Red Menace

We are pleased to introduce a new feature that we hope will soon become one of your favorites. We have contacted frustrated Marxist film critic, Borko Naberezhnyi, in Vladivostok and he has agreed to favor us with his thoughts on American cinema whenever possible (allowing for the sporadic power outages that plague Eastern Russia). Remember, just because the Cold War is over, doesn't mean we can't go on hating one another.


The Aviator
by Borko Naberezhnyi

Aviator is story of capitalist, Howard Hughes, who go crazy as metaphor for syphilitic rot at heart of American capitalist system. Hughes is rich from daddy's money, and go to Hollywood, California for to make movies and sleep with loose American women. He spend much monies on film, Hell's Angels. Better to be about struggle of proletariat to overcome restrictions inherent in classist hierarchy.

After he make movie, he go to play the golf with actress Katharine Hepburn. He like her because inside he is weak capitalist infant who want his mommy. Wahhh, wahhh, he say, please to be my mommy, Katharine Hepburn! He has little baby mustache, too, not manly whiskers like Stalin. He go to house of her rich parents in Connecticut, USA, then make cutting remark about not working for their monies. It make big scene at dinner. Yes, I think, now is getting nice.

Then he make big plane out of plywood that does not fly, similar to many planes we have in Aeroflot. Then president of Pan-American Airlines try to use corrupted US senator to make bill to hurt TWA. Is boring! Then Hughes make a speech, about make the airlines for all the people. Yes, I think, is getting nice again! But then he go crazy, buying much Kleenex to prop up flagging nose tissue industry. I think he crazy man still.

Rating: Is nice!

False Advertising

I've lost a lot of respect for Special Agent Jack Bauer. With the release of seasons one and two of "24" on DVD, the truth is finally out there in black and white. On the show they make Kiefer Sutherland out to be some kind of adrenaline-fueled super cop, never sleeping a wink from midnight to midnight as he saves the City of Los Angeles from implacable menaces. But a closer examination reveals that the run-time of the entire season is a mere 999 minutes. Those commercials are tricky things, aren't they, Jack? This works out to 16 hours and 39 minutes of real-time action, leaving more than enough time to save the world and get one's beauty sleep. Just like The Greatest Story Ever Told and The NeverEnding Story II, I've been cheated.

Snow is wasted on the weekend.

Dick Cheney, Fashion Plate

I'm not a big fashionista myself, but then again, I'm not the Vice-President of the United States. Taking a short break from fear-mongering and running the country from undisclosed locations, Dick Cheney went to Auschwitz for the 60th anniversary of its liberation. In deference to the somberness of the setting, the gathering of world leaders dressed in formal black. But the Big Richard is too much a clothes horse to be limited by the "conventions" of old Europe. He was resplendant in his olive parka and "Staff 2001" beanie, dressed, as Robin Givhan in the Post put it, "in the kind of attire one typically wears to operate a snow blower."

I've been a paraeducator and a paralegal, so it seems there's only one logical career move for me: paratrooper.

Let the Punishment Fit the Crime

I'm sure most people have now seen the reports on the Los Angeles commuter train derailment yesterday. I can't help being struck by the following quote from today's paper: "The Los Angeles County district attorney said today that he would probably seek the death penalty for the suicidal man who abandoned his S.U.V. on a heavily traveled commuter rail track." I'm not a great believer in the death-penalty, and this case seems a special circumstance. It can't be the most fitting punishment for a dithering suicidal man to have the government spend $2.3 million to do the deed for him.

Creative Uses for a Light Stick

Yesterday and today in his daily White House Briefing column, Washington Post columnist Dan Froomkin referred to the rape rooms and torture chambers of Saddam Hussein as being "under new management." This pithy phrase originated, as far as I can tell, on "The Daily Show with John Stewart" when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke. What is notable about Froomkin's usage is that he didn't source it. I remember this line being quoted often as it so succinctly summed up the moral catastrophe that the war on terror is becoming, but people always referenced The Daily. I guess it's become part of the national lexicon now. Frank Rich's editorial from the other day pretty accurately sums up why nobody in the media seems to care about this on-going monstrosity (people are much more interested in Katie Couric's prurient special on teen sex. The horror!) Apparently, the mortgaging of America's moral authority isn't newsworthy. We'll see what happens with the confirmation of Alberto "Torture Boy" Gonsalez this week.

Snubbing Time

As I watched Adrian Brody read the Oscar nominations this morning, it seemed so obvious that Paul Giamatti would be nominated for his nuanced performance in Sideways that I didn't even notice this year's most egregious snubbing. It took until I got to work and looked over the full list. Just looking at the nominations, you'd think that only six good movies came out in 2004 (one of which, incomprehensibly, would be Closer). I'll save my predictions until Oscar night, but for now, all I have to say is Leo is taking up valuable space. Giamatti is still owed for his American Splendor snubbing from last year. Of course, there was no way he would win, but as they say, it's an honor just to be nominated.

Additional Note: Speaking of snubs, where's Wyclef's original song nomination for "Million Voices"? Who chooses these things anyway?

"Freedom" Isn't Free

If you caught Dubya's speech from the Capitol balcony the other day, then you know what we're in for: four more years of spreading freedom. Janis Joplin said that "freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose," but she's been posthumously shilling for Mercedes Benz. Yes, everything and everyone has its price. On that note, now that W. is safely ensconsed for another term, he's requested $80 billlion from Congress to keep spreading liberty and freedom and other theoretical concepts around the globe. Knight-Ridder has broken this cost down to the second, putting the Joe Taxpayer's bill somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,500/second. That's $100,000 spent since you began reading this post.

That's another $12,500 gone as you paused after reading that last sentence.

Runners-Up

With all the fame and fortune blogging has brought to my life, I sometimes wonder what would have become of this enterprise had I chosen one of the many alternate blog titles suggested by the focus groups. Maybe it's only interesting in an Inside Baseball-type context, but here are some of the runners-up: Half Measures; Shit or Get Off the Pot; Bush-Cheney '04; Jars of Piss; The Onion; Holy Ghost Power and, of course, Despair.

Why Not Me?

I declare an end to the Age of Specialization. What could inspire such a frankly Fukuyama-esque pronouncement? It's the recent release of albums by Minnie Driver and Robert Downey, Jr (duh). An utter lack of talent and ability are no longer necessary in today's world. But I'm not going to limit myself like some second-rate Willis or Shatner. Actors aren't the only ones swapping careers. Singers have been sneaking their way into movies at least since Al Jolson, with mixed results (see Al Jolson). Still, I plan to take it one step further.

With the advantage of my utter lack of acting talent, looks and musical ability, it's only logical that I will be the next mega-star. Look out, J-Lo. In 2005, keep an eye out for my new album, Songs in the Key of Jive, and my upcoming film debut, The Guy Who Does That Thing (think The Thin Red Line meets Bedknobs and Broomsticks, but directed by Michael Mann).

My right eye has decided to reject contact lenses, like some black market kidney.
Despair.

GOP = Sucky Music

The most exclusive club in the world:
Republicans Who Rock

In the course of human history, the combination of vitriolic patriotism and affluence has yet to produce any decent music. For examples, look no further than this Thursday's presidential inauguration. I didn't attend myself, I watched it on the TV, which should have given me ample access to the "Mute" button. If only I'd made better use of this innovation. The 100,000 assembled, plus me, were "treated" to earnest renditions of John Ashcroft's "Let the Eagle Soar" and the "American [not National] Anthem." Lyrically, these two abominations sound like they were composed by a third-grader with a rhyming dictionary, no doubt as part of some onerous homework assignment. Any person hearing this music at the inauguration cannot have any doubt in his mind about the Bush administration's position on torture.

Pomp & Circumstance in Washington Town

On Inauguration's Eve, it fell to me to drive a decorated war hero and a pregnant lady across town to meet Dick Cheney. I was selected for this mission because, as is so often the case, I wasn't doing much of anything at the time. Without warning, a call from my landlords broke the silence. Actually, I shouldn't say it was completely without warning, since I can hear them walk to the phone and dial through the ceiling.

Tour buses rumbled down Massachusetts Ave and limosines cruised the streets like implacable sharks; I supposed these to be the people whose votes put Bush back into office and the people who are actually benefitting from it, respectively.

As I cut across the Mall erupted all around me: from the Ellipse, the Jefferson memorial and the Monument monument, reflecting reds and blues off the low clouds. Yeah, there were tacky fireworks displays that exploded into the letter "W", but inauguration is bigger than one petty little man. And it forces me to admit, cynical sort that I am, that there's something pretty cool about the orderly transfer of democratic power, no matter how many times I'm screwed by it.

Emergency Room Follies

Nurse, pass the claw hammer

Based on the coverage afforded to it, nail in the head seems to be America's favorite construction mishap (walkway collapse running a close second). The most recent example is from today's news cycle: construction worker Patrick Lawler's nail gun mishap that he didn't notice for six days until it was discovered in a dental X-ray. The four-inch nail barely missed his right eye as it inserted itself an inch and a half into Lawler's brain. It'd be easy to conclude that there's an epidemic of nail gun-related skull injuries by the following quote from Denver neurosurgeon Sean Markey: "This is the second one we've seen in this hospital where the person was injured by the nail gun and didn't actually realize the nail had been imbedded in their skull." While Dr. Markey claims this is a rare injury, he presents the caveat that this is merely the second time someone didn't notice.

PBS Teaches Me Something

Watching Ken Burns' new documentary, "Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson," really taught me something about our shared national heritage. In telling the story of Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion, Burns relies on many contemporary accounts, including blantantly racist commentary by the L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune and Jack London. Hearing these voices demonstrated with all the impact of a Johnson right hook that there was once a time, long ago in this country, when people actually cared about boxing. As we move forward into this brave new century, let us not forget that, although what specifically we need to remember about it presently escapes me.

Gareth Keenan Investigates!

Everybody loves the ITV monkey

Much has already been written on the comedic masterpiece that is BBC's "The Office," so I won't waste any of your time with overviews. I would like to focus one technical detail: how the show creates the richest soundscape of any program on television.

Conforming with the documentary style, the directors, Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, eschew any music or laugh tracks. Lesser shows have wrecked on the shoals of audience apathy without in-show theme music or laugh-tracks. For every laugh-trackless success like "Arrested Development", there's a graveyard of "Sports Nights", "Bakersfield, P.D.s", and "Actions". What sets "The Office" apart is not just its refusal to clue in the audience about whether a given line is meant to be funny. In the background of every scene is a throbbing forest of beeps, hums and whirs that color the office's bleak interior (and probably make Wilco green with envy). The rhythm of copiers and ringing phones, underlaid with the humming of flourescent lighting and computer fans, is so integral to what any modern office sounds like that it's beyond notice. But this attention to soundtrack is what establishes the eerie realism of "The Office": the viewer hears where they work. These tracks are all added during mixing and editing, so credit where credit is due to the diligent Foley artists at BBC; it's their work that makes "The Office" more alive than anything else on television.

We Get It, You're Oppressed

Hi, there. Do you know any women? If you do, then you've probably had every last one of them tell you about Maureen Dowd's recent editorial, headlined "Men Just Want Mommy." After the seventh person tried to explain to me how womens' IQs are inversely correlated to their marriability, I read the thing myself. While I found many of Dowd's conclusions plausible on a shallow level, there weren't any revelations one couldn't find in a Nora Ephron movie.

Dowd misses the whole point though, revealed in the final quote by Carrie Fisher. Now, please don't tell me that Princess Leia cannot get a date. She just has to troll a few sci-fi conventions in that bronze bikini from Jedi (She could easily land this guy, for instance). Professional women may be shunned by professional men, but it couldn't hurt to do a little slumming for desperate men.

(Damn, this is my third mention of Maureen Dowd this month. I guess she's Expecting Rain's Miss January).

Conspiracy Theory of the Day

As one who has watched Vladimir Putin's ruthless, Soviet-style consolidation of power with trepidation, I can't help but feel unnerved by this recent article on bears. It seems the balmy winter in Estonia, where the normal average temperature hovers around 23 degrees, has awoken the hibernating bears, which are now wandering the forest. Now that the US is occupied with its adventure in Iraq, are "awakening bears" the coded signal to the proletariat to re-unify and finally complete the glorious Revolution of '17. Will "concrete gray" be this year's "black"? They have us decadent capitalists right where they want us.

Darwin Watch

Despite the protests of the local school boards, monkey's once again my uncle in Georgia.

Some Kind of Monster

Fox Sports has done the admirable service of setting up a photo gallery of Barry Bonds "through the ages." It ends up being a bit of a freak show. You can almost hear the carnival barkers: "Come one, come all. See the 180 lb. two spot hitter morph before your very eyes into the incredible 'Forehead Man.' Marvel as he hits a ball 600 feet, yet cannot touch his arms to his own sides! A fanstastic feat of conditioning, you say? Quoth the man himself, 'Dude, whatever.'"

Maybe it's passe to make fun of Barry (there's also a Giambi gallery to further martyr that sorry son-of-a-bitch). I did learn that Bonds was wearing that cop-out elbow armor way back in the 90s. But if you asked me who really holds the home run record, that guy's name is Roger Maris.

Howlin' Wolf and Snickers: Closer Than You'd Think

Nothing satisfies like...

The modern era in which we live offers many advantages (like the polio vaccine, for instance, or Pop Rocks brand candy), but does it also have the unintended consequence of blurring the line between the insane and sane in our society? I'm not just talking about hands-free cellphone technology, although the recent multiplication of people walking down the street talking to "invisible" companions is certainly unnerving.

The sheer amount of information available to us through a proliferation of media outlets contributes to an unhealthy obsession with minutiae (much like the struggles of "Double Dare" host, Marc Summers). Call it "obsessive compulsive trivia disorder," or OCTD. Similarly to the universal nexus that is Kevin Bacon, the degrees of separation between seemingly disparate phenomena are rapidly dwindling, creating an exponential growth in connectivity. I'll give you an example from my own life: in the song "Goin' Down Slow," by Howlin' Wolf, he uses the phrase "great googily moogily." I knew I had heard this before, but where? I asked around, and though many attested to its familiarity, no one could figure out from whence it came. It came to obsess me; I could think of no other thing.

Fortunately, as they often do, my own personal Girl Friday came through in the clutch. The line is uttered by the hapless groundskeeper of the Kansas City "Chefs" in a Snickers bar commercial from 1996. Thus the logical connection between candy bars and the author of the self-referential song, "Three Hundred Pounds of Joy," was revealed.

Or perhaps I'm the only one suffering from OCTD. Despair.

Me and King Olaf

Now I'll have something to put on the mantle
next to my Brent Barry talking bobble-head.

If I could figure out why bathrooms are the most conducive places to thinking, I would win the damn Nobel Prize. I seem to have all my best ideas in there. Is it the austere, tiled interior? The Zen-like trickle of running water in the urinals? The fumes from bleach and detergeants? Perhaps the ample mirrors facilitate the self-reflection (pun very intended) necessary to connect those tricky neurons of inspiration. The story goes that Einstein thought up the theory of relativity on a streetcar, but odds are he was laying cable when he hit upon that particular brainstorm.

Ream-ed Out

Inspired by a viewing of the excellent Hotel Rwanda, I would like to extend an invitation to all the squirrels that I made homeless with my massive printing project on Sunday. I came into work at 5:00 p.m. and left at 5:00 a.m.; over this 12-hour span I would wager that a small forest was converted into antitrust trial exhibits. Three ten-ream copy boxes are now filled with documents, and dozens of squirrels deprived of house and home. Thus, all you rodents are welcome to crash with me, until you get back on your feet. My altruism won't be on par with Paul Rusesabagina's, but we all got to do our part. You can definitely expect a bowl of mixed nuts out on the coffee table, maybe a thimblefull of Knob Creek as we kick back and watch whatever it is squirrels would watch if they had television (possibly "Joey"?).

Semantics Rant, As Promised

Last month I was complaining about how the word "unique" is the most misused word in the English language. I've been waiting for an example in the media to seize upon and rant about, but the right moment hasn't presented itself. I'll have to go with something said during a football telecast, which I acknowledge is a tainted source for parsing the English language.

At any rate, Al Michael's or some such person was praising Peyton Manning's touchdown pass record of 49, and gushed about what a unique achievement it was. While it may be "technically" true that Manning is unique as the only holder of the record at this particular moment, that doesn't really make him unique. If, for instance, Peyton Manning was the only person to ever throw a touchdown in the history of the game (like Refrigerator Perry was the only player ever to pick up a running back and carry him into the endzone), than THAT would be unique.

I hope this has helped, though it wasn't as cathartic as I might have hoped.

Creative Bankruptcy Alert

As I'm sure everyone knows already, the People's Choice Awards were held last night. It's discouraging to see that they now give out an award for "Best Sequel." Original ideas to honor must be in short supply. The winner, if you care, was Shrek 2.

Rapper Watch

That would be Mos Def on the left

If Ice Cube insists on only making family comedies and action films from now on, he's in danger of losing his vaunted position as best "Rapper Who Acts." I don't know that he has much to worry about from Ja Rule (Scary Movie 3) or DMX (Cradle 2 The Grave), but Mos Def has been a stand-out in everything I've seen him in. He's the best thing about The Italian Job remake, and is currently generating a lot of buzz for his role in The Woodsman. So Cube, watch your back. Go have a talk with David O. Russell or Spike Jones and see if you can't get something together.

More Work Excitement

It's a sure bet I've been spending too much time at work if I find myself saying things like, "This is the most bush league job of document coding I've ever seen."

Oh, Is That Why...

"I know [stabilizing Iraq] is hard, but it's hard for a reason. And the reason it's hard is because there are a handful of folks who fear freedom."

-George W. Bush, The President

Update: Maureen Dowd seized on the same quote as me, but I like to think that her analysis is more clever and piquant than mine only because of the New York Times' superior research department.

Faking It

The $40 million inauguration is still more than a week away, but my personal honeymoon/mental recouperation period with the Prez appears to be over. Not only have I been fuming over Gonzales' weasally testimony to Congress, but now we have the reemergence of the Bush Administration propaganda wing. You may remember their previous attempts at disguising government prostletyzing as actual news, creating fake "special reports" touting Bush's medicare drug bill and drug abuse reform, among others. These aired on local news channels without any disclaimers that the spots were produced by the government and the "correspondants" were actors (their "reporter" names are Karen Ryan, Alberto Garcia and Mike Morris, just in case you were wondering).

Since fake news garnerned them a slap on the wrist from the GAO, the Bushies have decided to leave that angle to "The Daily Show" and just move right into payola. The Department of Education has "independently" decided that a prudent use of taxpayer dollars is to bribe conservative black radio host Armstrong Williams to sing the praises of the "No Child Left Behind Act" on his show. What is the price to shill for the federal government on the public airwaves? A mere $240,000. Would it be pandering to both right and left if I asked how much Humvee armor that would buy?

Suggested Reading

In honor of Alberto Gonzales's confirmation hearings, here's a couple depressing articles from the New York Times Op-Ed page on everybody's favorite topic: torture. Maureen Dowd brings her typically arch commentary to bear on administration hypocrisy and Supreme Court chicanery (why isn't this Clarence Thomas kick-back nonsense being reported anywhere?). Mark Danner has written a book, so he probably knows something about the subject of strapping electrodes to genitals. The Lead Editorial is justifiably dubious about Gonzales's contrition.

Yes, Gonzales is an evasive, supplicating weasel, but he rose up from poverty just like Republicans think all po' folk should be able to. That, plus his undying fealty to Bushie-Bush, make him the go-to guy for AG.

The Sporting News

Edgar: The Mustache Years

Frankly, if it's wrong to use NES games to correct historical injustices then I don't want to be right. Now that I've downloaded RBI Baseball 2, which features the Seattle Mariners baseball franchise circa 1989, I can correct all the moves that management balked on. Thus Jim Presley is benched in favor of a still-spry Edgar Martinez and Omar Vizquel is brought in at shortstop. Though this team would never have become a force in the Oakland-dominated AL West (our number one starter is Scott Bankhead, for chrissakes), it still keeps me warm on these baseball-less winter nights. I should probably stop playing so much Nintendo, but it's not like I have multiplication tables or a diorama due tomorrow.

My satisfaction with meting out after-the-fact sports justice may have something to do with watching a fatigued Sonics squad get slaughtered by the Wizards last night. I scored some tickets from a rather shady guy named Said who hangs out at the MCI Center Chipotle, but they weren't bad seats. After some tight McMillan-esque ball movement early this season, it was a pretty sloppy game. Ray Allen couldn't buy a field goal in the first half, and when that happens, you know it ain't gonna be pretty.

(In a side note, the late-80s incarnation of the Pittsburgh Pirates was a pretty sick team.)

The Rise of Western Technology

Now that the blades in razors are multiplying like bunnies, one might reflect on the fact that in 5,000 years humanity hasn't come up with a better method of removing men's facial hair than scraping it off with a sharpened piece of metal. Unlike indoor plumbing, I guess that was one we figured out right out of the gate.

Wednesday

It was one of those soul-crushing days at work. In the government, we call those "weekdays."

Global Pissing Contest (The Good Kind)

The SE Asian tsunamis appear to have triggered a massive global charity race. The US of A, after offering a piddly $15 million at first, upped its offer to $350 mil to compete with Japan's half-billion pledge. But the US could hardly get unzipped in this global pissing contest when Australia chipped in $764 million, passing Germany by $90,000,000. Whose going to step up next and earn bragging rights at the United Nations' cocktail hour?

Spicing Up C-SPAN

Bring out the gimp

If there's one thing people in Washington are tired of, it's those stodgy confirmation hearings. Aren't they just an opportunity for partisan soapboxing? Isn't there a more efficient way to extract information from George W. Bush's cabinet nominees? Fortunately for the future of political life in America, I have a novel solution for adding some spice to the up-coming rounds of Hill questioning. Instead of having Attorney General-nominee Alberto Gonzales placed in front of the cameras for a grilling by Carl Levin (D-MI) and Joseph Biden (D-DE), why not just interrogate him with his own administration approved methods? These, of course, are narrowly defined as everything excepting an "intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." What is your preferred color and pile-depth for the carpeting in the Justice Department, Mr. Gonzalez? Bring on the waterboards.

I Promised Myself I Wouldn't But...

I tried to resist, really I did, but I just...couldn't...help...myself. After I went to all the trouble of mocking the top ten lists of the year, I have to make a Top Ten List for Movies of 2004. It's the influence of reading all the critics' lists. I apologize profusely.

1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: to quote my Dad, "I don't know who directed this movie, but you just hate him 'cause he's so fucking good!"
2. Sideways
3. Fog of War (saw it in February, so we cool)
4. Bad Education
5. The Dreamers
6. A Very Long Engagement
7. Before Sunset
8. Kill Bill, Vol. 2
9. Kinsey
10. as I am not a way-cool New York film critic, I haven't seen the following yet, which may still make the list and/or knock others off: House of Flying Daggers, The Aviator, Million Dollar Baby, The Incredibles, Hotel Rwanda, Moolaade, Tarnation, etc.

Somebody Has a Case of the Tuesdays

To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, Tuesday is the cruelest day. Monday suffers the ignoble reputation of most dreaded weekday, but I declare that it is unearned. Blame Garfield the Cat's propaganda mill. For Monday carries the bittersweet hangover of weekend's felicity, the work day tempered by remnants of Sunday's lazy beatitude. Water cooler Iagos may claim we are most rudely delivered from weekend's womb into the cruelties of the so-aptly named "grind," but the memory of blessed freedom warms us in the cold light of office wasteland.

Wednesday, dutifully marking the work week's acme, begins the slide into Friday's dulcimer deliverance. Thursday offers up proximate promises of Friday and, until most recently, amusing NBC situation-comedies.

Yet Tuesday offers no light at tunnel's end, naught but flourescent purgatory; Dante abandoned by Virgil to drift in a sea of cubicles. Curse thee, abhorrent middle-child of the work week!

Curious, No?

In Washington the weather is unseasonably warm, and the flags are often at half-mast. But no one in Union Station will tell me who died.

Go, Hawks

The Seattle Seahawks: Just good enough to lose in the playoffs

Now that our illustrious hometown football team has managed to snatch the NFC West title and homefield advantage for round-one of the playoffs, can they manage to win their first post-season game since 1984? It'd be a nice little bookend for me, neatly encompassing those formative two decades between the ages of 4 and 24.

They're matched up against the St. Louis Rams, who trounced them back on November 14th, so the outlook isn't so good. For as long as it lasts (I'm guessing until next Saturday, say 4:30ish), Go Hawks. Justify for once that big mollusk-looking stadium all us Seattlites paid for.

Ray vs. Che

With the Oscar nominations approaching, it's biopic season again here in movieland. Time to reflect on the movies of the lives of the people who changed the world. Or at least warranted a $50 million budget from Fox Searchlight. This post should really be titled "Ray vs. Che vs. Kinsey vs. Hughes vs. Darin," but that wouldn't be the zingy title that this blog is so well-known for. Whose impersonation of a historical figure will garner Oscar gold? The smart money's on Jamie Foxx, since he's playing a drug addict and, more importantly, a cripple. Oscar can't resist a cripple.

I've seen all but one of the above-mentioned films, and all I can really say about the biopic genre is that I'll give major props to any filmmaker who doesn't end his movie with a little "Where Are They Now" segment (big ups, Bill Condon!). Directors, if you're gonna say it, put it in the film. Don't pad your runtime with inane paragraphs on black screens (e.g. "[Insert lead female's name] never stopped loving [protagonist], who died tragically of heart disease before his time, but not before kicking heroin, losing his mind and leading a peasants' revolt in the jungles of Bolivia.)

Out of the Closet

Now that we've arrived comfortably in the year 2005, it's OK to admit that your favorite Modest Mouse song has been, and always will be, "Trailer Trash." It's safe to come out now. Just say the words, I know you'll feel better.

Tradition!

More fun than huffing paint!

Thanks to a timely gift (big ups, Grandma!), I was able to revive a New Year's tradition for 2005. Back when I was young (19) and had no friends, I used to stay in on December 31st and watch the Marx Brothers marathon every year on PBS. Horse Feathers, Duck Soup, Monkey Business and The Cocoanuts, one after the other, warping my still-forming mind. Before I was old enough to appreciate the surreal brilliance of Monty Python or the silent mania of Buster Keaton, the Marxs made sure my world was just a little more strange. Thus at 2 a.m. on this New Year's Day, after finishing off the better part of two bottles of champagne, I settled in for a bit of wacky intrigue in the fictional European republic of Fredonia. Why a duck? Why, indeed.

The Year That Was

Let's all have big party

In honor of the end-of-year wrap-up lists so in vogue at the moment, I'd like to present the Top Ten Top Ten Lists of the 2004. So here it is, a salute to the year that was:

1. Top Ten Chinese Industrial Disasters
2. Top Ten Movies Featuring Jude Law
3. Top Ten Poor Managment Decisions by the New York Mets
4. Top Ten Prisoner Torture Incidents
5. Top Ten Democrat Excuses
6. Top Ten Failed ABC Sitcoms
7. Top Ten Awkward Nicknames for the Current Decade (2000-2009)
8. Top Ten Amusingly Callous Donald Rumsfeld Press Conferences
9. Top Ten Law and Order Spinoffs
10. Top Ten . . . ah, fuck it.

Patent Pending

I have a fantastic new product in development with some top engineers, soon to be the must-have accessory of 2005. And what is this new doohicky that everyone will be clamoring for? I'm glad you asked:

Presenting "The Drunk-Dialer," a combination flask and cellular phone. It ingeniously combines alcohol and mobile phone technology, the two things every hip urban dude and chick needs to survive. Now your vodka and your friends are always at your fingertips. Take "The Drunk-Dialer" anywhere you currently take your cellular phone, and soon concerts, funerals and state dinners will be more fun than ever. A trip to your local park was never so kooky now that you're trashed and chatting with your closest pals. Our special funnel assures the separation of liquor and electronics, to be certain all the alcohol goes into you and not your phone's circuitboard.

So remember: "The Drunk-Dialer." Ask for it by name.