Fuzz Defector

[Note: I had originally written this back on Tuesday, April 28, almost six months ago, and it acted as a valuable venting mechanism. But since I had a court date, I didn't want to inadvertantly put anything out there that could incriminate me. They have the Google now! Anyway, here is the story of the most trying two day stretch of 2009.]

So I got into a little issue with the New York State DMV this weekend. Apparently -- to steal a line from Willie Moe -- they expect you to pay for car insurance every month! Long story short, they took away my personalized plates (fine they weren't personalized, but they had the word "ARM" in them), as well as my car for safe-keeping.

When you used to having as-needed transportation, taking the bus throughout the Syracuse City limits is sobering and humbling. Having to be on someone else's schedule is something I am just not used to, and having to walk from bus stop to bus stop is brutal sometimes. I got lucky that it was in the spring and not the dead of winter. [Sidebar: why would the DMV north of the city have not one bus go anywhere near it?]

But basically my journey was like this:

Monday:

1. Taking bus from home to downtown; walking half mile to Erie Blvd DMV.
   
2. Being told by guy sweeping up outside building that DMV had moved to Western Lights Plaza.
   
3. Getting on bus I thought was going to Western Lights Plaza. Getting back on bus returning downtown.
   
4. Getting on correct bus to Western Lights; going to DMV.
   
5. Being told I had to come back the next day, because you cannot surrender your plates and get new ones on the same day (even though they were technically surrendered on Sunday).
   
6. Swearing at DMV.
   
7. Helping old lady with her bags to get on bus; considering myself a hero.
   
8. Going back downtown; getting off bus to run at top speed to catch next bus going near my work.
   
9. Panting all the way to work; applying swath of deodorant.

But it didn't end there.

Tuesday:

1. Taking bus downtown.
   
2. Waiting 50 minutes for next bus next to smell of garbage.
   
3. Taking bus north; getting off at wrong stop, 3 miles from where I needed to go.
   
4. Walking one mile in the blazing heat before saying "fuggit" and calling a cab.
   
5. Taking cab driving by sweaty mouthbreather to DMV. ($15)
   
6. Getting new plates and registration.
   
7. Taking another cab driven by friendly Jesus freak to police station to get release order for my car. ($20)
   
8. Finding out from ornery police department pencil-pusher that I needed to have a copy of the title, or else he wasn't going to give the release.
   
9. Taking cab back to the DMV to get this title for $20 and a green receipt. ($20)
   
10. Taking cab BAAAACK to the police station with the info I needed and getting my release. ($20)
    
11. Taking final cab ride ... in the WRONG FUCKING DIRECTION because the cop at the desk gave me the wrong address. (The tow truck driver would later tell me he thinks that this cop purposely fucks with people.)
    
12. Finally getting my final cab ride ($40) to a gas station where the tow truck driver picked me up to bring me back to my Cranberry-colored baby.

But here's the kicker -- and the irony, especially considering that my dear little brother is a member of law enforcement.

Out of all the people I dealt with on my 44-hour journey through the belly of the beast, almost all the people I dealt with were pleasant and helpful.

The tow truck driver, my main cab driver, the DMV folks, most bus drivers (although one of them was a fucking miserable asshole) and even the girl behind the bullet-proof glass at the Centro station (!) were all great, even if their circumstances limited how much they could help me.

Who were the two people that I dealt with who were full-fledged, grade-A bastards? You guessed it: the cops. The one that pulled me over, who said "You can sit in the back seat of my back car, I'm not going to cuff you." As if he had any reason to cuff me!

And the lifer behind the desk who sent me on a $40 wild goose chase when I could have just as easily called the tow truck driver first. (Apparently the tow truck would have come to the station to pick me up.)

My brother always tells me -- and I totally understand why -- that he gets annoyed when people talk back to him and say things like "I pay your salary!" That has to be irritating.

However, when police are paid to protect us, and they end up being condescending stewards for the DMV -- all the while ignorning real, heinous crimes -- it actually diminishes the great work that police do on a daily basis. People want to like police to protect them from actual criminals ... but when police go after the GOOD people (like me, you and all of the mostly law-abiding people we know), it makes them look like they just have chips on their shoulders and nothing more. The reason that people hate cops is not because they want to break the law unscathed; it's because they aren't doing anything wrong (at least morally), and are still getting hassled.

Anyway, my girl is back and it's great to be back inside her. Wait, that didn't come out right.

Keep Pluckin'...

To me the best part of this video is the female anchor's face after this guy tries to say "pluckin' that chicken."

Chris Collinsperv

Ladies and gents, your new Sunday Night Football analyst...

Al Franken Remaps America!

And somewhere Tom Delay is green with envy...

Glourious

My feelings about Quentin Tarantino go like this:

I love Pulp Fiction. I hated Jackie Brown. Reservoir Dogs is completely overrated, although well-crafted and very watchable. The Kill Bills were both very good. I didn't bother seeing his self-indulgent "Grindhouse" films.

The world of cinema simultaneously owes an enormous debt to Tarantino (the non-linear narratives, the importance of dialogue, the combination of violence and humor) and idolizes him far too much (the reliance on non-linear narrative, his reliance on his dialogue, his reliance on violence and humor). He is one of the great cinematic talents of this generation, but he's also one of the most derivative and sometimes becomes way too enthralled with his own sensibility.

Having said that, I saw Inglourious Bastards today, and this is the kind of movie that I have a feeling will stick with me for a while.

(SPOILERS AHEAD: SEE THE MOVIE FIRST)

There are so many things to love about it, and yet so many things I would change. Basically the plot is that two separate factions are on unknowingly on a collision course to try and topple the Third Reich in Nazi-occupied France. One is a young woman whose family was killed by the Nazis, another is a gang of "Basterds" who have taken it upon themselves to kill -- and scalp -- every Nazi they can find.

The film begins with "Once Upon a Time..." which gives the hint that this is not necessarily going to be historically accurate. In fact, part of the film's effectiveness is that it's not bound to any kind of historical fact. Every other Nazi film ever made by anyone other than Mel Brooks or Charlie Chaplin is hamstrung because you know how it all ends. (See: Valkyrie.) But Quentin casts aside all such shackles, and creates an alternate universe European Theater (no pun intended), where the unpredictability lies in the unknown. This isn't just a small story set in the backdrop of WWII, this is a WWII fantasia at whose heart is the entire outcome of the war itself.

There were a couple things I didn't love. (Here come them pesky SPOILERS I told you about.) First, does Quentin have to make heavy-handed references to other movies in every single film he makes? Usually it takes place in the dialogue, but in Basterds, the heroine owns a movie theater, which is also where the climax occurs. A main character is a (fictional) superstar German actress. There are references to then-popular culture throughout the film. I'm not saying it doesn't all work, because some of it does. But the fact that cinema has to play such a role in such a real-life time period says something about Quentin's possible lack of perspective here.

Secondly, Quentin needs an editor. I don't mean necessarily that the movie is too long, because if a movie is good (or near-great, as this one is) it can be as long as you want it to be. What I mean is that within his scenes of dialogue, Quentin doesn't have anyone who can stand up to him and tell him how to chop up the scenes. As dynamic and kinetic as his action scenes are, his scenes of dialogue are equally stodgy and overly verbose. (This is the plague that killed Jackie Brown.)

Quentin is so enamored with his own words that he doesn't know when to cut out a few words here or there, or let the subtext shine through. He could use a good David Mamet rewrite to get rid of a lot of the extraneous words. Some of the dialogue could be just as easily conveyed with a glance or a cut away to an object, or something non-verbal. When Quentin figures this out, he will make the greatest film of all time.

Those two qualms out of the way, this is a brilliant film. Absolutely brilliant. It's brutally violent, and it is tense throughout, notably in two scenes.

The first is a scene in an underground bar, where a game of Hitchcockian intrigue plays out, that ends in what has to be the loudest gun-battle I've ever seen. This scene is played to perfection throughout by all the characters, and it is so tense that when it's over it's like being jarred out of a trance. It's a brilliant scene and worthy of the greatest suspense films.

But then there is the coup de grace: the climax in the movie theater. And not for the reason you might think.

Yes, the heist-like scenes of hidden identities and moving explosives from one place to another are all very tense and effective. But they are nothing compared to the final reel ... and if you see the film, you'll know I mean that literally.

The climax can only be described as a holocaust revenge fantasy. It is one of the most powerful climaxes I've ever seen in any film. I don't mean to oversell it, but it affected me on a pretty deep emotional level. It is a catharsis, of every ounce of hatred that the Nazis elicit. It gives the Nazis the brutal, heartless, merciless ending they deserve.

The one image that I can't get out of my head is the look on Eli Roth's face as he haphazardly shoots his automatic rifle into a crowd of people. A theater burning around him, his eyes show the most intense evil you could ever see on a so-called protagonist. The Nazis are relegated to their own burning place, their own holocaust. Where they showed no mercy to others, none was shown to them. And the image of Hitler's body lying motionless, while his face is rent apart by machine gun fire, is haunting, and satisfying. It's a bloodlust that has been festering for six decades, and Quentin somehow finds a way to fuse his own violent sensibilities with the subconscious hatred we all feel. It might be the most satisfying climax I've ever witnessed on film.

The flipside to that is that Tarantino, to some degree, is also fucking with your head. The film that the Nazis are enjoying in the theater before the climax is one in which a Nazi "hero" snipes countless American/Allied soldiers from a clock-tower. The Nazis nod their heads and sometimes weep with glowing approval, and we are sickened by them. Yet when the tables are turned, and we watch those that WE hate get mowed down, it brings up feelings in me that I can only describe as euphoric. By turning the tables, it forces us to acknowledge our own base, vengeful desires.

It's not perfect, but it's great. I can see why it got an eight-minute standing ovation at Cannes, and people clapped at the theater in which I saw it too. It works on a much more subliminal level than any movie in recent memory, and it sets out to offer some sort of emotional closure. (Nothing ever could, of course, but it gives an idea of what that might feel like for a moment.)

It's a long movie, but a good one. And I think an important one.

I will leave you with Tarantino's all-too-true dissection of Top Gun.

You're Simply the Best!

Thruway Driving and You

I consider myself an excellent driver. Others don't, but I do. If there is one skill I have, it's driving on the New York State Thruway. I-90 is my turf, either east- or westbound, and I make the rules. If you don't want to follow them, you need to take back roads. Period.

My greatest gift in Thruway driving is "clearing the lane," as the Bohall calls it. It consists of unclogging the logjam in the left lane, like a quadruple bypass through an atery. I do this by tailgating and aggressive/copious use of turn signals (the tailgating + "hey, move it asshole" signal is a favorite). If you are in front of me, you are moving too slowly. I have shit to do, you are in my way.

There are a few simple rules of Thruway driving, and today, most people didn't care to follow any of them. So for those that forgot them, here they are:

• When in the left/passing lane, drive faster than the car to your right, or I will tailgate you. This is the simplest and most important rule in the book; if you can't follow it, you should not be operating a motor vehicle.

• Don't pull in front of me and then slow down, for I will stalk you and kill you. You can wait to do whatever it is you have to do; I can't.

• If there is no one in front of you, you need to drive faster, or I will eat your children. The Thruway is utilitarian; it is not meant for sight-seeing. If you want sight-seeing, get off at the next fucking exit and take the one-lane roads, dick.

• If you are to the left of me, hovering, and I put my left signal on, pass me, or I will throw a molotov cocktail through your window. It's a hint that you are driving like an asshole; take this nugget and learn from it.

• You should be driving at least 80 miles per hour any time you are in the left hand lane. The one exception is when you are coming up upon one of those "Don't U-Turn" signs, since that's where cops live. At this point, you may slow down to 75. If you don't do this, I will sideswipe you into the median.

• Get off your fucking phone if it causes you to drive 60 mph on the Thruway. I have places to be and I don't want to have to wait for your fucking ass.

• If you are in the left/passing lane, and multiple people are passing you on the right, take the hint and get the hell over. It's the driver's version of calling you incompetent at your task.

• Do not, under any goddamn circumstances, let an 18-wheeler pull in front of you in the passing lane. Pass it, and let it wait until there is NO ONE behind it. Eighteen-wheelers are the anti-Christ; if you help them, you are part of the problem.

• If you are in front of me, and I am up on your ass, and you hit your brakes to try and scare me, you might as well pick up that cell phone to call your relatives and say good-bye, because you have just signed your own death warrant.
  

No one enjoys driving on the Thruway, but it is a straight line, so we all have to deal with it. If you can't handle it, stick to the bunny slope, newb. If I see you out there and you can't follow all of the rules, you'll know I'm there soon enough.

A Slight Resemblance?

Trent Edwards


Peter Dinklage

The Young Cons

Joke or no? I swear I can't tell.



This one on the other hand....

Decisions, Decisions

Courtesy of Crappy Graphs...

TV Lesbian Breaks It Down Re: Town Hall Protests

Please take 10 minutes of your time to watch this information about these so-called "spontaneous" town-hall meeting shouting matches. It is all fabricated, contrived rage, foisted upon us by large right-wing corporations.

It's goes along with the birthers, the Swift-Boat Vets and others who live by the mantra, "If you tell a lie enough times, it becomes the truth." It is the continued shame of the once-spartan Republican party. I'm sure that John McCain had no idea that by picking Sarah Palin, he would unearth this unsanitary subterranean nation of hillbillies and mongoloids. These people need to be shut the fuck down so they will shut the fuck up.

This is important.

Fine, You Caught Me

Someone unearthed my Kenyan birth certificate. Damn you, Lou Dobbs!

Give Up On Your Life

If ever you questioned just how out of touch and myopic conservatives are, please read this article by Jonah Goldberg at Townhall.com, as well as the subsequent comments by its mongoloid subscribers.

The basic idea of the article is that LIBERALS are so worried about global warming and the environment and hugging trees and such, that it never occurs to them that the earth could get pounded by a meteor in 2019! (If he had done a lick of research, he'd know that the asteroid is actually coming as early as 2037.)

In other words, why bother worrying about the environment when at any second -- KABOOM! -- it could all be gone anyway?! There is no need for clean air, potable water, an intact ozone layer, or any of the items that LIBERALS think you need. It's that Negro Messiah NOBAMA who is tricking you into thinking that the world's ecology is deteriorating, and most LIBERALS in Socialist AmeriKa believe it!

As one commenter said, "What happens when the idiots behind the fake Global Warming give us an ice age instead? That's what their models predicted back in the 1970s... Small input changes to the models give wildly divergent results." This knuckle-dragger apparently doesn't realize that global warming isn't just about the planet heating up, but a destabilization in the climate as a whole -- including pressure systems changing that could cause more unstable weather patterns, like hurricanes, for example.

Others note that Chicago and NYC have recorded their coldest June and July, respectively, on record. That means global warming is a crock, right?!?!?!

I think we should all follow the logic of this article, that we don't have control over meteors, so why worry about it? We should all stop going to school and to work, and people should stop writing books and making music. Why don't we just prepare for the coming of the meteor and turn in our badges now?

Every day, conservatives move further from Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and even their supposed hero Ronald Reagan, and move toward Glenn Beck, Limbaugh and Fred Phelps. It is fine for conservatives to have a set of ideals, but when they ignore empirical fact (such as John Kerry's Swiftboat activities, Obama's birth, or the scientific fact of global environmental decay), they look like a bunch of idiots.

Tiffani Thiessen is Busy

Kelly Kapowski gettin' it DONE

Tiffani Thiessen is Busy from Tiffani Thiessen

Rap is Back!

In case you honkeys didn't know, my hip hop blog is back in effect. I'll be updating it more frequently, so go give it a look and get yourself some nostalgia.



I know rap, my man.

Flipping His Lid

So this is what happens when you get raped in prison.



I'll let my nigga J-Stew handle this.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Born Identity
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Joke of the Day

Oh and would someone please do the world a favor and put a gun to the base of this woman's skull and pull the fucking trigger?



That's what happens when you let women get involved in politics.

UPDATE!!!!!!!!

Even Ann-Fucking-Coulter thinks these people are "cranks"!

And This Guy Used to Trounce Letterman?

Do you think anyone will ever have the balls to tell Jay Leno he's the corniest comic working today?



Well at least his employees are laughing.

The Voice

The Voice - watch more funny videos

Jive Talk

Here is how the Closed Captioning transcribes the "jive talk scene" from the movie Airplane!. (Subtitles in parentheses.)

PART ONE

Jive Man #1: Sheeet, man, that honky mus' be messin' my old lady -- got to be runnin' col upside his head! You know?
(Golly that white fellow should stay away from my wife or I will punch him.)

Jive Man #2: Hey home, I can dig it. You know he ain't gonna be lay no mo' big rap up on you man!
(Yes he is wrong for doing that.)

Jive Man #1: I say, hey, sky. S'other say I won' say? Pray to J., I get the same ol' same ol'.
(I knew a man in a similar predicament and he ended up being sorry.)

Jive Man #2: Knock yourself a pro, slick. Gray matter back got perform' us down, I take T.C.B.in', man.
(Don't be so naive, Arthur. Each of us faces a clear moral choice.)

Jive Man #1: Hey, you know wha' they say: See a broad to get that booty ack...
(Early to bed early to rise...)

Both: ...Lay 'er down an' smack'em yack 'em!
(...makes a mean healthy, wealthy and wise!)

Jive Man #1: Col' got to be! You know? Sheeeeit....
(How true! Golly!)

PART TWO

Elaine: Would you gentlemen care to order your dinners?

Jive Man #1: Bet babe, slide a piece o' da porter, drink side run the java.
(I would like the steak please.)

Jive Man #2: Lookie Here, I can dig grease and chompin' on some butter, then drag it through the garden.
(I'll have the fish.)

PART THREE (with BARBARA BILLINGSLEY)

Stewardess: Can I get you something?

Jive Man #2: S'mo-fo butter layin' to the bone, jackin' me up. Tight me.

Stewardess: I'm sorry, I don't understand.

Jive Man #1: Cutty say he can't hang.

June Cleaver: Oh stewardess, I speak jive. He said that he's in great pain and he wants to know if you can help him.

Stewardess: All right would you tell him to just relax and I'll be back as soon as I can with some medicine.

June Cleaver [to Jive Man #2]: Jus' hang loose, blood. She gonna catch up on ta' rebound on de med side.

Jive Man #2: What it is, Big Momma, my mama ain't raised no dummies -- I dug her rap

June Cleaver: Cut me some slack, Jack!

[All speak jive]

June Cleaver: Chump don' wan' no help, chump don' get da help. Jive-ass dude ain't go to brains any-how!

Quiet You

Two people who need to shut the fuck up this week:

OSAMA BIN LADEN

Osama Osama Osama.... baby, you are looking desperate. This is the 32nd tape you've put out since 9/11. That's about four per year. People still hate you because you are a big-lipped, shit-spewing asshole. But your act is tired. Is there anybody in the world who ISN'T Satan? You went from looking like this bizarro Malcolm X type guy to some panhandler standing at a corner raving about how the stop signs are the antichrist. Your need for attention is approaching Roger Clemens/Pete Dougherty-like proportions. (Although I'm still not convinced that you are more of an asshole than Clemens is. Might be a dead-heat.) You are a very sad man ... although not as sad as you will be when they finally find you. Ouch, that's gonna be a rough one!

WILLIAM KRISTOL of the Weekly Standard

He said this week: “Only six months into the new administration, even a talented hot air blower like President Obama, assisted by friendly gusts of wind from the media, is having trouble keeping the liberal blimp afloat.”

Sweetheart, when you have been wrong about EVERYTHING THAT YOU HAVE SAID in the last eight years, you lose your seat at the table to gloat. First of all, let's explain why the media is usually more liberal: it's because throughout history, the political regimes that have been the most unkind to the media (locking them up, torturing them, etc.) have been extreme right-wing governments, such as Soviet Russia, East Germany, North Korea, etc. That is why most "Hollywood types" tend to be liberal too: because it's the conservatives who are mostly in favor of censorship. (The "Reverend" Al Sharpton and his hair-trigger minions excepted.)

He said notably, "There's been a certain amount of pop sociology in America ... that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular." (2003, source)

Eric Alterman notes the following prescient predictions by Kristol:

• In the opening moments of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Kristol insisted, "We are now in the final days." He intoned, "If the President lied to the American People...he's finished."
  
  
• When the Starr report was issued, causing almost universal revulsion among Americans, Kristol wrote a cover editorial for his magazine that headlined the report Starr's Home Run, portraying its author as Mark McGwire and calling for Clinton's immediate impeachment.

Not to mention sloppy misquotes, out-of-left-field comments and an epic 2003 C-Span interview that you might think was conducted by The Onion or Phil Hendrie.

Billy Boy, you really are George Costanza: a guy who would be right all the time if he just did the opposite of what his instincts tell him. Since you are wrong about just about everything that you say, you just need to shut the fuck up for a little while. Thanks bud.