tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80677552024-03-07T19:44:48.026-05:00No one cares what I thinkAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.comBlogger384125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-15201430710761242092016-02-14T13:19:00.000-05:002016-02-14T13:19:07.414-05:00Snobbery: Bad for BusinessWhile making coffee with my new French Press today, I remembered a time maybe eight or nine years ago when I was just really getting into beer, which had a domino effect of me getting into other foodie stuff like some foods, tea and coffee. Since local coffee shops are all over the place, I would often pop my head into a coffee shop on a Sunday afternoon to try something I've never had before and see if I liked it. This is the way you learn about things.<br />
<br />
One day in what must have been 2007 or 2008, or maybe later, who cares, I went to a coffee shop and I looked at their chalkboard menu. There was nobody in the coffee shop and one barista behind the counter. I was a coffee newb, and still drank it with a lot of cream and sugar, before I started going black. (They were right, I never went back.)<br />
<br />
I knew a few things about coffee back then: Espresso is spelled with an "S" and not an "X"; French roasts were generally a bit darker than Colombian; and Caffe Americano is basically half coffee, half water, since Americans during the War were such pansies about coffee that they couldn't handle the strength. (It's basically an anti-American joke, and I am nothing if not a LOYAL AMERICAN, so no, I won't order that.)<br />
<br />
I wanted something strong, so I saw what was called "French Press," which at the time I didn't know wasn't a type of coffee, but rather a brewing method. I thought that was a little odd, since the other menu items were types of beans, and this one was the way they brew it. But whatever, no biggie, it was on my list, so I was going to try it.<br />
<br />
So I stepped up the counter -- and I get nervous at coffee counters since I don't really know what I'm talking about -- and I asked if I could get a French Press coffee. The barista sort of sized me up, and asked me "Do you know what that is?" and immediately put me on the defensive. It seemed like she was trying to talk me out of it.<br />
<br />
What I didn't know then was that French Press coffee, while delightful through and through, is a pain in the ass to make. There are a few steps and you have to wait for water to do its thing and then you have to clean all the different parts. It's not easy. It's worth it, but it's not easy.<br />
<br />
But this barista, whose job, I might add, is to make me coffee in exchange for money, clearly did not want to make this French Press for me. Not only was it going to be a pain in the ass for her, but I was so clearly out of my depth that I wouldn't have appreciated it anyway. She made me feel very small and very dumb. And instead I ordered a mochaccino or hazelnut or something I've had a hundred times. While I can't say this experience soured me on trying new coffee types, it made me reticent to try new things off a menu because I can feel the baristas judging me.<br />
<br />
But for some reason, today, while I was cleaning out my French Press, I thought to myself, what the hell difference does it make whether I know what a French Press is or not? It's on the menu, you know how to make it, what the hell business is it of your whether I have a familiarity with the brewing process? That's what I pay <u>you</u> for.<br />
<br />
What I should have said was "NO, I don't know what a French Press is, but you can go ahead and get me one." I'm not one of these The Customer Is Always Right people because customers are usually assholes. But I wasn't being an asshole, I was ordering from the menu. If I was a bartender at a good beer bar, and someone ordered something weird, I wouldn't be like "Do you even know what that is?" I might say, "You're aware that's very sour, right?" or "Have you had it before, would you like a sample?" But I wouldn't talk them out of it because maybe it's difficult to pour.<br />
<br />
If I go to one of those frozen yogurt or gelato places where they have like 50 flavors, I don't run into this. If I've never had pistachio, and I want to know what pistachio tastes like, I will say to the person behind the counter, "Hi, I'll try the pistachio." The person wouldn't sniff at me and say "Do you even know if you like pistachio? Why don't you try this nice vanilla, it's nice and safe for you, ya n00b."<br />
<br />
I used to work at a video store, and people would rent the worst crap on earth. If they asked me if I had seen something and if I would recommend it, I would give my honest opinion. But if someone came up to the counter with "Chasing Amy," I wouldn't tell them "Are you <u>sure</u> you want to rent this? You know we have like a thousand good movies, right? Let me get you a Andrei Tarkovsky movie instead."<br />
<br />
The barista could have used this opportunity to take 30 seconds to educate me about what the French Press was, what its advantages are (such as no filtering out of its essential oils, its biggest advantage), and told me that it would take about 5-7 minutes to make, to at least give me an out and allowing me to save face. (I could have said something like, "Oh I'm in a hurry, so in that case I'll just take a regular old cup of joe!") But instead, she was either lazy or condescending or a combination of both, and now I just drink beer before work instead.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-64478655929742973992016-01-31T21:50:00.000-05:002016-01-31T21:50:19.405-05:00Academy Award Corrections: On the SixesSo now that we are in 2016, and Oscar time is nigh, it's a good idea to check out how well the Academy Awards do with hindsight as our friend. We have already talked about the <a href="http://billherb.blogspot.com/2015/03/academy-award-corrections-on-fives.html" target="_blank">Fives</a> and the <a href="http://billherb.blogspot.com/2015/01/academy-awards-corrections-on-fours.html" target="_blank">Fours</a>, so today we're going to talk about the Sixes, which is only appropriate, since that gives us a solid nine years of perspective at minimum.<br />
<br />
I'm actually going to skip over 1966 this for the moment because I realized that I've only seen like four movies from that year, and don't really remember the ones that I have seen. One of these days I may breeze through all of them so I could get a good sense of what was good that year. For the record, here were the nominees that year:<br />
<br />
<b>1966 ACADEMY AWARDS (39th Annual)</b><br />
The Actual Nominees:<br />
<ul>
<li>A Man for All Seasons (Dir. Fred Zinneman)</li>
<li>Alfie (Dir. Lewis Gilbert)</li>
<li>The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming (Dir. Norman Jewison)</li>
<li>The Sand Pebbles (Dir. Robert Wise)</li>
<li>Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf (Dir. Mike Nichols)</li>
</ul>
I've seen <i>Virginia Woolf</i> and the first half hour of <i>The Russians are Coming</i>. I'm going to get cultured soon.<br />
<br />
Let's skip to our nation's bicentennial, 1976, a great year for American cinema and the year that your humble narrator was brought forth into this world.<br />
<br />
<b>1976 ACADEMY AWARDS (49th Annual)</b><br />
The Actual Nominees:<br />
<ul>
<li>Rocky (Dir. John G. Avildsen) (<span style="color: red;"><b>WINNER</b></span>)</li>
<li>All the President's Men (Dir. Alan J. Pakula)</li>
<li>Bound for Glory (Dir. Hal Ashby)</li>
<li>Network (Dir. Sidney Lumet)</li>
<li>Taxi Driver (Dir. Martin Scorsese)</li>
</ul>
Three of these movies are among the greatest of the 1970s, if not of all time, all for completely different reasons: <i>Network</i> is an absolutely spot-on satire of the insanity/inanity of broadcast television that probably seemed over the top in 1976, but is positively tame by comparison forty years later. <i>Taxi Driver</i> is considered by some to be the best movie of the 1970s; it captures the paranoia, loneliness and disillusionment of the post-Vietnam era. And <i>All the President's Men</i> is a ripped-from-the-headlines procedural about the Watergate scandal, just two years after it actually happened! It's a cathartic, cleansing film that gives Americans permission to feel okay about hating politicians.<br />
<br />
<i>Rocky</i>? Well <i>Rocky</i> is a feel-good movie, at least toward the end, but there is a hell of a lot of slow, grimy Filth-adelphia business that has a lot of great scenes between Stallone and Burgess Meredith, and a lot of rousing boxing scenes at the end. I'm guessing that voters and audiences were still on a rah-rah high by the time voting came around, because of the nominees here, <i>Rocky</i> holds up the least.<br />
<br />
I've never seen Bound for Glory, but considering nobody ever talks about it anymore, I can assume maybe it would have been the odd man out.<br />
<br />
Movies that could have been considered:<br />
<ul>
<li>Carrie (Dir. Brian De Palma)</li>
<li>Marathon Man (Dir. John Schlesinger)</li>
<li>The Seven Per Cent Solution (Dir. Herbert Ross)</li>
<li>Seven Beauties (Dir. Lina Wertmuller)</li>
</ul>
<div>
<i>Carrie</i> isn't really Oscar bait, when all is said and done: it's a genre/exploitation pic that happens to still hold up years later, trading on the same isolation/disillusionment wish-fulfillment/fantasy that <i>Taxi Driver</i> does. But let's face it, it's still a Brian De Palma movie. <i>Seven Beauties</i> was kind of a darling back then, but boy does it not hold up; it feels like a new-wave film from ten years prior.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
The 20/20 Hindsight Nominees:<br />
<ul>
<li><b>All the President's Men</b> <b>(<span style="color: lime;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>Marathon Man</li>
<li>Network </li>
<li>Rocky </li>
<li>Taxi Driver</li>
</ul>
<div>
This one surprises even me! I am a devout Scorsese fanboy, and I am a huge admirer of <i>Network</i>, but in terms of pure filmmaking, I think <i>All the President's Men</i> is both the most enjoyable and the one that holds up the best decades later. Every journalism procedural that has come after it owes it a debt: it takes a complex, weighty story (one that could have been incredibly dry and boring) and makes it tense, compelling and suspenseful. I do think it's a shame that they didn't have any idea how to end it, because that teletype in the final minute is the only flaw in an otherwise near-perfect film.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>1986 ACADEMY AWARDS (59th Annual)</b><br />
The Actual Nominees:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><b>Platoon (Dir. Oliver Stone) (<span style="color: red;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>Children of a Lesser God (Dir. Randa Haines)</li>
<li>Hannah and Her Sisters (Dir. Woody Allen)</li>
<li>The Mission (Dir. Roland Joffe)</li>
<li>A Room With a View (Dir. James Ivory)</li>
</ul>
<div>
<i>Platoon</i> is still very effective thirty years after the fact, even though it's as subtle as a brick to the face. C<i>hildren of a Lesser God</i> is a really beautiful little story about the kinds of barriers that prevent people from connecting. I haven't seen <i>The Mission</i>, and <i>A Room With a View</i> bored the living shit out of me.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Movies that could have been considered:</div>
</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Blue Velvet (Dir. David Lynch)</li>
<li>Hoosiers (Dir. David Anspaugh)</li>
<li>The Color of Money (Dir. Martin Scorsese)</li>
<li>Jean de Florette/Manon of the Spring (Dir. Claude Berri)</li>
</ul>
<div>
<i>Blue Velvet</i> was a full decade ahead of its time in terms of its nightmarish narrative and shock value. The <i>Jean de Florette/Manon</i> double feature is one of the best double-feature morality plays of the 1980s, and even thought it's a simple story, it sure as shit packs a punch. <i>The Color of Money</i> isn't one of Marty's best, but it did win Paul Newman the Oscar; and it's a hell of a lot of fun. <i>Hoosiers</i> may be the greatest sports movie ever made.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The 20/20 Hindsight Nominees:</div>
</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><b>Hannah and Her Sisters (<span style="color: lime;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>Blue Velvet</li>
<li>Children of a Lesser God</li>
<li>Hoosiers</li>
<li>Platoon</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
I rewatched <i>Hannah</i> recently, and although it feels very dated, it holds up as a singular work of a visionary writer-director. It hits all the Oscar beats: a "serious" movie with a lot of humor; an actor who also directs and stars in his own work; a love triangle; a redemption story; and an exploration of the ennui of the affluent. I think that <i>Hoosiers</i> may be the most purely pleasurable movie for me on this list, but it's less Oscar-y than these other four nominees.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>1996 ACADEMY AWARDS (69th Annual)</b><br />
The Actual Nominees:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><b>The English Patient (Dir. Anthony Minghella) (<span style="color: red;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>Fargo (Dir. Joel Coen)</li>
<li>Jerry Maguire (Dr. Cameron Crowe)</li>
<li>Secrets and Lies (Dir. Mike Leigh)</li>
<li>Shine (Dir. Scott Hicks)</li>
</ul>
<div>
This was another one of those "strong years," and it was right in middle of the apex of the merging of the indie cinema and studio sensibilities, where directors were making personal but commercially-successful movies that were also critically acclaimed. </div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>The English Patient</i> is classic Oscar bait, and it kind of gets a lot of shit for it, not entirely unjustifiably so. Although it's a solid movie, it hits all the beats that Oscar loves: a love triangle, a period film, foreign lands, flashbacks, people with deformities or disabilities (which this year had plenty of, especially in the Best Actor category). I don't know a single person who thinks <i>The English Patient</i> was the best movie of 1996, nor did I know many people who thought it was <i>in 1996</i>.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I'm actually surprised to see <i>Shine</i> and <i>Secrets and Lies</i> in this list, as I had forgotten they were nominated. <i>Secrets and Lies</i> is one of those great little English indie films, with a great script and great performances; it's a difficult watch at times, but very rewarding. If you know Mike Leigh's oeuvre, this is among the best. <i>Shine</i> is not, in my opinion, a "great" film, but it has one of the great all-time performances by Geoffrey Rush as eccentric (to say the least) pianist David Helfgott. <i>Jerry Maguire</i> belongs nowhere near a Best Picture list.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Movies that could have been considered:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Breaking the Waves (Dir. Lars von Trier)</li>
<li>Sling Blade (Dir. Billy Bob Thornton)</li>
<li>The Birdcage (Dir. Mike Nichols)</li>
<li>Sleepers (Dir. Barry Levinson)</li>
<li>Lone Star (Dir. John Sayles)</li>
</ul>
<div>
If you had bet me $1,000 that <i>Sling Blade</i> wasn't originally nominated, you would have taken a cool grand from me. I totally thought it was a Best Pic nominee. It's one of the five strongest films of the year, easily. <i>The Birdcage</i> got no love because it's a comedy, but it's one of the most well-written movies of that year, and one of the funniest movies of the 1990s, period. It was one of the best theater-going experiences I've ever had.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>Sleepers</i> and <i>Lone Star</i> might be kind of a stretch, but the former addresses weighty issues of child sexual abuse and juvenile crime, and the latter is an expertly-crafted mystery that has a killer twist that makes it look totally different on a second viewing.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>Breaking the Waves</i> is one of the most beautiful movies of that era, and it would have been nice if Lars von Trier had continued down that path instead of trying to become Gaspar Noe lite. He's never made a better film and may never again.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The 20/20 Hindsight Nominees:</div>
</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><b>Fargo (<span style="color: lime;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>The Birdcage</li>
<li>Breaking the Waves</li>
<li>Secrets and Lies</li>
<li>Sling Blade</li>
</ul>
<div>
Twenty years later, people still point to this Academy Awards ceremony as one of the biggest travesties. <i>Fargo</i> is not only the best movie of 1996, it's one of the twenty best movies of the last quarter-century. It has everything: script, performance, direction, cinematography, text, subtext, mystery, suspense, humor, violence, character study. It's nearly perfect. But this is the kind of thing that the Oscars fuck up all the time: they pick a More Important movie instead of the best goddamn movie of the year. The 1996 Oscars are pretty much the reason I started this little exercise in the first place.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>2006 ACADEMY AWARDS (79th Annual)</b></div>
<div>
The Actual Nominees:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><b>The Departed (Dir. Martin Scorsese) (<span style="color: red;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>Babel (Dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu)</li>
<li>Letters from Iwo Jima (Dir. Clint Eastwood)</li>
<li>Little Miss Sunshine (Dirs. Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris)</li>
<li>The Queen (Dir. Stephen Frears)</li>
</ul>
<div>
Movies that could have been considered:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Borat (Dir. Larry Charles)</li>
<li>Children of Men (Dir. Alfonso Cuaron)</li>
<li>Dreamgirls (Dir. Bill Condon)</li>
<li>The Fountain (Dir. Darren Aronofsky)</li>
<li>Friends with Money (Dir. Nicole Holofcener)</li>
<li>Little Children (Dir. Todd Field)</li>
<li>The Lives of Others (Dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)</li>
<li>Pan's Labyrinth (Dir. Guillermo del Toro)</li>
<li>The Prestige (Dir. Christopher Nolan)</li>
<li>United 93 (Dir. Paul Greengrass)</li>
<li>The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Dir. Ken Loach)</li>
</ul>
<div>
The year 2006 had such an embarrassment of great movies that it's unbelievable that they landed on the nominees that they did. <i>Letters from Iwo Jima</i>? Come on. <i>Little Miss Sunshine</i>? It's cute enough, but give me a break. <i>Babel</i>? <i>BABEL</i>? That movie is a steaming pile of shit. It's amazing that of the Mexican Triad, Iñárritu's pretentious blather got a nod over two of the most relevatory movies of the year in <i>Pan's Labyrinth</i> and <i>Children of Men</i>.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There were so many damn good films in 2006; the ones listed above don't even count the really, really solid ones that came out. Ten years after the <i>Fargo</i>/<i>English Patient</i> debacle, Oscar voters were still making truly questionable choices of nominees. But they still got one thing right....</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The 20/20 Hindsight Nominees:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><b>The Departed (Dir. Martin Scorsese) (<span style="color: lime;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>Borat (Dir. Larry Charles)</li>
<li>Children of Men (Dir. Alfonso Cuaron)</li>
<li>The Lives of Others (Dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck)</li>
<li>United 93 (Dir. Paul Greengrass)</li>
</ul>
<div>
</div>
</div>
<div>
Finally, Marty Scorsese gets his rightful statues for Best Picture and Best Director; the fact that he previously got robbed by Robert Redford in '80 and by Kevin Costner in '90 make this win for <i>The Departed</i> -- which I still think is the best movie of 2006, and one of the five best films of the decade -- that much more satisfying and justified. </div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I think that <i>Borat</i> and <i>Children of Men</i> have only grown in stature over the last decade, so much so that it's hard to believe they are turning ten this year. <i>Borat</i> is a snapshot of America in the middle of the Bush years, and it will serve as a cultural artifact for decades to come. <i>Children of Men</i> is the perfect combination of dystopian nightmare and race against the clock. <i>United 93</i> ... well it's impossible that the first great 9/11 movie got snubbed just five years after the event.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I can't wait to do more of these later. It makes me remember how much I love all these films, and makes me want to get cracking on the ones I've missed. It also makes me realize that although <i>The Revenant</i> will likely sweep through the Oscars this year, that doesn't mean we won't re-evaluate it ten years down the road and conclude that <i>Sicario</i> is a much better and much more worthy film.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-33651692398768850162015-04-01T00:01:00.000-04:002015-04-01T00:02:38.443-04:00In Defense of Labels...<div>
Somewhere along the way -- I'm guessing in the late 1980s -- it became <i>declasse</i> to "label." Probably as a response to things like the Civil Rights Amendment, the Equal Rights Amendment, and various minority groups gaining more and more equality. So the days of rich white men "labeling" women and minorities (with stereotypes and false prejudices) were numbered, and the act of labeling people was considered a vestige of a more primitive time.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Naturally, since people are stupid, anti-labeling wasn't relegated to the negativity of racism, gender politics, sexual orientation, and class warfare, but to other walks of life. "You don't have to put a label on it" started to apply to other things, like internal feelings, people's personalities, and the arts. And while this is admirable to a certain extent, it suddenly became not okay to label anger "anger," and an asshole "an asshole." Every emotion was a complex bundle of stimuli from one's biological makeup and their upbringing. And people who were clearly scumbags were "more complex than that" and nice people "once you got to know them."</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Fine, I am willing to look at the complexity in human nature and refrain from boiling a complex system of nerves and electric brainwaves down to a glib, reductive sound byte that doesn't tell the whole story. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There is something a bit chilling, even, about the way we label things like politics, where every politician that makes an appearance on television has (R) or (D) after their name, as if they are sorted into one of two camps. This kind of information used to be instructive, so as to indicate a person's political bent. But now, since the tail wags the dog, the (R)s and (D)s are actually a kind of badge that a politician has to live up to. If you are, for example, a REPUBLICAN IN NAME ONLY, you are probably human garbage, worse than a (D) and unworthy of having the blessed (R) before your name. Instead of forming an ethos and then picking a camp, your camp picks your ethos for you. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This is very troublesome and yet it's a topic for another day. For today I speak to you of labels in music. And I don't mean record labels, nor Parental Advisory labels, but rather genre and subgenre labels that I think are absolutely crucial to one's enjoyment and understanding of music itself.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iFQekXk7CYo" width="459"></iframe></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
One of the most annoying things that I can hear from a modern musical artist is "I don't want to put a label on my music." You hear this from people like Kanye and Madonna, and you usually hear it after they have built up a nice little career staying in their lane, doing the kind of thing they're good at, right before they veer off into some weird direction. So in order to prevent himself from being labeled exclusively a "hip hop artist," Kanye has to do things like make songs using Auto-Tune, or with Bon Iver, or make all his SNL appearances look like undergraduate performance art pieces. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But you know what I like about Kanye? When Kanye is doing things like "Through the Wire," or "Gold Digger," or "O.T.I.S." Do you know what those songs have in common? They are soulful, they use breakbeats and traditional hip-hop samples, and they don't add in pretentious bullshit.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But Bill, you are probably saying, Kanye is a capital-A artist, and he has the right to make any kind of music he wants to. And you're absolutely right. What he doesn't have the right to do, in my humble opinion, is continuing to carry the flag of hip-hop (and "hip-hoppers," if people are still using that term) when he is making watered-down, cross-bred music that has nothing to do with the music I grew up listening to.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Kanye is a perfect test case here, because he started out as a regular Chicago rapper, hanging out with Common and John Legend and the Roots, making what those of us in the know very condescendingly call "real hip hop." But the problem is that in the last 15-20 years, Kanye, as big a megastar as he's become, has completely abandoned the aesthetic of what hip-hop used to be. And he's taken the entire hip hop industry with him!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So instead of Kanye making different types of songs and calling it "branching out" from hip-hop -- into soul, pop, electro, what have you -- the stuff that he does now is considered the New Hip-Hop. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And it stinks.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I want no part of this new hip-hop. There are a couple of good, new artists out there that I like well enough -- Kendrick Lamar, Earl Sweatshirt, Action Bronson, Chance, Pusha-T (sometimes) -- but they are really exceptions to the rule. They are putting out what we'd call "boom bap" hip hop, which is the kind of shit I want to hear. The rest of the current class (guys like A$AP Rocky, Wale, Gucci Mane, Wiz Khalifa, to name a few) are doing things that are very popular, but to me it all sounds like utter garbage. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Which brings me to my original point: I need labels.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I used to be a true expert on hip-hop and hip-hop culture. Though I grew up in a suburban/college-educated setting, I was an absolute omnivore when it came to rap music. (And my memory is so shitty that I can legitimately say that I've forgotten more about rap music than most people ever knew.) But today, I am no expert. And part of the reason is that I don't have the time nor the energy to sift through all the bullshit that passes for "hip-hop" these days to get to the stuff I want. And that makes me sad.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Finding new hip-hop songs and artists used to be one of the legitimate thrills of life in my teens and 20s. I have tapes upon tapes upon tapes that I would collect from record stores. I could recite entire albums front to back (still can in some cases). I was able to tell which rapper was with which clique, who hard worked with whom, who had beef, etc. And my knowledge of the intertexuality and meta nature of the music itself -- arguably the thing that drew me to it in the first place -- was peerless; the Venn diagram of popular culture and rap lyrics was always a fascination with me, and still is.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
It goes without saying that this applies to other genres of music too. I'm not saying that I have to be married to one genre of music or another -- I have around 1,500 albums and the selection is eclectic. But I definitely need labels not only so I can explore the stuff I might like, but to prevent myself from wasting my time with shit I hate.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A good example of this is country music: as a rule, I will always say "I fucking HHHHHAAAAAAATE country." And for the most part I do: country music that is on the radio or being given awards on Sunday night television can eat my shit. If you like it, that's fine, I will not waste one second of my precious time on earth listening to that rubbish. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But there are a couple country-ISH things that I don't mind listening to. I enjoy the southern guitar pickin' of John Fahey. I like bluegrass and fiddle music quite a bit. And if it's folk, it can turn a bit country and still be okay. I don't like twang, I don't like slide guitar, and I hate the sentimental story-song. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As mentioned before, there is a subgenre of rap and hip-hop informally known as "boom bap," a term coined by either KRS-ONE or Q-Tip ca. 1993. And boom-bap is miles way from (and streets ahead of) the kind of rap that is popular today. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If I am going to take a chance on a new hip-hop album, I need to know about it. Back in 1991, you could take a chance on a tape at Camelot records based on one video you saw on <i>Yo! MTV Raps </i>the day before, and probably 80% of the time or better, you would have yourself a solid album. Now, that is impossible. I haven't found a wall-to-wall great hip-hop album since maybe Cannibal Ox's <i>The Cold Vein</i>, in 2001! To try and buy a hip hop album today, in 2015, would be a fool's errand. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But when I know that the album isn't just a rap/hip-hop album, but a <u>Boom Bap album</u>, I can give it more of a listen. Not because I need to pigeonhole my tastes, but because I know that a boom bap album will have the elements that I like: breakbeats, soul samples, kick-drums on the 2's and 4's, clever punchlines, call-and-response refrains rather than repetitive 8-bar choruses. This is what I like, and I have the right to like it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So whenever someone says "Hey man, it's music, don't try to label it," I'm going to make a mix tape for them in which I put nothing but binaural drone, ambient street sounds and Yoko Ono's screeching and tell them to be more open-minded about their musical tastes.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-21264548816269019792015-03-09T21:26:00.000-04:002015-03-15T15:57:39.759-04:00Academy Award Corrections: On the Fives<br />
When your intrepid blogger <a href="http://billherb.blogspot.com/2015/01/academy-awards-corrections-on-fours.html">last left you</a>, he was wasting a great deal of time thinking about movies from long, long ago, as an overreaction to a podcast he was listening to. Now, since this past year's Academy Awards have completed -- and buoyed by the discovery of the wonderful <a href="http://letterboxd.com/BillShannon/">Letterboxd </a>website -- he is in list mode again, ready to revisit cinema of the last 50 years, ten years at a time. This time, we are going to explore the fives.<br />
<br />
Like last time, I'm only going back as far as the 1960s, for a couple reasons: 1) I don't really know much about cinema before 1960, with only a passing familiarity with some of the works of Billy Wilder and Akira Kurosawa, mostly. (I don't have much of a grasp of the other auteurs of that era.) 2) Let's face it, since only 14 movies came out every year back then, it was hard for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to screw it up. Yes, the Academy notoriously snubbed <i>Citizen Kane</i> in 1941 in favor of the middling, forgotten <i>How Green Was My Valley</i>, but they got a lot right. Even the 19th Academy Awards snubbed It's <i>A Wonderful Life</i> in favor of <i>The Best Years of Our Lives</i>, which, minus all the sentimentality, is a superior film!<br />
<br />
Again, this is a kind of combination of my own personal tastes and the longevity of the films in question. I will show you the movies that were nominated in 1965, 1975, 1985, 1995 and 2005, and then the ones that should have been nominated for each year. I will pick movies that were legitimately "Oscar Worthy," both in quality and scope. (I won't throw in any obscure nanobudget indie flick and stomp my feet that it somehow got overlooked; you know what movies are "Oscar movies" and ones that aren't, even if the ones that aren't are generally superior films.)<br />
<br />
This exercise serves a few purposes: it is a check on the Academy, it is a survey and snapshot of the best of film in any given year, and it is (to me) an interesting look back at what films were part of "the zeitgeist" and which ones stood the test of time. Here goes!<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>1965 ACADEMY AWARDS (38th Annual)</b><br />
<br />
The Actual Nominees:<br />
<ul>
<li><b>The Sound of Music (Director: Robert Wise) (<span style="color: red;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>Doctor Zhivago (Dir.: David Lean)</li>
<li>Darling (Dir.: John Schlesinger)</li>
<li>A Thousand Clowns (Dir.: Fred Coe)</li>
<li>Ship of Fools (Dir.: Stanley Kramer)</li>
</ul>
<div>
Okay I'm gonna be straight up with you here: <i>The Sound of Music</i> is the only one of these movies I've seen. I know that I am supposed to have seen <i>Dr. Zhivago</i>, but it's like four f*cking hours long, and I haven't had the gumption. I've actually never even heard of the other three, but here are the summaries: <i>Ship of Fools</i> is about a bunch of people on a Nazi-era boat bound for Germany; <i>Darling</i> is about Julie Christie acting like a Kardashian; <i>A Thousand Clowns</i> sounds like a sitcom, where Jason Robards has to put on a charade to make it look like he would be a good legal guardian.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I am not off to a strong start, but to be fair, this was back in a time when there were separate categories for "Art Direction Black & White" and "Art Direction Color." And really, none of the movies from that era are memorable. In fact, these are the nominees I know of (read: not necessarily seen) from 1965, barely a decade before my inauspicious arrival on this planet: <i>Cat Ballou</i> (seen it), <i>Othello</i>, <i>The Pawnbroker</i>, <i>A Patch of Blue</i>, <i>Marriage Italian-Style</i>, <i>Von Ryan's Express</i> (haven't seen 'em). Mind you, these are the ones I've <i><u>heard of;</u></i> I couldn't tell you anything about any one of them.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Because of this, I will leave the 1965 nominees as-is, pleading ignorance and hanging my head in shame.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>1975 ACADEMY AWARDS (48th Annual)</b><br />
The Actual Nominees:<br />
<ul>
<li><b>One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Dir.: Milos Forman) (<span style="color: red;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>Barry Lyndon (Dir.: Stanley Kubrick)</li>
<li>Dog Day Afternoon (Dir.: Sidney Lumet)</li>
<li>Jaws (Dir.: Stephen Spielberg)</li>
<li>Nashville (Dir.: Robert Altman)</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div>
Now that's more like it!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Not only was 1975 a very good year for film -- a great year I'd say -- but it's a moment in time. All five of the directors on this list are heavyweights, and each a true auteur. Each example is perhaps the perfect example of each director's style, too, if not their best films individually. Just look at this list, encased in primordial amber for our edification.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>One Flew</i> was Milos Forman's American coming-out party, and his first American iconoclast. (Celebrating outsiders and rule-breakers would become Forman's calling card in the coming decades, with <i>Amadeus</i>, <i>The People Vs. Larry Flynt</i>, and <i>Man on the Moon</i>.) <i>Barry Lyndon</i> is a slow, plodding, brooding Kubrick film, indicative of his style. <i>Dog Day Afternoon</i> taps into the angst of hot, sweaty NYC, circa 1975, right in Lumet's wheel house. <i>Jaws</i> would foretell a string of huge special effects Event Pictures by Spielberg in the four decades after. And <i>Nashville</i> might be THE consummate Robert Altman film, mixing huge ensembles, a wandering camera, and politics into a satirical tapestry. I watched <i>Nashville</i> for the second time shortly after 9/11, and let me tell you, it holds up in the 21st century better than ever.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Okay, having said that, <i>Barry Lyndon</i> is a dud: it's a boring film that was nominated strictly because it is an "achievement" and had Kubrick's name attached; it's out.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But what's going to replace it? <i>Funny Lady</i>? <i>Tommy</i>? <i>The Sunshine Boys</i>? <i>The Man Who Would be King</i>? I'm having a little trouble finding a suitable replacement. I'm tempted to throw something like <i>Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore</i> in there, but that might be just because I am biased toward Marty Scorsese. Instead, I'm going to pick a wild card.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>The 20/20 Hindsight Nominees:</b><br />
<ul>
<li><b>One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Dir.: Milos Forman) (<span style="color: lime;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>Nashville (Dir.: Robert Altman) (My Runner-Up)</li>
<li>Dog Day Afternoon (Dir.: Sidney Lumet)</li>
<li>Jaws (Dir.: Stephen Spielberg)</li>
<li>Swept Away ... by an Unusual Destiny in the Blue Sea of August (Dir: Lina Wertmuller)</li>
</ul>
<div>
So, <i>Cuckoo's Nest </i>still holds up as the best movie of the bunch, and one of the best movies of the last 40 years. Jack Nicholson is amazing, as is Louise Fletcher, who is fascist evil personified. The characters are incredible, the climax heartbreaking, and the coda exhilarating. <i>Jaws</i> and <i>Dog Day Afternoon</i> are products of their time and place, but no less worthy of a nomination.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
A little cheat with my fifth pick: <i>Swept Away...</i> was technically released in Europe in December 1974, but as far as the Academy goes, there was no way it was released in the United States until 1975, which puts it on the list. If you've never seen <i>Swept Away</i>, it was (<u>very</u> loosely) the template for the 1980s Kurt Russell-Goldie Hawn comedy <i>Overboard</i>. But <i>Swept Away</i> is less concerned with misunderstandings, chicanery, and hijinks, and is more concerned with socio-sexual dynamics, eroticism, and political commentary. It's an absolutely fascinating (and pretty damn hot!) social experiment that asks the question, what happens when your social status is stripped away, and there is no one else around?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>1985 ACADEMY AWARDS (58th Annual)</b><br />
The Actual Nominees:<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Out of Africa (Dir.: Sydney Pollack) (<span style="color: red;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>The Color Purple (Dir.: Stephen Spielberg)</li>
<li>Kiss of the Spider Woman (Dir.: Hector Babenco)</li>
<li>Prizzi's Honor (Dir.: John Huston)</li>
<li>Witness (Dir.: Peter Weir)</li>
</ul>
<div>
Full disclosure, again: I've never seen Out of Africa, and although I'm sure it's a fine film, it is the very definition of Oscar Bait. You never see Out of Africa on "best of" lists, such as the AFI's 1998 "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFI%27s_100_Years...100_Movies">100 Years ... 100 Movies</a>" list, which famously featured a ton of schlock. (Although it did include <i>Fargo</i>, which it later removed in 2007 to include <i>The Sixth Sense</i> and f*cking <i>Titanic</i>.) I will take a leap and guess that <i>Out of Africa</i> will not be my favorite film of 1985 when I finally do see it, which may be never.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The other glaring oversight on this list is <i>Prizzi's Honor</i>, and the reason it's an oversight is because it is an absolutely awful, incompetent pile of cinematic garbage. This had to be some kind of lifetime achievement nod for John Huston, because it is roundly awful, in acting, direction and script. Jack Nicholson looks absolutely foolish in this movie.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Great movies that could have been considered:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Back to the Future (Dir.: Robert Zemeckis)</li>
<li>Brazil (Dir.: Terry Gilliam)</li>
<li>Ran (Dir.: Akira Kurosawa)</li>
<li>Blood Simple (Dir.: Joel Coen)</li>
</ul>
<div>
Laugh all you want, but Zemeckis won an Oscar for <i>Forrest Gump</i> less than a decade later, so he has the pedigree. Plus, <i>Back to the Future</i>, while slight, is one hundred and fifty-four times better than <i>Prizzi's Honor.</i></div>
</div>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
<b>The 20/20 Hindsight Nominees:</b><br />
<ul>
<li><b>The Color Purple (<span style="color: lime;">MY WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>The Trip to Bountiful (Dir.: Peter Masterson) (My Runner-up)</li>
<li>The Purple Rose of Cairo (Dir.: Woody Allen)</li>
<li>Witness</li>
<li>The Kiss of the Spider Woman</li>
</ul>
<div>
I am not convinced that <i>The Color Purple</i> is the best movie of 1985, but I can tell you this, the first time I saw it, I started it very late on a weeknight. I found the entire thing very compelling, if a oppressive. But at the end -- and if you've seen it, you'll know why -- I sobbed uncontrollably for twenty straight minutes. That counts for something.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The most enjoyable film of all of these is <i>The Trip to Bountiful</i>, which also has the best performance of the year, and one of the best ever, by Geraldine Page, a wily elderly who tries to sneak her way back to her hometown. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And <i>The Purple Rose of Cairo</i>, though not one of Woody Allen's "important" works, is one of his most entertaining, and surprisingly poignant. <i>Witness</i> and <i>Kiss of the Spider Woman</i>, as different as can be, are both worthy entries.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>1995 ACADEMY AWARDS (68th Annual)</b><br />
The Actual Nominees:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Braveheart (Dir.: Mel Gibson) (<span style="color: red;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>Apollo 13 (Dir.: Ron Howard)</li>
<li>Babe (Dir.: Chris Noonan)</li>
<li>Il Postino (The Postman) (Dir. Michael Radford)</li>
<li>Sense and Sensibility (Dir.: Ang Lee)</li>
</ul>
<div>
1995 was a problematic year for a lot of reasons, not the least of which were that three pretty undeserving films were nominated right in the middle of a transformative decade of film.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>Il Postino/The Postman</i> is a very cute story, but a year removed from <i>Four Weddings and a Funeral</i>, a cute story is really a throwaway pick. Ditto <i>Babe</i>, an adorable tale, but hardly one that is worthy of the bald guy. <i>Sense and Sensibility</i>, while ticking off all the boxes of Oscar Bait, has resonated almost not at all in the last twenty years.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Great movies that could have been considered:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Casino (Dir.: Martin Scorsese)</li>
<li>12 Monkeys (Dir.: Terry Gilliam)</li>
<li>Seven (Dir.: David Fincher)</li>
<li>Smoke (Dir.: Wayne Wang/Paul Auster)</li>
</ul>
<div>
I am not including two movies in this list that some people love: Tim Robbins's <i>Dead Man Walking</i> and Rob Reiner's Aaron Sorkin's <i>The American President</i>, both high-concept liberal polemics, which -- even to a tree-hugger like me -- have no place in cinema.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>Casino</i> is a more intense (but lesser) version of <i>GoodFellas</i>; it is a paint-by-numbers remake that hits all the proper notes, but is often just too gross for its own sake. <i>12 Monkeys</i> and <i>Seven</i> are a pair of Brad Pitt mindf*cks, and while both are riveting, neither has the appropriate gravitas for an Oscar nom. <i>Smoke</i> is a fantastic movie that never had a chance during Oscar time, despite its impressive cast (Keitel, Hurt, Whitaker, Channing).</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>The 20/20 Hindsight Nominees:</b></div>
</div>
<div>
</div>
<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Leaving Las Vegas (Dir.: Mike Figgis) (<span style="color: lime;">MY WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>Apollo 13 (My Runner-Up)</li>
<li>The Usual Suspects (Dir.: Bryan Singer)</li>
<li>Braveheart</li>
<li>Mighty Aphrodite (Dir. Woody Allen)</li>
</ul>
<div>
So, <i>Leaving Las Vegas</i> might very well be the bleakest, most unpleasant film I've ever watched. But there is no denying both the power of the story -- a man who sets out to abandon his cushy life to drink himself to death -- and the two lead performances. I don't think I'll ever watch it again, but it's a singular piece of art.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>Apollo 13</i> is the best Spielberg movie that Spielberg didn't make. <i>Braveheart</i>, the ultimate winner, is a very entertaining movie, but doesn't hold up quite as well as it should have for such a runaway hit. <i>The Usual Suspects</i>, while wildly imperfect, has stood the test of time, and remains a showcase of great writing, excellent acting, and a terrific twist; if <i>The Sixth Sense</i> could get a nod in 1999 of all years, <i>The Usual Suspects</i> could have taken <i>Babe</i>'s place. And <i>Mighty Aphrodite</i> is one of Woody Allen's most clever movies; Mira Sorvino rightly won the Oscar for it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>2005 ACADEMY AWARDS (78th Annual)</b><br />
The Actual Nominees:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Crash (Dir.: Paul Haggis) (<span style="color: red;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>Brokeback Mountain (Dir. Ang Lee)</li>
<li>Capote (Dir.: Bennett Miller)</li>
<li>Good Night, and Good Luck (Dir.: George Clooney)</li>
<li>Munich (Dir.: Stephen Spielberg)</li>
</ul>
<div>
The 2005 Oscars will go down infamy as the year that <i>Crash</i> won Best Picture. <i>Crash</i>, a well-meaning ensemble film whose script contained all the subtlety of a Gallagher-sized sledgehammer, was not the best picture of 2005. In fact, I would submit that it wasn't in the top 20 films of 2005.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>Capote</i> is also a very troubling pick, as it is basically a wasted nomination, given that the film itself is no great shakes, and the real accolades should have been limited to Philip Seymour Hoffman's tour de force performance. <i>Munich</i> is an amazing story, but its brooding and hand-wringing prevented it from being great <b><i><u>and</u></i></b> from being enjoyable.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Great films that could have been considered:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>The Squid and the Whale (Dir. Noah Baumbach)</li>
<li>Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Dir. Alex Gibney)</li>
<li>Batman Begins (Dir. Christopher Nolan)</li>
</ul>
<div>
Not one of the three films above had a snowball's chance in hell of being nominated for the Oscar for various reasons. T<i>he Squid and the Whale</i> is a shoestring budget film with a very unlikable lead in Jeff Daniels; I have several friends who decry its "quirk" factor, but I think it transcends its indie-ness to become a really well-constructed movie. <i>Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room</i> is one of the best, most compelling, and most terrifying documentaries of all time; so of course it lost Best Documentary to the adorable <i>March of the Penguins</i>. And if <i>The Dark Knight</i> can get Academy consideration, why not its nearly-as-good prequel?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>The 20/20 Hindsight Winners:</b></div>
</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><b>Brokeback Mountain (<span style="color: lime;">MY WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>North Country (Dir. Niki Caro) (My Runner-Up)</li>
<li>A History of Violence (Dir. David Cronenberg)</li>
<li>Good Night, and Good Luck</li>
<li>Cinderella Man (Dir.: Ron Howard)</li>
</ul>
<div>
There is no doubt in my mind, especially a decade later, that <i>Brokeback Mountain</i> stands out as the best film of 2005. The story, the acting, the subtext, all flawless. It is everything that <i>Crash</i> isn't: subtle, thoughtful, deliberate. </div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>North Country</i> is one hell of a harrowing journey, and I was surprised that it didn't get more Academy love, especially considering the very timely subjects of sexism and harassment in the workplace; the Richard Jenkins speech alone earned it a nomination. <i>A History of Violence</i>, while imperfect, has held up much better than nearly all the other nominees not directed by Ang Lee; Cronenberg is a tough sell, and his <i>Eastern Promises</i> just a couple years later would be equally bleak. But <i>AHOV</i> combines plot and mood perfectly to create a whole. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>Good Night and Good Luck</i>, a parlor trick, to be sure, is still very effective because of its timely parallels between post-war Communist paranoia and post-9/11 terrorist paranoia. It also has a terrific lead performance by the perpetually-underrated David Strathairn.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And <i>Cinderella Man</i> is not a "great" movie by any stretch, but it ticks off all the boxes of Oscar Bait, including the pedigree of Ron Howard. And although it is hamstrung by an absolutely horrible title, and a bad performance by Renee Zellweger, the story itself, and the friendship between Russell Crowe and Paul Giamatti are enough to put it on my list, above many of the Academy's picks.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I really enjoy these little retrospectives, even if no one else will ever read them. They make me want to get out there and revisit all of my favorite movies of the last 50 years, even though I haven't seen as many as I'd like to think. If nothing else, it proves that while imperfect, and subject to a great deal of criticism, the Academy generally gets it right. Or at least right <i><u>enough</u></i>.</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-53213826367138755992015-01-27T00:54:00.001-05:002016-01-31T19:57:47.596-05:00Academy Awards Corrections: On the FoursI was listening to the <i>Cracked Podcast,</i> where they talked about Year-End lists, and how they look pretty ridiculous in retrospect. They brought up the interesting idea that there should be a five-year waiting period to decide the winners of the Academy Awards. I thought this was really interesting, so I decided that I am going to look at the Academy Awards through the decades, and we can now retroactively make corrections to egregious errors.<br />
<br />
I am only going to be looking at Best Picture, since to go through every goddamn category would be insane. I mean, do we need to correct what the best sound mixing was fifty years ago?<br />
<br />
Also, this is going to be my own personal list, of course, but I am going to use common sense. For example, I'm not going to replace a well-known movie with some obscure indie movie that no one's ever heard of. The movies I'll be putting on the list will be an "Oscar movie," meaning that it will not only be good, but it will be something that reasonably could have been nominated, had the Academy not had its head up its ass. Also, I'm only going back to the 1960s, because anything before that is filled with a lot of cruddy, dated movies that I don't plan to ever see. Plus, there were only like 20 movies that came out per year before that, so the Academy couldn't screw it up too badly even if they wanted to.<br />
<br />
Since 2014 just passed, let's start with the 4s:<br />
<br />
<b>1964 ACADEMY AWARDS (37th Annual)</b><br />
<br />
The Actual Nominees:<br />
<ul>
<li><b>My Fair Lady (Director: George Cukor) (<span style="color: red;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>Becket (Dir.: Peter Glenville)</li>
<li>Dr. Strangelove (Dir.: Stanley Kubrick)</li>
<li>Mary Poppins (Dir.: Robert Stevenson)</li>
<li>Zorba the Greek (Dir.: Michael Cacoyannis)</li>
</ul>
<div>
Clearly, my favorite movie of this list is <i>Dr. Strangelove</i>, which is one of the best movies of the entire 1960s. And nothing against the movie, but the fact that <i>Mary Poppins</i> is even on this list shows that there weren't a ton of heavy-hitters in '64. It might be the same reason that we started seeing a tenfold increase in fantasy-action movies after 9/11: escapism.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Great movies that could have been considered:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Dir.: Jacques Demy)</li>
<li>Topkapi (Dir.: Jules Dassin)</li>
<li>Seance on a Wet Afternoon (Dir. Bryan Forbes)</li>
</ul>
<div>
As much as I have a soft spot in my heart for <i>Umbrellas of Cherbourg</i> (including my hopeless crush on Catherine Deneuve ca. 1963), it would have been weird if a French pop-opera had been nominated over any of the American films listed. All five of the nominees pretty much hold up, although to me, <i>Becket</i> feels like classic Oscar Bait in the David Lean/William Wyler/Cecil B. Demille vein; it's got two great performances (Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton) but it's as cold and distant as a 12th Century British costume drama can be expected to be.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
For my first stab at this, Oscar got it right.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>1974 ACADEMY AWARDS (47th Annual)</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Actual Nominees:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><b>The Godfather Part II (Dir.: Francis Ford Coppola) (<span style="color: red;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>Chinatown (Dir: Roman Polanski)</li>
<li>The Conversation (Dir.: Francis Ford Coppola)</li>
<li>Lenny (Dir.: Bob Fosse)</li>
<li>The Towering Inferno (Dir: John Guillerman)</li>
</ul>
</div>
<br />
Okay, this one is going to pretty much undermine the entire point of this exercise, because at least four of these movies deserve to be here, and <i>The Towering Inferno</i> is probably the odd man out. You can't argue with <i>The Godfather II</i> and <i>Chinatown</i>, and <i>The Conversation</i> is kind of a forgotten classic. (If you doubt that F.F. Coppola was the King of 1970s cinema, 1974 should prove it.)<br />
<br />
In my opinion, <i>Lenny</i> doesn't hold up on repeated viewings, although Dustin Hoffman's performance is still stunning 40 years later. <i>The Towering Inferno</i> is notable in that it was a big budget disaster movie with two of the biggest stars of its day, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. And I'll be there was a lot of Hollywood money pumped into it, meaning that it had to be nominated.<br />
<br />
Great movies that could have been considered:<br />
<ul>
<li>A Woman Under the Influence (Dir. John Cassavetes) </li>
<li>Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (Dir. Martin Scorsese)</li>
<li>The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Dir. Joseph Sargent) </li>
<li>Murder on the Orient Express (Dir. Sidney Lumet)</li>
</ul>
The 20/20 Hindsight Nominees:<br />
<ul>
<li><b>The Godfather Part II (<span style="color: lime;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>Chinatown </li>
<li>A Woman Under the Influence (Dir.: John Cassavetes)</li>
<li>Murder on the Orient Express (Dir.: Sidney Lumet)</li>
<li>The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (Dir.: Joseph Sargent)</li>
</ul>
<div>
<i>The Godfather II </i>and <i>Chinatown</i> are bona fide classics, two of the maybe 50-75 greatest movies ever made: they stay. <i>A Woman Under the Influence</i> holds up much better than <i>Lenny</i> does, and Gena Rowlands puts in an incredible performance.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>Murder on the Orient Express</i> and <i>The Taking of Pelham One Two Three </i>take the other two slots, because they are just as good as <i>The Conversation </i>and <i>The Towering Inferno</i>, and in my opinion, more entertaining. If you're going to reserve a slot for an action movie, I'd take <i>Pelham</i> over <i>Inferno</i> any day.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>1984 ACADEMY AWARDS (57th Annual)</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Actual Nominees:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><b>Amadeus (Dir.: Milos Forman) (<span style="color: red;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>The Killing Fields (Dir.: Roland Joffe)</li>
<li>A Passage to India (Dir.: David Lean)</li>
<li>Places in the Heart (Dir.: Robert Benton) </li>
<li>A Soldier's Story (Dir.: Norman Jewison)</li>
</ul>
<div>
1984 was a good year for a lot of things, but Prestige Movies was not one of them. For every Amadeus, there were three <i>Ghostbusters</i>, <i>Gremlins</i> and <i>The Terminator</i>. It was a watershed year for popcorn movies and pop music ("Born in the USA," "Thriller," <i>Like a Virgin</i>), but when it came to Oscar Worthy Films, the Academy pretty much picked the only five that qualified, and all five meet one of the Academy's unwritten criteria</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>Amadeus</i> is a period film about a tortured genius. (Mozart, heard of him?) <i>The Killing Fields</i> is a war/journalism picture about the horrors of Cambodia during the time of the Khmer Rouge. <i>A Passage to India</i> was the final film for the legendary David Lean, and it features exotic locales and Alec Guinness as an Indian scholar. <i>Places in the Heart</i> is a triple-whammy: it is directed by an Oscar Winner (Benton, who won the Oscar for <i>Kramer vs. Kramer</i> five years prior); it's about the Great Depression; and it's about social issues like segregation. This movie was made to get an Oscar nod. And finally, <i>A Soldier's Story</i>, which is about the segregation-era American South.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Note that not one of 1984's films took place in the present day: <i>A Soldier's Story</i> takes place in the 1940s; <i>Places in the Heart</i> in the 1930s; <i>The Killing Fields</i> in the early 1970s; <i>A Passage to India</i> in the 1920s; and <i>Amadeus</i> in the 1820s. If ever there were a template for Oscar Bait, this one is it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So, by default, we aren't left with a ton of replacements. Most of the other "good" movies of this year are light popcorn fare: <i>The Karate Kid</i>, <i>This is Spinal Tap</i>, <i>Beverly Hills Cop</i>. Even movies that might have been considered Oscar Worthy, like, say <i>Romancing the Stone</i> or <i>Broadway Danny Rose</i> or <i>The Natural</i>, all lacked any kind of real gravitas, especially compared to war, segregation, exotic foreign lands and mental illness.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So I'm going to leave this list alone. That isn't to say that it is perfect, or that really any one of these movies (save for possibly <i>Amadeus</i>) is really considered a "classic," but you can't really argue with any of them in a surprisingly weak year. Damn you, Academy!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>1994 ACADEMY AWARDS (67th Annual)</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Actual Nominees:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><b>Forrest Gump (Dir.: Robert Zemeckis) (<span style="color: red;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>Four Weddings and a Funeral (Dir.: Mike Newell)</li>
<li>Pulp Fiction (Dir.: Quentin Tarantino)</li>
<li>Quiz Show (Dir.: Robert Redford)</li>
<li>The Shawshank Redemption (Dir.: Frank Darabont)</li>
</ul>
<div>
1994 is one of the most important years in cinema history, and most people will point to <i>Pulp Fiction</i> as the standard bearer, since it really is the movie that changed movies. <i>Pulp</i> still resonates to this very day, two decades later, as proof that film can go in nearly any direction, so long as it follows the language of movies and storytelling. </div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<i>Forrest Gump</i> gets a lot of shit, too, because by comparison to <i>Pulp</i>, it seems like a slight piece of pop entertainment, hardly worthy of being even uttered in the same sentence. But take a step back and remember that <i>Gump</i> was a phenomenon, and it is one of the most intricately and expertly crafted movies of all time, despite whether you agree with its socio-politics or its place on the Academy's pedestal.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
1994 was so good that movies like <i>Quiz Show</i> and <i>The Shawshank Redemption</i> didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell of bringing home the trophy, and they are both <u>fantastic</u> movies, ones that may have won the Award in any of the two or three years before and after. In fact, you have to give the Academy credit for recognizing <i>Shawshank</i>, a box office flop that would only gain its current cult status a few years later when it caught on via home video. The Academy looks eerily prescient here. So what do we have left?</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Great movies that could have been considered:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>The Lion King (Dirs.: Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff)</li>
<li>Ed Wood (Dir. Tim Burton)</li>
<li>Heavenly Creatures (Dir. Peter Jackson)</li>
<li>Exotica (Dir. Atom Egoyan)</li>
<li>The Last Seduction (Dir. John Dahl)</li>
<li>Hoop Dreams (Dir. Steve James)</li>
</ul>
<div>
And this is, again, where the problem lies: after <i>The Lion King</i>, which wouldn't be unprecedented, as <i>Beauty and the Beast</i> had been nominated for Best Pic a few years prior, things start to thin out a bit after <i>Ed Wood</i>. The last four mentioned above are all, in my opinion, superior films, but they don't quite meet the Academy's criteria in most ways.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The only real turd in the punch bowl of 1994's actual nominees was <i>Four Weddings and a Funeral</i>, which is fine, but pales horribly in comparison to the other four nominees. The Academy really did get four of the five best films of the year. So....</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The 20/20 Hindsight Nominees:</div>
<div>
</div>
<ul>
<li>Forrest Gump </li>
<li>The Lion King</li>
<li>Pulp Fiction</li>
<li>Quiz Show </li>
<li><b>The Shawshank Redemption (<span style="color: lime;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
</ul>
<div>
I know <i>Pulp Fiction</i> would get the nod from most cinephiles, and it's a landmark movie, don't get me wrong. But once you get past the non-linear storytelling, it doesn't hold up quite as well as hoped. <i>Shawshank</i>, on the other hand, is nearly flawless, and absolutely holds up after dozens of repeated viewings.<br />
<br />
And I'm also not saying that <i>The Lion King</i> is a superior film; in a lot of ways it is the kind of movie Disney would have come up with in a focus group. But when you think 1994, you think <i>Lion King</i> more than you think <i>Four Weddings</i>. Also, I think <i>Four Weddings</i> kind of sucks.<br />
<br />
I'm not saying these are necessarily THE five best movies of '94, but they are a good survey, twenty years later, of what the year was about.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And finally....</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<b>2004 ACADEMY AWARDS (77th Annual)</b></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The Actual Nominees:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li><b>Million Dollar Baby (Dir.: Clint Eastwood) (<span style="color: red;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>The Aviator (Dir.: Martin Scorsese)</li>
<li>Finding Neverland (Dir.: Marc Forster)</li>
<li>Ray (Dir.: Taylor Hackford)</li>
<li>Sideways (Dir.: Alexander Payne)</li>
</ul>
<div>
Let's get this out of the way: <i>The Aviator</i> and <i>Ray</i> have no business being on this list, whatsoever. <i>The Aviator</i> is an interesting, dynamic film about another tortured genius, but as a film it's far too unfocused and flawed to be considered one of the five best films of the year. <i>Ray</i> is just an extremely mediocre film, with Jamie Foxx doing an impressive parlor trick for 90 minutes; <i>Ray</i>'s inclusion here is an abomination.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There were quite a few movies I liked from 2004, but wouldn't probably be on Oscar's radar, such as <i>Palindromes</i>, <i>Collateral</i>, <i>Garden State</i>, <i>Layer Cake</i>, <i>Mysterious Skin, Friday Night Lights</i>, <i>A Love Song for Bobby Long</i> and <i>The Woodsman</i>. So that leaves a few candidates that could have possibly been in the mix.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Great movies that could have been considered:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Dir.: Michel Gondry)</li>
<li>Vera Drake (Dir.: Mike Leigh)</li>
<li>Closer (Dir.: Mike Nichols)</li>
<li>Bad Education (Dir.: Pedro Almodovar)</li>
</ul>
<div>
I am not as huge a fan of <i>Eternal Sunshine</i> as a lot of other people are, but it's about fifty times better than <i>Ray</i>. I think <i>Vera Drake</i> is a very underrated, wonderful little film. And <i>Bad Education</i> is criminally overlooked. <i>Closer</i> is basically an update of Nichols's own <i>Carnal Knowledge</i> -- one of the best play adaptations ever made -- three decades later. That said, here is my own list.</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
The 20/20 Hindsight Nominees:</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>Bad Education</li>
<li>Finding Neverland</li>
<li>Million Dollar Baby</li>
<li><b>Sideways (<span style="color: red;">WINNER</span>)</b></li>
<li>Vera Drake </li>
</ul>
<div>
I make no bones about my love for <i>Sideways</i>, and although <i>Million Dollar Baby</i> is a fine film, it doesn't hold up nearly as well against the inexorable march of time as <i>Sideways</i> does.<br />
<br />
I am looking forward to going back through the rest of the last fifty-or-so years, decade by decade, to correct the Academy's mistakes. I have a feeling that, unlike the Grammys, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences generally get it almost right. There haven't been too many egregious, "bad" films on any of these lists. (Although get ready for the year 2000, with a movie whose name sounds an awful lot like the type of confection that a candy bar is made of.)</div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-54003497275219973722014-12-03T18:43:00.002-05:002014-12-03T18:43:43.705-05:00I Hate Christmas Music and So Should YouWhen I was a kid, I loved Christmas so much. I remember specifically thinking one year that I didn't even need any presents, because just the feeling that I got around Christmas time was magical. You know how it goes: the tree, the colored lights, snow out the window, the cocoa/tea, and of course, the presents.<br />
<br />But even more than Christmas Day -- the day of presents -- I always loved Christmas Eve. I don't know if it was the anticipation or the excitement of what was to come the next day, but for most of my life, Christmas Eve was one of the very best days of the year. We would often go to church -- yawn, I know, but hey, it's for Jesus -- and then we could come home to have a special dinner of some kind. My grandpa used to show up, and my aunt Peggy still does. It was very tight-knit, and although I didn't grow up in one of those "warm" households (like your typical Italian family) those nights were as close to guaranteed perfection as you can imagine.<br />
<br />
One of the best memories I have is listening to the radio every year on Christmas Eve, and hearing the panoply of Christmas songs that would come on the radio. Although Christmas was always a big thing when I was a kid, it wasn't inescapable like it is now. There were Christmas commercials, but there were also commercials for other things too. And though you might hear a few Christmas songs in the mall in December, you could still listen to Wham! or Bon Jovi on the radio if you wanted to.<br />
<br />
But on this one night, we would envelop ourselves in nothing but Christmas music, and it was wonderful! We'd hear all the classics -- "White Christmas," "Jingle Bells," "The Little Drummer Boy," etc. -- and it was a genuine thrill. In fact, hearing a lot of those songs still makes me feel good to this day, due to the association. We also heard a lot of relatively obscure Christmas songs (well, obscure for me), like John Lennon's "Happy Xmas (War is Over)," Bruce Springsteen's "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," and "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (the Feed the World) song. And hearing all these songs packed into one day as you sat around the tree, opened gifts, or gabbed with your relatives, was just the best.<br />
<br />
Which brings me to today, in which case nothing is special, everything is overexposed, and there is no hiding from the ubiquitous spectre of Christmas. Not only does Christmas season start before Halloween now, but when it starts, there is absolutely no escaping it. If there is a War on Christmas, then Christmas is kicking the ever-loving shit out of whoever it's fighting.<br />
<br />
The bane of my existence today and for the next three weeks is Christmas music. You may think that's silly, as most Christmas songs are happy and some are really great. It should make me feel good! But it doesn't, and the reason why is purely due to repetition.<br />
<br />
The second the clock strikes midnight, turning Thanksgiving Day into Black Friday, Christmas is all you will hear about for a straight month. Most of this I am actually pretty good at avoiding: I do a lot of my gift-buying online, and I don't watch a lot of live TV other than football on Sundays, so for the most part I am able to shield myself from the onslaught that is the GIMME GIMME GIMME BUY BUY BUY Christmas season.<br />
<br />
But the music is absolutely inescapable.<br />
<br />
One day in, I'm assuming, the late 1990s, some asshole genius decided that, starting on the Friday after Thanksgiving, we needed to have multiple radio stations dedicated to nothing but Christmas music, 24 hours a day, for the majority of December. (In case you're wondering, that makes a total of 28 days, or 672 hours. Or better yet, 40,320 minutes, which means you can squeeze approximately 10,080 four-minute songs into that span.<br />
<br />
I don't even have 10,080 songs on my entire computer.<br />
<br />
Let's say there are 50 Christmas songs TOTAL (I think I'm being very liberal with that number). That means they are playing these approximately 50 songs a total of 201 times each in a month.<br />
<br />
I don't know about you, but I don't listen to my favorite ALBUMS THAT MUCH. Who in Jesus's name needs to hear that "pa-rum-pa-pum-pum" song -- 15 different versions of it, I might add! -- 200 times in a month. Name me one person who that benefits.<br />
<br />
I work in an office with music that plays overhead. Which means I get precisely 8 consecutive hours of Christmas music every day, that's only if I leave my desk for a half hour. I love <i>Led Zeppelin IV</i>. If I had to listen to <i>Led Zeppelin IV</i> every day for eight hours, I would tear my eardrums out of my head.<br />
<br />
Nobody should have to listen to that much repetitive music all day. No one. This is the kind of thing they use to torture people in Guantanamo.<br />
<br />
It's bad enough that most "workday" radio stations just shuffle the same shitty eight-our block of songs so you get a "NO REPEAT WORKDAY!" Having to hear the same song five times a week makes me crazy. HAVING TO HEAR MARIAH CAREY'S "ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS IS YOU" FOUR TIMES IN ONE DAY (which I did, last December) IS ENOUGH TO MAKE ME HOMICIDAL.<br />
<br />
What's amazing to me is that no one else seems to give a shit. Even music snobs like myself -- who never listen to the radio and have thousands of albums and a deep appreciation for eclectic musical styles -- don't say a word about this scourge on our world. They seem to be like "Hey! It's Christmas!" But I'm at the point where I actually dread Christmastime. I DREAD CHRISTMASTIME! I hope the eleven year-old me isn't watching this.<br />
<br />
I would be absolutely fine if there was some kind of variety in Christmas music. I wouldn't even mind taking regular songs and fucking with the words a little bit to make them Christmasy. Do about 20 of these a year by big artists, and within a decade or so, we might have a much better batch of songs to choose from. But as it stands now, you have a whole lot of Peggy Lee, Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, and then duplicate versions of the same songs. (And no, Christmas musicians, you aren't fooling anyone <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artists_who_have_recorded_%22Jingle_Bells%22">with that one version of "Jingle Bells" you do</a>, where you put ten seconds of glissando into "all the way-ayyy-ayyyy-ayyyyy!")<br />
<br />
This isn't like "A Christmas Story" being played consecutively on TBS for 24 hours. Not even close. That's because 24 hours of "A Christmas Story" is, well, 24 hours. One glorious day. Also, if you don't want to watch it, you can turn the channel and watch something else! I can't very well ask the guy in the mall to turn the goddamn radio station to Soft Rock Hits.<br />
<br />
I want to, again, as I once did, enjoy the holiday without feeling completely suffocated by it. Now that I'm not in school anymore, Christmas's allure has waned. (In school, at least you know you get like a month off around Christmas.) I would just love to be able to casually pop in and out of a Christmas-y mood, without being mandated every waking second of every day to face it down. I have other interests in my life, and I should be able to pursue them without Christmas constantly barreling into me, panting, making sure I didn't forget about it for five seconds.<br />
<br />
Bah humbug.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-69199798312472254172013-11-05T21:52:00.000-05:002013-11-05T21:52:00.330-05:00Thanksgiving is for the Chosen Few NowThis was bugging the shit out of me last night. As most things that come up on Facebook do.<br />
<br />
There was a click-bait local news article, asking people to comment on the fact that Kmart is going to be open on Thanksgiving Night this year. Which means that instead of Black Friday -- already something I find wholly distasteful -- we now have Black Thursday.<br />
<br />
A couple of things that get me riled up about this, the first, and not least of which is the fact that people are shopping on Thanksgiving. I understand Black Friday, as stupid as I think it is. It's become this kind of tradition for some people, to have Thanksgiving dinner, then get up obscenely early (or stay up all night) to get a bunch of deals with a bunch of other thrifty psychopaths.<br />
<br />
I don't like it, but I get it.<br />
<br />
Thanksgiving is a whole other kettle of fish. Whereas Black Friday unofficially (perhaps officially?) marks the transition from not-Christmas season into Christmas Season, Thanksgiving should be exempt. Why do we let Christmas Season horn in on Thanksgiving, which is one fucking day of the year, and (in my estimation) a superior holiday. Christmas gets a goddamn month, it can wait another 12 hours before it gets started.<br />
<br />
I am all about a thriving, robust economy, but are people's lives that empty that they can't even enjoy one Thanksgiving evening at home with their families (or perhaps out with their friends at a pub), and instead have to hurry away the holiday? As of the day after Thanksgiving, you will be hearing nothing but Christmas Songs, and seeing nothing but Santas, elves, snowmen and the like for a solid month.<br />
<br />
<b>IT CAN WAIT.</b><br />
<br />
But some people have correctly -- if <i><u>extremely</u></i> short-sightedly -- pointed out that it's a free country, and people can choose to either go shopping or stay home if they want to on Thanksgiving night. Totally true and totally valid, except for one thing: that freedom of choice is not afforded to the millions of retail workers who are forced by their employers to have "all hands on deck" for such a busy shopping season.<br />
<br />
Moreso than people choosing to waste precious hours with their families, the reactions to this are what I've become <strike>offended</strike> infuriated by. And I will give you a little spoiler alert: they are all bullshit, and none of them will ever convince me that it's okay.<br />
<br />
Some people say things like "If you don't like it, get out of retail!" Number one: fuck you. Number two: seriously? Number three: I hope either you or someone in your family has to work on Black Thanksgiving because they work retail, so you understand why it's such a burden on those who do.<br />
<br />
Just to clarify: I'm not including in this the kinds of jobs where we actually <i>need</i> people to be working, like doctors, cops, firefighters, etc. It's not fair, but at least there is some justification to it. I'm narrowing this down to greedy corporations fucking over working families while their CEOs enjoy turkey and cranberries in their large houses.<br />
<br />
Also, if you're going to play the "why don't you get a better job?!?!" card, there are a few things you should understand ...<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>One: some people actually like working retail, just like you like your job. But you don't want to work on Thanksgiving either do you, asshole?</li>
<li>Two: have you been paying attention to the news at all for the last 5 years? Not a ton of <i>pret-a-porter</i> jobs out there up for grabs. If you don't understand how a functioning economy works, you should probably just zip it.</li>
<li>Three: if you are really the kind of person that says "why don't you get a better job?" then oh my lord, go FUCK yourself. I don't know why I am friends with these people in the first place. (Note: these people are not "elitists" either; they are people who say "Wole-Marts" and watch <i>Two and a Half Men</i>. Where any of them get off looking down at other people is way beyond me.)</li>
</ul>
<br />
Are we really going to start living in a country where we separate people who get to celebrate holidays into the Retailers and the Non-retailers? Is this the country I grew up in? Is the country I want to live in? Shit, I have to work the day after Thanksgiving, and I'm really not happy about it. But at least I get a few very precious hours with my family before I have to drive an hour from my parents' house back to work.<br />
<br />
Thanksgiving is the quintessential American holiday. (Yes, you can argue the merits of its beginnings and all the subtext related to Native Americans, but I'm not here to fight that battle today.) And yet, we have people -- many of whom call themselves "conservatives" but are just fake-ass contrarians -- who harp all day about the importance of "family," "family values," "the family unit," and any other empty buzzword you can think of, but almost defiantly support taking people away from their families on the one sacred American day of the year.<br />
<br />
So here is what I propose: a federal law. (Yes, a fucking law, you Libertarian fucks.) And the law states thusly:<br />
<br />
<br />
<ol>
<li>Any person who is forced to work at any time on Thanksgiving is exempt from working on Black Friday. So if you work for one hour on Thursday, you get Friday off if you want it. Period. If a person chooses to work Thanksgiving AND Friday, they will be paid time-and-a-half for the Friday shift.</li>
<li>Any person who is forced to work on Thanksgiving will be paid at double-time for the first eight hours worked, and triple-time for each hour after that. Since this is a blatant money-grab by these stores, let's spreads that wealth around, eh, Joe the Plumber?</li>
<li>So-called "Black Thursday" cannot and will not call employees into work until 8pm, and stores may not open until 9pm. That gives employees an hour to get to the store and do prep work, and gives shoppers three full hours of precious shopping time before midnight.</li>
<li>Any breakage of these rules by management will result in a fine up to $10,000 (payable to a food bank) and up to three months in jail. Any manager who knowingly breaks any of these rules will be subject to this penalty, going up the chain of command, including any executives who sign off on it.</li>
</ol>
<div>
It's funny that all the people who have decried a War on Christmas, the people who are usually the most flag-wavingly patriotic of all, don't give a rip about the War on Thanksgiving, the most American holiday of them all. If we can't find a way to let everyone -- including those who work at retail stores -- celebrate Thanksgiving Day, then the country I grew up in ceases to exist as I knew it.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-64055332134377610482013-08-03T01:58:00.000-04:002013-08-03T01:58:02.054-04:00On Manners, Political Correctness and Being a Human Being for OnceThere is some shit going on in this country right now, dudes. <br />
<br />
So I'm sure you've all read the story about that guy from the Philadelphia Eagles who went to a Kenny Chesney concert (why?) and said something like "I will fight every nigger in here." (I'm not going to say "the N-word," because it's childish, dishonest, and there are like 25 words that start with "N," if not more.) This little who-gives-a-fuck event has brought out the absolute worst in everyone.<br />
<br />
Now, I'm not saying that people shouldn't be offended by the use of the word "nigger," because it's a fucking repugnant, vile, demeaning term. The word is loaded by hundreds of years of bad history, and I couldn't possibly fathom the spine-chilling effect that word has on people of African descent. I'm sure it's like opening up a wound.<br />
<br />
Having said that .... I have a feeling that the guy who said it (Cooper? Is that his name?) is probably not an out-and-out racist. Sure, he said he would "fight any nigger in here," but considering that he's been hanging out with black teammates for most of his life, do you really think he hates black people? And his career is probably over, not because he's a bad player (although maybe he is, I don't know. He's a white wide receiver), and not because of anything he <u><i>did</i></u>, but because of words that came out of his mouth. He will be ostracized pretty much for the rest of his public life. (He should be ostracized for attending a fucking Kenny Chesney concert, but that's for another time.)<br />
<br />
The word is so loaded, that simply saying it is like evoking some kind of Candyman/Beetlejuice like spell that cannot be undone. The genie ain't going back in the bottle, the bell can't be unrung, and the toothpaste can't go back in the tube. While yes, the word "nigger" is awful, and makes me feel like shit just typing it, do we have to relegate anyone who utters it complete pariahs for the rest of their lives? Paula Deen, who I could give two halves of a fuck about, is basically done for a while because she used the term. Now, I'm not saying that she shouldn't be fired from whatever who-cares tv show she's on: her employers have the right to do with her what they want. But the idea that somehow just evoking the word -- devoid of context, in the Cooper case -- is a career death sentence.<br />
<br />
What Cooper said was stupid and ridiculous, but let's put it in context: he said "I'll fight every nigger in here." So yes, he addressed "niggers" specifically. But ... well, so what? I mean, he didn't say that these so-called "niggers" (his words, not mine!) were inferior, or dumb, or lazy, or any of the other countless bullshit arguments that ACTUAL racists use against black people whilst sitting in their own filth and anonymously making misspelled comments on message boards. He didn't pull an <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4XUbENGaiY">Al Campanis</a> or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKtIqXMpHcY">Jimmy the Greek</a> and try and make some simpleminded "Bell Curve" arguments about the mental inferiority of blacks. In fact, I wonder if, had Cooper said something, "I will take on any of you black motherfuckers," that he would have gotten as much flak. He might have, but I don't know if he would have, because he didn't use the loaded word.<br />
<br />
[Side note: I often wonder when it's okay for me to use it, and I'll explain what I mean by that. I don't think it would be ever okay to use it to refer to someone or say it to someone, because it's just a terrible thing to do. Plus, I'd get my ass kicked. But like what if I'm rapping along with some of my favorite rap songs, like Wu-Tang's "Shame on a Nigga," Ice Cube's "The Wrong Nigga to Fuck With," or A Tribe Called Quest's "Sucka Nigga." (Forget the fact that they are using the "-a" version and not the "-er" version.) In this case, I am singing along with songs I enjoy, so should I be able to partake in the integrity of the artists' intents? Or should I self-censor so that I say "NNNN" or "aggiN" (radio-edit style), or just cough. I think I should be able to say it when it comes on a song if I'm rapping along with it, but I'm still not sure if that'll get my ass kicked or not.]<br />
<br />
So we have one side of the fence that absolutely has to crucify anyone who uses this word: it's not just black folks either. Although Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson might take their megaphones to the streets to protest any use of the word, they are relatively irrelevant at this point (see Tawana Brawley and "Hymietown" for evidence of their charlatanism). But a lot of it comes from whites. Some people call this "white guilt," and while I think there is definitely some of that (we were pretty fucking awful for a couple hundred years), I think a lot of it is "trying to be down-ism," or white folks grandstanding to show how tolerant and caring and loving they are to all people.<br />
<br />
(To wit: click <a href="http://deadspin.com/you-want-me-to-explain-the-humor-of-the-meme-the-meme-1002049214">this Deadspin link</a> and read the peacocking, holier-than-thou commenter QqqQ, as he deconstructs a silly meme into his humor vaccuum. If you can't laugh at a Reddit meme about a guy named Tyrone, you have no place in this society. Go find something to be ACTUALLY angry about instead of some silly caption. If QqqQ has a single friend in this world I'll eat my fucking hat.)<br />
<br />
I think we are going down a dangerous path when simply saying words -- in a vaccuum, completely devoid of context -- are enough to irrevocably, irreparably change your life. Contrition is never enough, only banishment to leper status will suffice. I'm not saying the guy should have said the word "nigger," but take that word out of the sentence and what do you have. There have been people who have said things much, much more inflammatory about people of African descent, but since they didn't use that nuclear word (the other "N" word), they got away with it. Where is the middle ground? I don't know.<br />
<br />
I'll tell you where the middle ground isn't, and that is with the mouthbreathing, self-victimizing white person who says something to the effect of "IF A BLACK KIN SAY IT, HOWS COME I CANT SAYS IT?" The argument is this: rappers and young black men throw the word "nigger" around like white people throw around "dude." Is that a great thing? I mean, I don't think so, but I also don't think it's the most egregious thing ever either. The black community -- TO THEIR CREDIT, I believe -- have reappropriated that word to be a term of friendship and camaraderie.<br />
<br />
The word "motherfucker" is pretty vulgar, when you think about it. If you call someone a motherfucker, you're basically saying they had sex with their mother. Not nice. But I can't even count on two hands the number of times a week that I call people -- my friends -- motherfuckers. At face value, them's fighting words. But IN CONTEXT -- the key to all human interpersonal communications -- it's not really that bad. I can call my friend that and he'll laugh and he'll call me that too. In college, we used that word more than we used each other's names. We took a bad word and made it our own, and it's cool.<br />
<br />
Now here's the difference, if we were in mixed company, and some stranger tried to step to my friends and start calling them "motherfuckers," we might have had some problems. You aren't us, so you can't use our internal terminology around us. Dig?<br />
<br />
But the false-equivalency white asshole will say something like, "Hey, I walk through the ghetto (Ed. note: no you don't, you liar) and I hear these thugs say it to each other all the time. If they can say it then I should be able to say it." Bullshit. First of all, you aren't "one of them." The stigma and the emotional reaction of the word is not something you nor your ancestors ever had to go through. You didn't earn it, you don't have the right to appropriate it. And furthermore, I'm PRET-TY sure you wouldn't be using it as a term of endearment. You would be using it to say something like "Look at these NIGGERS," and then a grin would come across your face, like the cat that at the fucking canary, because aren't you so <u>edgy</u>? And don't you just <u>speak your mind</u>??!? And isn't it refreshing when people can be <u>politically incorrect</u>??!?!<br />
<br />
No, you're an asshole who wants to get away with swearing in front of mom. One time when I was a kid, I had a friend over and I wanted to impress him, so I went to my mom and said "Hey mom, isn't ________ an ASS?!" See what I did? I said a naughty word. Holy shit, my friend must have been impressed! This is the same thing: white people want to take the short cut to things; they want to be able to use the word, even though they didn't grow up with it, they didn't have to deal with any history of it, and frankly they haven't fucking EARNED IT.<br />
<br />
So how about this, white folk, I'll make a deal with you on behalf of my African-American brethren: you can start saying "nigger" if:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>I can call your mother, daughter, sister or wife a "cunt" or a "whore." After all, if you can call women those words, we should be able to too, right? RIGHT?</li>
<li>You get racially profiled at airports</li>
<li>You get pulled over when you're just minding your own business because of what you look like</li>
<li>You -- and only you -- get asked for your id, even though you're with like a half-dozen other whites</li>
<li>I can use words about your particular European ethnicity, like Dago, Mick, Kike, etc. If I can throw the worst fucking stereotype that exists about your ethnic background, we can make a deal, you filthy Italian greaseball fuck. Or you southern redneck sister-fucking inbred shit-kicking hick? We're cool with all that now, right?</li>
</ul>
<div>
One more rule: you can't say it on a message board, or in a chat room, or in the comfort of your own home or other whites who will guffaw and slap you on the knee when you do it. You have to do it in the middle of a non-gentrified urban neighborhood, with no police or firearms around to protect you. Then we'll really see how fucking brave you really are.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
And if you have gone out to purchase a Riley Cooper jersey to "show him support" or to "stop being politically correct," take it one step further. Go to a gun shop, wait for the background check to come back, take your firearm home, take a good long look in the mirror, look at what a victim you've become and what's happened to your life. Put a plastic bag over your head (to alleviate some of the forthcoming mess), put the gun to your temple, and pull the fucking trigger. If you didn't own a Riley Cooper jersey and you're going out to buy one now because he said the word "nigger," you have proven to have zero value in our polite society. Happy trails.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-47681664669869782342013-07-10T00:49:00.003-04:002013-07-10T00:49:59.033-04:00To Have a Friend You Gots Ta Be a FriendI feel very bad about myself when I dislike someone who is very nice. I have always been taught that being kind to others is one of the great virtues that we can bestow upon each other, and I would love to be able to honor this trait in others. And yet, I find myself often becoming unbelievably frustrated -- even to the point of downright dislike -- with people who otherwise should should be worthy of my praise. And my praise, folks, is a great coup for he or she who receives it.<br />
<br />
There is a person -- let's call her Janice -- who is in my life basically every day; she truly has a heart of gold, and cares deeply about the well-being of her friends and family. And every day I want to scream at her and tell her to shut the fuck up.<br />
<br />
Janice always says she "doesn't have friends," even though she interacts with countless people every day of her life. Still, her social circle seems to consist almost solely of coworkers and family members. This fact further compounds my guilt, as I would love to be someone who is able to reach out and be friendly, but I can't bring myself to do it.<br />
<br />
So why is Janice so seemingly bereft of close friends? It isn't because she lacks self-confidence or that she's mean to people or that she's some kind of "loser" who is "undeserving" of friendship. It's because she is just a crappy friend. Not a crappy person, but a crappy friend.<br />
<br />
A coworker of mine once said "In order to have a friend, you have to be a friend." And that struck a real chord with me, because what it made me realize is that your own self-worth or face-value quality as a human being does not necessarily equate to having numerous and/or deep friendships. How many people do you know who are total bag-of-shit assholes who have a million friends? They are generally not nice, not that interesting, usually back-stabbing, shit-talking, obnoxious, mean-spirited and grating. And yet they always have a million things to do on the weekends, and a thousand pictures on Facebook where they are drinking on a patio somewhere with what seems to be a dozen other people.<br />
<br />
Now I am certainly not bereft of friendship in any way: I don't have a million of them, but I also am not wanting for deep friendship in my life. I have about a dozen or so incredibly close friends that I trust implicitly, fifty or so relatively close friends (I call them "hangout friends"), and maybe 200 acquaintances or friends who are tangential in my life.<br />
<br />
Does this mean I'm a nicer person than Janice? Absolutely not, I am a complete asshole: arrogant, pedantic, hypercritical, hypersensitive, stubborn ... if you've met me this is all redundant information. But I know that I'm a better <i>friend</i> than Janice is.<br />
<br />
That sounds like an awful thing to say, but my self-awareness of this fact tells me that at least I have the wherewithal to understand what it is to be <i>a friend</i>, and not just a nice person. Let me illustrate the differences.<br />
<br />
[Quick note: this is going to seem like me tooting my own horn, but believe me, it's not. This is simply to illustrate the understanding I have of what it takes to be a good friend, versus not really "getting it." Janice, as nice a person as she is, just doesn't fucking get it.]<br />
<br />
First, in order to be a friend, you have to care about your friends. This sounds so simple you probably want to slap the side of my head and say "no shit, dummy." But if you've spent a day in your life with someone who doesn't have the curiosity gene, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I was lucky, because I got the curiosity gene in spades, jack. I am genuinely interested in learning not just about events and facts, but about other people. I like to know how many siblings you have, or how you get along with your parents, or what your favorite albums are. Not because I'm trying to kiss your ass, but because you're not me, and I want to know what it's like to be not-me once in a while.<br />
<br />
If you tell me, "my sister is being an asshole," someone might say "oh that sucks," which is a nice (if cursory) bit of commiseration. However, I want to know why your sister is being an asshole. What did she do? What did she say? What was your response? You might think that's me being nosy; I consider it moving away from abstractions and into concrete details.<br />
<br />
The byproduct of this is that (and this is a little trick you might not realize), since I'm talking about YOU, you are going to find me slightly more interesting. Why? Because I am engaging you in YOUR interests. Again, this is not some ruse or clever trick to get you to give me your social security number: I genuinely am interested. But because I was blessed by God Almighty with a wide swath of interests, I can engage you in almost any conversation you want to have, on your own turf. Because of this, people think I'm much more interesting than I actually am.<br />
<br />
Janice is a different story: it is <i>all</i> about her. Always. I guarantee if you put a gun to her head, she couldn't tell you one fact about me: how many siblings do I have? Where did I grow up? Am I married? It never occurs to Janice to ask these questions or to engage people on this kind of level. Not just me, but anyone.<br />
<br />
So when you interact with Janice, it becomes about Janice: what's going on with HER, what is wrong in HER life, what is annoying HER. I've seen it in mixed company: a bunch of people get into a conversation at dinner or in a room or wherever, and someone deigns to ask her a question about what's going on, and it usually starts with a long exhale, and then either "Well......" or "So....." And you can almost feel the regret coming off the person who asked the question. They just were trying to make conversation, and instead got sucked into the history of the world.<br />
<br />
Secondly, you have to share the burden with your friends. The most wonderful thing about having good friends is the way that you complement each other, balance each other, keep each other in check, and lift each other up when one of you is strong and one of you is weak.<br />
<br />
In this same circle of people that Janice is in, I've had some very good, very personal conversations where people are going through crises (or God forbid I'm going through one), and we talk about it, support each other, bounce ideas off of each other, and try to eventually come to a greater truth. Talking about your problems with a good friend who has no agenda is one of the most cleansing and burden-relieving things you can do. It's the <i>raison d'etre</i> of friendship in the first place.<br />
<br />
Janice doesn't do this.<br />
<br />
Piggybacking off of the example above, every conversation is either about Janice, or Janice doesn't participate. What Janice does do is come into the day with a pre-existing story that she's clearly gone over in hear head about 50 times. She then relays this story not to one person to get it off her chest, but to every single person with which she has regular conversations. And she doesn't just give a 90-second overview: she goes into elaborate, painstaking minutiae, every detail, every nuance. And she does this over and over again. She vents, and venting is okay. But every day she just piles her own shit on everyone else, when lord knows we have our own battles to fight.<br />
<br />
Janet will, at least once every 2-3 days, have a tale cued up about some mildly annoying situation that happened at a restaurant, or a store, or in traffic. And she elevates it to epic proportions (even though she doesn't have the oratory skill to make it interesting). She assumes that everyone is going to be empathetic to her tale of woe, even though most of us just roll our eyes, pretend we're reading a text, or quietly slink away so as to not get sucked into a <i>Sorrow and the Pity</i>-length treatise about how unfair life is.<br />
<br />
This is going to sound like a stupid parallel but I'm going to use it anyway: remember in high school when your teacher would pile homework on you, and then you didn't do it because you had too much? And then the teacher would say "Well, why didn't you do it? It was a simple assignment!" And you were a kid so you couldn't say it, but what you wanted to say (and goddammit, SHOULD have said!) was "Because I have ten other classes and they gave me a shitload of homework too, asshole!" The teacher forgot that his class was not the center of your universe; you have other matter to attend to. When someone thinks they are the center of the universe -- like Janice does -- they tend to dump all of their problems on you as if it's your solemn duty to help shoulder the load.<br />
<br />
Thirdly -- and finally -- and most elementary: don't be annoying to those around you. Again, sounds rudimentary, but how many people don't realize that people are trying to avoid them. And how many people don't realize that the reason they don't get invited places is because they are more trouble than they are worth.<br />
<br />
If a bunch of my friends were having a party, and they were purposely trying to keep the event a secret from me, I would absolutely be hurt. In fact, this happened to me a thousand times when I was younger and not nearly as in-demand as I am today. But in my brain, I wouldn't think "Why the fuck didn't those assholes invite me? They are so mean!" I would think, "I wonder what it is about me that caused them not to want me around."<br />
<br />
I say this NOT because I feel it's necessary to conform to anyone's standards or try to please everyone in spite of yourself. I'm just saying that some self-reflection can often be a very useful thing. Sometimes, it's the things that people <i>don't</i> tell you about yourself that are the most truthful. If someone has a bone to pick with you, they will tell you flat-out; if someone doesn't want to hurt your feelings, they will try to tiptoe around you so that you don't get hurt.<br />
<br />
Janice, as nice as she is, can be incredibly annoying. She is loud; in fact she's unarguably the loudest person I know. Her voice carries across continents, through lead walls, into the troposphere. And it's not just the volume of her voice, it's that she complains about everything that is happening to her at the loudest possible volume. (Again, saddling everyone else with her own problems.)<br />
<br />
And she says the word "fuck" a LOT. And I mean more than any person I've ever met. She doesn't just say it when it's needed, such as for emphasis or out of frustration. She uses "fucking" as an adjective. Like: "All I wanted to do was order a fucking soda." Or: "This fucking guy has no idea what he's talking about." And "They told me it was gonna be a five-minute fucking wait for a table." This is clearly the speech of someone who has lost all perspective of when it's okay to use "fucking" and when you're literally just trying to fill up word-space.<br />
<br />
Also, the word coming out of her mouth is like a dagger in the eardrums. There are certain people who are great at swearing, who give it a certain <i>savoir faire</i>. George Carlin was one of them; my uncle Jim was one of them. Janice is not one of them. Every "fuck" or "fucking" that comes out of her word-hole is akin to a window-pane shattering in the other room. It's not soothing, it's not refreshing. It sounds vile, and it sounds like white trash.<br />
<br />
So to recap: when your friends feel like they have to appease you and "live with" your more overbearing qualities, it might mean that you are being tolerated and not necessarily "liked." Ironically, it is polite society that often shields us from ourselves, in that no one wants to tell us when we need to tone it down. (I would much prefer someone having "the talk" with me so I can be aware of my shortcomings or perceived shortcomings, rather than obliviously go on repeating them to an increasingly annoyed group.)<br />
<br />
If you want to have friends, try and be the person you would like to be around. There are enough people out there like you that will appreciate it. And maybe they'll invite you to parties and shit.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-27421004242054338992013-06-30T03:21:00.000-04:002013-09-23T20:41:45.405-04:00Green Lakes: A Shitty, Racist PlaceYou know who hates camping? Me.<br />
<br />
Okay, so I don't really "hate" camping. It's more like I am not an "outdoorsy" type. I hate bugs, I hate the heat, I hate sleeping on dirt and/or mud, I hate sleeping <i>with</i> bugs, I hate freezing my nutsac off, I hate waking up in a haze and walking into the wilderness where there are no toothbrushes or flushing toilets. Man used to camp because man <i>had </i>to camp. It was necessity borne of a dearth of technological advancements with which we are now quite blessed. Even the Amish have cellphones now.<br />
<br />
So a few friends of mine decided they wanted to go camping for a few days. It was kind of short notice so I knew I wouldn't be able to go, but I told them that if it was close enough, I would swing by for the evening to hang out, drink a couple of craft brews, regale them with my rapier's wit, and perhaps eat a hot dog or six. I roll with a pretty awesome crew: they are intelligent, interesting, humorous, thoughtful and kind. We like to hang out, talk, listen to tunes and enjoy each other's company. As Slick Rick once said, we don't cause trouble, we don't bother nobody. Here's a brief introduction to my crew this evening:<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>D.J. and Jenna: together for 13 years, married for a couple with a young boy.</li>
<li>Rob and Kim: married just had their second kid a few months ago</li>
<li>Richie and Ploy: a younger couple who have been married a couple years</li>
<li>Dwayne: my neighbor who lives down the street from me.</li>
<li>Andrea: amicus curiae ("friend of the crew") who showed up a little later</li>
</ul>
<div>
If you're scoring at home, we have an diverse mix: five males, four females. Two African-American males, three caucasian women, two caucasian men, and a Thai female. That isn't really relevant but I just want everyone to know how tolerant I am of various cultures. We are like a walking beer commercial.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Turns out that the campgrounds starts kicking out visitors around 9pm. Also, the campground said that there are to be no more than six people on the campgrounds at any time. Green Lakes is not far from where we live (20 minutes from pretty much any of our houses), and probably not that expensive, which is why I think it got picked as a last-minute camping option.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
So I get there around 8pm and the sun is still out. We have a couple drinks, some food, play a little beer pong. The Park Rangers come by to do their cursory check of everything: keep the music down, don't be rowdy, don't do anything illegal. Strictly boilerplate stuff. We listen, we adhere, we are polite. This isn't an actual warning, it's what these folks have to do every night to make sure everyone is in compliance. Fine.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Anyway, the night gets a little later, and I can hear ruckus from some of the other camps. We are playing our music at a very, VERY low level. (I basically can't hear any of it, and I guarantee anyone more than 8 feet away can't hear it either.) I am getting ready to leave until I am encouraged -- nay, ordered -- to have another drink or six. I comply and seat myself.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Shortly thereafter, the kinda bitchy female Ranger comes back saying that another camp has been complaining about our noise. I find this claim to be spurious at best. First of all, we weren't even being that loud. Secondly, the camp directly to our left was being even louder. Thirdly, and maybe this is may own naivete, but wouldn't the camp come to ask us to please keep it down if we were being too loud? </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This last query brings me to one of two possible conclusions: one, another camp was sincerely bothered by our "noise" (they must have had fucking super-hearing) and were too chickenshit to come over to us like a MAN and ask us to keep it down. So they tattled on us to the park ranger. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Two, there was no complaint and the park range was just making her rounds and got on a power trip. She decided that since she's the big swingin' dick in this place, she's gonna unzip and show us who's boss. It wasn't just her presence that brings me to this conclusion, but the fact that she said "I believe I asked you to turn your music down," and then before she left said, "This is my second time visiting you: you do NOT want me coming a third time." As if the first visit the rangers made was anything more than a standard "have a good night" and sniff-check for weed. I have a feeling Ranger Lady had a bit of a hard-on for my peeps.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Another thing: Ranger Lady said "there are only supposed to be six of you here and I count seven, so one of you is going to have to go." Really? Just like that, one of us has to go. Andrea said, truthfully, "I just got here, they let me in the gate." To which Ranger Lady replied, "They SHOULDN'T HAVE." Then bitch, go talk to your coworkers about letting people in after they're supposed to.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Now to be fair, Rob has one of those voices that "carries," even when he doesn't mean it to. So he was talking at what he considered to be a regular volume, but whenever he does this, the other six of us say "SHHHHHHHHH," since he's so fucking loud. It's not really his fault, he can't help it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Now here comes the kicker....</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We are still hanging out, keeping our music on at a VERY LOW volume. (Literally, they played "One Love" by Nas, a song I've heard a thousand times, and I couldn't even identify it until about 75% of the way through.) There came more flashlights, ostensibly from the Park Ranger Lady. Even though we had raised nothing remotely resembling a ruckus, I dart to the restroom to keep our total number at six (as far as the Rangers were concerned). Well, that and to take a leak. I had been drinking for like 4 hours.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I come back and apparently everything was okay: Ranger Lady had not shown up. Not five minutes later, a car comes down the road with its headlights on and stops in our area. I am about to go to my car and start driving home. Before I can, a police officer sees me and says "How you doing?" I, being fearful of all authority, am exceedingly polite. The cop I talk to is VERY, very cool. He basically says (paraphrasing), "Look man, I don't want to be here but technically we got a complaint from another camp and when that happens we kinda HAVE to check up on it. You guys look like you're not doing anything bad, just keep it down, okay?" I thank the officer and walk back to my crew, waiting for them to leave so I can hop in my Altima and get the fuck outta Green Lakes.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
As I walk to my peeps, I notice that the OTHER police officer is talking to Rob (who resembles Jake Gyllenhaal, kinda) and Dwayne (who looks kinda like Turk from <i>Scrubs</i>). The other cop seems to be a bit more of a hard-ass, taking a firmer tone with the two of them. Dwayne and Rob are both talkers, and they use this opportunity to start sweet-talking the officers and hopefully get them on our side(s). Rob starts talking about the Yankees, Dwayne starts talking about having kids, etc., etc. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Suddenly -- and this was the fucking <i>coup de grace</i> -- the officer asked to see Dwayne's (Turk's) ID, saying something like "I just need to see your ID, you understand." He took it and scanned it through his police scan thing. He didn't ask anyone else for their ID. Not Rob (who was standing beside him), not Ploy, not DJ, not Richie, not Andrea and not me. Only Dwayne; only the black guy.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Luckily for Dwayne, he is an upstanding citizen and has no outstanding warrants (that the cops will ever find out about!), and so it was all good. Still, this level of harassment for such a paltry infraction screams that there is another agenda. Long story short, do not go to Green Lakes, because the people who run the place are racist.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-3282003077869159532012-05-10T00:18:00.000-04:002012-05-10T00:18:34.043-04:00Hetero As It Gets (Ladies...)It has been brought to my attention -- more than once, I might add -- that some have bandied about the notion that I, your humble narrator, might be a homosexual. This truly baffles me. But first a few housekeeping tips.<br />
<br />
I don't think there is anything "wrong" with being gay, obviously. In fact, I would like to think that if I thought I were a gay guy, that I would be comfortable enough to come out and say it. I don't know if, when the rubber met the road, I would be able to actually do this. But I would like to think I could.<br />
<br />
In the wake of Barack Obama finally joining most non-hypocritical people by saying he thinks gays should be able to get married, it seems that most of my friends are pretty tolerant of gay marriage and gay-related issues too. And actually, I am super-tolerant of all lifestyles. After all, if you live in a society where homosexuality is marginalized, why would you "choose" it? Wouldn't it just be easier to "choose" to be a heterosexual? I don't think you pick it; it definitely picks you.<br />
<br />
Which brings me to this point: I absolutely love women. It's not something I talk about all that much, because I have a working brain and don't have to default to uninteresting neanderthal grunting. I love girls a lot. I am very shy around them, but that does not mean I don't admire them. I did not choose this, by the way: I did not wake up one day and decide to become attracted to women. I've been attracted to women since as far back as I can remember. Even when I was a kid, I knew that there was something about chicks that was pretty all right. I never admitted this to anyone, mind you, because of the guilt inherent in an Irish-Catholic upbringing. But I have always -- ALWAYS -- been into broads. Sorry, "skirts."<br />
<br />
That brings me to a second point, and please hear me out. I know I just said that I'm crazy-tolerant, and I am. But here's the deal: homosexuality disgusts me.<br />
<br />
Let me finish.<br />
<br />
I'm not saying that a person's lifestyle disgusts me, or that I judge anyone, or that I look down upon anyone for any reason. Someone <i>being a homosexual</i> doesn't bother me at all. Not in the slightest. But the idea of two men being together -- sexually, I mean -- makes me incredibly uncomfortable. Especially the thought of one of those men being me.<br />
<br />
Now before you play junior psychoanalyst, no, this is not one of those "I think he doth protest too much" situations. I already told you that I'm cool with gay dudes who wanna rail each other in the privacy of their own homes. But in the few instances where I've been privy to images of male-on-male action, I get incredibly uncomfortable. I loved <i>Brokeback Mountain</i> ... except for all the dude-on-dude action.<br />
<br />
To me it's like spiders: there is nothing inherently wrong with spiders, but they gross me out, dude! I wouldn't want to be sitting in a pile of spiders, or a pile of naked bro's for that matter. It's just a matter of personal preference. But I'm not saying that spiders should all be eradicated or that spiders shouldn't be allowed to marry other spiders if they want to.<br />
<br />
If I may sidebar: I think this makes me more tolerant that most people even! It's easy for people who "support" homosexuality (ie. aren't grossed out by it) to be tolerant. It's a whole other kettle of fish for people who think it's grody to be okay with it.<br />
<br />
Back to the original topic. I can see how someone might surmise that I'm gay since I haven't had a significant relationship with a girl in about 6 years (at least that anyone knows about!), but that doesn't mean that I haven't had ... let's say "episodes" here and there. And it doesn't mean that I haven't been working my magic.<br />
<br />
I tend to fly solo to bars and when out to dinner, but that doesn't mean that I'm a closet case.<br />
<br />
I will say this: I think that gay dudes are generally very interesting, more interesting than a lot of straight guys. I don't know if it's that they are wittier, more bitchy or better with cultural references (all three of which I am as well ... I guess that might be leading people to the wrong conclusion), but I do find that I enjoy talking to to them. I just <s>don't </s> wouldn't enjoy making sweet, sweet love to them.<br />
<br />
What confuses me about the conspiracy theory about me is that I don't "fit the profile" of a gay man in any way. I am 250+ lbs., I am sloppy as hell, and I dress like shit. I will admit that I can perform a perfect sibilant "S," which also might give people the wrong impression. But don't take my quick wit and whistlin' "S"s fool ya: I'm all about boobs and child-bearing hips. Always will be.<br />
<br />
I will say that I possess, one could say, less "masculine" qualities. I am sensitive (overly so, one might say), I get easily emotional, and I get nervous easily. I don't do manly shit like going to shooting ranges or doing Vegas with a gaggle of douchebags. I like foreign films and independent music. I'm pretty sure all the hops I've consumed in the last half-decade have quadrupled my estrogen levels, but that doesn't mean I want to grab another dude's johnson. Not by a long shot.<br />
<br />
I guess if you were to look at the circumstantial evidence, I come off as a regular Kevin Spacey, without the acting chops, that the world knows about! I've never been married or even engaged. (Incidentally, I was at dinner with some new coworkers a few weeks ago, and I was asked if I've ever been married or had kids; I replied no to both, and everyone said, "Really? Never?" As if it was impossible to believe that I wasn't at least divorced at my age.) But I live alone: you will never hear of me living with any "longtime companions," unless you're referring to the silverfish under the floorboards.<br />
<br />
Long story short: you have nothing to worry about ladies. I am as straight as an arrow and as hetero as the day is long. Sometimes I wish I could just get down with dudes, because frankly most girls suck. But I would just end up feeling like a real silly goose. What with all the male genitalia in my bottom and all.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-18220715077145123042012-05-03T00:08:00.000-04:002012-05-03T00:08:15.129-04:00Actor Hetero-Man Crush Time!The following are the actors that I will watch no matter how crappy their movie appears (and they've had a stinker or two in their day). This is a list of actors right now, not (necessarily) over their body of work. Also, this is male actors only, because you can't have a man-crush on a girl, dummy!:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Philip Seymour Hoffman (naturally)</li>
<li>Paul Giamatti</li>
<li>Michael Sheen</li>
<li>Gene Hackman</li>
<li>Robert Duvall</li>
<li>Jon Hamm</li>
<li>Jeff Bridges</li>
<li>Bryan Cox</li>
<li>John C. Reilly</li>
<li>Alan Arkin</li>
<li>Chris Cooper</li>
<li>Don Cheadle</li>
<li>Ted Danson (tv mostly)</li>
<li>Willem Dafoe</li>
<li>John Malkovich</li>
<li>Luis Guzman</li>
<li>Daniel Day-Lewis</li>
<li>Richard Dreyfuss(!)</li>
<li>Jeremy Renner</li>
<li>Steve Coogan</li>
<li>John Hawkes</li>
<li>Geoffrey Rush</li>
<li>Stanley Tucci</li>
<li>Casey Affleck</li>
<li>Viggo Mortensen</li>
<li>Tom Wilkinson</li>
<li>Michael Gambon</li>
<li>David Strathairn</li>
<li>Guy Pearce</li>
<li>Ed Harris</li>
<li>Alan Alda</li>
</ul>
<div>
That's enough for now I think.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-67103254418913986752012-04-11T22:23:00.000-04:002012-04-11T22:23:00.101-04:00FlyingI have flown a couple of times in my life, and largely without incident. Which scares the living shit out of me.<br />
<br />
I know that the odds of being a plane crash are astronomically low -- somewhere between being hit by lightning and being eaten by a koala -- and yet, somehow my overblown ego feels that I'm likely to win the unlucky lottery. Even writing that sentence makes me think that I'm going to end up the footnote in some kind of ironic story where some schmuck in upstate New York predicted his own death, and how sad it was.<br />
<br />
The thing is this: I'm not really afraid of dying, per se. It's not that I want to die, mind you, but death isn't the thing about flying. It's the falling, and the screaming, and the all that time you have to think about what a loser you are and how little you've done with your pitiful, meaningless existence. At least if I get hit by a bus, the lights are gonna go out pretty quickly and that will be that. If I ever have to put one of those fucking oxygen masks over my head in a plane, I might just tie the thing off so I can go off into the netherworld via a euphoric lack of oxygen, instead of a violent collision with the seat in front of me.<br />
<br />
But is that really what terrifies me about flying? That's the endgame, truth be told, but there's a lot more leading up to that. You could die almost any day of your life, from almost any cause. You take a risk whenever you get out of bed or stick your face in a fan. So to me it seems (and I know that this is logically absolute bullshit) that the number of circumstances that could lead to death seem to escalate on a plane.<br />
<br />
Side note: whenever you read about plane travel, they say that it's the safest way to get from one place to another, and then, for comparison, mention how many deadly auto crashes there are each year -- usually something like 40,000. Now I don't want to get into a fucking car either.<br />
<br />
It's just that if the motor goes out on your car, you can pull to the side of the road and call AAA. You can't do that 30,000 feet up in the air. I know that planes can glide if power goes out (I'll take your goddamn word for it, thank you), but every little thing has to be perfect in order for a plane to work, right? Not only does each bolt have to be tightened, and the wings have to not fall off the side of the plane, but physics has to continue to work. I know that Newton proved his so-called "Laws of Physics" many years ago, but what if they aren't really laws at all. What if they're just "Tendencies of Physics"? Has anyone investigated this??<br />
<br />
I'm not really afraid of terrorism so much, because that would be just dumb luck. The odds that my plane from Scranton to Wichita is going to be hijacked is slim. Also, it seems like if someone tries that shit these days, everyone on the plane will try to bumrush the guy. I wouldn't be one of them, only because if I take my hands off the armrests, the plane will destabilize and spin out of control anyway.<br />
<br />
Do you know how many planes fly every day? It's something like 30,000 every effing DAY! Successfully! That has got to be some kind of witchcraft. There is no way that can happen. There aren't even 30,000 planes in the U.S., are there?<br />
<br />
This is what scares me the most about flying. I've never had a "bad flight" (knock on Palo Santo wood), and I know that the more I fly, the greater the likelihood that I will. I've been in a few near-accidents in the car, and since I've seen them come and go, I'm pretty calm in the driver's seat when they look imminent. Not so in the cabin of a jet; the first sign of trouble and I will literally shit myself. Literally. I've done it over less.<br />
<br />
So wish me safe travels as those engines spool up and the wind carries me and some unlucky saps to another area code. I need it.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-86573511085434993492012-04-04T20:25:00.000-04:002012-04-04T20:25:11.891-04:00Tumble Out of Bed and I Stumble to the Kitchen...So here's something. <div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I was unemployed for about four and a half months. The reason why is immaterial; suffice it to say that I was rather terrible at my previous job, and both my former employer and I decided that I probably should stop coming in. So I was on the government tit for 1/3 of the last calendar year; it's not something I'm proud of, but I paid into the goddamn thing, so get off my ass.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Anyway I have recently procured myself gainful employment (my new employer got a nice discount for my copious abilities), and am back among the working stiffs. And although I couldn't be happier about it, I should reflect briefly about my time on the dole.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Do you know what sucks about being unemployed?</div>
<div>
<ul>
<li>You don't make as much money as you used to.</li>
</ul>
<div>
That's the list. Everything else about it is <i>incredible</i>! I knew when I did get a job, I would have to give up some of the comforts of my freeloading existence. It almost makes me sorry that I'm so charismatic, convincing and qualified. </div>
</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
When you're unemployed, you can get up out of bed whenever the hell you want. What day is it? Tuesday? Nope, it's Saturday. Every day is Saturday. I was shocked to see <i>Judge Judy</i> on TV when I got up instead of college football. One night I couldn't sleep, so I stayed up all night and watched TV until the sun came up. Then I went to bed around 11am and slept all day. Just like the old joke about the dog being able to lick itself, it was because I <i><b>could</b></i>.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
This is true: one day I woke up and thought it was Thursday all day long, but instead it was Friday. Oh to have that kind of blissful ignorance at work!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There were times I needed to get to the bank (although I'm not sure why since they really didn't have anything for me) or the post office or wherever else. I didn't have to wait until my lunch break, or get up wicked early or rush there after work. I could get up, make some coffee, edit a few Wikipedia pages (okay, like a hundred of them) and go whenever I felt like it. Showering was strictly optional, though greatly appreciated.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
If I wanted to go to a coffee shop or a diner or a book store, I could just get up and go LIT'RALLY any time I wanted to. (Granted, I never did any of those things, but you can imagine the possibilities!) Hit a matinee? Grab a beer at 12:30pm? Stay in bed? You're goddamn right.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I guess there are a couple downsides: when people ask what you do, you have to tell them you're unemployed or "between jobs," which always elicits a combination of sympathy and pretending it's okay. (When met someone and told her I was unemployed, she replied, "That's understandable." Bless her heart.) Also telling everyone you are out of work is pretty humbling; it usually comes up right after they told you they finally broke down and bought that solid gold front door.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Also, no round of drinks is truly on you: it's on Andrew Cuomo.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There is a certain level of despair, too, that comes with joblessness. It is a major blow to the ego, which is why (I'm guessing) that so many people lack the gumption to get up and find a gig. I know that I took my sweet-ass time (read: the holidays and a few weeks after New Year's) before I got my bee-hind out there looking for work. I had a total of three interviews: I was turned down for the first, I withdrew from the second, and I nailed the third. But my confidence took a big hit, and I knew it at the time. It was the kind of thing where I had to sit in my car for twenty minutes before every interview to simultaneously psych myself up and calm myself down. I can completely understand why people stay home on the couch instead of getting out there and looking for work: I did it too.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
There is also a certain degree of loneliness you get when all your friends are at work and you are at home by yourself. There were days on end where I never left the house. Days fly off the calendar and you make not one dent in the world. That part stinks too I guess. But I would highly recommend taking a few months off if possible to decompress, get your head back in order, and get the "itch" to work again. Because before long, the itch becomes like a rash. The impetus to be around other people is also a surprising motivator.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
But these days, as another working schnook, I have to get up before 8am(!), shower, put on pants(!!!) and show up to a place promptly in order to get a paycheck and not get yelled at. Isn't that really the Amer'can Dream right there? I like my new gig a lot so far, I just hope I'm good at it.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
No I'm not doing play-by-play for Bills games, or working in a brewery, or writing for <i>The Source</i>, or any other dream job I had when I was a high school senior. But a j.o.b. of any type is nothing to sneeze at. It's not just the fact that they give you money for showing up, but it rekindles some sense of your own worth. I feel really bad for people who struggle to find jobs for whatever reason: no experience, lack of interviewing skills, lack of networks. It has to be maddening. I got very lucky that I fooled someone into thinking I'd be a good hire. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I don't know what the hell the point of any of this was. Oh well. Happy Easter folks.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-24145474932049258292012-01-24T01:38:00.004-05:002012-01-24T02:22:03.756-05:00Bonus SNL: Best Ever Cast MembersSince I am still in my <span style="font-style:italic;">SNL</span> frame of mind, I'm going to list what is, definitely, the best list of cast members the show has ever had. Let me set a few ground rules: <br /><br />First, this is a list of those who performed best <span style="font-weight:bold;">on the show</span>. In other words, you won't see Robert Downey, Jr. Ben Stiller, or Sarah Silverman just because of their later success. If you didn't do it between 11:30pm and 1am, it doesn't count.<br /><br />Also, this person might have gone on to have a flop of a career after <span style="font-style:italic;">SNL</span>, but that doesn't weigh into my list. Which, by the way, is absolute gospel.<br /><br />Also, this might not necessarily mean THE funniest (although I think most of them are) but sometimes the best role players or utility players. Some of them might not have been the primary focus of a given sketch, but they could be counted on more times than not.<br /><br />Also, there are going to be some omissions here, and <span style="font-style:italic;">some</span> might chalk it up to sexism or racism, but to me it's a matter of talent and performance. For example, some might think Amy Poehler is a no-brainer here, but aside from some early strong seasons, she got a little lazy with her impressions. (See: Clinton, Hillary; Grace, Nancy)<br /><br />I am also going to put them into categories: Show-Stoppers, Utility Players, and Impressionists. The Show-Stoppers are the ones who could make a skit hilarious (regardless of writing) with just their charisma and humor. The Utility players could be relied on to do any role needed, despite the quality of the skit. (They were the ones you never realized you would miss so much when they left.) And the Impressionists were good enough to actually make you forget the performer's name. <br /><br />Here we go...<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">SHOW-STOPPERS</span><ul><br /><li>Bill Murray - The original "alternative comic" on SNL<br /><li>Eddie Murphy - Carried the show for 4 years by himself<br /><li>Gilda Radner - Oozing with charisma<br /><li>Jimmy Fallon - Despite his constant cracking up, his energy carried the show<br /><li>Kristen Wiig - The most talented female the show has ever produced<br /><li>Mike Myers - See Fallon above<br /><li>Will Ferrell - The heir apparent to Bill Murray</ul><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">UTILITY PLAYERS</span><ul><br /><li>Dan Aykroyd - The Swiss Army knife of the first cast<br /><li>Fred Armisen - Can play any race, always finds the funny part of the character<br /><li>Jan Hooks - The most versatile female the show ever had, and a great actress<br /><li>Joe Piscopo - Don't laugh, the guy was Eddie Murphy's only wingman <br /><li>Maya Rudolph - The female Armisen (or Armisen is the male Rudolph)<br /><li>Molly Shannon - Woefully underrated<br /><li>Phil Hartman - Never had a bad performance. Ever.</ul><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">IMPRESSIONISTS</span><ul><br /><li>Bill Hader - The best technician in show history<br /><li>Dana Carvey - No one did a better job of getting to the heart of the character<br /><li>Darrell Hammond - Sometimes phoned it in, but brilliant</ul><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">WILD CARD</span><ul><br /><li>Tina Fey - Didn't perform much, but re-energized the show</ul><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">CONSPICUOUSLY ABSENT</span><ul><br /><li>John Belushi - I just never got him.<br /><li>Chevy Chase - I thought he did the same schtick over and over<br /><li>Chris Farley - Sometimes brilliant, but sometimes just over the top<br /><li>Amy Poehler - Got a little too impressed with her own talent</ul><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">UNDERRATED</span><ul><br /><li>Chris Parnell<br /><li>Will Forte<br /><li>Abby Elliot<br /><li>Jon Lovitz<br /><li>Jason Sudeikis</ul><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">And the worst five cast members in SNL history:</span><br /><br />5) Melanie Hutsell - One-note<br />4) Rob Schneider - The brainless "Richmeister" was his only notable character<br />3) Adam Sandler - One note (Opera Man, Cajun Man), and usually just juvenile<br />2) Keenan Thompson - Bad actor, terrible impressionist, always the same<br />1) Horatio Sanz -Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-22050691494192327432012-01-22T18:57:00.005-05:002012-01-24T01:38:27.770-05:00I'm Here to Fix Things: "Saturday Night Live"<span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-style:italic;">Since I'm so full of <s>good</s> incredible ideas, I've decided to get back into the blogosphere with my new feature, "I'm Here to Fix Things." It's my way to give free advice or guidance to an institution that clearly needs it. It's my version of <span style="font-style:italic;">pro bono</span> work.</span></span><br /><br />I'm not breaking any news here when I say that the venerable <span style="font-weight:bold;"><span style="font-style:italic;">Saturday Night Live</span></span> has been a little weak over the last decade or so. It has had some flashes of brilliance (the Betty White episode from last year comes to mind, even though I'm pretty annoyed that it was spurred on by a knee-jerk internet campaign), and once in a while a very funny skit. But for the most part, it's really not that funny. I mean I still watch it (usually on Sunday mornings) but not because it really makes me laugh.<br /><br />If it didn't have a rotating cast, tradition on its side, and the occasional "buzz," it would have been cancelled years ago. There is no way that it has merited 35+ seasons based on quality alone. <br /><br />Although Lorne Michaels may be a powerful "industry" big shot, he has really let the show get away from him. It's almost like he doesn't know comedy anymore. He has let one of the more talented casts that the show has ever had (Wiig, Hader & Armisen are all in the top 15 in cast history) die on the vine with atrocious, lazy writing. <br /><br />So here's how to fix it.<br /><br /><blockquote>1) Get rid of the dead weight, ie. Taran Killam and Keenan from "Keenan and Kel." Killam technically can do an "impression," but he doesn't do any of them well. Keenan used to be the token black guy, but now that they have the eminently more-talented Jay Pharaoh, Keenan is really no longer needed. Not that he was ever good. His impressions are awful (notably his godawful Al Roker), and he is too fat to play half of the people he plays (Herman Cain, Tiger Woods, etc.). He almost makes Horatio Sanz look like a great talent by comparison. Almost.<br /><br />2) Get rid of the skits where the hosts play themselves. These usually manifest themselves as a talk show, where the talk show host says "ladies and gentleman, please welcome [real host]." The point of having a sketch show is to portray other people and events, not to be a vanity piece for your host. When Donald Trump hosted several years ago, there was one (1) skit in which he didn't play Donald Trump. We already met the celebrity in the intro, let's make that the last time we see those people as themselves.<br /><br />3) Stop having Justin Timberlake on. I get it, he's supposedly talented, and somehow he's made a side-career for himself by being a comic. (I don't get it, the guy is not funny when Andy Samberg or Jimmy Fallon aren't writing for him.) The subtext of every Timberlake appearance is, "Isn't Timberlake TALENTED?!" Enough. He plays along, and good for him, but I'd take Jon Hamm or Alec Baldwin any day of the week at face value. <br /><br />4) If you are going to do a spoof of another show (like "The View," for example) have it say something. It usually only does the same impression week after week, going to the tried and true impressions that the show has made into a weekly staple. But it should either say something about the show, or reach some kind of absurdity. In other words, it should have a POINT. <br /><br />5) It doesn't need to always be "live." Some of the best bits have been the pre-recorded Digital Shorts that Samberg does. But the show stubbornly clings to the idea of "live." Being live might have been impressive in 1975, but it shouldn't be a hindrance to comedy. If you need to pre-record some material to make it funnier, then do it, goddammit.<br /><br />6) Destroy all recurring characters except for the ones that REALLY work (The Barry Gibb Talk Show, ummmm.....). <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://warmingglow.uproxx.com/2012/01/ten-recurring-snl-characters-who-should-have-been-one-offs#page/1">Warming Glow</a></span> does a much better job than I could at listing the ones who should have been killed off after one try. <br /><br />7) The intro should have the guest host actually doing something entertaining, and not just "taking questions from the audience" or talking to a parade of wacky characters from pop culture, or from the guest host's fake past. In other words, stop being lazy. (That could pretty much apply to everything on this list.) The guest hosts should be asked to do a lot more: otherwise they shouldn't be hosting at all (COUGHJanuaryJonesCOUGH). They need more Jon Hamms, more Melissa McCarthys. (And stop asking Timberlake to bail you out.) Get people who are not only popular, but can actually perform. So more Donald Trumps, no more fucking Tom Bradys.<br /><br />8) Get Seth Myers off "Weekend Update," or at least give him another Amy Poehler to bounce things off of. He doesn't work as the sole anchor. At all. Especially because of his EXACT SAME DELIVERY!, on every punchline. (The same kind of sing-songy finish that you hear from a local on-the-scene news reporter right before they say "Maggie Malone, AC-tion news...." and throw it back to the anchor.) Seth may be a good writer, but he has turned Weekend Update -- which was a highlight when Fey/Fallon were there -- and turned it into the most predictably boring slog in the show. <br /><br />9) Speaking of Weekend Update, let's lay off the "Here, with a commentary is [bad impression by someone currently in the news]." These impressions are the one that aren't good enough to be in an actual skit. This usually begins with someone wheeling in on a chair and saying "Woooooo!" (I'm looking at you, Keenan.) The formula has gone bad. They need another Norm McDonald, or Dennis Miller (when he was still funny and not a GOP mouthpiece), with topical humor that is not only funny, but actually says something. Don't use it as a repository for all your leftover C-plus material. (Bill Hader's "Stefon" is exempt from this rule.)<br /><br />10) Speaking of satire and "saying something," this is where SNL has really lost its way. SNL used to be a snapshot of what was going on at the time, and mocking it. Now, it has been left in the dust by Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and even Daniel Tosh. Doing impressions is not enough. The impressions should either be dead on, putting the character in an unlikely situation, or should be something exposing the ridiculousness of a situation. In 1992, SNL was named the "Entertainer of the Year" by Entertainment Weekly magazine, because of how they helped shape much of the national dialogue of that year's presidential race.(Forget for a second, that EW's "Entertainer of the Year" award is specious at best, with such timeless performers as Ricky Martin, the cast of <span style="font-style:italic;">Grey's Anatomy</span>, and Taylor Swift winning.) Can you imagine THIS crop of SNLers getting that award? For what? For Gilly? For satirizing Elizabeth Hasselbeck? What is the last culturally poignant skit they've had?<br /><br />11) Finally, kill the skits that go absolutely nowhere and have nothing to say. Especially when they aren't especially funny. You know the type I mean: you see the skit coming to an end, and then realize it isn't going to have a punchline. It fizzles out, the camera pans back, and it goes to commercial. If your skit isn't going to shine some light on something hypocritical, or at least make humor out of something ridiculous, then cut it. We live in times that need humor to act as a spotlight on the danger, hypocrisy and insanity we see in the world. SNL simply hasn't had the chops to do so. It shouldn't be that way.</blockquote><br /><br />Am I a comedy writer? NO. Not in any way. But even I know that, when in doubt, you make the small big, and the big small. <a href="http://theonion.com">The Onion</a> does this better than anyone. It's actually kind of a simple formula. You take a huge event and boil it down to some mundane detail; or you take an insignificant issue and magnify it. It's not that fucking hard. I need a job; hire me as a writer on that show and I'll crank out 10 or so good sketches in one season (which would be a single-season record for the last decade).<br /><br />When I was a kid, I used to ask my mom if I could stay up to watch SNL, in the days of Christopher Guest, Martin Short, Billy Crystal and, well, Jim Belushi. I then get into the 1986-and-beyond cast of Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Jan Hooks, etc., and they were a criminally underrated cast of performers and of writers. Had Will Ferrell not come around, the show might have been cancelled, and rightfully so.<br /><br />The show can and should be a showcase for brilliant young writers. They should let these writers go for a full season, even if with the current cast (minus Keenan, of course). There is no reason that SNL can't reinvent itself, as it has so many times, and become, once again, the rapier of American comedy. <br /><br />But I'll believe it when I see it.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-72254314864921446942010-10-12T19:12:00.002-04:002011-07-20T23:57:18.305-04:00Kill the Penny!<span style="font-size:85%;">In 2010, it costs about $0.0167 to make a penny.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">The question is this: why in God's name are we still making pennies? At that rate of return, don't you think it's about time we just stop making them? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">The government is constantly trying to save money; why not start here? If we are saving 67 cents for every penny we DON'T create, isn't that going to be a financial windfall, given the number of pennies created each year? If the number of pennies we make are in the 1-2 billion range, how much would we be saving by not making them?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">I'm not saying we have to stop making them altogether, but maybe take 2011 off and see how it goes?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Have you ever run out of pennies? Ever? Have you ever needed pennies and not been able to find any? Do you ever look in your pocket and say, "I wish I had more pennies"? </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Of course not, because they are everywhere. Getting pennies back is like jury duty: it's great in theory but it's just annoying when it finally comes your way. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">It costs so much to make a penny because it has become so devalued. It's not worth much now, and it wasn't worth much 20 years ago. What makes you think it's going to be worth ANYTHING 20 years from now?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Why don't we slowly start phasing the penny out? (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efforts_to_eliminate_the_penny_in_the_United_States">I'm obviously not the first person to come up with this idea</a>.) Instead of getting pennies back, you can get a 1cent postage stamp, or a stick of gum, or a thumbtack or a band-aid or SOMETHING. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Most banks don't even accept rolls of pennies anymore. How is that even legal?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">I'd even be willing to compromise with a 2-cent piece. You can even keep Lincoln's face on it. I'm guessing that most people wouldn't mind getting only $0.02 back in change when they are owed $0.03. That is how worthless the penny has become in our current currency.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Show me one real world item that is worth a penny. One practical equivalent that you could purchase for a penny. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">That's right, there isn't one. We don't have penny candies anymore. Hell, I get annoyed by nickels, pennies are five times more annoying.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">The worst part of this is that with all these pennies scattered across the globe -- and so many of those forgotten, lost or discarded -- we are probably losing millions of dollars a year in couch cushions alone. It is cluttering up an already cluttered world, and for what. So if you can accumulate five of them you can almost have enough for a small coffee creamer?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Just get rid of the damn thing. It's about time.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-45445031303187200952010-09-30T23:16:00.004-04:002010-09-30T23:47:23.125-04:0016 is Greater Than 18All right I haven't put up a blog in a while, and it's a really stupid topic to make my triumphant return, but I'm starting to worry about the NFL.<div><br /></div><div>Sure they are currently the #1 sport in the nation -- in terms of popularity, quality gameplay, parity and any other metric you want to use (this point is inarguable so don't even attempt it) -- but they are doing everything they can do kill the proverbial golden goose.</div><div><br /></div><div>I could cite the fact that they black out a team with a large stadium and a tiny market (Buffalo: 3rd smallest market, 7th largest stadium) for non-sellout games, but don't prorate to take into account smaller stadiums with bigger markets (Chicago: third largest market, smallest stadium).</div><div><br /></div><div>I could cite their not allowing two double-headers.</div><div><br /></div><div>I could cite their ridiculous rule of only allowing 30 seconds of an interview for broadcast a few years ago. Or the fact that one network couldn't show another network's highlights while a game was still in progress. (Are you really trying to tell me that the league is trying to avoid saturation????)</div><div><br /></div><div>I could cite the fact that there might be a lockout in 2011, and that certain owners (see: Jones, Jerry; Snyder, Daniel) are trying to circumvent the revenue-sharing that made the league the greatest sports league in the world in the first place.</div><div><br /></div><div>I do worry about all of these things. They seem to portend pride before the fall. Baseball, boxing and horse-racing were the three most popular sports in the year 1900, and they are all laughingstock now. (Yes, I said they are ALL a laughingstock.) </div><div><br /></div><div>But the thing that worries me the most is the idea that the league is thinking of changing the number of games in a given year from 16 to 18. This would a be a colossal mistake, and a possible sea-change in the future of the league.</div><div><br /></div><div>Let's start with this: if they go to 18 games, they will never -- EVER -- go back. It will be permanent. And it will be horrible. And for me it has nothing to do with more injuries or not allowing rookies to make the team.</div><div><br /></div><div>The league switched to a 16-game schedule in 1978, and it's no coincidence that it matches exactly to the point at which football started leaving basketball in the dust in terms of popularity.</div><div><br /></div><div>16 games is absolutely perfect, and the reason it is perfect is that football is a game of fours.</div><div><br /></div><div>What the hell am I talking about? Well, think of it this way: baseball is a games of threes and nines. Three outs, three strikes, three bases (plus home plate); nine players on each team, nine innings. Those numbers really do speak to the history and symmetry of baseball. They are the essence of why the game works and carries such tradition. It's why people like Billy Beane compare players from 1908 to players from 2008.</div><div><br /></div><div>When the NFL switched to 16 games, it found its perfect number. Football is a game of fours. Four downs, four quarters, four divisions in each conference, four teams in each division. Sixteen games is four times four: most coaches split each season into four "quarters" of four games each to gauge their success. Even the 100-yard field can be split into four "quarters" of 25 yards each for offensive strategies.</div><div><br /></div><div>And unlike any other sport in America, you can spit out a record to give an immediate shorthand of how good a team is. They are a 2-14 team, a 7-9 team, a 12-4 team, or a 14-2 team. (In the Patriots' case, they were a 18-1 team, but that's a different story.) </div><div><br /></div><div>You won't hear anyone saying "I think the Twins will be a 91-71 team this year." </div><div><br /></div><div>We all know about 16, and I'll bet it helps many of us with our math. We know the shorthand, let's stop the prospect of a team going 9-9, or 16-2. Or 4-14.</div><div><br /></div><div>It doesn't <i>sound right</i>!</div><div><br /></div><div>They always say that no sports organization is better than the NFL at improving its product and reducing flaws. This has always been true, but now they are becoming too clever by half. I know that an extra two games would add some extra revenue, but it's a permanent solution to a temporary problem (ie. the recession). </div><div><br /></div><div>When the NFL switched the playoff format to allow 12 teams for the 1990 season, it was absolutely the right move. 10 was too few, 14 was too many. Twelve is perfect: it leaves good teams out of the playoffs, only allowing the VERY good ones in (in theory anyway). In that way it distinguished itself from Baseball (who only allowed 2 per league at the time, and only 4 per league today), as well as hockey and basketball (in which more teams make the playoffs than miss them).</div><div><br /></div><div>Let's not forget that in 1993, the league experimented with an 18-week schedule (16 games for each team with two bye weeks). It was such a disaster, and so disruptive -- to teams' routines and fans' viewing habits -- that it was scrapped after only one season. Unless the league wants 2011 to look like the strike-shortened season of 1987 (ie. all f'd up) where they only played 15 games, they need to <b>leave a good thing alone</b>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Eighteen games is a cash-grab, no more. It doesn't improve the product. It doesn't give two welcome extra weeks. (We are always geeked for the playoffs to start.) And there is no upside. It's going to provide for more sellouts, maybe, but also more blackouts for struggling teams. It's not for the fans, it's for the separation of loyal fans and their money.</div><div><br /></div><div>If 18 wasn't good enough for a legal drinking age, it sure as shit isn't good enough for the League.</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-38962646217093323752010-04-16T23:05:00.010-04:002010-04-17T00:30:56.853-04:00Record Stores are RelicsI have just over 1500 albums <a href="http://rateyourmusic.com/collection/williamherbert/oo">by my count</a>, and though they weren't all purchased on CD or cassette, thousands -- if not tens of thousands -- of dollars of them were. Record stores became both a Mecca and a sanctuary for me in my younger life. My buddy Cialini and I went to Camelot Records in Eastview Mall every Saturday for the better part of a year to blow the bulk of our paychecks on the new music that was coming out that week -- as well as bricks of blank tapes for "dubbing" purposes. It didn't take Cialini and I long to amass a pretty huge collection of rap and hip hop albums of the early 1990s.<br /><br />More than just being a place of commerce, record stores have always been a place of discovery for me. I have to admit, I've never been one of these DJ Shadow-type characters, going into the "back room" where the obscure vinyl was. But that didn't make my record store discoveries any less revelatory. Back in the days before the internets, there were no reviews online to tell you whether an album was going to suck or not. You had to either get <span style="font-style:italic;">The Source</span> or <span style="font-style:italic;">RapPages</span> to get the scoop. (Ironically, having only a couple of voices rather than thousands of them tended to lend more clarity than modern online criticism does.) But if you got to the record store and that month's issue of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Source</span> hadn't come out yet, you were going on blind faith.<br /><br />I would buy albums sometimes for no particular reason. I remember buying Stetsasonic's "In Full Gear" album because I thought the cover looked kinda cool. Ditto Grand Daddy I.U.'s "Smooth Assassin." I bought Lord Finesse's "Return of the Funky Man" because of a video I had seen once on MTV and liked; ditto Spice-1's "Spice-1" (a very bad album with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-rXU7kmqEk">one very good song</a>). Record stores were not a safe place to take chances back then ... but that is what made every surprisingly good album such a great victory.<br /><br />Back then I was a proud cassette man, partially because I found their analog pedigree more reliable than the fickle digital format, but also because I am a cheapskate and CDs were more expensive. Besides, I didn't have a Bose stereo or anything, so I didn't need CD-quality anything for the most part. By buying tapes, I could more quickly build up an arsenal of music that would later become the envy of a few of my friends. (This was the embryonic stage of a possibly self-destructive "ticker" mentality that has permeated into other avenues of my life and turned me from someone seeking pleasure in life to someone collecting the most shit.) There was almost nothing better than suddenly seeing an album that you had been mulling over buying for months in the bargain bin for like $1.99. I remember once I came home from the mall $80 lighter, but with 13 new albums. <br /><br />I would quite literally quantify my paycheck in terms of how many tapes I could buy with it. I kid you not. I bought almost nothing else.<br /><br />After college, I made it my mission to visit every single solitary record store in Rochester, New York, just because I loved going to them so much. I made quite a dent too, and spent hours upon hours sitting at vinyl listening stations and thumbing through stacks of CDs and tapes. <br /><br />I used to go to Soundgarden in Syracuse, NY about once very two weeks, and I would drop between $30 to $50 on every single transaction. (I am physically and genetically incapable of buying only one CD.)<br /><br />So with these qualifications in mind, please hear me out when I say this...<br /><br />There is little need for record stores right now.<br /><br />Now before all my record store employees and crate-diggers get mad, let me explain. I'm not saying that there WILL never be a need for record stores again, but right now, anyone with a computer can get any album they want for $9.99 on iTunes and the cost of a blank CD. (Some can get them even cheaper, if they know where to look. Wink wink.) The biggest problem is that while record stores are still a wonderful place to spend an hour looking through CDs, they are not practical in their current incarnation.<br /><br />First of all, the staff at many record stores are assholes. I hate to say it, but it's true, and this is one place where it permeates both the mom-and-pop shops or the big box stores. At the mom-and-pop shops, the counter jockeys are aloof, too-cool-for-the-room hipster assholes who think they are Jack Black in <span style="font-style:italic;">High Fidelity</span>. (This is a broad generalization, I know, but you know I'm not wrong.) They stare at their clipboard or their cell phone, and when you say "excuse me" to ask for help, they say, "What's up" in a tone that really means "this better be important."<br /><br />The Best Buys and Circuit Citys of the world are hardly better. They may be slightly more friendly, but they generally know jackshit about the music they are selling. And at any one of these places, when you check out, they don't say "thank you" or "have a great day." They usually say "yuuup" as they dismissively hand you a receipt while looking the other way.<br /><br />These oversights are simply stupid for the music industry. If a consumer can eliminate the annoying human interaction (yecch) that was inherent to purchases pre-1995, why wouldn't they? Why would I want to deal with some patchouli-smelling shitbag with a bad haircut when I can get the exact product -- the EXACT SAME PRODUCT -- online, usually for cheaper. I don't have to drive anywhere, I don't have to pay postage as I might if ordering from a catalog, and I don't have to put my pants on. <br /><br />If anything, you would think that record stores would be bending over backward to make the customer experience more enjoyable for their patrons. You would think that they would employ armchair music experts who could not only point you to the album you want, but suggest one or two others as well. You would think that with download technology eclipsing their <span style="font-style:italic;">raison d'etre</span>, they would find other innovative ways of dealing out the goods, much like other brick-and-mortar retailers have done with other products.<br /><br />But the music industry has never been smart about catering to their customers. They have seen an unconscionable drop in sales, not (just) because the music of today stinks, but because they are not offering any more-attractive alternative. The entire idea of capitalism is that, if someone is willing to sell for cheaper, you go to them. Period, end of story. The Recording Industry has tried to litigate people into buying their wares, at exorbitantly marked-up prices.<br /><br />And to me, this is the crux of why record stores are failing: they are following an old model, and relying on litigation and fear of prosecution to keep them competitive. (You know, in lieu of actually improving the attractiveness of their product.) <br /><br />I think it's great that they are having "Record Store Day" tomorrow (April 17), and I may try and get out to a couple of record stores to show some support and buy some new tunes. (I have bought two CDs in the last two years, both by mail. I have downloaded dozens.)<br /><br />But record stores are not going to recover until they drop their prices.<br /><br />The bottom line is that with iTunes selling most albums for $9.99, along with the convenience of not having to go anywhere, record stores simply cannot compete. It is strictly impossible. But the price of CDs has not gone down significantly. Yes, it may be $8.99 now instead of $11.99, but that's a drop in the bucket.<br /><br />When any new technology ages, the price naturally drops. It happened with the VCR, DVDs and players, TVs, computers... you name it. I remember when blank CDs were $1 per disc: now you can get a 100-pack for $15 if you know where to get them. It's natural evolution, and it's the way that inflation balances itself to some degree. But record stores have never received this proverbial memo.<br /><br />Instead, you still have FYE stores selling CDs for $17!! Seventeen American dollars for a mass-produced piece of plastic that probably cost fourteen cents to make. This is the greed of the industry. Everyone's gotta make a living and make a profit, but this borders on extortion.<br /><br />Think of music in opposition to the video industry. The video/DVD industry has a model: pay a small fee to watch one time or rent for a small window of time, and pay a larger fee if you want to keep it. There is a certain level of concession made by both parties in this transaction. If you only want to keep it for 3 days, it's $5; if you want to own it forever, it's $15. Simple. If you don't like the movie you rented, well it was only $5 to find that out; if you want to own it, here is a modest increase in the price, and you can watch it whenever.<br /><br />The record industry has no such model. Unless you're in the library, you can't borrow a CD for $3 and then bring it back. Home recording equipment made that impossible. Why not, I'm not sure; renting didn't cripple the VHS market in the '80s and '90s, and illegal recording capabilities existed then too.<br /><br />So what you have is a monolithic record industry who is not only unwilling to bend on pricing to meet market demand, but actually actively price-GOUGING. It's no wonder that the record industry has no goodwill with the buying public. They expect you to pay 5-6 times more than you should be paying, and that's with risking buying a crappy product! And all this for an unknown commodity you can't even rent ahead of time to see if you'll like it!<br /><br />My solution: every record store should go the Fugazi route and sell every single album for $5.99 or less. You are still making a profit, you are underselling iTunes (by a lot, I might add), and you are bringing people into the record stores, where their eye might be drawn to another album they wanted. Oh and another one, oh and that one! They could walk out of your record store with four albums for under $25 ... instead of possibly one for $17.<br /><br />You are also encouraging people to take chances on buying more music, and therefore broadening their scope to possibly purchase other music they might not have otherwise given a shot. If I know I only have to pay $6 for an album instead of $13, I'm going to take way more of a chance on trying something new that I might not have before. Good for company, good for consumer.<br /><br />Again, the record companies are still making a profit, and I'm still walking away with a shit-ton of tunes. <br /><br />Naturally, this will never happen, because the myopic, short-sighted music industry wants to squeeze every fucking penny they can out of you. They are not interested in creating a diverse culture of music experts, but rather of maximizing their profit-margin. What they don't realize is that if they would just ease up on their greed for a short period of time, they would probably get back on their feet.<br /><br />Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get in my car, drive downtown, find a place to park, pay $14 for a CD that I can't listen to beforehand, and spend 25 minutes trying to get the goddamn plastic off.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-7376949498898589352010-03-22T18:45:00.003-04:002010-03-22T19:41:14.688-04:00Video Store MemoryI don't know why I just thought of this, but there was an incident that happened to me at an old job, and it still bothers me to this day. I don't know why I can't let things like this go, but there was something about it that still infuriates me. It might be one of the reasons I hate people as a whole.<br /><br />I was working at a video store -- this was about 1999 or so, when they still had VHS tapes -- and we had a program with our popular new releases that if we didn't certain titles in stock, we'd give you a coupon for a freebie for next time. This usually applied toward big-name movies, or "Blockbuster" titles, if you will.<br /><br />One night was especially busy, and we were all out of one movie, and so we were handing out coupons left and right. (I don't even the remember the movie, which I should if I'm going to continue harboring resentment toward the incident.) <br /><br /><blockquote>We did keep a small stockpile of these movies behind the counter, because we found out that people were coming around with no intention of renting the movie in question, just to get the free coupon. There was nothing more priceless than having some asshole come up to the counter saying, "You don't have any copies of ________, so I'll take a coupon." I would say, "Well actually, it's your lucky day!" and then produce a copy of the movie. More than a few times, the person would say, "Oh, no never mind," and I would leave a comment on their account not to give them any coupons or refund them any late fees for trying to scam. Ah, the good old days.</blockquote><br /><br />So anyway, this one guy comes up to get a coupon, and so I gave one. We were completely out of copies, even our backups. The kid didn't look like white trash: he was relatively well-dressed, nice-looking enough (no homo) and if I didn't know better I would have assumed he was not a piece of shit.<br /><br />I gave him a coupon and dated it one month later to the day, which was the policy. Since we were so busy, I forgot about the kid and started ringing up other customers. The video store I used to work at did a ton of business, and Friday nights were often out the door.<br /><br />About ten minutes later, the kid to whom I had just given the coupon for the freebie (to be redeemed at a later time) came up with the movie that we had been out of, and so he plopped that and the coupon on the counter, smiling a sketchy little smile as if to say, "Give my my free movie, bitch."<br /><br />I was pissed for two reasons:<br /><br />1) It turns out that this sonofabitch went into our "Employees Only" video drop box and found the movie he was looking for. (We didn't have a lock on it, and at this store it was out on the floor, not behind the counter.) He went into an Employees-only space, like a selfish hunk of shit, and just took what he wanted. Make no mistake, this was a violation. Since I had already given him the coupon -- and didn't wait until he left the store as I had been instructed to do by my manager -- I had no recourse. And the reason I had no recourse was ...<br /><br />2) ...because I never put a date range on the ticket. I gave an end-date, but I never gave a beginning date. (From this point forward I would always put the next day's date on the ticket.) I still don't know whether I was furious at myself or at the scheming piece of trash who did this.<br /><br />The worst part is, I'm sure he doesn't remember the incident. Even worse, I couldn't pick him out of a lineup, which means the odds of me identifying him well enough to punch him in the testicles gets slimmer by the day.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-16543791886419797642010-03-16T19:27:00.004-04:002010-03-17T00:40:43.046-04:00The FactsI'm having trouble figuring out whether the Tea Party members and/or many Republicans are stupid, or just evil. And more importantly, which one would be worse. Which would you rather have in charge: a gang of good-hearted but foolhardy incompetents, or a well-oiled, brilliant evil cabal.<br /><br />I honestly can't tell which these people are. I suppose that there has to be a combination of both. But with the groundswell of misinformation spreading around like so much astroturf-growing fertilizer, are the people perpetrating this horseshit actually too dumb to understand? Or are they so smart that they know repeating the lie over and over will eventually make it "truth."<br /><br />Take the example of J.D. Hayworth -- the man who is running against John McCain for the Arizona Senate seat this year. He said in reference to gay marriage: "You see, the Massachusetts Supreme Court, when it started this move toward same-sex marriage, actually defined marriage -- now get this -- it defined marriage as simply, 'the establishment of intimacy.'" <br /><br />Rachel Maddow, <a href="http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/03/maddow-to-hayworth-massachusetts-court-didnt-define-marriage-as-establishment-of-intimacy-video.php?ref=fpb">to her credit, kept her cool</a> -- and a straight face -- when telling this dipshit that there is no mention of "establishment of intimacy" anywhere in Massachusetts law. The would-be senator basically said it's a "difference of opinion." No, fucko, it's not a difference of opinion. It's either a fact, or it's not. Why is it that facts suddenly mean nothing in today's political argument.<br /><br />[Side note: I wish these subintelligent jackasses would stop using the "gay marriage is like allowing a man to marry a horse" fallacy. A marriage is not legal if is not with the bride's consent, nor can an animal given consent to marry. From a strictly legal standpoint, this is pretty clear I would think. If I have intimate relations with a woman -- just go with me on this one guys -- it doesn't mean that she and I are married, now does it? And if these hypocritical assholes are so concerned about this, why are they not up in arms over that waste of blood platelets in South Korea who just married his pillow? Why so quiet, Brent Bozell? I can't hear you, Mitt Romney.]<br /><br />Facts are not malleable. Interpretations of facts certainly are, but facts themselves are not. Let's get that straight. When there is unequivocal proof of something, it is a fact and not just a matter of one's own opinion. So based on this, J.D. Hayworth pretty much embarrassed himself in front of anyone who could see that the pantless Emperor is running around with his dick swinging in the wind.<br /><br />So when people call Obama a "communist" (or when radical-liberals called Bush a Nazi), I'm not sure if they were just trying to evoke an dishonest emotional reaction to a buzzword, or if they were too stupid to truly understand what those words really mean. While it's true that many of the Bush Administration's foreign policies smacked of imperialism, it was certainly a far cry from the Third Reich. And just because Obama believes in higher taxes for those who can afford it (and begrudgingly enacted TARP), that does not make him a "communist" or "socialist" as some might say. To paint him as such is not only dishonest, it's just fucking stupid. Anyone who would truly call him a socialist has a) no idea what Obama is really about, or b) what the words "communism" and "socialism" mean. There is also a third choice, c), that implies that they might be very knowledgeable, but are intent on steering their hapless flock of mongoloids the wrong way.<br /><br />We know that the Republicans have been engaging in Psy-Ops for a while now, putting up "anonymous" billboards of Obama with a turban, or some other nonsense. The idea is that Obama must "hate America" and is trying to pull a fast one to ruin the country. <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-03-04/billboards-of-hate/?cid=hp:mainpromo2">He is a closet terrorist, you see??!?!?</a> He's waiting for the right time to strike! And we better take back our country or else! [Cue Toby Keith music]<br /><br />The problem is, Obama is not a terrorist. Anyone saying that he is, is either a liar, or too stupid to know the difference. Either way, that's a problem, because those people's votes count just as much as mine. <br /><br />But people are afraid to call these assholes liars. (Calling these liars assholes only exacerbates the problem.) And this here is the conundrum of liberal influence. I hate to use the term, but people are far to politically correct to call these lying scumbags ... well ... lying scumbags. It is perfectly appropriate to call a liar a liar, and to point out exactly where he is lying. And if he's not lying but is incorrect, someone should be able to quote scripture and verse as to where someone is wrong. (Note to Republicans and teabaggers: this would work for you too, if you ever said anything based in fact.)<br /><br />I had a conversation with a good friend of mine the other day -- one who has a conservative bent -- in a forum were some comments were left, and he and I had a disagreement, and that's fine. But one of his commenters said something so stupid that I couldn't believe it. He said (and I'm paraphrasing), "I can't wait until Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Obama are out of office so they can stop racking up trillions of dollars worth of debt, and Republicans can get back to making this country profitable again." <br /><br />I'll let that one settle in for a second.<br /><br />I hate to quote the creepy Eric Massa, but he did say one thing right: the national debt did not start last year. Without playing the "blame Bush" game here, in 2000, we had a huge surplus, and now, we have a huge debt. (Part of that is because we are fighting two wars and people with teabags hanging from their clothes don't want to pay any more in taxes, but that's a different point altogether.) That is economic fact. It's not an opinion I made up because I'm a "tree-hugging liberal." You can make the argument that you feel Republicans are better when they are in charge; that's fine, that's an opinion, and one to which you have the right. But what you don't have the right to is facts: the fact is, neither Obama, or Herr Pelosi, nor that sniveling ineffectual Harry Reid caused financial meltdown. <br /><br />In fact, I read an article the other day saying that despite some hard-to-swallow realities, the Obama economic policies are actually working. [Update:<a href="http://www.newser.com/story/66333/stimulus-worked-economists.html"> here is the link to the article</a>.] I would love to see him really nail the banks abusing TARP, and until he prevents them from anally-intruding their customers with prohibitive fees and unannounced interest-hikes, I can't say I approve with 100% of what's done. But to say that he's destroying the country economically is not matching up with the numbers.<br /><br />[Side note: I sent a private message to my buddy telling him that his indignant friend was, and I quote, "a fucking retard." I'm not proud of using that language, but based on my limited exposure to this post-Keynesian economic theorist, I believe it in my heart. My friend responded, something to the effect of, "Well I don't know about that, he served in the military and saw a lot of combat." Out of respect to his service, I relented. However, can we please stop justifying people's right to an incorrect opinion just because they served in the military? I admire the service, but you don't suddenly become a genius -- or get credit for being a good person for that matter -- just because you put on a uniform. It's a total cop-out to say that just because I haven't worn the uniform that I don't have right to an opinion about something. That's a fucking cop-out, and it's how children argue. How about as long as my opinion isn't related to military inner-workings -- something of which I know nothing -- I'm not dismissed like some kind of coward? Just because you served and I didn't, scissors does not beat rock, sorry. Fuck that horseshit.]<br /><br />Now I am not some rah-rah Democrat. Remember: I am not a registered Democrat and have not been for over a decade. I think Democrats are a bunch of weak do-nothings, who would rather be inoffensive than get things done. The way they squandered a year and a half of a supermajority is mind-boggling, and emblematic of why Dems can shit in their hat for all I care. But by comparison, Republicans on the whole come off like evil fearmongers. They would rather shout empty slogans and call people names than to have rational, fact-based arguments. [If you want a really great, nonpartisan site to sort out the lies, go to Politifact.com. They do a great job of separating truths, half-truths, untruths and outright bullshit.]<br /><br />Can we please get to a place where facts make sense again? Where people are honest and forthright, even with difference of opinion? I don't even mind people having hatred for other people, but do it for the right reasons. Hate Obama for who he is (a liberal), not for who he isn't (a terrorist, a communist). If you are part of the white-noise, then you are part of the problem.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-70111457632800369502010-02-17T18:58:00.003-05:002010-02-17T20:32:48.649-05:00Feast or FamineI had a routine physical last month and turns out that, for a fat guy, I'm actually in pretty good health. My blood pressure was good -- likely due to my dutiful consumption of blood-thinning alcohol -- and my cholesterol is only a hair above normal. This came as a shock to me, since when I got a "health screening" at work in 2006, all my metrics were way off. So I was happy, although it would have been nice to have the doctor say that I needed more peanut butter pie in my diet. <br /><br />He did tell me that I have to drop some weight, because if I don't, it will lead to health problems down the road. Since my health is inexplicably decent, I figure that it's probably a good time to start shedding some unwanted poundage.<br /><br />I told the doctor that I was planning to go to the gym a lot more, and that I was hoping that I could offset my high-calorie, low-nutrition diet with some hardcore exercise. And he told me something that I guess I had never considered before: no matter how much you exercise, you can't out-run a bad diet.<br /><br />This was shocking to me. I had always figured that I could counteract any visit to the BK drive-thru with an hour on the elliptical. But it turns out it's the other way around: I could do three hours on the treadmill and a side of french fries would kill it.<br /><br />This BLEW my EFFING mind.<br /><br />Okay, not actually, but it did give me a new look on food. My relationship with food has always been close but not a healthy one (no pun intended). One of my New Year's resolutions was to start cooking more and cooking BETTER. Not necessarily healthier but more delicious and less easy; more food that's not made in the microwave. So when my doc told me I had to stop eating as much -- he even gave me a meal plan with a lot of cottage cheese and apples -- I thought I was kissing my delicious foods goodbye.<br /><br />Then a couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon a method of eating called ADF -- Alternate Day Fasting. It's also known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate-day_fasting">Intermittent Fasting</a> (I.F.), and it is basically this: eat every other day. It sounds impossible, but I've been doing it for a couple non-consecutive weeks and it's really given me some interesting results and insights into my relationship with food.<br /><br />Here's how I do it: I can eat pretty much however I choose from 6pm to 6pm on alternating days, and then I go without eating (or if I have to cheat, I keep it under 300 calories) on the other 6-6 shift. It's definitely not a quick fix -- my weight has gone down, but not drastically -- it's a long-term strategy. The idea is to limit calorie intake over time. Since the body deals with calorie intake over long stretches of time (week to week as opposed to day to day), it will result in long term loss of excess fat.<br /><br />Oddly, there are also tons of additional health benefits, such as a reduction of glucose and insulin, and lowering risks of coronary disease, strokes and blood pressure. In fact, in all the research I did, there was no real downside ... other than the fact that many of us are miserable bastards when we are hungry.<br /><br />I have been referring to it as the "Caveman Diet" because it follows the eating cycles of cavemen, who did not eat every day, but rather ate when they got hungry and then went and hunted their food, gorging on it when they could. They had very little if any belly fat, and actually had a longer lifespan than we do. (Their early deaths were due to other unsafe factors in their lives, like biblical floods and brontosauri.<br /><br />For me, this method is forcing me to re-think my codependent relationship with food. Rather than absently chewing on food during bored hours in front of the tv, I'm now abstaining altogether. To me, this is so much easier than counting calories or staying away from foods I like. Now, I just don't eat one day, and I don't worry the next. <br /><br />I'm starting to appreciate food more instead of feeling like I "need" to have it all the time. Truth is, I don't. Also, when 6pm rolls around and it's been 24 hours since I've had anything significant, having that first piece of food is like Christmas morning and the opening day of football seasons rolled into one. Not to mention, I am stuffed after even small portions now. Maybe that means my stomach shrinking, or maybe it means my body is not just getting full faster. Either way, it's gotta be a good thing.<br /><br />You would think that this would give me a tendency to gorge on my "food days," and while that was true early on, I've pretty much reined that in. I probably do overeat a little bit, but definitely not to complete excess. And when you spread one days over-eating over two days (and repeat for several weeks), you are still looking at a net loss in calorie intake.<br /><br />It's not the easiest thing in the entire world: there are days that I'm just a miserable asshole to everyone because of my self-induced starvation. When that happens, though, I'm not gorging on three slices of pizza; I'm having a granola bar and a cup of coffee for a little boost.<br /><br />The worst part is, of course, beer. On days that I can't eat, I also can't drink anything but water, so booze is out of the question, unfortunately. That will probably be a good thing, long term, both for my liver and for my finances. Plus, I don't have to give it up altogether, just rein it in. And that's the beauty of this plan all the way around: I'm not giving anything up, I'm just limiting the window in which I can consume them.<br /><br />I have no idea if this will work for me long term, or if I'll even be able to keep with it, but I am feeling pretty good about it so far. And the best part is, I don't actually have to DO anything ... I just have to "DON'T" something, and that's eat for 24 hours. Its actually much easier to do that than go to the gym. (Not that this replaces working out, I'll get back to exercising in about August or so.) I'm hoping that long-term, I won't "crave" food as much as just enjoy it when I get to it. It's okay to be a little bit hungry (or a whole hell of a lot-bit) every once in a while. And just knowing that 6:00 will come around soon enough is surprisingly comforting.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-26114562372128912292010-01-11T18:45:00.006-05:002010-01-11T20:12:20.460-05:00First Post of the 2010s!It's been a while since I blogged, so I thought I'd weigh in on three things that are really annoying me right now. I have OPINIONS!<br /><br />1) Yes, I admit that the Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien hasn't been very good, and most of that has to do with Conan's (excuse the cliche) losing his edge. The day Conesy lost me was when he had Paris Hilton doing a Bob Hope-style walk-on, complete with golf club. It wasn't spontaneous, her jokes were not particularly funny, and worst of all, it let Paris Hilton in the club.<br /><br />The thing that was great about Conan's old show is the way that it allowed all the nerds in. Those of us who were never the "cool kids" were able to relate to a guy like Conan -- although his self-deprecation is often too belabored. People like Paris Hilton were the target ... they shouldn't be allowed in the clubhouse. When Conan legitimized this talentless tart, I realized that he wasn't one of "us" anymore, he was one of "them."<br /><br />Now, I do give him a little slack. It's not like I hate Conan, or think he's a true sell-out. But I was no-longer compelled to watch his show, because he wasn't getting the laughs. But I had expected Conan to find his groove ... eventually. After about a year or so, he probably would have found his new voice -- a la David Letterman, who holy shit will have been on the air twenty years in 2013.<br /><br />But it looks like Conan won't get his chance, because for some reason, NBC seems to think that Jay Leno is the answer. Jay Leno, who milked Bill Clinton and OJ Simpson jokes for well over a decade, but somehow inexplicably trounced Letterman in tv ratings. (Well, actually, it's very explicable... Americans are fucking idiots.) So now, as if he was some sort of automatic ratings machine, NBC is going to move him back to 11:35, and then Conan to 12:05. Keep in mind, Leno has been ON TV FOR THE LAST SEVERAL MONTHS. Maybe people got tired of Leno, and you have to give them just a tad bit more credit than to think they would have forgotten he existed just because he was on at 10pm.<br /><br />So after the Olympics are over, Leno is going to be on again AFTER the local news instead of before. And my hope -- as well as my prediction -- is that the public realized from the 10pm experiment that Leno is old and stale, and just not that damn funny, and that Conan bolts for another network and can do his own thing again without having to live up to the "Tonight Show" brand. Because at this point, who gives a shit.<br /><br />2) The "Rooney Rule" is the rule in the NFL that all teams must interview minority candidates before they can make a hire. The idea is very noble: to get exposure for more minority candidates so that they will have more chances at jobs. It is affirmative action, yes, but it's also been proven to be very effective. (The Steelers, to their credit, put their money where their mouths are, as they hired Mike Tomlin, a black coach who led them to a Super Bowl championship last season.)<br /><br />But this past week a pair of Washington teams -- the Redskins and Seahawks (see what I did there, football fans?) -- hired high-profile coaches without following the spirit of the Rooney Rule. The Skins did a cursory interview with their assistant coach Jerry Gray, and the Seahawks did a sham interview with Vikings defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier. Both teams knew they were going to hire established coaches, which makes the interviews of the minority candidates seem especially hollow, and condescending.<br /><br />But you can't really blame the teams for hiring who they did -- two of the most well-known football coaches of the last fifteen years. Back in 2003, the Detroit Lions fired their coach because recently-deposted 49ers Steve Mariucci became available, and they knew they wanted him. The Lions got fined because they didn't interview a minority candidate. (The Cowboys, incidentally, did not, even though their sham interview consisted of a phone call with Dennis Green.)<br /><br />But think about it, why force these teams to interview a minority when they know with 100% certainty that there is no chance that any of the minority candidates have a chance... not because they aren't qualified, but because the teams had pre-existing coaches in mind. But you can't just throw the Rooney Rule out, can you??? There's got to BE a better way!<br /><br />I have the solution, and I'm not the first to come up with it, but I'll tell you about it. The Rooney Rule should be this: if you only interview ONE candidate (eg. Pete Carroll, Mike Shanahan), you don't have to do a phony interview with a minority candidate. This would allow these teams to expedite their hirings and stop with the phony bullshit.<br /><br />If your team does MORE than one interview, however, that team has to interview at least as many minority candidates as they do white candidates. This, you might think, is also a sham, but it shouldn't be. A wider net cast would mean that teams would open up their searches anyway, so the more exposure the better for all. If they just implement this in the Rooney Rule, all will be well.<br /><br />3) Mark McGwire is a selfish asshole and I hope he never gets into the Baseball Hall of Fame. I have never liked him, because of what an arrogant cock he was in 1998 when he broke the then-home run record and went on Letterman talking about what a service that he and Sammy Sosa did for the country. Not for the NL Central, not for Major League Baseball. For the COUNTRY. He can shit in his hat.<br /><br />It's interesting that when he didn't get immunity in the 2004 baseball steroid hearings, he decided to pull his "I'm not here to talk about the past." And then he remained silent about the matter for over five years.<br /><br />But today, he decided that he wanted to fess up about it. Why? Because his conscience was weighing on him? Because the truth needed to be told? Because he wanted to tell kids not to do it? No, of course not. It's because he wanted another job in baseball, and this was the only way that anyone was going to let him do it. If he wanted to take credit for saving the nation 11.5 years ago, he can take the heat for being a sack of shit.<br /><br />4) I read a Facebook group called "I Shouldn't Have to Press '1' so Speak English!" Of course, this is blatant anti-immigration racism in the guise of pro-America populism. It's horseshit. If you don't like brown people, just admit it. Stop acting like somehow you are a more legitimate American just because you speak English. Remember, America has NO official language, and that's the way the Founding Fathers wanted it.<br /><br />Of course, when you go onto the site to read the comments, there is a lot of "go home to your country" and "learn to speak English!" and other such nonsense. But do you know what's so ironic? Spanish speakers are not ruining the language in this country: English speakers are.<br /><br />If you've ever listened to a NASCAR-loving hillbilly speak, you can tell that they don't have what we might call a "command" of the English language. Not only do they mix their metaphors, but they usually leave the "g" of gerunds, such as "learning," "talking" and "eating." They use phrases like "that dog don't hunt," and "git er done!" but somehow get upset about Ebonics. (Also, they are under the borderline retarded notion that Ebonics was something proposed to be TAUGHT in schools to students. It wasn't: it was meant to be taught to TEACHERS so that they could more effectively communicate with their students.)<br /><br />Also, can we agree that even common language is dying? And it has nothing to do with people from other countries trying to usurp our linguistic dominance. It has everything to do with lazy Americans (blacks AND whites both) who don't feel like learning the correct ways to say things, instead relying either on what "feels" right, or what they thought they heard once.<br /><br />The best example of this is "irregardless." I'm sure that a bunch of these shit-kicking hicks have used this combination of letters. But the truth is, there is no such word. It came about by some numbskull combining "regardless" and "irrespective." Before "Bennifer" and "Brangelina," there was "irregardless."<br /><br />But do you want to know the infuriating part? Some dictionaries actually recognize "irregardless" as an actual word. Basically, the least educated of our society has somehow come to dictate language, and infiltrate the intelligent, correct-spelling world with their stupidity. If these "I hate pressing '1' to speak Inglish" people had any integrity at all -- or any LEGITIMATE respect for the English language, as opposed to using it as some kind of patriotic wedge issue -- they would be storming the offices of Webster's and demanding that such heresy be stricken from the books, to PRESERVE OUR LANGUAGE!<br /><br />But no, these cro-magnon faggots will flip over their Bill Engvall cassettes and LOL whenever he says "Heerrrrrrrrrre's yer sign!"<br /><br />Ahhhh... I feel so much better now. Happy New Year!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-86346890162386424622009-12-28T21:54:00.019-05:002009-12-29T22:32:35.588-05:00Best of the 2000s: Best Movies<span style="font-weight:bold;">The 72 MOVIES I LOVED IN THE 2000s</span><br /><ol><br /><li>The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - 2003 - Peter Jackson<br /><li>The Departed - 2006 - Martin Scorsese<br /><li>Borat - 2006 - Larry Charles<br /><li>The Prestige - 2006 - Christopher Nolan<br /><li>The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - 2001 - Peter Jackson<br /><li>Sideways - 2005 - Alexander Payne<br /><li>The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - 2002 - Peter Jackson<br /><li>School of Rock - 2003 - Richard Linklater<br /><li>Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World - 2003 - Peter Weir<br /><li>Amélie - 2001 - Jean-Pierre Jeunet<br /><li>Lost in Translation - 2003 - Sofia Coppola<br /><li>300 - 2007 - Zack Snyder<br /><li>Donnie Darko - 2002 - Richard Kelly<br /><li>Adaptation - 2003 - Spike Jonze<br /><li>X2: X-Men United - 2003 - Bryan Singer<br /><li>Good Night, and Good Luck. - 2005 - George Clooney<br /><li>X-Men - 2000 - Bryan Singer<br /><li>Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang - 2005 - Shane Black<br /><li>Inglourious Basterds - 2009 - Quentin Tarantino<br /><li>Mulholland Dr. - 2001 - David Lynch <br /><li>The Fountain - 2006 - Darren Aronofsky<br /><li>Zombieland - 2009 - Ruben Fleischer<br /><li>Brokeback Mountain - 2005 - Ang Lee <br /><li>Spirited Away - 2001 - Hayao Miyazaki<br /><li>Minority Report - 2002 - Steven Spielberg<br /><li>Milk - 2008 - Gus Van Sant<br /><li>The Dark Knight - 2008 - Christopher Nolan<br /><li>Ocean's Eleven - 2001 - Steven Soderbergh<br /><li>The 40-Year-Old Virgin - 2005 - Judd Apatow<br /><li>In The Loop - 2009 - Armando Iannucci<br /><li>Imaginary Heroes - 2005 - Dan Harris<br /><li>Narc - 2003 - Joe Carnahan<br /><li>The Wrestler - 2008 - Darren Aronofsky<br /><li>Step Brothers - 2008 - Adam McKay<br /><li>Memento - 2001 - Christopher Nolan<br /><li>Robots - 2005 - Chris Wedge<br /><li>High Fidelity - 2000 - Stephen Frears<br /><li>The Queen - 2006 - Stephen Frears<br /><li>Serenity - 2005 - Joss Whedon<br /><li>The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters - 2008 - Seth Gordon<br /><li>Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy - 2004 - Adam McKay<br /><li>In the Bedroom - 2002 - Todd Field<br /><li>About a Boy - 2002 - Chris Weitz<br /><li>Hedwig and The Angry Inch - 2001 - John Cameron Mitchell<br /><li>Wet Hot American Summer - 2002 - David Wain<br /><li>United 93 - 2006 - Paul Greengrass<br /><li>Blue Car - 2003 - Karen Moncrieff<br /><li>Michael Clayton - 2007 - Tony Gilroy<br /><li>The Salton Sea - 2002 - D.J. Caruso<br /><li>Seabiscuit - 2003 - Gary Ross<br /><li>Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story - 2004 - Rawson Marshall Thurber<br /><li>Blades of Glory - 2007 - Josh Gordon<br /><li>The Fog of War - 2004 - Errol Morris<br /><li>Dear Zachary - 2008 - Kurt Kuenne<br /><li>There Will Be Blood - 2008 - Paul Thomas Anderson<br /><li>Thumbsucker - 2005 - Mike Mills<br /><li>Storytelling - 2001 Todd Solondz<br /><li>Ghost World - 2001 - Terry Zwigoff<br /><li>Shattered Glass - 2003 - Billy Ray<br /><li>Layer Cake - 2004 - Matthew Vaughn<br /><li>Drowning Mona - 2000 - Nick Gomez<br /><li>Bloody Sunday - 2002 - Paul Greengrass<br /><li>In America - 2003 - Jim Sheridan<br /><li>Spellbound - 2003 - Jeffrey Blitz<br /><li>The Woodsman - 2005 - Nicole Kassell<br /><li>Iron Man - 2008 - Jon Favreau<br /><li>Return to Me - 2000 - Bonnie Hunt<br /><li>10 Items or Less - 2006 - Brad Silberling<br /><li>In Bruges - 2008 - Martin McDonagh<br /><li>Russian Ark - 2002 - Alexander Sokurov<br /><li>Animal Factory - 2000 - Steve Buscemi<br /><li>All the Real Girls - 2003 - David Gordon Green<br /></ol><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">...86 HONORABLE MENTIONS</span><br /><ul><br /><li>Secretary - 2002 - Steven Shainberg<br /><li>Personal Velocity: Three Portraits - 2002 - Rebecca Miller<br /><li>The Safety of Objects - 2001 - Rose Troche<br /><li>The Shape of Things - 2003 - Neil LaBute<br /><li>Thirteen Conversations About One Thing - 2001 - Jill Sprecher<br /><li>Pan's Labyrinth - 2006 - Guillermo del Toro <br /><li>A Love Song For Bobby Long - 2005 - Shainee Gabel<br /><li>North Country - 2005 - Niki Caro<br /><li>Eastern Promises - 2007 - David Cronenberg<br /><li>Waking Life - 2002 - Richard Linklater<br /><li>Full Frontal - 2002 - Steven Soderbergh<br /><li>The Secret Lives of Dentists - 2004 - Alan Rudolph<br /><li>Lost in La Mancha - 2002 - Keith Fulton<br /><li>We Don't Live Here Anymore - 2004 - John Curran<br /><li>Fanboys - 2009 - Kyle Newman<br /><li>Capturing the Friedmans - 2003 - Andrew Jarecki<br /><li>The Darjeeling Limited - 2007 - Wes Anderson<br /><li>I Heart Huckabees - 2004 - David O. Russell<br /><li>Friends With Money - 2006 - Nicole Holofcener<br /><li>You Can Count On Me - 2000 - Kenneth Lonergan<br /><li>The History Boys - 2006 - Nicholas Hytner<br /><li>Vera Drake - 2004 - Mike Leigh<br /><li>Far from Heaven - 2002 - Todd Haynes<br /><li>American Splendor - 2003 - Shari Springer Berman<br /><li>Gone Baby Gone - 2007 - Ben Affleck<br /><li>Confidence - 2003 - James Foley<br /><li>SherryBaby - 2007 - Laurie Collyer<br /><li>A Very Long Engagement - 2004 - Jean-Pierre Jeunet<br /><li>Wonder Boys - 2000 - Curtis Hanson<br /><li>Role Models - 2008 - David Wain<br /><li>Possession - 2002 - Neil LaBute<br /><li>Thirteen Days - 2000 - Roger Donaldson<br /><li>The Shape of Things - 2003 - Neil LaBute<br /><li>The Triplets of Belleville - 2003 - Sylvain Chomet<br /><li>Friday Night Lights - 2004 - Peter Berg<br /><li>In the Mood for Love - 2000 - Kar Wai Wong<br /><li>Elephant - 2003 - Gus Van Sant<br /><li>The Hours - 2003 - Stephen Daldry<br /><li>Billy Elliot - 2000 - Stephen Daldry<br /><li>Finding Nemo - 2003 Andrew Stanton<br /><li>Frequency - 2000 - Gregory Hoblit<br /><li>Thirteen - 2003 - Catherine Hardwicke<br /><li>Old School - 2003 - Todd Phillips<br /><li>This is England - 2007 - Shane Meadows<br /><li>Stardust - 2007 - Matthew Vaughn<br /><li>Cold Mountain - 2003 - Anthony Minghella<br /><li>Rachel Getting Married - 2008 - Jonathan Demme<br /><li>No Country for Old Men - 2007 - Ethan & Joel Coen<br /><li>Y Tu Mamá También - 2001 - Alfonso Cuarón<br /><li>Best in Show - 2001 - Christopher Guest<br /><li>Monster - 2004 - Patty Jenkins<br /><li>Punch-Drunk Love - 2002 - Paul Thomas Anderson<br /><li>Requiem for a Dream - 2000 - Darren Aronofsky<br /><li>Shaun of the Dead - 2004 - Edgar Wright<br /><li>City of God - 2003 - Fernando Meirelles<br /><li>Roger Dodger - 2003 - Dylan Kidd<br /><li>Frost/Nixon - 2008 - Ron Howard<br /><li>A History of Violence - 2005 - David Cronenberg<br /><li>Wall-E - 2008 - Andrew Stanton<br /><li>Meet The Parents - 2000 - Jay Roach<br /><li>Chicago - 2003 - Rob Marshall<br /><li>Kill Bill Vol. 1 - 2003 - Quentin Tarantino <br /><li>Casino Royale - 2006 - Martin Campbell<br /><li>Amores Perros - 2000 - Alejandro González Iñárritu<br /><li>Gran Torino - 2009 - Clint Eastwood<br /><li>8 Mile - 2002 - Curtis Hanson<br /><li>About Schmidt - 2002 - Alexander Payne<br /><li>Infernal Affairs - 2002 - Wai-keung Lau<br /><li>Children of Men - 2007 - Alfonso Cuarón<br /><li>Palindromes - 2005 - Todd Solondz<br /><li>Talk to Her - 2002 - Pedro Almodóvar<br /><li>The Aviator - 2004 - Martin Scorsese<br /><li>Kill Bill Vol. 2 - 2004 - Quentin Tarantino <br /><li>Batman Begins - 2005 - Christopher Nolan<br /><li>Star Trek - 2009 - J.J. Abrams<br /><li>The Squid and the Whale - 2006 - Noah Baumbach<br /><li>Finding Neverland - 2004 - Marc Forster<br /><li>Moulin Rouge - 2001 - Baz Luhrmann<br /><li>The Royal Tenenbaums - 2001 - Wes Anderson<br /><li>The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - 2008 - David Fincher<br /><li>Million Dollar Baby - 2005 - Clint Eastwood<br /><li>Cast Away - 2000 - Robert Zemeckis<br /><li>Oldboy - 2003 - Chan-wook Park<br /><li>Garden State - 2004 - Zach Braff<br /><li>Zodiac - 2007 - David Fincher<br /><li>Monsters, Inc. - 2001 - Pete Docter<br /></ul><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">AND MOVIES THAT WERE OVERRATED, DISAPPOINTING or JUST PLAIN TERRIBLE:</span><br /><br />Overrated<br /><ul><br /><li>Wanted<br /><li>Scary Movie<br /><li>Superbad<br /><li>Almost Famous<br /><li>Slumdog Millionaire<br /><li>Ray<br /><li>Walk the Line<br /><li>Gladiator<br /><li>The Passion of the Christ<br /></ul><br /><br />Disappointing<br /><ul><br /><li>Spider-Man (all three, but mostly "Spider-Man 2")<br /><li>Taken<br /><li>X-Men 3: The Last Stand<br /><li>Meet the Fockers (also see under: Terrible)<br /><li>Superman Returns<br /><li>Ocean's Twelve<br /><li>Babel<br /><li>Fever Pitch<br /><li>Unbreakable<br /><li>Insomnia<br /><li>The Ladykillers<br /><li>Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist<br /></ul><br /><br />Terrible<br /><ul><br /><li>Gerry<br /><li>The Wedding Date<br /><li>American Dreamz<br /><li>Meet the Fockers<br /><li>1408<br /><li>Cellular<br /><li>Changing Lanes<br /><li>America's Sweethearts<br /></ul>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8067755.post-68850427316502198302009-12-28T21:35:00.006-05:002010-04-17T00:32:59.927-04:00Jim Caldwell is a Gutless CowardThe only acceptable reasons that it would be okay for the Colts to tank yesterday's game against the Jets, bringing their record to 14-1 for the year.<ol><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://cdn.bleacherreport.com/images_root/images/photos/000/784/579/95425381.jpg.2711.0_feature.jpg?1262018749"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 358px; height: 243px;" src="http://cdn.bleacherreport.com/images_root/images/photos/000/784/579/95425381.jpg.2711.0_feature.jpg?1262018749" border="0" alt="" /></a><br /><li>They were trying to keep Denver or Pittsburgh out of the playoffs by giving the Jets an advantage. (The Jets now control their own playoff destiny.)<br /><li>The Colts felt like the Jets were poised to beat them <span style="font-style:italic;">anyway</span>, and they didn't want to tarnish their air of invincibility. (Unlikely, but possible.)<br /><li>They wanted to honor Belichick's legacy.<br /><li>Better draft pick position.<br /><li>They think "Killer Instinct" is a Sharon Stone movie.<br /><li>Mercury Morris is holding Reggie Wayne's mother hostage.<br /><li>They knew they had no chance against Buffalo next Sunday anyway, so why prolong the inevitable?<br /><li>So many teams go 19-0, it's not even a big deal anymore.<br /><li>Fell for the Jets' old "you pull your starters, we'll pull ours" trick.<br /><li>Painter is actually a better QB than Peyton and gives them their best chance to win.<br /><li>Jim Caldwell inherited the great team that Tony Dungy left for him and actually has no clue how to coach a football team or how 19-0 puts you on the short list for greatest team of all time.<br /></ol>Whatever the reason, I will be rooting against the Colts and shooing away their bad karma for the entire postseason. (Unless they are playing Pittsburgh, Dallas or New England, of course.)<br /><br />[<span style="font-weight:bold;">Update:</span> Man am I tired of being right. WHO DEY!]Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14149681322702330575noreply@blogger.com0