All Tomorrow’s Parties

It doesn’t matter what I’m doing. I might be carrying on a conversation with you about the shortcomings of our public schools or watching R. Kelly sing about midgets eating cherry pie. I could appear to be listening intently to why your boyfriend is emotionally stunted or watching someone flash out their stainless steel tit rings. If I’m at a party, then I can guarantee you that while I look like I care what you’re doing or what you’re saying, I do not. All I am doing is thinking about is beer, booze, blunts, bowls, and bongs, and how I can’t have them.

Unless you’re a child movie star, becoming an alcoholic by the age of twenty-one is hardly expected and not accommodated for. In the majority of these situations you are faced with two choices: hang out with your friends while they drink and get stoned or become a hermit who spends his Friday nights watching The Ghost Whisperer. While Jennifer Love Hewitt has exquisite breasts, they will only get you through about two episodes of the show until you decide it would be best if you got out a little more.

Now, for the alcoholic, attending a party involving inebriants is a masochistic exercise of the highest degree. It’s like setting a pedophile loose in a daycare center while all the supervisors are on their lunch break. Everyone around you is getting pissed on hooch and baked off their ass, but YOU can’t because YOU have a problem. It all feels terribly unfair. You become wrapped up in a mix of jealousy, lust, and guilt that floods your brain. The horned and haloed characters on your shoulders begin hurling obscenities at one another and the fellow with the red trident always gains ground on his cherubic foe. It’s then that you start rationalizing. “If they can do it, then there’s no reason I can’t take one hit,” or the ever-popular, “I’ll just have one and no one will notice,” which they always do.

It’s around this time that the rampant eye-fucking begins. All of your vices begin calling to you like Odyssean Sirens without the courtesy of giving you time to tie yourself around a table leg. People begin hitting a bowl and your gaze becomes stuck to that wretched piece of glass until it comes round to you, at which point you hold it like a newborn child, unwilling to give it up to the next person who would most certainly be an unfit parent. Your friends start doing shots of Jameson and you find yourself just hovering behind them, trying to vicariously experience the whisky burning down their throats.

The only thing worse than pining after the drinking and smoking of your friends is doing it yourself. It’s not bad for any objective moral reason so much as it just feels like sin. The memories of partying with your friends, getting carelessly shit-faced, and peeing on public edifices are just that: memories. When you take that first sip or toke you become subsumed by a wave of guilt that nullifies any pleasure you might have derived from it. If weed used to pacify you, now it makes you paranoid. If liquor used to make you feel relaxed and giddy, now it makes you uptight and irritable. Above all, you feel like you’ve betrayed the trust of family and friends, the thought of which will consume you for the following days, weeks, or even months.

It is for these reasons that I now dread parties. Celebrations are now for me endurance tests of my self-will and my ability to cope with the use of substances around me. This is why I don’t want birthday parties of my own, why the thought of a bachelor party scares me, and why the holidays have lost some of their luster. Fuck all of tomorrows parties because they won’t seem like parties anymore.

Turn on, Tune in, and Drop Out (LSD Optional)

During last night’s vice-presidential debates, Joe Biden invoked Shakespeare in an effort to emphasize the impact that the Bush administration’s ineptitudes will have on the policies of whoever wins this November’s election, saying, “What’s past is prologue.” The fact that the aforementioned quote is from The Tempest is fitting considering the economic maelstrom that has come down upon Global and U.S. markets in the past few weeks. However, after watching last night’s debate and as a by-product of living in the stunted socio-political atmosphere of this country for my entire life, I look back to the more recent past for a quotation that resonates for me. It was over forty years ago when the psychedelic guru Dr. Timothy Leary urged people to, “Turn on, tune in, and drop out,” and it is in 2008 that I resound that call.

Leary’s philosophy was centered on the opening of human consciousness and spirituality based on the transformative powers of LSD. He told his followers to detach themselves from the conventional hierarchies of modern society and to become aware of their internal consciousness in an effort to reach a state of harmony with the world around them. This worldview would be all well and good if it weren’t dependent on the use of a mind-altering substance, but I’m not about to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

This wasn't exactly what I had in mind.

It is my growing belief that the only way to survive life in 21st century America is to follow a drugless, amended version of Leary’s mantra. We must be turned on in the sense that we need to reverse the perverse anti-intellectualism that has invaded modern American culture. The idea that people in this country find Sarah Palin appealing because she’s just so gosh-darn down-to-earth, folksy and “just like us” is disgusting. The fact that we have a vice-presidential candidate who can’t name a single Supreme Court decision besides Roe V. Wade should make us collectively gag as a nation.

However, this problem is not just contained to Governor Palin, but is endemic in politics as evidenced by the nauseating display of false middle-class identity that has become a staple of our election process. If I have to hear one more politician wax nostalgic about the rough and tumble small town that they grew up in I may have an aneurysm. But, to blame these actions solely on the heads of politicians would be to ignore our tacit encouragement of their behavior. The only reason a politician does anything is to get elected and every Washington strategist is convinced that this simplistic pandering is an effective strategy. Until we become an informed and learned nation that can call politicians out on their unscrupulous use of class as a political tool, then they will continue to do it.

Now, once you’ve begun the process of turning on, then you need to start tuning in. What tuning in consists of is a thorough analysis of everything that goes on around you and of everything that you are told. Tuning in is the practice of the skeptic and the cynic and it is necessary for sanity in 21st century America. If Barack Obama says he plans to do this, that, and the other in his first term, you take it with a grain of salt and try to determine whether or not it’s actually feasible. A perfect example of where tuning in is essential is when you’re watching The State of the Union. If President Bush asks congress to work on reducing gasoline usage in the United States by 20% in the next ten years, but won’t be in office for nine of those years, then you shouldn’t put too much stock in the plan. Tune in and siphon out the bullshit.

Finally, we come to the act of dropping out. This is the point of the program where I become nice and morose. If you want to survive in this nation you need to drop any emotional investment you have in politics or government. To paraphrase Woody Allen, politicians are notch below child molesters on the ethical food chain. These people will always disappoint you. They will always promise you things they can never give and withhold the things they can unless it will benefit them in some way. I was born into a world that has created in me cynicism and a healthy mistrust. Hope died in the 1960’s only to be resurrected in 2007 as a hollow campaign slogan and Democrats today are more conservative than Nixon was four decades ago. In order to make it from one day to the next you must drop out and view U.S. government as some obscene, absurdist piece of performance art that has no effect on your life. If you actually internalize how hard you’re getting fucked by the people who supposedly represent you, then you will never even approach a stable life.

Turn on your intellect, tune in to the actual meaning of the political rhetoric being shoved down your gullet, and drop out of that group of people who hold onto the childlike assumption that governments have your best interest at heart.

Not so Simple Jack

Upon first seeing the trailer for the film Tropic Thunder, the prevailing thought that swam around in my head was something along the lines of, “What in the name of Al Jolson is Robert Downey Jr. doing in blackface!” This sentiment was quickly followed by thoughts of how the NAACP and other African-American rights groups would attempt to have Downey Jr. ceremonially drawn and quartered on Hollywood and Vine. But an odd thing happened on the road to politically correct outrage.

It looks as though the African-American community and various advocacy groups got a sense of humor. They seem to grasp that the idea of Robert Downey Jr. playing an Australian method actor in a movie, who in turn is playing a farcical black man who is part Uncle Remus and part Dolemite in the movie-within-the-movie, is in fact satire. It doesn’t hurt that Downey Jr. has the chops to pull something like this off or that there is a legitimately African-American character, played by Brandon T. Jackson, there to tell Downey Jr. how fucking moronic he’s being, but it seems as though audiences are able to grasp the idea that Downey Jr.’s blackface is simply a vehicle for mocking the absurdities of method acting. Examples that come immediately to mind are Christian Bale dropping from a healthy 185 lbs. to an anemic 122 lbs. for his role in The Machinist or Daniel Day-Lewis refusing to break character and leave his wheelchair when playing the severely paralyzed Christy Brown in My Left Foot.

However, another character in Tropic Thunder managed to provoke the ire of advocacy groups across the country. Ben Stiller’s character in the film, Tugg Speedman, is an action movie star whose popularity has begun to wane. Before embarking on the absurd movie-within-a-movie around which Tropic Thunder’s plot centers, Hellzapoppin’ Apocalypse Now, Stiller’s character tried to garner an Oscar nomination by playing a mentally disabled man named Simple Jack in a film of the same name (It’s tagline is “Once there was a retard”). In the film, Simple Jack was a failure for Stiller as Tugg Speedman and in real life Simple Jack has become a problem for Stiller as director/actor.

Offensive? Probably... Pickett-worthy? Not-so-much.

Dozens of groups that support the rights of the mentally disabled have been picketing Tropic Thunder for Stiller’s portrayal of Simple Jack and for the film’s liberal usage of the word “retard,” which is thrown around 17 times during the movie. Groups ranging from the Special Olympics to the American Association of People with Disabilities were out to protest this past Monday at the film’s L.A. premiere. The protesters held up signs reading things like, “We have abilities, not disabilities” and “We are people first,” while many of the organizations are calling on the public to boycott the movie.

Before I get to the movie, I have to take umbrage with one of the signs that the protestors were holding. A mentally disabled person saying, “We have abilities, not disabilities” is just ignorant. I truly believe that the mentally disabled community is a vibrant and productive pocket of our society. That being said, the word is part of what your condition is now officially called and is in the title of your largest activist group. You are mentally disabled, thus you have mental disabilities. It would be like a paraplegic man saying, “I have enough upper body strength to crush your head like a honeydew, not the inability to use my legs.” Just because the former is true, it doesn’t mean the latter must be true as well.

That said, I think that the mentally disabled community’s outrage is a little misplaced. Granted, I have yet to see Tropic Thunder because it won’t be released until August 15th and I’m not exactly in a position to nab tickets to any early premieres, but from all of the reviews of the film that I have read so far, it doesn’’t appear to be targeting the mentally disabled community at all. The crux of the argument behind Simple Jack is that the Academy will deliver an Oscar on a silver platter to any actor that “has the courage” to play a mentally disabled character. By my count, 13 actors playing characters who were either mentally or physically disabled have been nominated for the best actor Oscar in the past twenty years. Of those fifteen, eight came home with the Oscar, including 2 mentally disabled characters: Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man and Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump.

There is a legitimate complaint to be lodged against the academy for fawning over actors portrayals of the mentally disabled like tweeners lusting after Zac Efron (hey, I’m hip with the kiddies……I read Tiger Beat). They gave Sean Penn a best actor nomination for I Am Sam for Christsakes. Did you see that movie? It was a Hallmark Channel made-for-TV movie with A-list actors and a big budget. This type of behavior is patronizing towards the mentally disabled because it implies that they are such a sub-class of human being that simply doing a convincing job acting like one in a movie is worthy of an Academy Award.

The usage of the word “retard” in Tropic Thunder could have been insensitive—I don’t know. What I do know is that the mentally disabled community is not the target of these jokes in the same way Robert Downey Jr.’s “skin pigmentation” isn’t a jab at African-Americans. All I’m saying is that the next time some actor wins an academy award for playing someone with a severe learning disorder or down syndrome, the mentally disabled community should take a long look at itself and try to see whether picketing a satirical war-comedy is really that important.

Side Effects May Exclude Sex

In a very widely marketed ad for the anti-depressant Zoloft, a melancholy, yet adorable, anthropomorphized cartoon egg is stuck underneath a rain cloud. A voiceover laments that:

“You know when you feel the weight of sadness. You may feel exhausted, hopeless and anxious. Whatever you do, you feel lonely and don’t enjoy the things you once loved. Things just don’t feel like they used to. These are some symptoms of depression.”

The voiceover than goes on to explain that Zoloft can help, turning the morose egg into a joyous egg that bounces about the screen like all the other chemically balanced eggs. However, while the egg is frolicking on his Zoloft high, the voiceover man takes about 10 seconds to describe the side effects of Zoloft in little detail. What are these side effects, you ask? They’re nothing to write home about. It’s just that you may experience nausea, insomnia, diarrhea, drowsiness, dizziness, dry mouth, tremors, Akathisia (an inability to sit still or remain motionless), increased risk of birth defects if taken while pregnant, increased suicidal tendencies in people under 25, and the piece de resistance, a general sexual dysfunction which can manifest itself in the form of decreased libido, sexual arousal disorder (the inability of women to become lubricated and men to get wood) and orgasm dysfunction. Well, shucks, that’s enough to make someone, I don’t know, depressed.

The Zoloft Egg used to have an active sex life. Now it looks at butterflies

It’s a bit of a catch-22 when it comes to anti-depressants. Neurologically speaking, they do increase the amount of serotonin and norepinephrine in your system, which is thought to stabilize one’s mood. However, once you take this medication you might spend your days on the toilet, feeling like you’re going to chunder, drinking unhealthy amounts of water to get rid of your cotton mouth, and finding yourself unable to have sex because the only way you can become erect is to wrap a splint around your cock. Now for men, there is, and has for quite some time, been a logical solution to relieving the depression of one’s sexual organs: take more drugs. Just pop a couple of Viagra and you’re good to go. However, there is the little caveat of having an unwanted boner for about 3 hours post-coitus, which would leave you under voluntary house arrest if you’re not comfortable walking around your local IGA with a raging hard-on showing through your slacks.

On the other hand, women who take anti-depressants have been left to suffer from sexual malaise while their male counterparts prance about the apartment, seeing how many coat hangers they can fit on their erection, which, for your information, is totally normal and in no way perverted or distressing as my girlfriend and my therapist claim. But now women too have the ability to offset the sexual side effects of anti-depressants with…Viagra.

How physicians and researchers discovered this gem of a cure is truly beyond me. The idea that a drug that cures male impotence would work with female impotence is so far-fetched that you’d have to be a true pharmacological visionary to come up with it. According to a study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association regarding women experiencing sexual dysfunction due to anti-depressants, three times as many women taking Viagra had orgasms compared with women who were given a placebo.

Huzzah! Men and women are now cured of at least one of the side effects of anti-depression medications so that the drugs can work as they were intended to. Oh, hold on. It appears Viagra has its share of side effects too. The quicker, picker upper can cause sneezing, headache, flushing (redness of the skin), dyspepsia, palpitations, increased sensitivity to light, and, in rare cases, priapism (the never-ending hard-on), heart attack, severe hypotension, ventricular arrythmias and stroke. So, if you take some Afrin, a couple Advil, go to a dermatologist, down some Pepto Bismol, wear light clothing, stay in darkened areas, and have no history of heart problems, then you’re good to go, depending on the side effects of all the medicine you just took.

A Fitting Tribute

It is a long-standing tradition in the U.S. that our fearless leaders build their own Presidential Libraries after their time in office is over. These are not libraries in the traditional sense of being repositories of books that people can check out and read, but are instead a vast collection of Presidential documents and historical materials that no one in their right mind would want to check out, even if they were allowed to. The first President to create a library to house his Presidential papers and historical materials was Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1939 and Presidents have been doing it ever since, in large part because the government foots the bill for these architectural representations of egotism.

The reason that I bring up the Presidential library is that our current Commander-in-Chief will be leaving office soon, which means that in 195 days or so President Bush will be given loads of cash to go out and build his own library. It almost goes without saying that this is a patently silly idea as President Bush is very much opposed to reading documents of any kind and not fond of writing them either. As for his cabinet, they have a tricky little habit of “misplacing” or deleting documents that incriminate them in any wrongdoing, which leaves very little to put into a Presidential library. What we would end up with is a 150,000 square foot library holding about a hundred or so e-mails from Bush to various staff members about how he was going down to Crawford for the weekend and archived video clips of him doing African Tribal Dances on goodwill missions.

An enterprising group of young men and women calling themselves The Presidential Memorial Committee of San Francisco have come up with a rather ingenious solution. They have decided it would only be appropriate to change the name of the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant to The George W Bush Sewage Plant. So far, the group has collected over 12,000 signatures to have the initiative put on the ballot in the Bay Area for this year’s elections. Petition organizer Brian McConnell told reporters that, “In President Bush’s case, we think that we will be cleaning up a substantial mess for the next 10 or 20 years. The sewage treatment facility’s job is to clean up a mess, so we think it’s a fitting tribute.”

This idea of creating unflattering memorials for President Bush to reflect his time in office, while comic in nature, might actually lead to the first productive thing to come out of the Bush presidency, even though it would come after he had left office. I like the Committee’s initiative and sense of irony, but I think they’ve only touched the tip of the memorial iceberg. I propose that we spend the money that would have been used by President Bush on his Presidential library–$165 million based on what Ex-President Clinton spent in 2004–to aide some of the people that he has fucked over in his eight years in office.

Enter The George W. Bush Presidential Library of Casualties. This facility would be the size of a Presidential library, about 150,000 square feet (based again on Ex-President Clinton’s library), and would be used to help every man, woman, and child that was directly hurt by President Bush’s policies. The 2,000+ Homeless Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans would be housed there. Any Veteran injured, either physically or mentally, in those wars will get treatment there which VA medical centers like Walter Reed failed to provide. And, the countless thousands whose lives were destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and by FEMA’s sheer ineptitude will receive all the monetary reimbursement and proper housing that these funds can provide. The Library of Casualties would use every penny of that $165 million to try and help right the wrongs of the past eight years. President Bush might be upset about the usage of his name on sewage plant, but the fallout from his presidency should be far more embarrassing.

Never Say It Can’t Get Any Worse.

This past week may well have been too depressing on a global level to produce a solid article, much less one that’s replete with the requisite amount of Swiftian satire and jokes about people’s naughty-bits that you, my loyal 20-25 readers, have come to expect from me. However, I’m going to take a stab at it anyway and therefore, without any further pomp and circumstance, here is the week in review:

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court slashed $2.9 billion in damages against the Exxon Mobil Corporation for that little tanker spill the Exxon Valdez had in 1989. The oil giant now only has to pay $507 million in punitive damages to meet the amount of compensatory damages that they have already paid to “fix up” the 1,200 miles of Alaskan coastline they drenched in oil. Is the legalese getting to you a little bit? Let me put it this way: Before Wednesday’s decision, every one of the 32,000 individuals whose lives were directly and drastically affected by the spill would have received $75,000 in compensation from Exxon Mobil. With this new settlement everybody gets about $16,000 in compensation. Did I mention that the region’s fishing based economy is still irreparably damaged and that everyone in the area is fiscally fucked? God, don’t you love it when Big Oil wins. It’s just so heartwarming to see the little guy get knocked on his ass by the highest court in the land and a massive corporation at the same time. Oh, also on Wednesday, the Supreme Court ruled that giving the death penalty to child rapists was unconstitutional. When the Supreme Court vindicates child rapists and Exxon Mobil on the same day, that means it’s time to head over to Wal-Mart and grab another red, white, and blue magnetic ribbon for your Chevy Silverado. Ain’t this country the shit?

Then, on Friday, the Supreme Court ruled with a 5-to-4 majority that the right to bear arms is not a collective right, as has been the prevailing wisdom for the past seventy years, but is an individual right. This of course makes perfect sense when you hear the majority’s explanation, written by Justice Antonin Scalia that says, “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditionally lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.” This is only logical coming from Scalia, a man who claims to be an Originalist who views the constitution as a document that should be interpreted as if it were being read by reasonable persons alive at the time of its inception. Clearly, a reasonable man in 1787 would read the Second Amendment (which for those of you with hazy memory of high school civics and U.S. government, states that, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed,” ), ponder it over for a moment, and reasonably conclude that it meant that all citizens had the right to a .357 Magnum, and that the whole bit about militias didn’t much matter.

Finally, today marked the end of the presidential run-off election in Zimbabwe, where the incumbent Robert Mugabe won a landslide victory with 85% of the vote and has been sworn in to begin his sixth five-year term. Of course, the outcome may have been slightly affected by the somewhat unorthodox campaigning strategies of Mugabe’s party officials against Morgan Tsvangirai of the Movement for Democratic Change. Mugabe only drew 43% of the vote to Tsvangirai’s 48% in the first election, so, the question that gets raised is, “how did Mugabe gain 42% of the electorate in under four months?” Well, this picture from the front page of this Thursday’s New York Times says it all:

That is an 11-month old boy whose legs were broken by members of Mugabe’s ruling ZANU-PF party to force citizens into voting for him in the run-off election. If you didn’t know, Tsvangirai officially dropped out of the race last week to prevent the killing and abuse of his supporters and fellow countrymen. He watched the “election” take place from the safety of the Dutch Embassy in Harare.

And, that was a brief week-in-review from yours truly. It might seem a tad grim, but don’t worry. With any luck, next week we’ll be authorizing some serious offshore drilling that not only won’t have an effect on the price of crude oil, but will destroy the environment as well.
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Editor’s Note, July 10th, 2008: It turns out, according to the corrections department at the New York Times, that the photograph seen above and on the front page of their June 26 publication wasn’t entirely factual. Yes, the 11-month year old Zimbabwean had casts on his feet and, yes, his mother and he were targeted by Mugabe’s ruling party because her husband was a supporter for the opposition party of Morgan Tsvangirai. However, the mother did keep mum about the fact that her child was wearing the leg casts before the incident with Mugabe supporters due to the fact that the child has club feet. The New York Times discovered this when they took the child to Harare to get medical attention and found that he had no bone fractures. The mother hid the information from reporters in an effort to get help in curing her son’s ailment, but she still maintains, bolstered by some shaky testimony by people near the attack, that her child was harmed by youths supporting Mugabe.

George Carlin: It’s About Time you Septuagenarian Motherfucker

“Fuck you, you motherfucking cunt, I hope your funeral consists of a steady stream of crusty old syphilitic cock-suckers shitting and pissing in your open casket, and then slapping your bloodless face with their floppy pancake tits.”

There you are: the perfect obituary for George Carlin, which not only uses all of his seven words that you can never say on television (even though this is, indeed, print), but does so in a joyously obscene and scatological fashion. But, quite honestly, I say good riddance you crazy old coot. You might have been funny once (god knows when, but it was certainly before I was born), but for the past two decades or so you’ve been nothing but a geriatric waste of TV space, taking up countless hours in HBO’s programming schedule that could have been much better served with re-runs of The Chronicles of Riddick and documentaries about the 1980 U.S. Men’s Olympic Hockey Team. Oh Lord, and the books…the pages and pages of material that you just had to put into book form even though we’d already heard about 90% of it in your stand-up special that aired last week. Do you have any idea how many trees you butchered, you hypocritical hippie-dippie bastard? You were responsible for more literary abominations than the illegitimate love child of Nora Roberts and Dean Koontz.

I would also like to extend a giant fuck you for subjecting me to what is bound to be at least a month solid of inane fucking retrospectives about how revolutionary a comedian you were and how many boundaries you broke down. I’ll have to watch countless hours of obligatorily tearful remembrances from whatever-the-fuck-number wife you were on to when you went six feet under and from the kids that you no doubt neglected, but who forgave you when they realized you’d be dead in a couple of months and they’d get all of your cash. Not to mention the other comedians talking about you like you were Sojourner Truth or something when all they’re really thinking is, “Thank God that cunt-rag is finally dead. If I had to see him bitch about backwards baseball caps one more time I would have killed him myself.”

I think what it comes down to is that you were just a lazy son of a bitch who couldn’t wait to kick the bucket. And yes George, I realize that when you die you don’t literally kick a bucket. You probably had an entire routine about that shit? “What fucking bucket? I’ve never seen any fucking bucket. Are you born with this bucket or do you have to buy one when you get old and start shopping for caskets. And do you actually kick this bucket while you’re dying or just before you go to meet your maker? And who decided that we have a maker in the first place…” It’s a fucking metaphor you over-analytical shit-brick! Ha ha! The English language is so fucking quirky. We get it.

Shit. The truth of the matter is that you got it. I can’t make this obituary entirely farcical, because you were too fucking important. When the FCC has a fucking law drawn up in response to a stand-up bit you’ve done, it goes beyond comedy and into the realm of truly important social critique. Your spot on the comedic Mt. Rushmore is already being carved right next to Richard Pryor’s combustible head. You weren’t Gallagher, smashing melons with a fucking mallet to make us laugh. Your comedy made us laugh, but it did so not by pandering to the lowest common denominator, but by flipping society on its head and shaking it like a bottle of orange juice until all the pulp had been evenly distributed throughout the audience, everyone the better for the experience.

Now that I’ve completed the sappy portion of this obituary, I would like to finish by telling you to fuck off and by hoping beyond hope that God is a devout Catholic who will give Beelzebub the charge of performing rectal probes on you in hell while making you watch your performance in Jersey Girl for all eternity.

How Does This Man Keep On Making Movies?

It is time for us, the citizens of this grand and glorious nation, to take a stand. To take a stand against the oppression, degradation, economic loss, and irreparable psychological damage caused by a single man. A man, whose reign of terror now stretches almost a decade in length and, despite all rational indications, appears to be growing stronger. He titillates us with the possibility of something that at worst will be interesting and at best will be nigh perfect in its power to entertain and enthrall us. This demon spawn of hell of whom I speak is M. Night Shamalan. And he will wrench our souls from our bodies and take about $9.50 from our wallets. Unless, you have a student ID, in which case you’ll only lose your soul and about six bucks.

You may or may not have noticed that I spelled M. Night’s name incorrectly. I know that there is a y between the h and the a in his last name, but I refuse to spell his name correctly out of principle and encourage you to do the same. Hopefully, if enough of us butcher the phonetics of his surname, we can deflate his ego enough to make him reconsider making whatever shit-storm of a movie he’s writing at this very moment.

Now, I saw The Sixth Sense when it came out in 1999 and I will readily admit that it was thoroughly enjoyable thriller, in spite of the fact that it caused a 3 to 4 year epidemic of people making half-assed jokes involving the phrase, “I see…(insert word here)…people.” However, while the movie was good, I think that people drastically underestimate Haley Joel Osment’s off-the-charts creepiness in the movie’s success. You take that kid out of picture and replace him with any other little tyke (with the exception of Dakota Fanning who is Osment’s female creeper equivalent) and the movie would have been just above mediocrity. I just thank God that the kid never made it into any TV or commercial spots. Can you imagine a Life cereal ad with Haley Joel Osment? Oh, Mikey would like it all right, and then he’d gouge out his brother’s eyes with his cereal spoon.

After The Sixth Sense is where M. Night Shammalamma’s reign of terror truly begins. Since that film came out, the man has written and directed five movies, none of which could be qualified as good. Granted, there are some people who will claim that Unbreakable and Signs were solid, enjoyable films, but I think these people miss what has become one of the key features of a M. Night production: a terrible, trite, and downright stupid ending that ruins everything that came before it. Signs is a perfect example of this as M. Night builds up the suspense of whether or not the world is going to be destroyed by evil extraterrestrials only to bust out the amazing plot twist that the aliens are deathly allergic to water. Water! That’s the best this dumb motherfucker could come up with? The substance covering 2/3 of the fucking earth? Why the fuck would aliens invade a planet that is predominantly made of liquid that burns their skin off? No, no, I’ve got to stop this now because attempting to apply reason and logic to any of this man’s films only leads to frustration and aneurisms.

I went to see Signs, and I ended up going to see The Village as well, which illustrates the second major flaw in all of M. Night’s films: his total inability to write even palatable dialogue. The Village had a cast that included Joaquin Phoenix (two Oscar nominations), Adrien Brody (one Best Actor Oscar), William Hurt (one Best Actor Oscar), Sigourney Weaver (three Oscar nominations), and a bevy of other talented actors. However, in spite of this collection of thespian excellence, the script that M. night wrote for them was so bloody horrendous that I felt like I was watching a high school production of The Crucible. This man managed to flummox the abilities of some of Hollywood’s finest actors with his complete and utter literary handicap. No actor, no matter how talented, could possibly say lines like, “I love you… like the day is long!” or, “We’ll be safe, we have the magic rocks,” with a straight face. It is somewhat needless to say that the shit-tastic “twist ending “ to The Village was really of no consequence because the film was pure drek from the opening credits and you can’t ruin something that was never any good to begin with.

This leads me to this past Friday when I went to see his latest offering, The Happening. I had no expectations for this movie whatsoever and knew beforehand that seeing it would be an exercise in masochism, but I went anyway. Part of the reason I went was that my friend wanted to see it and agreed to pay for gas and parking, but the other part was a morbid curiosity as to how M. Night Shamalan could possibly find new ways to fuck up a good premise for a movie. The idea behind The Happening, that some chemical or force reverses our survival instinct, causing us to become intensely suicidal, is a good one. However, true to form, M. Night managed to screw it up with his horrendous dialogue and a gut-wrenchingly sappy, pandering message of eco-consciousness. The idea that plants can adapt and “fight back” against our destruction of the planet by releasing spores is just idiotic and it completely ruins an otherwise intriguing premise. And, contrary to what you may think, what I just wrote doesn’t deserve to be prefaced with a spoiler alert because there is nothing to spoil. You will be just as unsatisfied with The Happening whether you know his signature “plot twist” or not.

I feel a great deal of guilt for paying money to see The Happening because I believe it is morally irresponsible, especially in these times of economic downturn, recession, and increased unemployment rates, to support the gainful employment of M. Night Shahmaylan. Just because a man made one good movie does not give him license to make bomb after bomb after bomb. The man is not talented, he is not original, he writes about as well as first-year theater major, and he has some sort of terrible power over us. He manages to get movies green-lighted that should never be in production and he gets the general public to come out in droves to watch films that even Pauly Shore could rightfully call crap. This man is one of the two major cinematic conundrums that I cannot for the life of me wrap my head around (Tyler Perry being the other). All I know is that M. Night Shaminahalalan must be stopped before he makes a movie so truly horrific that gives legions of moviegoers post-traumatic-stress-disorder. Don’t think it couldn’t happen. Thirty-three people had to be committed after they saw Battlefield Earth and a further fifty-two theatergoers were hospitalized with 2nd-degree burns on their corneas after watching Glitter from start to finish. The next film M. Night Shyamallan makes, and there will be a next one, could do even more damage than that.

Gkl

Of Waffles and Wenches

“People are always like…‘You’re too pretty to be working at Waffle House’”

The above quotation, and all of the events surrounding it, represents the most concentrated stupidity that I have been privy to in quite some time. On Saturday night I went to a house party hosted by one of my friends in Mt. Washington. One of her housemates decided to invite some of her friends from Lebanon, OH, or some such place where having a full, working set of teeth is to be envied. I hate to come off as some sort of elitist urbanite who thinks anyone grew up in rural America is a ignorant fuckwit, but I kind of do feel that way, and the events of Saturday night, most specifically those perpetrated by the Waffle House Wench, back this up.

There were many people at this party whom I should give cursory notice too, most specifically a scruffy son of bitch who wouldn’t stop expounding his theory that it was the right course of action to beat up a cop if you were caught with weed on you, provided said copper was alone and without a camera (The fact that all cop cars have cameras on the dash or that cops are equipped with those guns what that shoot the bullets at you must have escaped him). However, I must focus most of my attention on this one tragically slutty woman. And I use the term woman loosely, as any sensible person with a vagina would be ashamed to be placed in the same category as this turbo-slut.

I honestly can’t remember her name, but that doesn’t really matter as I will be referring to her using a bevy of epithets for the entire article. She, along with her much nicer, less whorish, but no more intelligent friend Brittney, apparently double-dipped by working at Waffle House and Hooter’s. The ho-bag apparently also stripped, which really isn’t that much of a surprise as working at Hooter’s is the community college to stripping’s main campus. Over the course of merely an hour and a half I witnessed this woman engage in the following acts:

A) Bending over a dishwasher and shaking her scantily clad ass to “demonstrate” to another guy at the party how she exploits old men for cash
B) Flip-Flapping her (most likely) fake tits up and down while surrounded by people who had no interest in seeing that.
C) Uttering that mind-bending sentence: “People are always like…‘You’re too pretty to be working at Waffle House’”.
D) Proclaiming that women should have equal rights, but only if a sugar daddy will pay for everything she wants.
E) Complaining about how her sugar daddy wasn’t paying for everything she wants.

Now, maybe I’m just too sheltered, but I wasn’t aware that something this trashy could actually exist. It was astonishing how shallow, amoral, and downright foul this woman was. I can say, without guilt or shame, that this woman offers the world absolutely nothing. As a matter of fact, it would be a safe to say that she actually detracts from the quality of life on this planet. All she can provide us with is silicone, vacuity, and a feeling of improved self-worth because, well shit, at least we’re not her. Perhaps that’s her charge in this life. She is the keeper of the bottom of the barrel, a constant reminder that things could be worse, that our gene pool could be shallower. As paradoxical as this sounds, in her utter uselessness she has a use. So, if you’re ever feeling like your life has amounted to nothing and that you’re spiraling headlong into abject failure, just go to the Waffle House up by Lebanon and you’ll feel better. Just don’t eat any of the food. You know who’s been handling it and she’s probably got Herpes.

21 Can Salute

Right now, I’m at a stage in my life where it’ll be a good three or four decades before I begin religiously checking the obituaries for “death notices,” informing me that a good number of my friends have shuffled off their mortal coils. However, since the Internet at the Coffee Emporium is on the fritz and they have free copies of yesterday’s Cincinnati Enquirer lying underneath the airpots of coffee, I am willing to check the obituaries for writing fodder. I could have paid a $1.50 for today’s Enquirer, but, as I have stated many times, the Enquirer is a journalistic abomination whose only redeeming qualities consist of the daily crossword, the comics, and movie listings, which don’t justify doling out a dollar and a half. Plus, not to sound too callous, but dead folk are going to be just as bereft of life yesterday as they are today, if not more so.

Granted, I did not set out to write this article about the obituaries, but am doing so out of necessity. I thought I would be able to get some funny snippets from the “Your Hometown Enquirer” section, but, alas, all I found were little pieces on local academic achievement and Memorial Day parades. So I turned to the Obits and saw a headline that arrested my attention:

“Fredric J. Baur was designer of P&G’s Pringles container.”

My initial reaction of smug amusement quickly turned to one of mild depression. This man who spent 89 years on this earth will be remembered, if he is at all, as the guy who created a cardboard cylinder into which Proctor & Gamble could put potato chips. Then it dawned on me that this man had been deemed the most successful and prosperous person to die in the Greater Cincinnati area on that day, according to the Enquirer. Now, what’s more unsettling: The fact that inventing a potato chip container is seen as the crowning achievement to a man’s life, or that no one else had any accolade to match it?

All of these thoughts, to some degree or another, passed through my mind just as I was reading the obituary’s headline. When I actually got to the article itself I became bewildered and, ultimately, incensed:

“Dr. Fredric J. Baur was so proud of having designed the container for Pringles potato crisps that he asked his family to bury him in one.”

Those are the first words of this man’s obituary and, while they may seem laughable, are for me quite disturbing. A man desired to be buried in a Pringles can, a can you can find on the shelves of any Circle-K or IGA across the country. How deep was this man’s emotional attachment to a casing for a snack food that he wanted to rest for all eternity inside of it? Part of me hopes that this was simply senility kicking in and that his request was made with all the sound judgment of a six-year old, but something tells me he genuinely wanted to buried in a Pringles can. That leads to even more absurd questions like what type Pringles can he wanted to be kept in. Would he choose regular because that was the only one P&G sold when he first designed the can or would he go with his favorite flavor: “We have lovingly placed the deceased in this can of Sour Cream & Onion Pringles. They were the only flavor that…I’m sorry…that when he popped, the fun indeed did not stop.”

What you might not have caught in the opening of Fredric J. Bauer’s obituary is that he was a doctor. Not only was he a doctor, he received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Ohio State. I cannot think of a harder degree to get than a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry. Basic classes in O-Chem are what send med-school students into semester-long bouts of lunacy where they remember nothing save waking up three months later in their dormitory, weeping uncontrollably while clutching their report card amid a pile of laundry that reaches the ceiling. Shit, I’d bet even money that 95% of Congress isn’t smart enough to get a PH.D. in Organic Chemistry, and the Enquirer buried it in the seventh paragraph. Dr. Bauer also was an aviation physiologist in WWII, testing out the medical effects of flying on pilots. That information wasn’t given until paragraph eight. His work with the National Presbyterian Church didn’t make it until the very end of the article. Oh, but the fact that he developed a fucking freeze-dried ice cream for Proctor that didn’t even sell well was important information about this man’s life that we needed to know right away.

My internship this summer is with an advertising company and it is part and parcel of the reason why this man’s obituary is so tragic. I could just go on a rant telling the Cincinnati Enquirer and the woman who wrote the article to go play in traffic, but it would be giving short shrift to a larger problem endemic to our society. We are a grossly consumer culture that has spun out of control to the point that bright men and women start to believe that promoting a snack food or a dish soap is something to be proud of and, in some cases, proud enough to judge your entire life’s worth by it.

But I could just be flat-out wrong. I’ll probably never look at a can of Pringles without thinking of this man being buried in one, so he’s found a small way to live on. I just hope this isn’t a trend because I don’t want to be constantly thinking about dead folks when I’m at the grocery store.