In 2004, in the midst of a contentious political season when I was voting more against someone than for someone (hmm, seems familiar), I saw a young, handsome and charismatic African-American state senator who was running for national office give a speech at the DNC. His name, of course, was Barack Obama, and like a lot of people in the immediate aftermath of that speech, I wondered "why isn't *this guy* the one running for president?" It's not that I didn't like John Kerry, but...I was more anti-Dubya than pro-Kerry, and I wanted more than anything to see George and his posse rounded up and hauled before the International War Crimes Tribunal for what they perpetuated in Iraq. Still, when Obama was done speaking, I thought I'd like to vote for him someday. I can no longer find the message boards that I was a regular on back then (mostly because a lot of them became infected with spambots), but I'm pretty sure that I predicted (or hoped aloud) that Barack Obama would be elected president someday.
So when he announced his bid in 2007...I had not really kept up with him since 2004, and I remembered liking his speech but not being sure that a black man could win the White House, not in the America I knew (and I didn't know half of what I know now when it comes to the racial divide and how I have benefited from it). But he ran, and he came to speak at Clemson (and that's when I first saw snipers on the roofs of buildings surrounding his speaking area, joking to my buddy about how many of them, if local, were likely wanting to take a shot at him and not protect him), and I was all in for hope and change. Obama was the first guy I voted for who won (I turned seventeen a month before Clinton's 1996 victory, and honestly I would've voted for him even though I was still kinda Republican back then). Then when I voted for him again four years later, and he won, I felt like a tiny part of the reason why (though my state has never gone for him in an election, those cranky racist white folks around me have to die sometime).
So let me say something that will likely piss off anyone I know who has never liked him, because I think it's going to be true: Obama will be to Democrats what Reagan is to Republicans. I already feel like he's that way for me. And boy do I wish he'd seize the government and take over for life like his enemies have long said he would.
Now, when I say he's my Reagan, let me be perfectly clear: you will never, ever dissuade me from this with facts or logic. You could tell me that he didn't do half of what he wanted to do, that he was not as effective as he should've been, or that he was someone who sold a vision of America that isn't close to being reality. Okay, fine, but you know what he did for me? He saved me from being cynical about our nation, about our possibilities. Didn't Reagan do that for the GOP?
Reagan came along after Nixon, who was a hot mess all his own and whose exit from the stage (apart from a brief "third term lite" in the tenure of Gerald Ford) seemed to signal the death of the Republican Party. Then Reagan (a celebrity, by the way) came along and Americans of conservative stripes fell in love with him. To this day, you can point out Reagan's flaws and GOPers won't hear it. So when anyone tries to tell me how Obama screwed up this country, I can just chuckle and go "well" with that disarming Reagan twinkle in my eye that secretly says "you fucking prick, don't you know you can't dissuade me with logic!"
I'm like a Trump supporter, but less evil.
I think the historic record will be kinder to Obama than the contemporary scene (and yes, I think racism has a lot to do with it, though not all Obama-haters are bigots. I'm sure not all of them are employed by Fox News). Frankly, the more that people talk about how awful he is, the more I think he must be doing something right. People didn't always like Reagan when he was in office (especially not John Hinckley). But we don't remember that so much as the way that he made us "feel." Ditto for Obama and me, I won't always remember the times when he failed (or when his critics said that he failed), but I'll remember how he made me feel proud to be an American, where at least I knew he was free to be president after two-hundred-plus years of white people.
But more than that, there's the personal politics: when I read that Obama didn't really have a relationship with his father, and that he was raised by his mother with help from his maternal grandparents, it marked the first time I can remember coming across a presidential candidate whose upbringing mirrored mine (to this day, I am also accused of being a secret Muslim born in Kenya, but that's another issue). Plus, look at who faced him in 2008: I voted for McCain in the 2000 Repub primary here in SC and was crushed when he lost to former Yale cheerleader and future war criminal Dubya. Then I saw him become just the absolute lapdog for Bush (kinda like Chris Christie is for the short-fingered Devil), and by the time he ran, I was full-on Democrat and liberal. And it didn't help that his running mate was an idiot.
So Obama made me a believer in the political system, four years after Bush's cynical win as a sign of our national cowardice to admit that the Iraq War was a mistake. And whatever his faults (of which I am sure there are more than a few), I believed in him again in 2012. I believe in him now. Like FDR or JFK before him, Obama will be a Democratic icon. Maybe he won't be the national icon that I believe he should be, but you can never account for sore losers. Obama is my Reagan, hell he's even better than Reagan to me, but I'll settle for him being thought of in such terms by my fellow Dems. And no amount of facts can persuade me otherwise, because when have facts mattered to Reagan lovers? Obama is my Reagan; one day I can only hope the GOP can think of someone as "their Obama."
Thursday, August 11, 2016
Thursday, July 28, 2016
Be Careful About What You Choose to Be
In case you haven't noticed, we're living in a very contentious political season right now, with each side trying to outdo the other in terms of who's the loudest voice in the room. I would imagine that, if you know me or at least have "known" me online for a while now, you can tell where I stand on the debate between Clinton and Trump. I'm not here to argue with you about that (I can't, anyway; you would have to leave a comment, and I would have to respond, and then you'd have to respond to my response to your comment, and so on and so forth until one or both of us is referred to as "that asshole" and mutual blocking of friendship begins). No, I don't think I'll change your mind about this any more than you'll change mine. But I wonder if we couldn't stand to be a little nicer about it.
Social media is fantastic, but it's also infantilizing. Trading insults once was the low-hanging fruit of internet trolls. Now one of those trolls is running for president (harsh, I know, but true). When it's at its best, social media can open our eyes to a side of the world or side of an issue that we may never have considered before; at its worst, it can create an echo chamber of well-meaning but ultimately unrewarding and unchallenging sycophantic comments traded back and forth. The feedback loop we all enter into (your humble blogger included) can blind us to the other side of the issue (and there is always another side, even if it's ultimately not the right side after all). It's far easier to stay in our lane. It's also fun as hell to insult those who disagree with us.
I'm not about to give up speaking my mind when it comes to short-fingered megalomaniacs who have no business running a used-car dealership, much less a country. But I would hope that we all take a minute to acknowledge that "freedom of speech" and "freedom to be an asshole" don't mean the same things.
But perhaps my jabs at the Once and Future Internet Troll have already alienated you, if you're still reading. My bad.
Kurt Vonnegut has a line from Mother Night, which concerns an American spy living in Berlin during the Second World War who, in order to get information for the Allied war effort, has to pose as a rabble-rousing Nazi sympathizer (like "Tokyo Rose" or "Lord Haw-Haw"). Not to give anything away, but everyone who knew this character was a spy is either dead or not talking when the Israelis finally come for him. The line that I think bears repeating is "we must be careful about the things we pretend to be."
In a political season, it's easy to shout and bellow and yell. It's fun, really, and the feedback loop of likeminded people agreeing with you can be intoxicating. But I have a hard time believing that many of my conservative friends, people who seem to have deeply held beliefs that I may disagree with and fight against but which I do not doubt they believe in wholeheartedly, would embrace a man who doesn't have anything in common with the sainted "Ronnie" that many of them seem to think is just about to walk through that doorway all over again. I think they're pretending, talking themselves into being on the Trump train. Similarly, I'm talking myself into supporting Hillary. It's becoming easier to do when I consider that the other candidate is someone I would never vote for, but I'm not a Clinton booster. This election, both sides have been handed a candidate that maybe isn't all that great. Only one of them, I believe, would be a disaster as president, and it sure ain't the one who's had actual experience in government.
But again, I'm guessing if you don't agree with me, you've stopped reading by now.
It's easy to get behind a keyboard, to risk nothing by saying something that everyone in your circle will approve. But how many of you will actually get out from behind that monitor or put away that phone and risk yourselves, your beings?
In April, some friends of mine helped organize and stage a sit-in rally here at Clemson, demanding that more minority voices be heard and responded to in the wake of a racial incident which angered them and all right-thinking people on campus (you'd be surprised how many people didn't think it was such a big deal). They risked being kicked out of school. They risked arrest. Some of them were arrested. You don't have to agree with what they were protesting for, but you have to respect them. I respect them. It's easy to be brave, to pretend to be brave anyway, when you've got some distance between the words you use and the people they affect. Social media is a wonderful tool for enlightenment, but it can be used to build up barriers and refuse to see the common humanity shared with even our most fervent enemies. Don't be an internet troll, content to throw jabs that will get you multiple likes from the usual suspects. Be willing to admit when you're wrong (because news flash, you often will be), and be willing to learn from your mistakes (because you will make them).
Let me end with another Vonnegut quote: goddam it, babies, you've got to be kind.
Social media is fantastic, but it's also infantilizing. Trading insults once was the low-hanging fruit of internet trolls. Now one of those trolls is running for president (harsh, I know, but true). When it's at its best, social media can open our eyes to a side of the world or side of an issue that we may never have considered before; at its worst, it can create an echo chamber of well-meaning but ultimately unrewarding and unchallenging sycophantic comments traded back and forth. The feedback loop we all enter into (your humble blogger included) can blind us to the other side of the issue (and there is always another side, even if it's ultimately not the right side after all). It's far easier to stay in our lane. It's also fun as hell to insult those who disagree with us.
I'm not about to give up speaking my mind when it comes to short-fingered megalomaniacs who have no business running a used-car dealership, much less a country. But I would hope that we all take a minute to acknowledge that "freedom of speech" and "freedom to be an asshole" don't mean the same things.
But perhaps my jabs at the Once and Future Internet Troll have already alienated you, if you're still reading. My bad.
Kurt Vonnegut has a line from Mother Night, which concerns an American spy living in Berlin during the Second World War who, in order to get information for the Allied war effort, has to pose as a rabble-rousing Nazi sympathizer (like "Tokyo Rose" or "Lord Haw-Haw"). Not to give anything away, but everyone who knew this character was a spy is either dead or not talking when the Israelis finally come for him. The line that I think bears repeating is "we must be careful about the things we pretend to be."
In a political season, it's easy to shout and bellow and yell. It's fun, really, and the feedback loop of likeminded people agreeing with you can be intoxicating. But I have a hard time believing that many of my conservative friends, people who seem to have deeply held beliefs that I may disagree with and fight against but which I do not doubt they believe in wholeheartedly, would embrace a man who doesn't have anything in common with the sainted "Ronnie" that many of them seem to think is just about to walk through that doorway all over again. I think they're pretending, talking themselves into being on the Trump train. Similarly, I'm talking myself into supporting Hillary. It's becoming easier to do when I consider that the other candidate is someone I would never vote for, but I'm not a Clinton booster. This election, both sides have been handed a candidate that maybe isn't all that great. Only one of them, I believe, would be a disaster as president, and it sure ain't the one who's had actual experience in government.
But again, I'm guessing if you don't agree with me, you've stopped reading by now.
It's easy to get behind a keyboard, to risk nothing by saying something that everyone in your circle will approve. But how many of you will actually get out from behind that monitor or put away that phone and risk yourselves, your beings?
In April, some friends of mine helped organize and stage a sit-in rally here at Clemson, demanding that more minority voices be heard and responded to in the wake of a racial incident which angered them and all right-thinking people on campus (you'd be surprised how many people didn't think it was such a big deal). They risked being kicked out of school. They risked arrest. Some of them were arrested. You don't have to agree with what they were protesting for, but you have to respect them. I respect them. It's easy to be brave, to pretend to be brave anyway, when you've got some distance between the words you use and the people they affect. Social media is a wonderful tool for enlightenment, but it can be used to build up barriers and refuse to see the common humanity shared with even our most fervent enemies. Don't be an internet troll, content to throw jabs that will get you multiple likes from the usual suspects. Be willing to admit when you're wrong (because news flash, you often will be), and be willing to learn from your mistakes (because you will make them).
Let me end with another Vonnegut quote: goddam it, babies, you've got to be kind.
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Walking Life
It's the end of June, a month that has been eventful in the greater, outside world, with the good (Cavs winning) balanced out by the bad (Orlando) and everything in between. Because all the local libraries have the nerve to be patriotic, and also because I don't have wi-fi at the casa, I will be offline at least until the Fourth, after the libs close tomorrow afternoon for the holiday weekend.
If only the Brits had won...wait, would "Brexit" have happened if we were still property of the Queen?
Anyway, I'm coming to the end of the period I like to call "no payments for student loans or medical bills due," I've already mailed off the first payment for next month for the student loans and my medical bills will be paid via an arrangement I like to call "bleeding me dry if I don't get a job soon." Speaking of which, I have applications out there, no responses as yet. But some of the jobs I've applied for in teaching, they probably are waiting for a while before calling people like myself, who are qualified to teach. I figure by this time next month, it might be time to hit the "panic" button on the lack-of-incoming-cash department. But for now, I walk.
I started up walking again over at Sertoma Field ("Sertoma" being Cherokee for "made-up word coined by white people," I suppose. Though if I Google it after posting this and it turns out to be a real word, who's the racist then?). It usually takes about forty-five minutes to do three laps (well, it takes me forty-five minutes to do three laps), and it's a good way to meet people who like to run by while also saying good morning if they can be bothered. I'm not a hat-wearer per se, but I like to go walk before I even think about taking a shower, and my bedhead is best hidden under my twenty-odd-years-old Red Sox cap (from Starter, so it's got a band in the back to accommodate my oversized head). Plus, you tend to get sweaty from all that walking. So why not save some water and walk while you already stink? Stink some more! It's fun!
I got an iPod Shuffle back in May, it was almost a full month before I got it up and running (of the two thousand songs I have, it could load maybe 250. But I can't complain about the variety too much, even when I don't want to hear Van Morrison songs one right after the other. I like to mix it up). I like to have a soundtrack while I avoid the duck shit that's all over certain parts of the walking track. At Sertoma, as in life, a lot of your time will be spent avoiding duck shit. Look it up, it's in the Bible and the Bill of Rights. Generally, I have been walking pretty regularly in the mornings, at around nine; any later and, with the way the weather is going here in SC, I'd melt before I made it completely all the way around. And I'd melt into the duck shit on the paths. Nobody wants that.
By and large, I've done a lot of reading this past month, right now I'm almost three hundred pages into Infinite Jest. I like to head down to the Cooper lib and get online, the parking pass doesn't run out until early August so why not? I do miss the daily tumult of either teaching a class or preparing to teach one the next day; even after the clusterfuck that was April, I have to say that I enjoyed every last stress-inducing minute of the final build-up to graduation. As I didn't get into any MFA programs yet, I'll have to put off my exit from the state for a year, I guess. There's a lot of uncertainty in the near future, safe to say, and I imagine a lot of my fellow grads feel something similar. I guess that's why I took up walking again, even with all the duck shit to navigate: it's something that I have some control over, even if there's duck shit involved. And did I mention how the mama and papa ducks hiss at you if you walk too close to their babies?
At any rate, I walk to lose weight (which I *think* is starting to work), I walk to get exercise, I walk to get out of the house for a little bit, and I walk because I like to listen to music. And then I walk some more...
If only the Brits had won...wait, would "Brexit" have happened if we were still property of the Queen?
Anyway, I'm coming to the end of the period I like to call "no payments for student loans or medical bills due," I've already mailed off the first payment for next month for the student loans and my medical bills will be paid via an arrangement I like to call "bleeding me dry if I don't get a job soon." Speaking of which, I have applications out there, no responses as yet. But some of the jobs I've applied for in teaching, they probably are waiting for a while before calling people like myself, who are qualified to teach. I figure by this time next month, it might be time to hit the "panic" button on the lack-of-incoming-cash department. But for now, I walk.
I started up walking again over at Sertoma Field ("Sertoma" being Cherokee for "made-up word coined by white people," I suppose. Though if I Google it after posting this and it turns out to be a real word, who's the racist then?). It usually takes about forty-five minutes to do three laps (well, it takes me forty-five minutes to do three laps), and it's a good way to meet people who like to run by while also saying good morning if they can be bothered. I'm not a hat-wearer per se, but I like to go walk before I even think about taking a shower, and my bedhead is best hidden under my twenty-odd-years-old Red Sox cap (from Starter, so it's got a band in the back to accommodate my oversized head). Plus, you tend to get sweaty from all that walking. So why not save some water and walk while you already stink? Stink some more! It's fun!
I got an iPod Shuffle back in May, it was almost a full month before I got it up and running (of the two thousand songs I have, it could load maybe 250. But I can't complain about the variety too much, even when I don't want to hear Van Morrison songs one right after the other. I like to mix it up). I like to have a soundtrack while I avoid the duck shit that's all over certain parts of the walking track. At Sertoma, as in life, a lot of your time will be spent avoiding duck shit. Look it up, it's in the Bible and the Bill of Rights. Generally, I have been walking pretty regularly in the mornings, at around nine; any later and, with the way the weather is going here in SC, I'd melt before I made it completely all the way around. And I'd melt into the duck shit on the paths. Nobody wants that.
By and large, I've done a lot of reading this past month, right now I'm almost three hundred pages into Infinite Jest. I like to head down to the Cooper lib and get online, the parking pass doesn't run out until early August so why not? I do miss the daily tumult of either teaching a class or preparing to teach one the next day; even after the clusterfuck that was April, I have to say that I enjoyed every last stress-inducing minute of the final build-up to graduation. As I didn't get into any MFA programs yet, I'll have to put off my exit from the state for a year, I guess. There's a lot of uncertainty in the near future, safe to say, and I imagine a lot of my fellow grads feel something similar. I guess that's why I took up walking again, even with all the duck shit to navigate: it's something that I have some control over, even if there's duck shit involved. And did I mention how the mama and papa ducks hiss at you if you walk too close to their babies?
At any rate, I walk to lose weight (which I *think* is starting to work), I walk to get exercise, I walk to get out of the house for a little bit, and I walk because I like to listen to music. And then I walk some more...
Friday, June 24, 2016
Isolationism Is So 1941
If you're like me and you're waking up today (or, if like me you turned it to CNN right after "@midnight" and saw the news, you went to bed) with the news that the UK has left the EU, all because of something called the "Brexit vote," you are not alone. Also, you may want to make sure you didn't have anything invested in any English businesses, because their economy is in the shitter. Literally.
I have to admit that I'm not well-versed on what Brexit means (it sounds like a synth-pop duo from the Eighties, albeit a very racist and xenophobic one). But judging from the way it's being described online, it sounds like a really, really, really fucking stupid idea. Kind of like electing Trump over here.
By the way, that sentient bag of human fecal matter tweeted some sort of nonsense about the UK "taking their country back, like we will take back America." Can he be forced to stay in Scotland for the rest of his life? They know what to do with power-hungry despots over there (hey kids, ever read "Macbeth"?).
Anywho, it seems like the more the world is becoming connected, the easier it is for people to bemoan that connection (or, assuming that they don't know the meaning of the word "bemoan," bitch and complain about it). I know it's scary, and I know that it's not always fun to have connections to the outside world. But it's time for all of us to put on our big boy(or girl) pants and admit that hey, we're all connected. And not in a pseudo-hippie bullshit kind of way, either.
Isolationism, as sold to us most recently by Ron Paul, Rand Paul, and now Donald Trump, sounds fantastic. Hey, screw the rest of the world, we don't need nobody! But ask any of the members of famous bands who went off to do their solo careers (and whose names aren't John, Paul, George, or Ringo) how that worked out. Growing up in the Southern Baptist church, I heard all the time apocalyptic warnings about "the coming one-world government." It was supposed to set the plate for a ravenous Satan to feast upon all our souls, presumably while James Taylor blasted in the background.
Seriously, does anyone actually think the Evil One gets down to heavy metal? Please, Satan is an earworm junkie. How else to explain Justin Bieber?
Like I said, going it alone sounds like a great idea, whether you're a moody teenager or a country. But you need people (and other countries) in today's world. You cannot do it alone. Even solo acts need backing musicians.
I would like to point out that all this citation of musical metaphors is meant to cover the fact that I still am not 100 percent sure of what "Brexit" is. But I do know what isolationism is; it's an outmoded, outdated, and thoroughly discredited ideology that essentially gives a middle finger to the rest of the world and then shuts itself away in its room to listen to Goth music. Britain done fucked up, and I think we should take some pause before we similarly fuck up by electing Reichsfuhrer Trump in November.
I still think "Brexit" is a fantastic name for a synth-pop duo, by the way.
I have to admit that I'm not well-versed on what Brexit means (it sounds like a synth-pop duo from the Eighties, albeit a very racist and xenophobic one). But judging from the way it's being described online, it sounds like a really, really, really fucking stupid idea. Kind of like electing Trump over here.
By the way, that sentient bag of human fecal matter tweeted some sort of nonsense about the UK "taking their country back, like we will take back America." Can he be forced to stay in Scotland for the rest of his life? They know what to do with power-hungry despots over there (hey kids, ever read "Macbeth"?).
Anywho, it seems like the more the world is becoming connected, the easier it is for people to bemoan that connection (or, assuming that they don't know the meaning of the word "bemoan," bitch and complain about it). I know it's scary, and I know that it's not always fun to have connections to the outside world. But it's time for all of us to put on our big boy(or girl) pants and admit that hey, we're all connected. And not in a pseudo-hippie bullshit kind of way, either.
Isolationism, as sold to us most recently by Ron Paul, Rand Paul, and now Donald Trump, sounds fantastic. Hey, screw the rest of the world, we don't need nobody! But ask any of the members of famous bands who went off to do their solo careers (and whose names aren't John, Paul, George, or Ringo) how that worked out. Growing up in the Southern Baptist church, I heard all the time apocalyptic warnings about "the coming one-world government." It was supposed to set the plate for a ravenous Satan to feast upon all our souls, presumably while James Taylor blasted in the background.
Seriously, does anyone actually think the Evil One gets down to heavy metal? Please, Satan is an earworm junkie. How else to explain Justin Bieber?
Like I said, going it alone sounds like a great idea, whether you're a moody teenager or a country. But you need people (and other countries) in today's world. You cannot do it alone. Even solo acts need backing musicians.
I would like to point out that all this citation of musical metaphors is meant to cover the fact that I still am not 100 percent sure of what "Brexit" is. But I do know what isolationism is; it's an outmoded, outdated, and thoroughly discredited ideology that essentially gives a middle finger to the rest of the world and then shuts itself away in its room to listen to Goth music. Britain done fucked up, and I think we should take some pause before we similarly fuck up by electing Reichsfuhrer Trump in November.
I still think "Brexit" is a fantastic name for a synth-pop duo, by the way.
Friday, June 17, 2016
No Randy Quaid, No ID4
There's a lot of incredibly serious and depressing shit going on in the world this past week, in case you haven't noticed. So let me set your mind at ease by talking about something that is far, far less substantial or important...though of course, that's what the government wants you to believe.
I was in high school when the original Independence Day (also known as ID4, in an attempt to confuse people wondering where IDs 1-3 were, or maybe that's just me being silly) came out. I *think* I saw it during its original run, but I certainly saw it during what turned out to be the last of VHS's glory days (the late Nineties) on more than one occasion, and it sure seemed awesome at the time. Shit got blow'd up real good, and when you're a hormonal teenage boy that's what you went to movies to see (well, that and naked female chests, of which ID4 was bereft). Over time, as is often the case with things that we love when we're younger and stupider, I came to view ID4 as a cynical cash-grab by two directors who were clearly of the Michael Bay school of action shit (even if they pre-dated him or even inspired him, I lumped them in with Bay's amped-up uber-manly shitfests). This is not to say that ID4 is a bad movie; it's entertaining as hell when shit's getting blow'd up real good. But it's the alien invasion movie as popcorn thrill-ride, when more substantial and lasting alien movies (like Alien or The Thing, for instance) force us to confront more "realistic" instances of aliens among us (I use quotation marks because no one really knows how "reality" would be affected by contact with an alien species. My guess: we'd lose our shit).
Part of what makes me appreciate, to some extent, my own view of the film's faults is that it has quite possibly the most overwrought death scene in the history of cinema. I speak, of course, of former walking punchline (and current walking punchline, but for different reasons) Randy Quaid's heroic sacrifice to shove his plane up the alien ship's....well, just go watch it. I can wait, it's on YouTube.
Are you back? Good. Notice anything about that scene in particular? I am not a professional screenwriter, I don't know if it's hard to craft the perfect dialogue for anally probing (or perhaps acting as a human catheter on) an alien spaceship, knowing full well that you're a goner. But I'm guessing a roomful of actual monkeys chained to typewriters would write more convincing "last hurrah" dialogue than what comes out of Mr. Quaid's mouth. Why stop at one cliché when you can use them all? Really, we're in no hurry to bring this alien craft down, have your moment, Mr. Quaid!
It is shitty filmmaking par excellence.
So while I see this generation's ID4, with Goldblum and Pullman and even, for some reason, Brent Spiner back in it (spoiler alert: I thought his character died in the original, but I'm not a Hollywood scriptwriter), I say "that's nice, but where's your Randy Quaid-esque character or moment?" By the way, I have zero interest in seeing the new one. I find that remakes or reboots or re-imaginings sometimes stretch the credibility factor and indeed rarely justify their existence (there are exceptions to this rule, of course. But they're few and far between). And while the internet (read: lonely men) was getting itself in a tizzy over an all-female Ghostbusters, nary a word seems to be said about a Quaid-less ID4 (if Spiner can come back, why not Quaid? Maybe his proctology exam of the alien ship granted him an extra life or two?). I will be that voice in the wilderness, then, that one brave soul asking the question that no one in their right mind would ask because I have a lot of time on my hands and it's stupid and pointless and less depressing to think about than our country's sick obsession with firearms.
I'll be more than happy to accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom for this post, is what I'm saying.
Truly, in the history of cinema, in the history of chewing scenery, in the history of milking it for all it's worth, Randy Quaid in ID4's closing act cannot be beat. So maybe the new film won't even try. But where there's a will, there's a way. Nothing like a little elbow grease to get the job done. I'm coming, Elizabeth, and that's all she wrote. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. In the words of my generation, whatever...
I was in high school when the original Independence Day (also known as ID4, in an attempt to confuse people wondering where IDs 1-3 were, or maybe that's just me being silly) came out. I *think* I saw it during its original run, but I certainly saw it during what turned out to be the last of VHS's glory days (the late Nineties) on more than one occasion, and it sure seemed awesome at the time. Shit got blow'd up real good, and when you're a hormonal teenage boy that's what you went to movies to see (well, that and naked female chests, of which ID4 was bereft). Over time, as is often the case with things that we love when we're younger and stupider, I came to view ID4 as a cynical cash-grab by two directors who were clearly of the Michael Bay school of action shit (even if they pre-dated him or even inspired him, I lumped them in with Bay's amped-up uber-manly shitfests). This is not to say that ID4 is a bad movie; it's entertaining as hell when shit's getting blow'd up real good. But it's the alien invasion movie as popcorn thrill-ride, when more substantial and lasting alien movies (like Alien or The Thing, for instance) force us to confront more "realistic" instances of aliens among us (I use quotation marks because no one really knows how "reality" would be affected by contact with an alien species. My guess: we'd lose our shit).
Part of what makes me appreciate, to some extent, my own view of the film's faults is that it has quite possibly the most overwrought death scene in the history of cinema. I speak, of course, of former walking punchline (and current walking punchline, but for different reasons) Randy Quaid's heroic sacrifice to shove his plane up the alien ship's....well, just go watch it. I can wait, it's on YouTube.
Are you back? Good. Notice anything about that scene in particular? I am not a professional screenwriter, I don't know if it's hard to craft the perfect dialogue for anally probing (or perhaps acting as a human catheter on) an alien spaceship, knowing full well that you're a goner. But I'm guessing a roomful of actual monkeys chained to typewriters would write more convincing "last hurrah" dialogue than what comes out of Mr. Quaid's mouth. Why stop at one cliché when you can use them all? Really, we're in no hurry to bring this alien craft down, have your moment, Mr. Quaid!
It is shitty filmmaking par excellence.
So while I see this generation's ID4, with Goldblum and Pullman and even, for some reason, Brent Spiner back in it (spoiler alert: I thought his character died in the original, but I'm not a Hollywood scriptwriter), I say "that's nice, but where's your Randy Quaid-esque character or moment?" By the way, I have zero interest in seeing the new one. I find that remakes or reboots or re-imaginings sometimes stretch the credibility factor and indeed rarely justify their existence (there are exceptions to this rule, of course. But they're few and far between). And while the internet (read: lonely men) was getting itself in a tizzy over an all-female Ghostbusters, nary a word seems to be said about a Quaid-less ID4 (if Spiner can come back, why not Quaid? Maybe his proctology exam of the alien ship granted him an extra life or two?). I will be that voice in the wilderness, then, that one brave soul asking the question that no one in their right mind would ask because I have a lot of time on my hands and it's stupid and pointless and less depressing to think about than our country's sick obsession with firearms.
I'll be more than happy to accept the Presidential Medal of Freedom for this post, is what I'm saying.
Truly, in the history of cinema, in the history of chewing scenery, in the history of milking it for all it's worth, Randy Quaid in ID4's closing act cannot be beat. So maybe the new film won't even try. But where there's a will, there's a way. Nothing like a little elbow grease to get the job done. I'm coming, Elizabeth, and that's all she wrote. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. In the words of my generation, whatever...
Friday, June 3, 2016
The Last Stand of the Heterosexual White Male (And Why That's a Good Thing)
Everywhere on the internet, it seems, people are getting angry and yelling at one another. And usually it's because of Donald Trump. I am not here to slam him any more than I already have (though have you tried buying any Trump Steaks lately?), but to point to a larger issue that I think is driving his surge to future Fuehrer-dom, if it can't be stopped. The issue I speak about, of course, is the death of political incorrectness.
Any time I hear someone say aloud "well, we all have to be politically correct now," what I really hear is "I can't call blacks/Muslims/Hispanics/Jews/fill-in-the-blank what I really want to call them anymore." This may strike some of you as unfair, but this is my blog. You want to complain about it, start your own. Anyway, it's no secret why The Great Combover One is currently leading the GOP over a cliff of non-relevance no matter what happens in November: white people be tripping, yo.
Specifically, white heterosexual males (of which I am a member, though I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth it considering some of the company I have to keep).
During my TCTC days, we were told in Sociology that in twenty years, people of Mexican or Hispanic descent would be the majority in this country. Seeing as my last class at TCTC was twelve years ago, I'd say we're in the home stretch towards that goal being achieved. African-Americans may dominate our sports, music, and culture, but they're not a huge part of our overall population. And pretty soon, neither will we white folks be, at least in terms of dominance through sheer numbers.
All I can say is: thank fucking God.
For most of recorded history, people from the relatively small continent of Europe (and not even all of Europe; when was the last time thoughts of an Italian invasion stirred fear in anyone?) have kinda had the run of things, using their pale skin (from being so far from the sun, don't you know?) as some sort of indicator that they're better than anyone else (spoiler alert: we're not). From slavery to imperialism, colonialism to Colonial Williamsburg, we white men have had a lot to answer for, even if (as my family loves to remind me whenever I dare to be the only liberal in the room) some of us didn't have direct participation in ancient-history stuff (but here's the thing: that shit still has power over everything we do, and we don't acknowledge it at our peril). I think we white men have done some good things, to be sure: the Beatles, for one thing, and pizza. But that's an awful small amount of good to bring into the world when the balance is really scaled towards all the negative shit we've done, or has been done in our name. And it's not even stuff that we just did to "others." I'm pretty sure the Spanish Inquisition was more terrifying than anything Monty Python conceived of for the skit of the same name.
You'll notice I didn't say "we white people," because let's be honest: for most of history, women didn't mean shit to white men except as baby-makers and maybe mistresses when we got tired of making babies officially. Somehow giving you ladies the vote less than a hundred years ago means "we're good, right?" Considering how casually rape culture is taken by some of my fellow white men (most of them at Return of Kings), it's understandable that we are not, in fact, good.
So we (white men not named me) are scared of the coming loss of racial dominance, I guess. Tough shit, it's a thing and it's happening, and thank God for it. Someone else will be in charge now, as it should be. It might not happen this election cycle (hell, there may be enough crazy white people to elect a smooth-talking con artist to the highest office in the land; it's happened before), but it's coming, and soon. And we white men can be like Custer, kicking and screaming the whole way because our penis size is threatened. Or we can work with those communities that are rising up to dominate our country, and ensure that they know that we're allies, not enemies. This is a nation of immigrants, from all over the damn place. We white men have no special claim to being "American," not really.
But I'm guessing my friends who support Trump are going to hate this idea :-p
Any time I hear someone say aloud "well, we all have to be politically correct now," what I really hear is "I can't call blacks/Muslims/Hispanics/Jews/fill-in-the-blank what I really want to call them anymore." This may strike some of you as unfair, but this is my blog. You want to complain about it, start your own. Anyway, it's no secret why The Great Combover One is currently leading the GOP over a cliff of non-relevance no matter what happens in November: white people be tripping, yo.
Specifically, white heterosexual males (of which I am a member, though I'm beginning to wonder if it's worth it considering some of the company I have to keep).
During my TCTC days, we were told in Sociology that in twenty years, people of Mexican or Hispanic descent would be the majority in this country. Seeing as my last class at TCTC was twelve years ago, I'd say we're in the home stretch towards that goal being achieved. African-Americans may dominate our sports, music, and culture, but they're not a huge part of our overall population. And pretty soon, neither will we white folks be, at least in terms of dominance through sheer numbers.
All I can say is: thank fucking God.
For most of recorded history, people from the relatively small continent of Europe (and not even all of Europe; when was the last time thoughts of an Italian invasion stirred fear in anyone?) have kinda had the run of things, using their pale skin (from being so far from the sun, don't you know?) as some sort of indicator that they're better than anyone else (spoiler alert: we're not). From slavery to imperialism, colonialism to Colonial Williamsburg, we white men have had a lot to answer for, even if (as my family loves to remind me whenever I dare to be the only liberal in the room) some of us didn't have direct participation in ancient-history stuff (but here's the thing: that shit still has power over everything we do, and we don't acknowledge it at our peril). I think we white men have done some good things, to be sure: the Beatles, for one thing, and pizza. But that's an awful small amount of good to bring into the world when the balance is really scaled towards all the negative shit we've done, or has been done in our name. And it's not even stuff that we just did to "others." I'm pretty sure the Spanish Inquisition was more terrifying than anything Monty Python conceived of for the skit of the same name.
You'll notice I didn't say "we white people," because let's be honest: for most of history, women didn't mean shit to white men except as baby-makers and maybe mistresses when we got tired of making babies officially. Somehow giving you ladies the vote less than a hundred years ago means "we're good, right?" Considering how casually rape culture is taken by some of my fellow white men (most of them at Return of Kings), it's understandable that we are not, in fact, good.
So we (white men not named me) are scared of the coming loss of racial dominance, I guess. Tough shit, it's a thing and it's happening, and thank God for it. Someone else will be in charge now, as it should be. It might not happen this election cycle (hell, there may be enough crazy white people to elect a smooth-talking con artist to the highest office in the land; it's happened before), but it's coming, and soon. And we white men can be like Custer, kicking and screaming the whole way because our penis size is threatened. Or we can work with those communities that are rising up to dominate our country, and ensure that they know that we're allies, not enemies. This is a nation of immigrants, from all over the damn place. We white men have no special claim to being "American," not really.
But I'm guessing my friends who support Trump are going to hate this idea :-p
Saturday, May 21, 2016
The Smiths, "The Queen Is Dead"
Last week I woke up one morning sure that, when I turned on the TV, the news networks would be breaking from their regular Trump coverage to announce the death of Queen Elizabeth II (or "Liza," as her friends call her). I can't explain why this certainty came over me, if it was part of some left-over dream residue or a psychic malevolency on my part. Obviously, when I did turn on the TV there was no such breaking news. But given the fact that Liza did just celebrate her 90th birthday on this planet, the odds are in my favor that such a day will occur sooner rather than later.
I don't like authority figures, especially those whose authority is just assumed and not earned (or "earned" in quotation marks). In a country where we're this close to electing a self-important billionaire (or so he says...I think Donnie's facing another bankruptcy, hence the making of America great again) or the wife of a former president (so she's had experience hanging around the White House), I seem to be in the minority of folks who feel this way. All the Bernie Bros convince me of is that they'd be liking Trump if he wasn't playing the bigot card. I don't know what to think about for the fall, I almost wish we'd lost the Revolution now.
Britain, once our landlord, is still a country that we look to with what even the most Anglophile among us would regard as a simpering inferiority complex. And why not? They've got centuries of culture to our two (though said culture is way more racist and sexist when you take a closer look at it and get past the sexy accents), they often times make better music, and nobody does tuberculosis-ridden female novelists quite like the UK. But they have an archaic and borderline stupid devotion to a family of inbreds whose only claim to legitimacy is "we have been and always will be better than you."
I remember getting up super-early in the morning on the day William and Kate got married. I am anything but a royalist, but I had a bad attack of what I later learned were gallstones, and I was up anyway writhing in pain so I figured I'd check it out. To hear the way people talk about the royal family, and the two kids born since and how they'll "inherit the throne" once Liza checks out (I guess Chuck isn't in line for it anymore? I didn't get the memo on that one), I feel like shouting "constitutional monarchy" at the top of my lungs. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the Windsors are figureheads at this point. That is, they don't do anything but look pretty for the cameras and tourists. You know, Kardashians.
Maybe it's not so hard to understand why people are obsessed with them, then.
I came to loath the whole enterprise like countless American boys of my time: by reading John Lydon's autobiography Rotten. The once and future Sex Pistol unloads on the whole notion of inherited authority pretty well (my memory is hazy, but he did pen "God Save the Queen" so I feel I'm on good footing without having to refer to the memoir). What's more, about a dozen years later I stumbled across John Gardner's Grendel, which includes a paragraph that explains where royal "authority" gets off telling us mere mortals what to do (hint: it's similar to the whole "built another castle, that sank into the swamp" story from Monty Python and the Holy Grail). When it comes to the royals, there's an awful lot of wish fulfillment on the part of royal-watchers. Call it "crown envy" instead of penis envy, if you will. I don't understand it...unless, of course, I do.
You know how I mentioned the Pistols just now, and punk rock in general? That's my jam, frankly. I would love to travel back in time to around 1976 (when it was all getting started) right up to 1982 or so (Ian Curtis was dead, but punk was now "postpunk" or "New Wave" and just about to become ridiculous thanks to the New Romantics). So perhaps it's not all that weird to me how some people look to other cultures (and other timelines) to feel better about themselves. Growing up in a small town that I was convinced was devoid of culture, I looked at the world outside the confines of my town and wanted to be in that world (I was Ariel in The Little Mermaid, minus the ability to swim or the red hair). Looking at the wider world now, and how incredibly close we seem to be to some sort of apocalypse, I think maybe I was naïve back then. But I can be forgiven for it; I saw something attractive in a culture not my own and wanted to emulate it. It's not a sin (well, not until you start emulating Nazis and put people you don't like in camps, but that could never happen under any president, right?).
I thought, in my younger, more "radicalized" days, that when the Queen did throw off her mortal coil, I'd blast "The Queen Is Dead" at full volume. But the Queen is as much a flesh-and-blood human being as she is a figurehead (albeit a figurehead for a system that I still seem passionately opposed to, even though there's really no reason for me to still carry the punk-rock flag against the royals). In "The King's Speech," we even see her as a little girl, her daddy the guy who has to rally his country in the wake of Hitler's blitzkrieg. It's easy to forget that the figureheads we hate or love, at the end of the day, take a shit like the rest of us. That doesn't make our feelings any less valid, but it should regulate our behavior a little bit. So when Liza doffs her crazy hat one last time and exits stage left, I guess I'll try to take a minute to remember that she's somebody's mother/grandmother/great-grandmother. But after that moment, I still might queue up some Smiths or Sex Pistols. Because I'm human, too.
I don't like authority figures, especially those whose authority is just assumed and not earned (or "earned" in quotation marks). In a country where we're this close to electing a self-important billionaire (or so he says...I think Donnie's facing another bankruptcy, hence the making of America great again) or the wife of a former president (so she's had experience hanging around the White House), I seem to be in the minority of folks who feel this way. All the Bernie Bros convince me of is that they'd be liking Trump if he wasn't playing the bigot card. I don't know what to think about for the fall, I almost wish we'd lost the Revolution now.
Britain, once our landlord, is still a country that we look to with what even the most Anglophile among us would regard as a simpering inferiority complex. And why not? They've got centuries of culture to our two (though said culture is way more racist and sexist when you take a closer look at it and get past the sexy accents), they often times make better music, and nobody does tuberculosis-ridden female novelists quite like the UK. But they have an archaic and borderline stupid devotion to a family of inbreds whose only claim to legitimacy is "we have been and always will be better than you."
I remember getting up super-early in the morning on the day William and Kate got married. I am anything but a royalist, but I had a bad attack of what I later learned were gallstones, and I was up anyway writhing in pain so I figured I'd check it out. To hear the way people talk about the royal family, and the two kids born since and how they'll "inherit the throne" once Liza checks out (I guess Chuck isn't in line for it anymore? I didn't get the memo on that one), I feel like shouting "constitutional monarchy" at the top of my lungs. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the Windsors are figureheads at this point. That is, they don't do anything but look pretty for the cameras and tourists. You know, Kardashians.
Maybe it's not so hard to understand why people are obsessed with them, then.
I came to loath the whole enterprise like countless American boys of my time: by reading John Lydon's autobiography Rotten. The once and future Sex Pistol unloads on the whole notion of inherited authority pretty well (my memory is hazy, but he did pen "God Save the Queen" so I feel I'm on good footing without having to refer to the memoir). What's more, about a dozen years later I stumbled across John Gardner's Grendel, which includes a paragraph that explains where royal "authority" gets off telling us mere mortals what to do (hint: it's similar to the whole "built another castle, that sank into the swamp" story from Monty Python and the Holy Grail). When it comes to the royals, there's an awful lot of wish fulfillment on the part of royal-watchers. Call it "crown envy" instead of penis envy, if you will. I don't understand it...unless, of course, I do.
You know how I mentioned the Pistols just now, and punk rock in general? That's my jam, frankly. I would love to travel back in time to around 1976 (when it was all getting started) right up to 1982 or so (Ian Curtis was dead, but punk was now "postpunk" or "New Wave" and just about to become ridiculous thanks to the New Romantics). So perhaps it's not all that weird to me how some people look to other cultures (and other timelines) to feel better about themselves. Growing up in a small town that I was convinced was devoid of culture, I looked at the world outside the confines of my town and wanted to be in that world (I was Ariel in The Little Mermaid, minus the ability to swim or the red hair). Looking at the wider world now, and how incredibly close we seem to be to some sort of apocalypse, I think maybe I was naïve back then. But I can be forgiven for it; I saw something attractive in a culture not my own and wanted to emulate it. It's not a sin (well, not until you start emulating Nazis and put people you don't like in camps, but that could never happen under any president, right?).
I thought, in my younger, more "radicalized" days, that when the Queen did throw off her mortal coil, I'd blast "The Queen Is Dead" at full volume. But the Queen is as much a flesh-and-blood human being as she is a figurehead (albeit a figurehead for a system that I still seem passionately opposed to, even though there's really no reason for me to still carry the punk-rock flag against the royals). In "The King's Speech," we even see her as a little girl, her daddy the guy who has to rally his country in the wake of Hitler's blitzkrieg. It's easy to forget that the figureheads we hate or love, at the end of the day, take a shit like the rest of us. That doesn't make our feelings any less valid, but it should regulate our behavior a little bit. So when Liza doffs her crazy hat one last time and exits stage left, I guess I'll try to take a minute to remember that she's somebody's mother/grandmother/great-grandmother. But after that moment, I still might queue up some Smiths or Sex Pistols. Because I'm human, too.
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