Yesterday, I was thinking about how I've only been updating this with serious stuff (American Sniper, gun violence, etc.) and thought "hey, let's lighten the mood a bit. So I humbly present to you my list of various pop-culture things that I'm guessing I'll never really be into. Because, well, it beats talking about Bill Belichick's deflated balls.
Harry Potter: Let me preface this by saying that, many years ago, I checked out Finnegan's Wake from my local library because 1.) I was shocked that they had something by any author not named "James Patterson" in the fiction section and 2.) I was under the impression that James Joyce might be an author I need to read if I want to understand the "human condition" and Modernism. I got a page and a half into that unholy mess before throwing up my hands in defeat. Similarly, I went with my aunt to the movie theater, she wanted to see whichever Harry Potter movie was out at the time (the one where Dumbledore dies at the end, if you're wondering) and I wanted to see something else that actually wasn't starting anytime soon, so I ended up watching Harry and his friends alongside her. I couldn't tell you what the hell happened in that movie. I am aware of this Harry Potter fellow, of course, and I know basic things about him (he looks like me when I was twelve and first got glasses, he's into magic, there are scarves involved) but that's about it. I feel at a loss when people a little younger (okay, a lot younger) than me in the MAE program start talking about him like an old friend who helped them get through childhood. I'm never going to read the books, probably. I appreciate that it's better overall than the sick and twisted crap that is Twilight in terms of "things geared towards younger audiences," but I feel like I was too old to get into HP when the books first started coming out. Razz-ma-tazz all you want, I ain't getting on the train to that magic school.
The Godfather Trilogy: I've seen all three of these movies, so my "getting into" them is purely a choice I made after considering all that there was to each film. Truthfully, Goodfellas is better, I feel like Michael Corleone is a glorified heel. Much like Peter Griffin, I did not care for these films. That being said, I understand their importance in the history of American cinema (well, the first two anyway), and I acknowledge that, filmmaking-wise, they're beatifully crafted. But emotionally engaging? Not for me. Coppola made the all-time best movie about the Vietnam War (through the lens of Heart of Darkness). Apocalypse Now is an unholy mess of a film, but then Vietnam was an unholy mess of a war. Good guys and bad guys? Shit, they've all got something that they're running towards or from. But the Corleones are cardboard compared to Willard and Kurtz. I've seen all three films (I saw the third one first, which might have ruined me on the previous two installments), and I'm left with nothing but a hollow "appreciation" of the films as art but no connection to them whatsoever.
Modern Country Music: Also known as "post-Garth Brooks populist clap-trap that has nothing of value to say and is as empty and soul-less as modern post-Tupac rap." So of course every girl I know loves this crap. I'll take Johnny Cash any day over Florida-Georgia Line.
Dr. Who: Now, this is one that, by all rights, I should be into. I have a grudging accpetance of sci-fi as a legitmate avenue for cultural expression, albeit one that often falls into the "hey, look at this cool effect" school of film-making (or literature). There's over fifty years of mythology to sort through and I can't say that I am up for the challenge. I may eventually get on board with this, but for the time being I'm content to keep confusing Dr. Who with The Who (the greatest rock band of all time).
Modern-day video games: I used to be a "gamer," back when those games involved an Italian plumber navigating a series of ladders while an angry gorilla threw barrels at him. I understand that gaming is now much more intensive than that, and I respect those for whom such ideas as an all-weekend-binge of role-playing games sounds like a fun time. But I don't feel like investing in any modern gaming systems myself. Just passed me by, I guess (though I'm always down for a multi-player round of GoldenEye in the various locales and with rocket launchers).
Vampire/Zombie/Vampire-Zombie Cinema/Literature/Games: Every few years, there's a horror-inspired craze that takes over the entertainment world (to whit: not only did someone write a book about Honest Abe killing vampires, they made a movie about that book as well). I respect that the marketplace is driven by ideas, even if those ideas are done to death (notable bright side to all the zombie nonsense: Shaun Of the Dead). I remember seeing bookshelves littered with variations of the Pride & Prejudice & Zombies template a few years back, none of them enticing (come to think of it, P&P&Z was kinda awful). No thank you.
Soccer: It may be the most popular game in the world, but every time I've watched it (on TV, or when some of my young cousins were playing on soccer teams), I've been bored stiff. Sorry.
Hockey: Ditto.
My favorite bands getting back together for a reunion tour: This is not always a bad idea, but it rarely does more than remind me how much better a lead singer was in his twenties or thirties (now that he's pushing AARP age and I'm wincing as he tries to make a song that was relevant back in the Eighties or whenever "come alive" in the modern day). I saw the best bands of generations previous to my own destroyed by nostalgia, and madness.
The NFL, after all the crap this past season: I'm done with watching the games all the way through anymore, or giving a damn. Roger Goodell being disembowled on live TV after the Super Bowl couldn't get me back into my pre-Ray Rice level of excitement for the sport. I'm not a complete automaton; I'll still tune in from time to time (especially if it's the Giants). But as far as giving a crap, I think I'm done with that.
Golf: Whether playing it (which I did once) or watching it on TV (only on summer afternoons when there was nothing else on), I've never been bowled over by golf. It's not a sport; it's an excuse for white dudes to get away from the wife for an afternoon (but not involving something like strippers or drugs, so less fun).
Sunday, January 25, 2015
Friday, January 23, 2015
American Sniping
When I went with a buddy to go see Inherent Vice recently, there was a trailer for the new Clint Eastwood film American Sniper. I'd seen it before, and seen the countless commercials in which Bradley Cooper has a terrible, godawful Southern/Texas accent. I can honestly say that my level of interest in seeing the film has remained at the "wait for it on cable one night when there's nothing else on" level (like with most of Eastwood's directorial projects; I acknowledge that he's a master of the form without necessarily liking his stuff enough to seek it out. I mean, Gran Torino was good but not great). So I guess that makes me a Commie pinko homosexual liberal elite who wants to destroy this country and take a shit on the bald eagle while wiping my private parts with the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.
Because, of course, people had to make this political. First on the left, with Seth Rogen saying the film reminded him of the film-within-a-film Nation's Pride (from Tarantino's masterpiece Inglourious Basterds) and then Michael Moore weighing in that snipers were "cowards." This caused the predictable Fox News attacks and Breitbart exposes that basically revealed what you already knew: Moore is fat and Rogen is un-American (literally: he's Canadian). Shit storm of shit storms, do your worst! Now it's almost considered a patriotic duty not just to see the film (again, with Bradley Cooper's atrocious accent) but to also dump on those who don't like it as much as you do.
Fact is, I acknowledge there's plenty of bullshit on both sides of the debate, but I'm more inclined to highlight it when it's on the far, far, far right of the spectrum. I'm a liberal, after all, or what passes for one in South Carolina (i.e., I don't mind that Obama's in charge of the country). I've read Marx (Richard Marx, Hold On to the Night: My Life In and Out of Lite-Rock Radio...I kid, but how awesome would that be?), I have never voted for a Republican since I was old enough to vote for the important stuff like "president" or "dog catcher," and I can't be blamed for the fact that Lindsey Graham is somehow still in office when everyone knows that he's...well...just so masculine (sorry, I don't want to upset that drama queen). So yeah, I'm not in the target audience for American Sniper, at least not in terms of unquestioningly accepting that Chris Kyle (the real-life guy, whose accent, I assume, is far more accurate than Cooper's) was an American hero with no shades of grey to upset the dominant narrative of his sacrifice for us.
But that's just it: I can't dismiss out of hand that Kyle, whatever his faults, was an important figure in the Iraq War, just not in the way that Sean Hannity would have you think. Kyle served in Afghanistan and Iraq, racked up over 150 kills as a sniper in both theaters, and came home only to be gunned down by a fellow veteran on a shooting range in 2013/2014 (can't remember which). His is a story of tragedy, of a life cut short due to an act of kindness on his part. That part I don't dispute. What I have a problem with is the notion that Kyle, or anyone else in the military who served in Iraq, was "protecting our freedoms."
Someone on my Facebook page said "freedom isn't free," and he's right. But it doesn't always have to be purchased at the end of a gun barrel. In fact, the more often it's gained through other more peaceful means, the better it is for everyone involved. But you'd expect me to say that, right? Godless America-hating liberal that I am, I am the son of a military veteran, a man who saw action in Vietnam. He came back home, hooked up with my mom, and never came around when I was growing up. I am the son of someone like Chris Kyle, someone who fought in a war and who never could come back to who he was before. I love this country, and I would gladly die to protect its freedoms. But nothing about Iraq was about defending our freedoms, or those of the Iraqi people. We went in under false pretenses, with no exit strategy, and a pie-in-the-sky understanding of just what the conflict would involve. Countless soldiers went over and died, and none of them got a fucking movie made about their life (by Clint Eastwood, nonetheless). None of them have been wrapped up in the flag, apple pie, and America by the shit-headed gutless cowards on Fox News, the pompous arrogant SOBs who helped Bush promote that war and looked the other way when the facts didn't line up with what they wanted. Freedom isn't free, yes, but it also isn't subject to abuse by those very people we put in charge of making sure we get to keep it.
But far be it from me to try and suggest that we shouldn't try and have a debate about the Iraq War, or the legacy of George W. Bush. Because then someone with a Twitter handle and a position of "celebrity" might attack me and call me names. Blake Shelton did that, to the Rogen/Moore crowd (and for the record: I find Rogen okay if not compelling as an actor, and Moore may be an overinflated gasbag of liberal/paranoid invective, but Fahrenheit 9/11 is one of the most important documents ever filmed). I guess hearing about that (and his using the old chestnut of "defending our freedoms") is what triggered this on my part. I couldn't give two fucks about Blake Shelton, or any of the other folks attacking Rogen and Moore (again, I'm a pinko liberal Commie-Nazi), but resorting to attacks when the facts aren't in your corner, when the idea of being subtle gets outweighed by the need to have the loudest megaphone in a sea of sound-bites, really pisses me off.
All of this is not to say that American Sniper is a bad film, or a good film; I haven't seen it, I don't plan on seeing it anytime soon, and I reserve the right to be wrong about everything I've said about it (except Cooper's accent; seriously, dude isn't even trying). But Chris Kyle didn't die to protect my freedoms anymore than he died to protect yours, or Sean Hannity's or Michael Moore's. He died because a crazy person shot him. Out soldiers died in Iraq because a president who was too busy worrying about his legacy to care about the consequences launched a war on a former enemy who had no ties whatsoever to 9/11 simply because the climate was ripe for such lying and chicanery. Freedom isn't free, but that doesn't mean it can't be destroyed with the very guns that a lot of people claim help uphold that very principle. And also, people should really see Inherent Vice, it's fucking amazing.
Now if you'll excuse me, the soapbox I'm on is getting awfully crowded.
Because, of course, people had to make this political. First on the left, with Seth Rogen saying the film reminded him of the film-within-a-film Nation's Pride (from Tarantino's masterpiece Inglourious Basterds) and then Michael Moore weighing in that snipers were "cowards." This caused the predictable Fox News attacks and Breitbart exposes that basically revealed what you already knew: Moore is fat and Rogen is un-American (literally: he's Canadian). Shit storm of shit storms, do your worst! Now it's almost considered a patriotic duty not just to see the film (again, with Bradley Cooper's atrocious accent) but to also dump on those who don't like it as much as you do.
Fact is, I acknowledge there's plenty of bullshit on both sides of the debate, but I'm more inclined to highlight it when it's on the far, far, far right of the spectrum. I'm a liberal, after all, or what passes for one in South Carolina (i.e., I don't mind that Obama's in charge of the country). I've read Marx (Richard Marx, Hold On to the Night: My Life In and Out of Lite-Rock Radio...I kid, but how awesome would that be?), I have never voted for a Republican since I was old enough to vote for the important stuff like "president" or "dog catcher," and I can't be blamed for the fact that Lindsey Graham is somehow still in office when everyone knows that he's...well...just so masculine (sorry, I don't want to upset that drama queen). So yeah, I'm not in the target audience for American Sniper, at least not in terms of unquestioningly accepting that Chris Kyle (the real-life guy, whose accent, I assume, is far more accurate than Cooper's) was an American hero with no shades of grey to upset the dominant narrative of his sacrifice for us.
But that's just it: I can't dismiss out of hand that Kyle, whatever his faults, was an important figure in the Iraq War, just not in the way that Sean Hannity would have you think. Kyle served in Afghanistan and Iraq, racked up over 150 kills as a sniper in both theaters, and came home only to be gunned down by a fellow veteran on a shooting range in 2013/2014 (can't remember which). His is a story of tragedy, of a life cut short due to an act of kindness on his part. That part I don't dispute. What I have a problem with is the notion that Kyle, or anyone else in the military who served in Iraq, was "protecting our freedoms."
Someone on my Facebook page said "freedom isn't free," and he's right. But it doesn't always have to be purchased at the end of a gun barrel. In fact, the more often it's gained through other more peaceful means, the better it is for everyone involved. But you'd expect me to say that, right? Godless America-hating liberal that I am, I am the son of a military veteran, a man who saw action in Vietnam. He came back home, hooked up with my mom, and never came around when I was growing up. I am the son of someone like Chris Kyle, someone who fought in a war and who never could come back to who he was before. I love this country, and I would gladly die to protect its freedoms. But nothing about Iraq was about defending our freedoms, or those of the Iraqi people. We went in under false pretenses, with no exit strategy, and a pie-in-the-sky understanding of just what the conflict would involve. Countless soldiers went over and died, and none of them got a fucking movie made about their life (by Clint Eastwood, nonetheless). None of them have been wrapped up in the flag, apple pie, and America by the shit-headed gutless cowards on Fox News, the pompous arrogant SOBs who helped Bush promote that war and looked the other way when the facts didn't line up with what they wanted. Freedom isn't free, yes, but it also isn't subject to abuse by those very people we put in charge of making sure we get to keep it.
But far be it from me to try and suggest that we shouldn't try and have a debate about the Iraq War, or the legacy of George W. Bush. Because then someone with a Twitter handle and a position of "celebrity" might attack me and call me names. Blake Shelton did that, to the Rogen/Moore crowd (and for the record: I find Rogen okay if not compelling as an actor, and Moore may be an overinflated gasbag of liberal/paranoid invective, but Fahrenheit 9/11 is one of the most important documents ever filmed). I guess hearing about that (and his using the old chestnut of "defending our freedoms") is what triggered this on my part. I couldn't give two fucks about Blake Shelton, or any of the other folks attacking Rogen and Moore (again, I'm a pinko liberal Commie-Nazi), but resorting to attacks when the facts aren't in your corner, when the idea of being subtle gets outweighed by the need to have the loudest megaphone in a sea of sound-bites, really pisses me off.
All of this is not to say that American Sniper is a bad film, or a good film; I haven't seen it, I don't plan on seeing it anytime soon, and I reserve the right to be wrong about everything I've said about it (except Cooper's accent; seriously, dude isn't even trying). But Chris Kyle didn't die to protect my freedoms anymore than he died to protect yours, or Sean Hannity's or Michael Moore's. He died because a crazy person shot him. Out soldiers died in Iraq because a president who was too busy worrying about his legacy to care about the consequences launched a war on a former enemy who had no ties whatsoever to 9/11 simply because the climate was ripe for such lying and chicanery. Freedom isn't free, but that doesn't mean it can't be destroyed with the very guns that a lot of people claim help uphold that very principle. And also, people should really see Inherent Vice, it's fucking amazing.
Now if you'll excuse me, the soapbox I'm on is getting awfully crowded.
Tuesday, January 13, 2015
Je Suis Charlie? Well, Yeah, But...
I realize that a lot of people make a lot of noise about the supposed imposition of stricter controls upon our rights to own guns in this country, but freedom of speech trumps freedom to bear arms every day and twice on Sunday as far as I'm concerned. Granted, we free-speech-ers don't have a ready-made slogan like the gun nuts ("you can take my freedom of speech when you pry it from my cold, dead hands" doesn't have the same ring to it), but I have never owned a gun, I don't plan on owning a gun, and if the government ever did come after me to take my gun, they'd be disappointed. Freedom of speech, even when you disagree with it, isn't just an American right. It's a human-being right, no matter where you are. The people who worry so much about protecting their penis-substitutes won't say a thing if someone's right to speak out (especially if the right to speak out is against gun violence) is taken from them.
The attacks on Charlie Hebdo have done what often occurs when issues of free speech come up in the past: they've made an unlikely martyr out of something that probably doesn't deserve it. What I've seen of the magazine's cartoons is pretty awful, content-wise. But here's the thing: you can think that, but that doesn't give you license to walk into the place and shoot it up. "Je Suis Charlie" is trending now on social media, and like a lot of things that "trend," the subtle arguments one could make about the tastefulness of the magazine's cartoons don't fit well under a hashtag. I may not like what I've seen of Charlie Hebdo, but I don't think anyone deserved to lose their lives over it.
Freedom of speech, the freedom to form your own thought and not have it imposed from you on high, is taken for granted in this country. We simply don't give a damn about protecting it, especially when someone says something that we don't agree with. Vile and hateful speech has been a particular victim of social media, which is a good thing: if someone's stupid enough to post something derogatory, they deserve the scorn that is usually unleashed upon them. But what the attackers (who claimed to be Islamic warriors, though I think that they cloaked their actions in the idea of Muslim beliefs to "justify" it, just as Crusaders dressed themselves up in the Christian Church to explain away their campaigns of bloodshed and plunder in the Holy Land) did is never, ever, ever okay. If anything, they defeated the claimed purpose of their own endeavor with their very actions: those cartoons that they sought to suppress will probably be seen, and by millions more eyeballs than the magazine frankly probably deserves. It is a victory for freedom of speech, even if that speech is disagreeable.
Consider someone who comes from an oppressive regime, where basic freedoms aren't available; you think they give a damn about getting their choice of firearms at the local WalMart if they've escaped years, decades of torture and terror elsewhere? Speech, and writing, are far more powerful than any bullet can ever hope to be. Words convey ideas, illustrations, revolutions. So while I question the logic behind the "offensive cartoons" in the first place, while I find much of what else the magazine has done to be tasteless and vulgar, I defend Charlie Hebdo's right to do what they do without the fear of violent reprisal. Because, goddam it, that doesn't fly with me. "Je suis Charlie"? If that's what you mean, than yeah, Je Suis Charlie.
The attacks on Charlie Hebdo have done what often occurs when issues of free speech come up in the past: they've made an unlikely martyr out of something that probably doesn't deserve it. What I've seen of the magazine's cartoons is pretty awful, content-wise. But here's the thing: you can think that, but that doesn't give you license to walk into the place and shoot it up. "Je Suis Charlie" is trending now on social media, and like a lot of things that "trend," the subtle arguments one could make about the tastefulness of the magazine's cartoons don't fit well under a hashtag. I may not like what I've seen of Charlie Hebdo, but I don't think anyone deserved to lose their lives over it.
Freedom of speech, the freedom to form your own thought and not have it imposed from you on high, is taken for granted in this country. We simply don't give a damn about protecting it, especially when someone says something that we don't agree with. Vile and hateful speech has been a particular victim of social media, which is a good thing: if someone's stupid enough to post something derogatory, they deserve the scorn that is usually unleashed upon them. But what the attackers (who claimed to be Islamic warriors, though I think that they cloaked their actions in the idea of Muslim beliefs to "justify" it, just as Crusaders dressed themselves up in the Christian Church to explain away their campaigns of bloodshed and plunder in the Holy Land) did is never, ever, ever okay. If anything, they defeated the claimed purpose of their own endeavor with their very actions: those cartoons that they sought to suppress will probably be seen, and by millions more eyeballs than the magazine frankly probably deserves. It is a victory for freedom of speech, even if that speech is disagreeable.
Consider someone who comes from an oppressive regime, where basic freedoms aren't available; you think they give a damn about getting their choice of firearms at the local WalMart if they've escaped years, decades of torture and terror elsewhere? Speech, and writing, are far more powerful than any bullet can ever hope to be. Words convey ideas, illustrations, revolutions. So while I question the logic behind the "offensive cartoons" in the first place, while I find much of what else the magazine has done to be tasteless and vulgar, I defend Charlie Hebdo's right to do what they do without the fear of violent reprisal. Because, goddam it, that doesn't fly with me. "Je suis Charlie"? If that's what you mean, than yeah, Je Suis Charlie.
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