Ruining Your Childhood

Inspector Gadget was a shitty movie. It made me angry. 

When Inspector Gadget 2 came out, I was confused.

Star Wars Episode 1 made me like the Star Wars Trilogy less than I used to. What was the world doing to itself? Was this an example of greed winning out over art?

When I heard an interview with George Lucas, he said something like, of course lots of fans of the originals didn't like the new Star Wars movies; they were too old to; they were outside of the target demographic. You know who the most popular character was? Jar Jar effing Binx. 

And here, an entire generation of movie-goers was like, "What did you do to my movies?" 

How funny. 

In a recent post on the Best Week Ever blog, I saw a post titled "Of course the Yogi Bear trailer looks stupid. You know what else was stupid? Yogi Bear."

And indeed, it probably was. How would I have enjoyed it as a 4 year old, if it had not been stupid on some level? The more I think about Yogi Bear, the more I wonder how it entertained me in the first place. 

I was all about Yogi Bear, Inspector Gadget, and Bugs Bunny. They were completely awesome to me. I think back on them like pinnacles of entertainment, like models of excellence. When my friends talk about the unsurpassed greatness of Care Bears, the Smurfs, or, essentially, any children's show that our parents didn't let us watch, I think, 'what an idiot. They have no idea what they're talking about'. I am, in my adulthood, still critical and judgmental of these obviously, to me, inferior shows. 

As adults, we all stand by these things which we grew up with, which instilled in us this insane sense of loyalty and attachment. I saw an episode of the Pink Panther cartoon the other day, something I used to completely love. As a child, I would hang in anticipation, nervous, clutching, clenching and fixated on what was happening. Now, snoozefest. It takes something else, something entirely else, to fire off these neurons now as an adult. Now what I tell people about is not how awesome a show The Pink Panther was, but rather how awesome it was to watch as a kid.

I must tell you, in was a long time since a movie or TV Show had breached this cold exterior and affected the emotional receptors in my brain when I watched Inception the other week and left feeling mostly just tired. My friend and I walked out of the theater afterwards- unimpressed, dissecting the film, walking with people who mostly seemed to love it. I watched the movie Kick Ass a few days later and loved it. The same way that I loved the movie  The One for an entire Summer, keeping it running on repeat for seriously an entire Summer. I know The One was one of the worst movies ever made. It was ridiculous and insane. It was hilarious, and stands out in my mind as a pinnacle of entertainment. I'm a little afraid to ever watch it again, because that might just ruin it.

Bored to Tears

I was granted an audience to tour the grounds, the gardens, the streets and the facilities of what turns out to be our universal afterlife, where we are all going to end up before this earth is slated for destruction due to age, to self-elimination of humankind, or due to the action generally slowing down. (Word from the top is: if humans find a way to survive the deadly chaotic cluster-fuck that is outer-space, and are not eliminated by climate change, he's going to pull another full out divine intervention and just flush the whole thing out. I had a talk with the big guy while I was up there, and he seemed a bit perturbed by the U.S. Space Program. He kept saying "How the heck am I going to kill people in outer space? No floods... nothing! Not even air!" I got a chance to hear him talk about the disproportionate amount of money the U.S. spends on it's space program, in comparison to the quality of life it's inhabitants are afforded. He just kept repeating, "Irresponsible, God-dammit! Poor people everywhere and you're building billion dollar toys!"

I think he was just frustrated about how he was going to kill them if they space-colonized, though. I genuinely felt bad for the guy. He had a plan, and for probably the 20th time, it wasn't working out the way he had expected.

Heaven (or New-Earth, as they called it there), was a decent place. People generally kept to their own, much like Earth but more accentuated by the fact that there were fewer people, less places for them to go, and within a neighborhood you would have Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and all other religions mashed together, the majority of which were still living with a sense of bitter shock that their counterparts were allowed in in the first place. I never checked up on the rules for acceptance into Heaven. There were definitely people missing, but some of the people that were there were completely unexpected- like Janis Joplin. I was perfectly thrilled to see here, but for the life of me could not locate a bit of ink or a scrap of paper, rendering me unable to get an autograph. I'm not usually an autograph guy, but for fucks sake... Janis Joplin.

The weather was decent. We had a few light showers, and for several hours my robe would be damp and uncomfortable. Honestly I would rather spend a week in Monterey, but it wasn't terrible, and at least it was interesting.

 I would say it was a mildly enlightening visit. There are a few details that I have been asked not to divulge (in the way that God asks sometimes- the way that means 'if you tell anybody I will seriously fuck you up'). I do, however, have one item to pass on about the goings on in the afterlife. This is the issue of digital displays.

Digital displays are not visible from a separate lifetime. On Earth, people are constantly being spied on by bored and curious onlookers from Heaven. These voyeuristic people watchers often pass their infinite time by watching their loved ones, their hated ones, or people that they don't even know. They watch them eat, they watch them fight, they watch them have sex. They watch them play music, they watch them break the law, they watch them do their jobs, they watch them perform in plays, they watch them sing in the shower. But digital displays, due to some scientific disconnect having to do with the faculties of Earth-watching that they somehow have, and the way that digital information is displayed on a screen, cannot be seen at all. They appear to Heaven-dwellers as glowing yellowish panels. Some of them have attempted to get around this by watching TV shows get filmed, or movies get shot, or reading what the critics say when they find somebody with a newspaper open to the Entertainment page, but, needless to say, this is hardly a substitute for an episode of 30 Rock.

On Earth, the internet revolution has massively driven people out of their lives and into the nethersphere of digital mind-fuck. 50 years ago, TV watching was perhaps a thing, but it accounted for only a fraction of life lived. Currently, a person can work, socialize, date, and play on the idiot-box, and what they do outside of that life is only the drab and monotonous, the uncreative aspects of sustenance and sleep. With the advent of mind-reading technology, quite soon we may be able to take the chemical, the fleshy, and the analog out of even those specks of verbal communication we are forced to engage in. When I am shoved aside in the subway by some jerk-wad who's not paying attention, I will hold up my iphone 55G, and through it I will relay a thought. On Jerk-wad's Iphone 55G, a message will be transmitted directly to his brain, indicating my precise location, and he will hear my voice in his head "WTF MF-er?" And what did my mom see when she was watching me lovingly from on high, trying to watch over her little boy, all grown up and on his way to work in the government-owned robot-doctor factory for the Motherland' socialized death-care industry in the Divided Kenyan Republic of Obama (or Kenya 2, as we call it then)? She will see a slightly perturbed look into a glowing yellow panel, and the guy next to me look into his own panel, and then a few minutes of heavy breathing as we both stare into our panels, perhaps exchanging blows in virtual reality, perhaps just yelling at each-other, or maybe even having gay sex, all digitally, and all invisibly.

It is so sad to think about them up there. They would love it if we would pick up a picture book once in a while. They would really love it if we would go engage in an activity. It could be cooking. When I visited Heaven, the people up there were already a bit bored. It was already a bit crowded, and any attractions had enormous lines and short turns. The cafeterias at least had conversation about Earth, because then there were still some things going on. Plays still happen, sports are still played, people still communicate verbally, people still have sex because our not quite yet communist government has not made it illegal yet. We are still something to watch, something to talk about up there. But will we be for long? And when this generation dies, will Heaven really be anything desirable at all? Or would it just be wiser to find the secret to an opt-out?

The Atomic Cafe

Quite a film about the Atomic Bomb, entirely made up of archival footage. Originally released in 1982. Not a feel-good film.

Why John McCain Has to be So Sad

McCain has long seemed to me to be a great guy. I lost a bit of respect for him during the campaign, but that mostly had to do with his unfortunate willingness to play puppet to the ideologies of an entire party. He probably wouldn't have made it as far as he did without it (playing puppet). It was sad to see him jeered at when he defended Obama during the campaign. It is sad to see him jeered at when he defends Obama now. It is sad to see somebody genuine forced to waste their political time maintaining their personal dignity by not letting childish partisan comments just stand un-challenged. Bravo McCain... with your sense of empathy, you would make a wonderful non-profit manager.

Auto Tune the News

I know Bill Maher is often a bit much but..

I am not the type of person who would do well in the audience of "Real Time with Bill Maher". I enjoy his comedy and appreciate a great deal of his insight, but he often strikes me as a radical-- almost the Rush Limbaugh of the Democrats (only mounds of shit more pleasant). I think he is a very smart guy, I think he has just over-committed himself on many of the issues. That said, I want to share a piece he did on his show. I have extracted this from a written version on the Huffington Post website.



New Rule: Not Everything in America Has to Make a Profit

How about this for a New Rule: Not everything in America has to make a profit. It used to be that there were some services and institutions so vital to our nation that they were exempt from market pressures. Some things we just didn't do for money. The United States always defined capitalism, but it didn't used to define us. But now it's becoming all that we are.

Did you know, for example, that there was a time when being called a "war profiteer" was a bad thing? But now our war zones are dominated by private contractors and mercenaries who work for corporations. There are more private contractors in Iraq than American troops, and we pay them generous salaries to do jobs the troops used to do for themselves ­-- like laundry. War is not supposed to turn a profit, but our wars have become boondoggles for weapons manufacturers and connected civilian contractors.

Prisons used to be a non-profit business, too. And for good reason --­ who the hell wants to own a prison? By definition you're going to have trouble with the tenants. But now prisons are big business. A company called the Corrections Corporation of America is on the New York Stock Exchange, which is convenient since that's where all the real crime is happening anyway. The CCA and similar corporations actually lobby Congress for stiffer sentencing laws so they can lock more people up and make more money. That's why America has the world;s largest prison population ­-- because actually rehabilitating people would have a negative impact on the bottom line.

Television news is another area that used to be roped off from the profit motive. When Walter Cronkite died last week, it was odd to see news anchor after news anchor talking about how much better the news coverage was back in Cronkite's day. I thought, "Gee, if only you were in a position to do something about it."

But maybe they aren't. Because unlike in Cronkite's day, today's news has to make a profit like all the other divisions in a media conglomerate. That's why it wasn't surprising to see the CBS Evening News broadcast live from the Staples Center for two nights this month, just in case Michael Jackson came back to life and sold Iran nuclear weapons. In Uncle Walter's time, the news division was a loss leader. Making money was the job of The Beverly Hillbillies. And now that we have reporters moving to Alaska to hang out with the Palin family, the news is The Beverly Hillbillies.

And finally, there's health care. It wasn't that long ago that when a kid broke his leg playing stickball, his parents took him to the local Catholic hospital, the nun put a thermometer in his mouth, the doctor slapped some plaster on his ankle and you were done. The bill was $1.50, plus you got to keep the thermometer.

But like everything else that's good and noble in life, some Wall Street wizard decided that hospitals could be big business, so now they're run by some bean counters in a corporate plaza in Charlotte. In the U.S. today, three giant for-profit conglomerates own close to 600 hospitals and other health care facilities. They're not hospitals anymore; they're Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. America's largest hospital chain, HCA, was founded by the family of Bill Frist, who perfectly represents the Republican attitude toward health care: it's not a right, it's a racket. The more people who get sick and need medicine, the higher their profit margins. Which is why they're always pushing the Jell-O.

Because medicine is now for-profit we have things like "recision," where insurance companies hire people to figure out ways to deny you coverage when you get sick, even though you've been paying into your plan for years.

When did the profit motive become the only reason to do anything? When did that become the new patriotism? Ask not what you could do for your country, ask what's in it for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

If conservatives get to call universal health care "socialized medicine," I get to call private health care "soulless vampires making money off human pain." The problem with President Obama's health care plan isn't socialism, it's capitalism.

And if medicine is for profit, and war, and the news, and the penal system, my question is: what's wrong with firemen? Why don't they charge? They must be commies. Oh my God! That explains the red trucks!

Things I like to hear

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Reverse Racism
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Mark Sanford

Picking Teams

If I was playing basketball (which I would not enjoy in the slightest, because it's not a real sport), and we were picking teams, and one of the captains picked two white guys in a row, and the white guys who were picked first "raised the roof" and said "Sweet! White guys! I'm glad we have a bunch of white guys on this team!"

I would feel strange, uncomfortable.

If one of the captains picked a black dude, and the other black guys gave him a fist bump and started busting out some freestyle that expressed the equivalent of "bruvahs in da house yo"
I would feel equally uncomfortable.

If there was only one Jew, and he got picked and the other guys on the team were like "Sweet, we got a Jew." (perhaps Jews are good luck?)
I would be uncomfortable.

For the most part, when it comes to sports, you get a chance to see people rise to attention and fame and money based on talent, based on skill or strength. People do like to talk about details, but they are trivial, circumstantial, irrelevant to what is really going on.

If I were captain, and I had to pick somebody for my team, and I already had a Jew (lucky) and I already had some black dudes and some white guys, and there was a choice between a Mexican dude and a white dude, and I was gonna ask a humongous favor of every Mexican that I knew in a few years, and they were pretty much evenly matched (it's not like I knew them super well), and I knew that no matter who I picked, there was gonna be some bitching and moaning about it, I would pick the Mexican dude. Even if I wasn't gonna ask that favor of every Mexican I knew, I would still pick the Mexican dude. I would pick that guy because an effort to blend classes, to blend origins, to combine races, to be inclusive and actively so, is an attempt to be blind to race when we very much are not. Until we are not, perhaps we have to pretend to be.

I have the same instinctive reaction as many when I hear people talk so much about race. It bugs the piss out of me, in the same vein that white people celebrating whiteness would, just without the humongous history behind it. There is an unfortunate instinctive trait in us to be only with those who look like us-- tribalism. It used to keep us safe. These attempts at a higher morality are in direct opposition to something that is ingrained in us. I am happy to meet people who have grown up without that somehow (I am not one of them). In a place like Baltimore, strangely enough, they are few and far between.

New Widget

I have just now added a new widget-- the Huffington Post's most popular stories, to my web log. I was thinking, 'now, at the very least, if people find nothing of interest on my web log, they will see a great news story on the sidebar', like Ryan Grimm's story on the LSD use of Steve Jobs, he calling it "One of the two or three most important things I will ever do", or Nico Pitney's Iran Uprising Live-blogging series (a very nice example of the utilization of modern technology in the thwarting of Orwellian censorship).

My first glimpse was disappointing. The widget was filled with trash, not news. Three of the stories were about Sarah Palin. One of them was Michelle Obama's fashion. These, America, these are the stories that mean the most to you. This is what you live on, you feed on, you perpetuate your droll, voyeuristic lives on-- your sawdust filled grain. Can we please have steak for dinner? Why can't we just have something nice for once, that tastes good and is good for us? A salad perhaps. A sweet and salty dressing on top of crisp leaves, that leaves us refreshed, healthy, better. No, please, I don't want Taco Bell again. There's no food in those pastel wrappings. There is only trash.

I do not hate the media. The 24 hour networks do what they do because it is what we ask of them. They would not do it if it was not profitable. They are merely businesses. The reason that Michael Jackson is still crowding out the sick, the dying, the suffering, the starving, and the oppressed is because we are the ones who inflated him, collectively put our mouths to the nozzle of this giant freakish blow-up doll; and that air will be a long time in escaping, especailly after death. Especially after death because death is just the kind of drama that gets our saliva flowing. That and Sarah Palin I guess.

{update: 1 day later I have removed the widget. Over a period of 24 hours, the top stories have changed in author, have changed in wording, but have changed far too little in content. I will recommend the widget to the next fashion blogger or completely wasteful bullshit blogger I run across}