in video game visuals ready to challenge those of any motion picture short of Avatar.

The New York Times agrees:

I’ll just put it this way: I recently invited several friends to compare the visual spectacle of the opening sequence of Final Fantasy XIII with the opening sequence of “Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith,” a frantic spaceship battle and chase that has been one of my personal animation benchmarks. Sorry, George Lucas, but it was a unanimous wipeout among my jury. For the moment the only animation that compares with Final Fantasy XIII is in “Avatar.” (And Final Fantasy XIII has better writing and voice acting than that film, though that’s not saying much.)

Hold onto that thought about Avatar for tomorrow, and if you want the whole NY Times review: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/15/arts/television/15fantasy.html

Now, I’ve only seen about two hours of FFXIII, and my preliminary judgment is that it’s come together pretty damn well. It has wisely returned to a more turn-based approach to fighting (with an emphasis on strategic choices [as in FFVII] rather than controller dexterity), but has found a way to seamlessly integrate battle sequences into your characters’ exploration of the world (which was the goal of FFXII’s battle system that was played out in semi-real time, but that any FF addict will tell you was a travesty to the integrity of the franchise). The leveling system – which, in order to explore, required me to stay up far later than I would have cared to – is similar to that of FFX’s sphere system, where players can choose different paths for characters to go down in order to customize your party to whatever your preferences may be.

So, in essence, the gameplay mixes elements of FFVII and FFX, which were certainly the two best games in the series’ modern era (strictly in terms of gameplay).

And in addition to those gorgeous cinematics, it appears that the story itself has a great deal of depth and originality. Of course, there are certainly some corny lines (New catch phrase: “Moms are tough”), and an African American character named Sazh Katzroy seems to be riding the line between racially problematic and racially troubling.

Overall, it appears that FFXIII will certainly continue the dominance of the franchise and could turn out to be one of the strongest overall games of the entire series. Bottom line is that if you have the system (sadly, I don’t) you should get it.

Now, how does that link in to movies and politics? Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion tomorrow where we will try to mix in discussion of Manifest Destiny, global monomyths, and those little blue people that we’ve become, oh, so fond of.

And in the meantime, see if you can answer the question of why someone I know thought that this person:

Looked like this person:

Dear Deidre

2010-03-14T22:46:00.000-07:00

We are expanding.

The High Horse Blog would like to officially welcome contributing column Dear Deidre. We'll hope for a weekly. This will give us a nice break from my political rants and condescending movie reviews. If you have a question for Deidre on any pressing life issue, please e-mail it to deardeidrehighhorse@gmail.com

Stay tuned. A review for Chumscrubber is coming up soon (and spoiler alert: this movie is directly responsible for me losing consciousness).

Enjoy.

Dear Deidre,

I am a 25 year old woman and have been dating the same guy for about a year. Unfortunately, I can’t seem to have an orgasm during sex… I have been close, but can never get there. Is there something wrong with me? Or something wrong with the guy?

Sincerely,

Getting frustrated, not off.

Dear Getting Frustrated, Not Off,

This is a totally normal and common issue among young women. According to WebMD's sexpert Louanne Cole Weston, PhD*, 10% of women had never had any type of orgasm – either by flying solo or with a partner. (And I suspect that number would be higher if women were not so afraid of acknowledging their inability to ‘get off’). So, you’re certainly not alone in your concern.

But, don’t let that number discourage you; there is hope! As a perfectly healthy young woman, you are completely capable of experiencing an orgasm during sexual intercourse with your partner.

First things first, make sure that you are comfortable with your bedmate. He should be a person you feel 100% confident with even when you’re sweaty and naked. And trust me, if you’re sweaty and naked, he’ll like you no matter what you look like.

Second, don’t try so hard – don’t focus so much on trying to get the orgasm. Enjoy the feelings while they happen. Revel in the kisses and really feel each touch. When you’re truly living in the moment and can feel how sensual sex really is, it is much easier to get turned on.

Last but not least, it may just take a little time. Practice makes perfect! Go buy yourself a nice, little (well, maybe not little) dildo and explore yourself. Try different things and see what gets you going. Then, when you’re with your guy, try and position yourself so that you can get that same feeling you did with your new toy. Or ask your partner to try a different position – guys are pleasantly surprised when their girl wants to be adventurous in bed. Sometimes a new position puts pressure on a different area and can get the senses going.

So, bottom line – there is NOTHING wrong with you and nothing wrong with your guy (unless he’s having some sort of physical malfunction which is a whole different issue). It has nothing to do with your attraction for each other; it’s just one of those things that happens when it happens. And it will.

*check out this article, it may be of some help to you

http://www.webmd.com/sexual-conditions/guide/cant-orgasm-heres-help-for-women

Best of luck,

Deidre

Politics Sunday

2010-03-14T06:52:00.000-07:00

We missed out on Sports Saturday yesterday, but I didn't have too much to say. Basketball hasn't been particularly exciting this year (no real standout stars it seems to me), and we're still in the doldrums of spring training in baseball land. I will say this though: If everything goes right for the Cincinnati Reds, they have the chance to develop into a pretty fearsome team this year. Jay Bruce could start hitting again, Homer Bailey might have finally gotten his act together, Aaron Harang probably will win more than six games. And then, of course, there's the biggest unanswered question of all, which concerns what to do with Aroldis Chapman. If the power arm continues to pitch like he's been doing, I think he has to start the year in the majors. He can always be sent down later, which I know can be deflating, but something needs to be done to jump start the team, and what better to do it than a 100 mph fastball?

Comments?

Ok. Now onto the politics.

To follow up my diatribe from last week (Liz Cheney is a... something), look at this from uber-liberal and ex-theatre critic Frank Rich.

"For that matter, [Marc] Thiessen was challenged more thoroughly in an interview by Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show” on Tuesday than he has been by any representative of non-fake television news."

See. I told you Jon Stewart is a great American. Read the whole article (but beware. Frank likes to talk). http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/opinion/14rich.html?th&emc=th

Now onto something that's really got me burning right now.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/education/13texas.html?th&emc=th

So Texas schools want to rewrite the curriculum to highlight Republican accomplishments? Oh, no - sorry. I mean they want equal emphasis on Republican accomplishments in the textbooks that are supposedly written by the Liberal academia. Apparently, the idea that History will be the ultimate judge is just as quaint a notion as the tooth fairy or Jackelope.

Republicans are right that Academia leans to the left, but shouldn't that be expected in the same way that businessmen lean slightly to the right?

And when you think of great American accomplishments, what comes to mind? Civil Rights. The New Deal. Suffrage. The Emancipation Proclamation. Now, the fact these were all done under Democratic presidents (except the Emancipation Proclamation, which was done by Republican Abe Lincoln back when the parties were essentially reversed) is not what should be highlighted here, but rather the quality of the accomplishment. To me, the most important act in the history of America was the Civil Rights Act (many attempts at which were stymied by Republican filibusters [Boy, isn't it great to see what important causes the filibuster has protected? Extending health insurance for millions and ending segregation. Thank God we have that protection built into the Constitution.]), and there's no comparison between that and anything by any President (Democratic or Republican) that can be put on equal footing with it.

There is no accomplishment by Ronald Reagan that has equal weight when compared to the Civil Rights Act, so how can we possibly give equal emphasis to both parties?

And when you were in high school, did you really pay attention to which political party seemed to be the most accomplished in the history books? This whole "Fair and balanced" push is a product of the 24-hour news era. We like to think that since both Republicans and Democrats are equally intelligent people, their ideas must be equally worthwhile. History says otherwise, and it cuts both ways. The whole idea of Indoctrination in our schools is ludicrous, and is really meant as a way of demonizing a certain side of the political debate.

Though there is, of course, room for familiarization with both sides of the political spectrum, rewriting history is not the way to do it. An understanding of current issues and the debates within those issues is probably the better way to go.

I feel like that one kid from youtube. LEAVE HISTORY ALONE!!!

Ok. One more article. (Not from the NY Times. Who knew I read other things?)

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/lesbian-air-force-sergeant-jene-newsome-discharged-after-police-out-her/19397963?icid=main|main|dl1|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolnews.com%2Fnation%2Farticle%2Flesbian-air-force-sergeant-jene-newsome-discharged-after-police-out-her%2F19397963

This is painful to read. Don't Ask Don't Tell is a senseless policy in itself, and it's absurd that someone who plays by the rules can still be outed by a third party. And who were these cops that narc'd on this woman because they saw a marriage certificate. Is homosexuality really that abhorrent to you? These guys strike me like those kids who tattled on you at recess.

"Mrs. Finster, Mrs. Finster! Johnny just told me to go to H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks."
"Mrs. Finster, Mrs. Finster! I Jimmy's a queer."

Didn't everybody hate that kid?

Obama can end Don't Ask Don't Tell with a simple executive order. He should, and he will... just as soon as the midterms are over is my guess. By then, the only power he may have will be through executive orders. Sad sad sad.

And quickly.

HEALTH CARE WATCH

Looks like the Democrats are scrambling to find the votes in the House now. If it's not one thing it's the other. My guess is that they'll find the votes and trudge through a bunch of Republican roadblocks as they move to pass it... my guess is mid-April.

Here's hoping.

The Crazies

2010-03-12T18:54:00.000-08:00

Can one call The Crazies a zombie flick?

While I knew very little about this movie going in, my seeing it was preempted by a spirited debate between myself and my horror-loving friends on the various incarnations that zombies have taken in film. It seemed to boil down to two main types: The Undead – that is, those that have already died but somehow manage to be reincarnated into moaning, mindless, slow-moving, flesh-eating beasts (a la Dawn of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead, Shaun of the Dead, etc.) – and the “Infected” – mortal, living people that have some kind of virus or disease or were raised near Chernobyl or, you know, whatever (does it really matter how they became zombies in the first place?), and can be killed in the same way as a normal person (as opposed to The Undead which usually can only die by, in the immortal words of Shaun of the Dead, “…removing the head or destroying the brain.”) To me, the “Infected” are best represented by the speedy, raging, teeth gnashers of 28 Days Later.

So in which camp does The Crazies fall into? Going in, I could literally see no difference between the crazies of the The Crazies and the crazies of 28 Days Later. The premise of The Crazies is that a maniacal, Big-Brother type of corporation accidentally releases a toxin into the water system of a quaint, hapless Iowa town, turning the ever-pleasant citizens into psycho-killers who want to kill kill kill all their friends and loved ones.

(It’s sort of the opposite of The Music Man, where a sour, stubborn, Iowa town is infected by the musical showmanship of Harold Hill, turning the nose-thumbers into a tight-knit citizenry who rally behind Beethoven’s Minuet in G)

In 28 Days Later, the setting is London, and the responsibility for the outbreak stems from a test monkey biting a researcher, but the end result is much the same: lots of death.

But there are some subtle disparities between the zombies in the two movies. Number one is that the Crazies are high-functioning. They can still open doors, use weapons (including wonderfully macabre items like pitchforks), and operate heavy machinery, just like normal people. This allows for some creativity in the way that the Crazies murder everyone they’ve ever known or loved. Unlike 28 Days Later, the bad guys are not relegated to simply biting or bludgeoning someone to death. Oh no. How about locking your wife and child in a closet and setting the whole house ablaze!

That’s really the best thing that The Crazies has going for it, in what is otherwise a pretty typical run-away-from-the-baddies movie. We follow the town Sheriff (the always solid Timothy Olyphant), his wife (Radha Mitchell), the Deputy (Russell Clank), and an inexplicably present Becca Darling (Danielle Panabaker) – who serves no function and has about ten lines throughout the entire movie – as they attempt to escape the possessed populace as well as the military soldiers sent in to contain the outbreak. For our purposes, we can forget about Becca, who, though darling, amounts to nothing. But the other characters are pretty well-written if inexplicably stupid at times. They walk on the open road even as they know that containment forces are trying to eliminate them. They hang out in front of a big glass window pane as they relax in a diner (remember, both Crazies and the military are after them).

There is some minor development of a few themes. Namely, the seduction and corruption caused by violence (if you thought shooting deer was fun, try shooting a zombie), and the disregard for human life in a major catastrophe (You say there are still some uninfected in the town? Screw it, take out the whole area). But mostly, the film is a hodgepodge of zombie movie tropes. Sacrifices are made, love is chosen over safety, loyalties are tested, the weak are eaten, the strong survive. With the exception of about four inventive death sequences, this is all previously mined territory.

Ok. So are the Crazies zombies?

Have they lost control of themselves? Yes.
Do they turn on the ones they love? Yes.
Are they contagious? Yes.

But…

Do they moan and groan? No.
Do they bite? No.
Are they Undead? No.

It’s a tough choice.

I think the fact that the Crazies retain their creative impulses is indeed significant. The basic point of the zombie is that it’s a human reduced to a beast. And what possibly separates man from animal more than higher brain function? The Crazies may not be writing symphonies or painting masterpieces (Unless you count their blood spattering as an homage to Jackson Pollack), but there is something artistic going on inside their minds that allows them to kill with such élan.

It may be only barely so, but they’re still human.

And here’s your special treat for getting to the end of my schpeel. The first line from the NY Times review of Robert Pattinson’s new movie! Thanks Manohla Dargis.

“In “Remember Me” love means never having to say you’re sorry, particularly to the audience.”

Boy, I really want to see this movie. Read the whole review.

http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/movies/12remember.html?scp=1&sq=remember%20me%20review&st=cse

Theatre Thursday

2010-03-11T07:12:00.001-08:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/theater/10love.html?scp=1&sq=phantom%20of%20the%20opera&st=cse

http://theater.nytimes.com/2008/02/26/theater/reviews/26cher.html

http://theater.nytimes.com/2009/10/23/theater/reviews/23after.html

Ok, here we have the reviews for three sequels to perennial classic plays (although, to be fair, "After Miss Julie" is more of an adaptation than a sequel), and my only question is Why??

Neither "After Miss Julie" nor "The Cherry Orchard Sequel" were written by the original author, and "Love Never Dies" was written by Webber decades after the original was performed. In fact, when I thought about it I could only think of a very slim few who write follow-ups to their original work. The most prominent examples are Tony Kushner (who wrote "Perestroika," the sequel to "Angels in America," only after being begged by producers to do so), and August Wilson (whose plays progress throughout the 20th century decade by decade, but only rarely have some overlap in actual characters).

This, to me, is one of the most interesting differences between film and theatre, and obviously it comes down to money. In film, where the bottom line is always number one, a movie with any kind of financial success always gets a sequel, often announced before the original has finished its movie theatre run.

By the way, apparently there is going to be an Avatar sequel. Number one, God help us all. Number two, was there any plotline left open that could be used in the sequel? Was there any question that we had unanswered at the end of those three hours we spent on Pandora?

To solve the latter problem, many Hollywood movies are just writing in cliffhangers to every movie so that if it does get picked up for a sequel, they're ready to go.

But I digress. It's Theatre Thursday. I think that we can unanimously agree that in movies, sequels are almost unanimously worse than the original (though there are notable exceptions like Godfather II), but does it work the same way in plays? My guess is yes. For one thing, for a play to receive a sequel it has to have a very strong following, and you can only get that through extremely popular initial runs, or years and years of popular syndication. This usually means that the authors who receive sequels are extremely well-established (like Chekhov or Strindberg or Webber), and it's almost impossible to live up to expectations laid down by the initial works themselves.

GTG... More later.

The New Order

2010-03-11T07:06:00.000-08:00

It's become clear to me that writing whenever I see fit about whatever I see fit is going to make this blog seem haphazard and droning. So, I'm going to try to organize it a bit.

Let's say this: Sunday is politics day. Thursday is Theatre. Friday is movies. Saturday is sports. Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday will be wild cards.

This does not include little fun things I want to post, but just long rants, reviews, and musings.

Liz Cheney is a Dirty Dirty tramp

2010-03-09T20:34:00.001-08:00

When I first read about Liz Cheney's campaign against lawyers working (pro bono) for terror suspects being held at Guantanamo, I wanted to throw my computer through the window. But instead I just let out a Chekhovian sigh and went on with my day more than just a little sadder than I was before. I wish I'd had my blog at the time- I might have beat Jon Stewart to talking about the issue. But luckily, we have great Americans like Mr. Stewart who can speak eloquently to raise awareness on important, weighty questions (and often the baselessness, and ignorance behind accusations) like this.

Here's an article to bring you up to speed:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/us/politics/10lawyers.html

You know that when the Republicans are split on something, it must be monstrously controversial.

And here are links to Jon Stewart's interview with Marc Thiessen. Beware, it's long (about 30 minutes). Part 3 is particularly infuriating. But what I love about these interviews is that you actually can really get into the meat of a debate when you go on for over about 20 minutes. That doesn't make it any less maddening.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-march-9-2010/exclusive---marc-thiessen-extended-interview-pt--1
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-march-9-2010/exclusive---marc-thiessen-extended-interview-pt--2
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-march-9-2010/exclusive---marc-thiessen-extended-interview-pt--3

Did anyone think that Jon Stewart was in the wrong for "steamrolling" Marc Thiessen? I think his point was basically made, and anyway, it was ridiculous and (as Jon so pointedly repeated) hypothetical. Other opinions?

The title of this post is "Liz Cheney is a Dirty Dirty Tramp," and I have no problem saying that because it is just as well-reasoned and logical a deduction as her accusation that being a lawyer for a terrorist equates you to being a terrorist supporter. By that logic, anyone who defends anyone accused of a crime should be read as a supporter of the crime itself.

Jon Stewart posed the question to Marc Thiessen, "If someone spends their time defending accused pedophiles, should they then be read as a supporter of pedophilia in general?" The response was, "If someone spends all their free time defending pedophiles then, yes, I think questions are raised." (Or something thereabouts)

Madness. Marc Thiessen and Liz Cheney have no right to question the motives of someone defending the accused. Maybe he or she truly believes that the person they are defending is innocent. Perhaps the lawyer simply has a natural propensity towards defending those that have no other means of support. Isn't that the entire allure of being a public defender- the nobility of aiding those who have no other source of help available to them?

And by the way, the careers of these lawyers cannot help but be harmed when they take on these almost certainly losing cases. They are, in essence, sacrificing themselves for a principal on which our legal rights are based.

But I am glad for one thing in this, and that is that Liz Cheney has finally found a way to make herself prominent enough for decent, sane people to realize that she is full of crap. Not to toot my own horn, but I had already endured some minor bleeding from the ears whenever she came onto This Week with George Stephanopoulos to spout whatever Republican talking point the situation demanded.

By now, you've figured out that I'm a Democrat, but, frankly, I have quite a bit of respect for many elements of the Republican platform. I think there is a place for honest debate and disagreement between the two parties, but what I have no patience for is someone (like Liz Cheney) whose mission is to promote a party rather than work for the betterment of the country. To Liz Cheney, the Republicans will be better than the Democrats No Matter What. But guess what, nobody can be right 100% of the time, not even Ronald Reagan.

To simplify:
Calling these lawyers the Al Qaeda 7: Wrong
Liz Cheney: Dirty Tramp (I've removed one of the dirties since I just ate and am feeling better about the world)
Marc Thiessen: Get over it, you lost to Jon Stewart
Republicans: Right some of the time.
Democrats: Right some of the time.
Talking points: Boring and wrong (or at least not fully true) almost all of the time.
Honest Debate: Rare except on Charlie Rose and the Daily Show

Oscar Madness

2010-03-09T07:34:00.001-08:00

Ok, I have to say a piece about the Oscars before it is forgotten by all of America until late January of next year (rightfully so).

This year's ceremony was much better than last year when the Oscars were trying to be the Tony's. Though I really didn't like the co-host thing, Steve Martin can do no wrong in my book and there were some great comic moments. "It's that Damn Helen Mirren" - "No, that's dame Helen Mirren." Ok, that's pretty funny, but it doesn't require two people to deliver. The Paranormal Activity video scene was brilliant, but the highlight of the night for me was the Ben Stiller Na'vi getup when he presented best makeup- perhaps the only good thing that I can say about Avatar is that it is one of those infinitely parody-able things like Star Wars. Best Oscar moment thoughts anyone?

And the Oscar goes to...

Though I still thought the blue people were going to take best picture, I did get a sense that Hurt Locker was building up momentum. I think it was virtually a lock that Kathryn Bigalow (I hope that's the right spelling because I'm too rushed to check it today) was going to win best director- there's no way the Academy could have gone another year without having a female director win without many cries at them being blatantly sexist (which has always been true but which didn't have a storyline to highlight it so vividly until this year). I think it was deserved too, certainly more so than Avatar (and apparently James Cameron threw a little hissy fit when he didn't win either of the two biggies... puh-lease), but my personal vote would have been for Inglorious Bastards as I think it takes a lot of imagination to coax out those comical, ridiculous, cartoony performances from actors.

Ok some thoughts on to whom the Oscars went to in acting- and I'd welcome yours as well:

Christoph Waltz, Supporting Actor, Inglorious Bastards- Absolutely. This is by far the best performance of the year. Original, entertaining, frightening, and still charming. How did he do it?

Monique, Supporting Actress, Precious- From what I've seen, this looks like a pretty riveting performance. Plus I'm so glad the Up in the Air ladies missed out- there was definitely not enough there for an Oscar.

Jeff Bridges, Actor, Crazy Heart- I've heard nothing but good things.

Sandra Bullock, Actress, The Blind Side- ...
...
...
...
... In the words of Forrest Gump, "And that's all I have to say about that."

And finally, just a little bit on each of the Best Pictures that I saw:

District 9- Not a bad movie by any means, but just because it gets critical success doesn't mean that it's Oscar-worthy. This film sashays towards thematic exploration for the first half, but by the second it's just about blowing shit up. The aliens looked like shrimp and I CHATE (Hebrew pronunciation for emphasis) when CGI is used for important characters. It never looks as good as costumes and makeup. Great performance by Sharlto Copley though.

The Blind Side- ...cricket...

Hurt Locker- The only thing that I took away from this movie is that war is intense. Kathryn Bigalow does do a good job capturing the pressure facing bomb defusers on a daily basis, but there isn't too much in the way of a story. It just seems to move from one high-pressure situation to another. This sort of reminded me of Jarhead, but was much better done. Also, I've heard so much talk that this film does not play up the politics of the war in Iraq and how that's a good thing. First off, it's not inherently good to make an unpolitical movie, and second it's impossible to make an unpolitical movie about the War in Iraq. Any sensible person would come away from this film with a heightened sense of realization that it is ridiculous that we have put our troops and the Iraqi people in such a dangerous and ludicrous situation from which there is no easy escape.

Not to mention that the film is framed by the idea that "War is a drug." Are you telling me that's not a political statement?

Inglorious Bastards- I loved this movie. I thought it was such a fun fantasy on World War II that found a way to do an original take on one of the most often-tread genres. I loved the mixing of classic and new film techniques and the clever script which highlighted the inherent creativity of the film medium itself. Plus, how could any self-loving Jew not love to watch what happens to Hitler and Goebbels at the end?

Up in the Air- You've gotta be fucking me. I'm sorry, but again, this film cozies up to important thematic elements, but for me just fell into the trap of cliche after cliche. Oh look, the old, grumpy guy is going to show the young wide-eyed hotshot that she doesn't know jack about the realities of the business. Isn't that the premise for every partner cop movie ever? Vera Farmiga did a good job, and I always think Clooney does solid work. But who is this Anna Kendrick, and why is everybody so enamored with her? Her performance struck me like a first-year theatre movement class exercise. "Ok dear, now imagine that your character is very rigid and by-the-book about everything. Always be angular and precise." But this is just an exercise- a performance is about integrating those ideas into realistic human actions. I think she was stuck in phase one. Plus, would such a strong businesswoman just go to pieces when her boyfriend leaves her? Or would she maybe try to hold back tears and appear to be strong? I guess I'm really upset because rarely in film is there a performance that I vehemently don't like, and this was one of them, and it got an Oscar nod.

Avatar- We've all heard it before, but it's true: Fern Gully meets Dances With Wolves. Set aside the fact that the screenplay follows the same sort of melodramatic arc that was prominent in the almost unanimously racist plays of the 19th century, the writing in this movie just wasn't any good. I mean, the stuff the bad guys are after is called Unobtainium... for real. That's like naming your main character John Everyman. Yes, Pandora was orgasmically good to look at, but don't we want more out of a movie than nice visuals? Forget all that crap about seeing through another person's eyes- there was absolutely nothing deep in this movie. But I must admit that I did have a good time in the theatre, and thought that for the most part the directing and acting were solid. For me, though, it has to start with writing and this just didn't cut it. It is nice, though, to have a movie that almost everyone in the world as seen. There's something very communal and uniting about it- and I'm sure the Na'vi will be parodied forever for just that reason.

*Sidebar: Another Kurt Vonnegut essay I read talked about an anthropologist who theorized that every major civilization once went through the phase of a Folk Society, where people shared a signficant connection to the land. Perhaps this is why Avatar resonates so well.

And to end on a high note, Up- This was just a really sweet movie. If you don't find at least some joy in seeing it, then it is possible you have no heart. Since it's animated, the screenplay was simple and clear and the movie kept you entertained throughout. And I couldn't stop cracking up at the dog with the malfunctioning collar. If you haven't seen this movie, you should.

Though I didn't see Precious, An Education, or A Serious Man, I've heard nothing but great things about all and would welcome more opinions. I have heard that Precious sort of bludgeons you with its depiction of the underpriveleged and abused, which from looking at the previews I can definitely see. As for A Serious Man, to me, the Coen Brothers can very rarely go wrong, so I'm sure I will hightail to Blockbuster at some point to check it out- Ok, I'll get it on Netflix. Nobody uses Blockbuster anymore.

And if you've made it to the end of this, you'll realize that I still haven't discussed the crazy lady who did her best Kanye impression (I think we'll start to see these moments more and more as people crave subjects for twitter posts and the style of these ceremonies begins to further trump their substance), but I think that John Stewart said it best, so I'll link you to him.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-march-8-2010/the-oscars-big-moment

Phew! And now I can forget all about the Oscars for another year. Maybe next year's best picture nominees will be better overall, but I'm not holding my breath. It's been all downhill since 1994: Forrest Gump (winner), Pulp Fiction, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Shawshank Redemption, and Quiz Show all in one year. Can you imagine such a strong showing nowadays?

Ok, we'll be reviewing the Crazies soon. Get ready.

2010-03-09T00:10:00.000-08:00

I'd like for this to be the official image for the blog.

deadgirl Review

2010-03-09T00:04:00.000-08:00

Get. Out. Of. My. Head.

It’s been three days since I saw deadgirl, the thriller about a zombie-cum-sex slave, and I am still reeling. For a self-professed horror cynic, the film was more than a simple grade A, but also something of a breakthrough that for me confirmed that legitimacy of an entire genre.

As the movie wastes no time bringing you straight into the story, neither will I. deadgirl begins with two lovelorn high school burnouts, Rickie (Shiloh Fernandez) and J.T. (Noah Segan) cutting class to chug beer in the only place they can think of where nobody will catch them: an abandoned insane asylum (probably not the best of decisions). While wandering around, they stumble on what appears to be a somewhat dead, somewhat alive, very naked woman (Jenny Spain) bound up in a basement that obviously hasn’t been visited by another soul in quite some time. Rickie, being the stricter moralist of the two, initially wants to call the police, but he is talked out of it by J.T. who, though he claims he is worried about legal repercussions, we soon find has plans of his own for whoever (or whatever) it is they have found.

It doesn’t take a genius to guess at what might be on a post-pubescent high school boy’s mind. J.T. convinces Rickie to return to the scene, where he shows him that he has discovered that no matter what is done to the deadgirl (the objectifying name by which they refer to her), she cannot, in the literal sense, die. Though neither boy really knows what to make of it, J.T. has at least figured out what to do with her. “I know what I’m thinkin’ about,” he says, “I’m thinkin’ about wet pussy.” There you have it. The deadgirl becomes J.T.’s sex slave, functioning literally as just an orifice through which the high schooler can work out his adolescent urgings.

Just what the deadgirl is – A zombie? An immortal? – is never explained. Though she has the Undead’s bitey sensibilities (and causes similar side effects), she doesn’t appear to have any superhuman strength or speed. Nor, like a zombie, can she be killed by simple head trauma, or any way for that matter. Ms. Spain’s remarkable performance—which for most of the movie can only consist of hollow, hopeless, facial expressions—shows that she appears to see, feel, and understand what is being inflicted on her body, but because she is so thoroughly bound, she lacks any recourse. There is also a seething danger in her eyes that seems to tell you that if and when she does escape, there will be a bloody revenge.

Throughout the movie, Rickie must wrestle with his conscience—though his instinct is to put an end to the whole ordeal, his own sexual curiosity (recently aggravated by rejection from his lifelong crush) urges him to take part. J.T., on the other hand, has no moral qualms whatsoever, and sinks deeper and deeper into sexual perversion with the deadgirl – perhaps most graphically indicated with a suggestion of sex through a bullet hole he has shot into her torso. He even brings his stoner friend Wheeler (Eric Podnar) in on the secret, and it isn’t long before others start to find out. With an irreparable rift growing between himself and J.T., Rickie realizes that he can no longer stay quiet and accept what is happening in the basement of the asylum. But J.T. will not give up his prized possession so easily. He begins to think that he has developed a sort of bond with the deadgirl, and even his best friend is expendable to keep the unbridled sex romp going. If Rickie wants to free the deadgirl (a risky act with unclear consequences) he will have to go through J.T. to do it.

Yes. I know it’s a looooot of plot explanation for a movie review (and there’s a lot more that happens, but I couldn’t in good conscience spoil any more of it!) but that should be considered a testament to the film’s complexity and depth. My general problem with most horror movies is that the story is secondary to the scare tactics used—it doesn’t really matter what the significance of the zombie scourge is, just that we are thrilled enough to want to see it to its conclusion. This is what separates deadgirl from the mundane bulk of the horror genre. It cannot be strictly called a horror film or a thriller, where fright is induced for its own sake and thematic elements are secondary to the fear factor. Rather, it is a film where themes are conveyed and bolstered by the use of frightening elements. Form is matched to function.

Beware. Though the gore level is only minor, deadgirl is definitely not for the feint of heart. Directors Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel keep you on the edge of your seat in almost every scene, building tension not through the use of sudden loud screeches and impromptu gruesome ends, but by ratcheting up the danger and significance behind the moral choices made by the characters. In one of the most intense scenes I’ve ever witnessed—one that had me cowering in a corner of the room as I watched it—involved a character attempting to have the deadgirl perform oral sex on him. Though I’m a general proponent of falatio, I’ve never wanted so badly for someone to just go home and whack off instead.

But that’s the genius of how deadgirl functions. It elevates questions of sexual assault and rape to the level of life and death. The jarring images presented make it impossible to side with anyone but the victim, which is actually remarkable considering that the victim is a zombie.

*On a side note: I just read an article by Kurt Vonnegut in which he pondered if there are any fates worse than death itself. If he’d have known that being an eternal zombie sex slave was an option, he’d have probably mentioned it.

The movie’s politics are fascinating, rejecting any ideas about the wholesome innocence of high school boys’ puppy love, and equating their obsession with girls to that of a serial rapist. Those two best friends who start to fight when they both fall in love with the same girl? They’re not doing it because they want to make her happy, but because they want her to give her body to only their own self. While I generally frown upon movies, books, poems, and songs that have lower-case titles (most of which do it as a way of seeming more profound), this is a case where it actually has a purpose: the deadgirl is not a person, but an object. And it can’t be denied that this is how many a young boy looks at his first love, especially if that love is unrequited.

Though I believe its general themes are eye-opening and morally correct, deadgirl also has several problematic elements that are difficult to get past (and probably have something to do with why it was not given a larger release). Intentionally objectifying a woman will never be and should never be simple, and though I think the movie clearly does it as a way of highlighting larger women’s issues, for many it will be difficult to swallow. As will the bludgeoning image of what amounts to an on-camera rape, which is hideously painful to watch. The film also upholds an antiquated view of women as the weaker sex, completely at men’s mercy and only able to free themselves with their assistance.

But it is nearly impossible to take on such sensitive issues without falling into a few traps as well. There is a definite difference between having problematic elements pop up in a movie that dives into precarious but important subject matter, versus in a popcorn flick where attractive and scantily-clad women serve no purpose but to be the first to die. deadgirl may be a horror movie, but it is just as deep as any of the Best Picture nominees of this year.

And I’ll guarantee that it will make you think differently about teenage sexual attraction. How could you not after spending a night or two seeing Ms. Spain’s worn out, used up look every time you lay your head down to sleep? deadgirl utilizes perhaps the most important element of the horror genre: an inability to erase it from your head.

Welcome All!

2010-03-08T23:38:00.000-08:00

Hellllooo!

I would like to welcome you to the High Horse Blog, a place where I get to sit on my pulpit and spout my opinions without any interruption - comments, you see, will always be a lesser font than posts.

This blog is for movies, t.v., sports, theatre, music, politics, and whatever the Hell else I feel like spouting about. I also consider it a sister blog- or I guess I should call it a brother blog...- to lovehatehorror.blogspot.com, which is written by a friend of mine who will likely review many of the same movies. Hope you'll check it out as well.

Before I get on my high horse and start my blabbing (sometimes shooting from the hip, and sometimes with essays I've taken some time to prepare), I should give you a little info about me:

I'm a Cincinnati native exiled to Chicago, where rent is much higher but careers in the theatre arts are supposedly much more numerous. Having been in the arts my whole life in myriad capacities, I've amassed what I like to think is a wealth of knowledge, as well as what most certainly are a wealth of opinions. I'm a theatre actor and director primarily, and so many of the reviews I write will approach shows and movies from this perspective.

I've been told that a critic should approach things with three questions in mind:

What am I seeing?
How well is it being done?
Was it worth doing?

If I am ever lucky enough to develop some sort of readership I hope you will tell me if I begin to stray from that.

Also, though I am often hard on what I critique, I have the utmost respect for artists and would like to think that my writings reflect that. I know it's just a blog, but I want to try my best to uphold some sense of integrity. Please hold me to that as well.

But that shouldn't be a problem for my first review. It is most definitely positive.

Thanks for reading!