Friday, November 24, 2006
HOLIDAY UPDATE. I hope your Thanksgiving went well. I find it curious that I, a godless lie-beral moonbat, had my turkey at my sister's table, while Lileks, a member of the blessed Elect, had his at a Holiday Inn. Shouldn't he be in a Norman Rockwell tableau? Conversely, aren't wretches like me supposed to spend major holidays in saloons, whorehouses, or John Reed's Greenwich Village apartment, fruitlessly seeked to soothe our withered souls with tinkling pianos, chromosome-splitting drugs, and Tofurkey sploshing? Well, maybe next year.
I will try to add content this weekend, though I am spending it with editor Martin and his family in New Hampshire, and we will spend most of our time trying to amuse the toddler and empty the liquor cabinet simultaneously. To add political roughage, I note this Pajamas Media story, "Pierre Gemayel's funeral turns into anti-Syrian rally." Given their previous sanctimony over the Paul Wellstone memorial, does that mean they condemn it?
6:59 AM by roy edroso
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Wednesday, November 22, 2006
THINGS TO BE GRATEFUL FOR. Crunchy Rod Dreher says people refuse to believe in his God because "it might mean that they can't conduct their sex lives exactly as they wish."
Like I need a better reason? Well, my lack of faith also allows me to sleep in on Sundays, and to avoid people like Rod Dreher. It's win-win-win, so far as I can see.
This really is a great country. Y'all enjoy your turkey and, if you are so blessed, your atheism and extramarital sex!
1:54 PM by roy edroso
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Tuesday, November 21, 2006
THE DREAM THEATRE. This obituary of Robert Altman, who has just passed, talks about the string of "flops" that preceded his "biggest box office success since M*A*S*H, Gosford Park." "He would go for years at a time directing obscure movies before roaring back with a hit," it also says. That's the way the world sees it, I guess: filmmaking as a hunt for boffo b.o., to only be counted a success when the big cat has been bagged.
But Altman made movies in a way, and at a pace, that proved he wasn't a big game hunter, but a poacher in the preserves of King Hollywood. Now, he was no duffer at the coup de cinema that moves a whole roomful of people to react simultaneously -- as in Nashville, when Haven passes the mike to a random bystander and commands her to sing, and, as she slowly turns, we realize everything now depends on that fragile, demented girl who was raving about the flyswatters, and who knows what she'll do...
But for the most part Altman made private movies that seemed to block off the periphery and live like dreams inside our heads. That kind of movie may get to be a hit by accident, or by accretion (even the much-maligned Popeye made its money back in foreign receipts and parents' rentals), but it is very far from a sure thing.
If you're going to work that way, you have to work hard, and Altman was tireless and prolific. When there was no money, he would do T.V. on film -- or, if the project were interesting enough, T.V. on T.V. (Altman also co-wrote this libretto!)
Not everything was great, but even the minor films have their charms. I am very fond, for example, of The Gingerbread Man -- where the cheap novel mystery is conveyed, not as usual by thudding soundtrack cues, shadows, and jittery editing, but by constant rain, regnant foliage, and the muzzy atmosphere of lives gone to seed. But I was a film nerd in the '70s, when Altman was one of the gods; any piece of his movies is to me like a few notes from the voice of an old friend. Now these images float through my dream-theatre: Elliot Gould trying to name all seven dwarves, then dancing drunk with George Segal ("Rufus Rastus Rawlston Brown..."). The community passing buckets to save its church while McCabe dies in a snowdrift. Legions of Depression rustics, armed with Coca-Colas, ascending a staircase in slow motion. Sterling Hayden and Nina Van Pallandt fighting the Malibu waves in darkness and long shot. The shock of the scars on Sally Kellerman's back. Copters descending like locusts on Los Angeles. Fade out, the voice of the auctioneer calling the astonishing numbers and the gasps of the crowd; fade in, Vincent van Gogh on a bed of straw...
The dream theatre is always open.
UPDATE. Altman's death gives the loathsome Roger L. Simon an opportunity to demonstrate an all-embracing lack of class. Althouse is kind of sweet about it, but her commenters confuse Altman's M*A*S*H with the TV show, which figures.
UPDATE II. Been scanning the blogs, and it reminds me of one of the many things I don't like about this 'sphere: just about every blogger whom I already know to be a jackass has, when mentioning Altman, been similarly ignorant and dismissive. In real life, jackasses are more well-rounded than this; they will have a few admirable qualities, which we will sometimes be forced to notice and thus be reacquainted with the wonderful mystery that is life. It is just not common for every asshole you know to share the same asshole opinion about the same subject. People aren't that dull. Maybe the problem is that the worst popular bloggers are very bad writers, and their comprehension and portrayal of themselves is as weak as their comprehension and portrayal of everything else.
12:23 PM by roy edroso
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Monday, November 20, 2006
HOW COME THEY CAN CALL EACH OTHER NIGGER AND WE CAN'T? PART 82,363. Michael Richards' weird racial crackup at the Laugh Factory got picked up right fast by the right wing. And if you've been playing along with us at home, you know what kind of comments that leads to -- for example, from Althouse:Not to be justifying or anything, but has anyone noticed how all the black comedians (and comediennes) almost always do a segment belittling white people? You know, where the comedians enunciate words and talk about how ineffectual white people are...
...But it's a question that bears mentioning: why has it become hip for blacks to call each other nigger? I've never understood that. I suppose it's like gays calling themselves fags. But I don't understand that either...
...I'm puzzled as to why almost every black comedian, rapper, and actor seems to use the word on a regular basis, then... Etc. Interestingly, at this moment the commenters at Ace of Spades are less clueless than Althouse's.
3:39 PM by roy edroso
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WRONGTHINK CARTOON EXPOSED! Foolish revisionist parents going to Happy Feet in great numbers. But Comrade Dan McLaughlin of Party cell Red State is giving traitorous cartoon big nyet!..the second half of the film is basically an extended diatribe in favor of a UN ban on fishing in the Antarctic. As with so many cartoons today featuring talking animals, carnivores and humans are uniformly evil...
...There were Hollywood stereotypes abounding: unfavorable characters were given Southern or Scottish accents, misguided religious superstitions and a bluenosed insistence on tradition and conformity (even though the film's beginning dramatically emphasized the reality that tradition and conformity are essential to the survival of emperor penguins), while favorable ones got Latino accents, rythym, a sense of humor and a lust for females...
...inhuman (or at least, anti-human) environmental propaganda wrapped in the veneer of a kids' movie is not the best way to spend a Saturday afternoon with the family. Is pro-ecology, pro-lust propaganda disguised as cartoon for little ones! Also is showing anti-Scottish tendencies, which brings shame on Mike Myers, who without career-saving burr is only Wayne's World Minus One, not to mention libel on our beloved Scots-Irish persons of whiteness at expense of rhythmic and probably illegal Latinos!
Child cannot grow strong into New Conservative Man or Woman with such wrongthink playing in cinemas! Suggest Conservative Film Unit create alternative movie, filmstrip, or flipbook showing adventures of ANWR drillers helping Mr. Moose and Mrs. Bear break out of arctic rut! That and Passion of the Christ make good citizens and good fun also! Da, da, we laugh!
UPDATE. Maybe it's because they present a soothing change after the psychopaths at Ace of Spades, but I feel Ms.-Right-Now-style love for McLaughlin's commenters. One decries "'Ren & Stimpy' values" and "the 'Animaniacs' singing gleefully about 'baloney in our slacks'" and asks, "Now, Hollyweird wonders why kids are so disrespectful and destructive?" and I can answer, no, Hollyweird knows why the kids are disrespectful and destructive, they just want to know if they have learned to identify the taste of Ecstasy in their soft drinks, and if the Lusty Latino division of our film indoctrination crew has prepared them sufficiently for anal.
Lots of other delights in there, including one with the Line of the Day: "Due in part to my (extremely) mild form of autism, I'm pretty hard to shock."
2:06 PM by roy edroso
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Sunday, November 19, 2006
BUSINESS AS USUAL. Ace of Spades declares, "There are those who shriek in high dudgeon when it's suggested that, at some point, it may be necessary to kill off an awful lot of the Islamic world to secure our own lives." He briefly considers the shriekers' point of view, then decides, "I think what a lot of these people mean, but won't say, is that it's actually about time to consider giving Israel to the Muslims, and let them wipe out most of the Jews."
There isn't anything that can be said to this, except small talk like, "So, how about that Ohio State?" to keep him distracted until the ambulance arrives.
UPDATE. Commenter Porrofatto points us to an Ace commenter who -- well, I dunno, fellas, I've been on this beat a long time and I can't remember a comment quite like this:Part of my crazy, is that I have VERY vivid dreams. I tend to remember a great many details.
After I left service, and after 9/11 I would start to find comfort in dreams/thoughts that were absolutely horrible in their brutality. I won't go into details, but it had to do with me viewing horror from above and causing that horror.
After a while, my friends at work started to ask me why I looked like hell, and I confided in them. It became a simple statement to explain why I looked like such hell (after all I'm a sexy mother fucker, and for me to look like hell, I have to REALLY look like hell) "The village?" I would nod, and whenever anyone would come at me, my friends, coworkers and bosses would interdict because they understood that I just spent a night dreaming of slaughtering villages, to teach a lesson.
I know, it's just a dream, but that cruelty has seaped into me to the point that I find comfort in believing that grotesque violence might teach these people to stop killing us in the same way. You have to wonder about "Wickedpinto"'s place of work, where Dennis Hopper as the office manager informs his colleagues, each time Wickedpinto runs through the jungle, that his mind is sane but his soul is mad. What kind of business is it? Electroless nickel plating? Army surplus? Maybe he's a receptionist for Dr. Mrs. Perfesser ("The insta wife could hammer damascus steel with her awesome knockers, and hone a monofiliment with her perfectly sharp cheekbones").
I joke sometimes about Homeland Security monitoring this site, but sometimes I rather hope that they do.
9:49 PM by roy edroso
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