1. If I die before I witness a San Francisco Giants' World Championship, my life will be somewhat incomplete, no matter what else happens.
2. One of my proudest achievements is also one of my most frustrating: I was "reassigned" as the campus newspaper adviser after one year because the administration was uncomfortable with actual journalism being taught, rather than just putting out a monthly propaganda newsletter about how great things were. It still aggravates me just as much almost three years later.
3. If there had been "Rock Band" when I was in college, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have graduated, at least on time.
4. As it was, it was close: I had to call from a pay phone in Switzerland (a month after walking the stage at Davis) to verify I had actually passed a class that the professor had threatened me with no credit in. I apologize to the Swiss people who had to deal with the drunken American redhead yelling "I graduated! Yes! Oh, wait. Is that a good thing?"
5. Most days I can look around and think how blessed I am to come to work every day and be surrounded by youthful vitality and laughter and noise. Some days I simply want to kill them all. The day half of them cut to get free Denny's was the most recent example.
6. My wife and I first got together in a friends' house in San Francisco where neither of us lived. In the morning, I woke up and went down the hill to walk in the Bay to Breakers race with some other buddies. Our pre-planned costume theme? The Walk of Shame.
7. My biggest problem with most who call themselves "conservatives" is that they usually just repeat ideology they've heard some right-wing commentator spout off, and they rarely have any history or evidence to back it up. The fact that they've been on the wrong side of every single civil rights issue and continue to back things like Prop H8te is especially galling.
8. I can't stand when people are consistently late. It speaks volumes about their personalities, even though every time they are tardy, they have an excuse about that one time and refuse to see it as a destructive pattern. I lived in San Francisco and commuted to Pleasant Hill for five years. In that time, I was late to school exactly twice: once when there was a gigantic accident on the Bay Bridge, and once when I was staying over at my parents' in Lafayette and set the alarm an hour late.
9. I can't take anyone's writing completely seriously who still hasn't figured out homonyms like your/you're, there/their/they're, its/it's, etc. It makes me apoplectic when I see someone has made a sign for the world to see (like at a sporting event or in front of a store). It makes me question if humans are really worthwhile as a species when I point this out to the signmaker and he or she shrugs instead of immediately apologizing and remedying the situation.
10. I nicknamed my sister "Vern" at an early age, and it has stuck with her into her 30's.
11. Perhaps the best compliment I've ever received was from a student who wrote to me in her journal a few years back: "You say what you'll do, and you do what you say." My wife recently told me something similar. In that vein, I think honesty is one of my biggest strengths/weaknesses. I am a terrible liar, and I often say things without really thinking about them. I then have to backpedal with a stunning lack of grace or finesse because of the aforementioned lack of guile.
12. I've never seen a tattoo that I thought was attractive. They are a total turn-off for me. I also firmly believe (with some evidence) that nearly every single person who gets a tattoo regrets doing so later in life. It's no secret why: most people get them between the ages of 18-25. You're not going to be the person you are at 30 that you were at 19. And thank god for that.
13. I consider myself a good writer in the same way I consider myself good at "Rock Band." I'm better than most people I know, which gives me an inflated sense of self-worth right up until I read something by F. Scott Fitzgerald or watch a youtube video of some nine year-old playing "Free Bird." That usually puts me in my place.
14. It frustrates me when people don't understand satire. There's a reason that "South Park" and "The Simpsons" are better shows than "Family Guy," and why "Tropic Thunder" is a better movie than "Paul Blart: Mall Cop."
15. If you saw "Paul Blart: Mall Cop," and CAN'T WAIT for the new "Transformers" movie, but you've never seen "Goodfellas"...well...let's not talk about movies until you've grown up a bit, eh?
16. I love and am a passionate defender of the Bay Area. I've lived here my whole life (except for a four-year sojourn at nearby Davis), just bought a house here, and went to elementary school with four of the five groomsmen from my wedding. I don't think it's because I'm a homebody, necessarily. I think it's because I was born and raised in one of the most desirable places on earth to be born and raised, and I've had the good sense to appreciate it, along with most of my friends. Kuzak will come to his senses sooner or later.
17. If you were born and raised in the Bay Area, you MUST root exclusively for Bay Area sports teams, no exceptions. If you root for the Lakers or another historically successful franchise, you are a poser. You're stuck with the Warriors like the rest of us, like it or not. End of discussion. Oh, and also: If you root for USC, the Yankees, or the Cowboys and you didn't go there/aren't from there, you are probably the Devil, or at least related to Him.
18. I'm always skeptical of people who insist on defining themselves as "we" and losing their identities to their significant others. It even bugs me when people post facebook/myspace profile photos locked in some sort of embrace with their spouse/mate/hookup partner, whatever. You can be in love and still have your own identity. Oh, and if you're under 25 or so, you are not sane when it comes to relationships. You may think and believe you are with all your might, but that does not make it so. Trust me.
19. If there were three abilities (non-superpower division) that I wish I had, they would be, in order: 1. Be able to dunk a basketball 2. Be able to hit a home run out of a major league ballpark 3. Be an amazing singer/actor (I'm in a few movies already but am not "amazing"- check out my videos). Also, I'd settle for just being an average ball hockey player, instead of the crappy one I am currently.
20. My ideal Friday night is take-out dinner at home with Eileen, watching Battlestar Glactica and a Sharks/Warriors/Giants victory, and having a couple ice-cold martinis. The college version of me just stomped on my head repeatedly while the mid-20's version stood there and watched, nodding.
21. I've been meaning to lose the same 20 pounds or so for roughly the last eleven years, but beer and fried foods keep altering the deal. I pray they do not alter it further.
22. I don't really have a favorite food, but at gunpoint I'd go with Mexican over Italian. I could probably eat some form of tacos for the rest of my life.
23. I used to describe my music taste as "eclectic." Then some guys at work made me realize that I was using "eclectic" to mean "a fan of girl pop music in addition to more typical rock fare." I watched an Avril Lavigne concert in HD last night at 2:30 in the morning. I'm not making this up.
24. My feelings about organized religion range from "benign and somewhat useful" at best to "contemptible and the root of most human tragedy for the past few thousands of years" at worst. Yet I'm the son of a church choir director, I married a Catholic in a Catholic church, and I find newer, more out-there religions like Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Scientology endlessly fascinating. I'm even reading a book on Mormons right now, and it's my second one.
25. I typically disdain sentimental, tacky crap. But every once in a while I take a look around at my family, my friends, my home, and the 40-50 happy birthday messages I got a few days ago, and I feel pretty damn lucky. Although, I'd really like a dog somewhere in my life.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Monday, February 2, 2009
#1
Before I finally end this torture (I did title the first entry on this list as "A Project I Will Likely Never Finish"), I want to give shout-outs to two shows I mentioned in that very first blog on my top-10 t.v. shows list.
Battlestar Galactica is just finishing up its run, and as I predicted, it would easily have made this list had I started it six months later. I went back and watched the first two seasons, and they were just as magnificent as I had suspected. It's yet another of the shows on this list that will turn some people off because of the name. And yeah, it's science fiction, for sure. But it's well-done sci-fi, which means it's actually about real issues, not just "aliens and robots and stuff," to paraphrase my 10th graders.
The other show I mentioned in that January 30th, 2008 blog (yes, it has taken me over a year to complete a top-10 list...how does David Letterman do it?) ended this fall, and its finale was as good as anything I've seen besides Six Feet Under (#3). It's one of those endings that made you say, "You know, it couldn't have ended any other way." Michael Chiklis (as morally-challenged cop Vic Mackey) is fantastic (although whenever he would do something shady -which was A LOT- Eileen would lament, "I liked him better as 'The Commish'"), and the supporting cast is top notch and vulnerable to being killed off at any moment. This is hardly an original idea, but the crazy thing was how no matter how much destruction Vic causes or how many people he burns, there's part of you that keeps rooting for him, in spite of your better judgement. Such is the power of Chiklis; he intimidates the viewer into liking him even as he's intimidating and abusing other characters on the show.
Ok- on to the grand finale.
The Wire
Yet another HBO show, and yet another one that I didn't give a fair shot when it came out. I'm actually pretty ashamed of myself. I read a couple reviews about how it was the best show on television, came into the middle of an episode from season one, watched for about eight minutes, and decided it wasn't for me. Brilliant, Nolan.
What turned me off? All the stuff that eventually made me love it: the lack of any recognizable actors (although that's certainly changed now), the grittiness of urban Baltimore, the labyrinthine plots, the unhurried pace.
The beauty of The Wire is that it's so many things at once:
It's a cop show. Some of the best scenes involved the archetypal buddy cop banter of "Bunk" Moreland and Jimmy McNulty, two of Baltimore's most effective yet hardest-drinking detectives. One highlight was the end of an episode in season one where the two investigate a crime scene, using only curse words, uttered in various grunts and incarnations.
It's a street show. The Wire is the only t.v. drama that neither glorifies nor marginalizes what it's like to grow up in an urban neighborhood, where the drug trade is by far the most profitable career path. Instead of painting all these young, mostly black men with the same brush, each character has different motivations and nuance. This show will quite simply expand your mind on the nature of American crime and criminals. It won't make you change any of your political views, necessarily, but at the very least you will see things from a perspective that you might have never had before. Isn't that what great art is supposed to do?
It's a show about big issues. Each season focuses on a different aspect of urban American life, and at the end of the season you will feel a mixture of hope, frustration, terror, and pride. But you will come away changed.
The first season introduced the street players and the cops who try (mostly fruitlessly) to stem the flow of drugs into the streets of Baltimore. We meet the legendary characters Avon Barksdale (drug kingpin), Stringer Bell (Avon's refined consigliere), and one of the superlative characters in t.v. history, Robin Hood of-the-Hood Omar Little. You've never been quite so terrified/delighted as when you've heard Omar whistle "The Farmer in the Dell," strolling slowly, a shotgun over his shoulder.
The second stanza chronicles life on the docks, showing the camaraderie and corruption that a blue-collar union can bring. Special props for introducing future Oscar nominee and Michael Scott paramour Amy Ryan as an idealistic but in-over-her-head dock cop.
The third season portrays a fascinating gamble in America's longest-running struggle: the war on drugs. The police captain makes an unofficial decision to allow drug dealers to operate without consequence in a certain area of town (comically labeled "Hamsterdam"). The results don't pretend to offer up an easy solution to our drug policy, but as usual, The Wire makes you think.
Most critics count the fourth season as the show's zenith, and I'm with them. It has special resonance for me, because it largely deals with public schools and all the roadblocks, setbacks, and occasional mini-triumphs everyone who enters that realm is subject to. The story of the four boys whose fates are to be all uniquely intertwined feels as authentic as a documentary while never becoming predictable.
Season five received grumbles of discontent from fans and critics who felt it neglected "the street," which is ironic because it dealt largely with homelessness. I had no problems with it. If anything, I thought it was slightly ahead of its time due to the way it defined the struggling American newspaper business (an expertise of head writer David Simon, who was a former crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun). The show ended well and with dignity, with its trademark tragedies and moments of sweetness.
I've thought about this last facet of the show a lot, and I hesitated to mention it because I thought it would look ridiculous in print. But it just keeps coming back to me: It's a show about bureaucracy. It's about American institutions and why they're largely so ineffective. The Wire shows that there are amazing, heroic people in every aspect of society. However, those bright lights are inevitably dimmed or even extinguished by the soul-crushing rules, order, and self-preservation that is promoted by the very systems we've put in place to ensure our safety, education, and pursuit of happiness. The amazing thing is how The Wire juxtaposes legal, government bureaucracy with organized crime and shows that a drug lord manages the same leadership challenges, petty jealousies, and nagging constituencies that a big-city mayor must face.
If you haven't already, you should rent this show from the beginning. Please don't give up on it after an episode or two. This is one of those great contributions to the cannon of works that are uniquely American, the t.v. equivalent of The Great Gatsby or The Godfather.
I'll end with the touching re-imagining of Margaret Wise Brown's "Goodnight, Moon," as told by incorruptible detective Kima Greggs to her son, Elijah:
Goodnight moon
Goodnight stars
Goodnight po-pos
Goodnight fiends
Goodnight hoppers
Goodnight hustlers
Goodnight scammers
Goodnight to everybody
Goodnight to one and all.
Battlestar Galactica is just finishing up its run, and as I predicted, it would easily have made this list had I started it six months later. I went back and watched the first two seasons, and they were just as magnificent as I had suspected. It's yet another of the shows on this list that will turn some people off because of the name. And yeah, it's science fiction, for sure. But it's well-done sci-fi, which means it's actually about real issues, not just "aliens and robots and stuff," to paraphrase my 10th graders.
The other show I mentioned in that January 30th, 2008 blog (yes, it has taken me over a year to complete a top-10 list...how does David Letterman do it?) ended this fall, and its finale was as good as anything I've seen besides Six Feet Under (#3). It's one of those endings that made you say, "You know, it couldn't have ended any other way." Michael Chiklis (as morally-challenged cop Vic Mackey) is fantastic (although whenever he would do something shady -which was A LOT- Eileen would lament, "I liked him better as 'The Commish'"), and the supporting cast is top notch and vulnerable to being killed off at any moment. This is hardly an original idea, but the crazy thing was how no matter how much destruction Vic causes or how many people he burns, there's part of you that keeps rooting for him, in spite of your better judgement. Such is the power of Chiklis; he intimidates the viewer into liking him even as he's intimidating and abusing other characters on the show.
Ok- on to the grand finale.
The Wire
Yet another HBO show, and yet another one that I didn't give a fair shot when it came out. I'm actually pretty ashamed of myself. I read a couple reviews about how it was the best show on television, came into the middle of an episode from season one, watched for about eight minutes, and decided it wasn't for me. Brilliant, Nolan.
What turned me off? All the stuff that eventually made me love it: the lack of any recognizable actors (although that's certainly changed now), the grittiness of urban Baltimore, the labyrinthine plots, the unhurried pace.
The beauty of The Wire is that it's so many things at once:
It's a cop show. Some of the best scenes involved the archetypal buddy cop banter of "Bunk" Moreland and Jimmy McNulty, two of Baltimore's most effective yet hardest-drinking detectives. One highlight was the end of an episode in season one where the two investigate a crime scene, using only curse words, uttered in various grunts and incarnations.
It's a street show. The Wire is the only t.v. drama that neither glorifies nor marginalizes what it's like to grow up in an urban neighborhood, where the drug trade is by far the most profitable career path. Instead of painting all these young, mostly black men with the same brush, each character has different motivations and nuance. This show will quite simply expand your mind on the nature of American crime and criminals. It won't make you change any of your political views, necessarily, but at the very least you will see things from a perspective that you might have never had before. Isn't that what great art is supposed to do?
It's a show about big issues. Each season focuses on a different aspect of urban American life, and at the end of the season you will feel a mixture of hope, frustration, terror, and pride. But you will come away changed.
The first season introduced the street players and the cops who try (mostly fruitlessly) to stem the flow of drugs into the streets of Baltimore. We meet the legendary characters Avon Barksdale (drug kingpin), Stringer Bell (Avon's refined consigliere), and one of the superlative characters in t.v. history, Robin Hood of-the-Hood Omar Little. You've never been quite so terrified/delighted as when you've heard Omar whistle "The Farmer in the Dell," strolling slowly, a shotgun over his shoulder.
The second stanza chronicles life on the docks, showing the camaraderie and corruption that a blue-collar union can bring. Special props for introducing future Oscar nominee and Michael Scott paramour Amy Ryan as an idealistic but in-over-her-head dock cop.
The third season portrays a fascinating gamble in America's longest-running struggle: the war on drugs. The police captain makes an unofficial decision to allow drug dealers to operate without consequence in a certain area of town (comically labeled "Hamsterdam"). The results don't pretend to offer up an easy solution to our drug policy, but as usual, The Wire makes you think.
Most critics count the fourth season as the show's zenith, and I'm with them. It has special resonance for me, because it largely deals with public schools and all the roadblocks, setbacks, and occasional mini-triumphs everyone who enters that realm is subject to. The story of the four boys whose fates are to be all uniquely intertwined feels as authentic as a documentary while never becoming predictable.
Season five received grumbles of discontent from fans and critics who felt it neglected "the street," which is ironic because it dealt largely with homelessness. I had no problems with it. If anything, I thought it was slightly ahead of its time due to the way it defined the struggling American newspaper business (an expertise of head writer David Simon, who was a former crime reporter for the Baltimore Sun). The show ended well and with dignity, with its trademark tragedies and moments of sweetness.
I've thought about this last facet of the show a lot, and I hesitated to mention it because I thought it would look ridiculous in print. But it just keeps coming back to me: It's a show about bureaucracy. It's about American institutions and why they're largely so ineffective. The Wire shows that there are amazing, heroic people in every aspect of society. However, those bright lights are inevitably dimmed or even extinguished by the soul-crushing rules, order, and self-preservation that is promoted by the very systems we've put in place to ensure our safety, education, and pursuit of happiness. The amazing thing is how The Wire juxtaposes legal, government bureaucracy with organized crime and shows that a drug lord manages the same leadership challenges, petty jealousies, and nagging constituencies that a big-city mayor must face.
If you haven't already, you should rent this show from the beginning. Please don't give up on it after an episode or two. This is one of those great contributions to the cannon of works that are uniquely American, the t.v. equivalent of The Great Gatsby or The Godfather.
I'll end with the touching re-imagining of Margaret Wise Brown's "Goodnight, Moon," as told by incorruptible detective Kima Greggs to her son, Elijah:
Goodnight moon
Goodnight stars
Goodnight po-pos
Goodnight fiends
Goodnight hoppers
Goodnight hustlers
Goodnight scammers
Goodnight to everybody
Goodnight to one and all.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
#2
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
I have no excuses nor ideas for why it's taken me so long to get back to my Top 10 t.v. dramas list. It's pretty embarrassing. I think if it'd been any other show at #2, I would've written this before now. But my blog about Angel is the weakest one on this list, and I've been facing the same trouble with Buffy.
Let's get one thing out of the way first: the name gives people pause. I know, because I was one of those people. It sounds ridiculous (and more than a tad girly), and if you saw the crappy movie it was based on, there would be no reason for you to give it a try. I remember a few friends in college saying they were going off to a Buffy-watching party, and I derided them thoroughly.
Then I caught the excellent doppleganger episode, "The Wish," and I was hooked. Much like Six Feet Under, I came in at the absolute best time, during the third season. I still consider this to be the pinnacle of the show's run, with the season culminating with the violent rooftop climax between Buffy and the smoldering Faith (Eliza Dushku- so very hot). Season three also had my favorite villain: the cheerily demonic Mayor.
This is one of the facets I truly enjoyed about the show- each season has a villain, combined with several subplots, over the course of 22 hour-long shows. I have a friend at work who says the narrative arc of a clearly defined set of episodes with a beginning and an end is what's so wrong with American television (as opposed to the Brits, whose seasons apparently just start and stop willy-nilly). I disagree. There's nothing wrong with producing a television show like it's volumes of the same book.
There's also nothing wrong with providing your audience satisfaction by completing character arcs, tying up loose ends, and not going off on plot tangents that lead nowhere. By finishing up the sotryline at the end of each season, creator Joss Whedon avoids the Sopranos-style hangover that ensues during every hiatus.
He also avoids the confusion of a show like Lost. A friend of mine said yesterday that she loved the show, but she never had any idea what was going on. I stopped watching Lost because there was just too much weird stuff going in too many different directions. I didn't want to invest my time in something that just turns out to be a bunch of writers throwing shit at the wall and hoping it sticks, without any idea where it's going. Even when at first something doesn't make sense, like Buffy's sister Dawn just "appearing" out of nowhere at the outset of season five, we all waited a few episodes, and Joss explained it to us. It's nice to have that kind of trust in your storyteller.
Then there's Whedon's ear for dialogue: His characters are hyper-literate, quick-witted, and delightfully pop culture-aware. Funnyman Xander gets most of the best ones, but if you've never believed Sarah Michelle Gellar could be funny, wait until you hear Whedon's words escaping her delightfully curved lips. There's another thing: Gellar has not shown that she can be any kind of presence in Hollywood, despite repeated opportunities. But if you watch enough Buffy, you'll believe she's a star.
In fact, plenty of actors first made their marks on Buffy: a list that includes Michelle Trachtenberg (Six Feet Under, EuroTrip), Alyson Hannigan (American Pie, How I Met Your Mother), David Boreanaz (Bones), Nathan Fillion (Waitress, Slither, Firefly) and Seth Green (Just about everything funny and cool). I'm looking forward to indoctrinating my wife into the cult of Buffy by re-watching the entire series and keeping my eye out for current big-name actors in small parts.
Much was made by critics of Buffy's subtext: that the entire show could be seen as a metaphor for the rigors of teen life, particularly the arc where Buffy sleeps with Angel and he "becomes a monster." To me, all that deeper meaning stuff was beside the point. Whedon created a fascinating universe full of vampires, demons, werewolves, hell-mouths, and slayers. It's modern mythology, the television equivalent of Star Wars.
Oh, and Buffy did love sensationally as well. Ladies, put down those namby-pamby, abstinence-pamphlets-passing-for-literature known as Twilight series. Welcome to the world of real relationships, with all the romance, drama, and heartache that comes along with it. Consider merely the character of Willow: She's on-again, off-again with best bud Xander, then dates a werewolf, becomes a lesbian, and skins a guy alive using her Wiccan powers after he accidentally kills Willow's girlfriend.
Suck on that, Twilight.
I have no excuses nor ideas for why it's taken me so long to get back to my Top 10 t.v. dramas list. It's pretty embarrassing. I think if it'd been any other show at #2, I would've written this before now. But my blog about Angel is the weakest one on this list, and I've been facing the same trouble with Buffy.
Let's get one thing out of the way first: the name gives people pause. I know, because I was one of those people. It sounds ridiculous (and more than a tad girly), and if you saw the crappy movie it was based on, there would be no reason for you to give it a try. I remember a few friends in college saying they were going off to a Buffy-watching party, and I derided them thoroughly.
Then I caught the excellent doppleganger episode, "The Wish," and I was hooked. Much like Six Feet Under, I came in at the absolute best time, during the third season. I still consider this to be the pinnacle of the show's run, with the season culminating with the violent rooftop climax between Buffy and the smoldering Faith (Eliza Dushku- so very hot). Season three also had my favorite villain: the cheerily demonic Mayor.
This is one of the facets I truly enjoyed about the show- each season has a villain, combined with several subplots, over the course of 22 hour-long shows. I have a friend at work who says the narrative arc of a clearly defined set of episodes with a beginning and an end is what's so wrong with American television (as opposed to the Brits, whose seasons apparently just start and stop willy-nilly). I disagree. There's nothing wrong with producing a television show like it's volumes of the same book.
There's also nothing wrong with providing your audience satisfaction by completing character arcs, tying up loose ends, and not going off on plot tangents that lead nowhere. By finishing up the sotryline at the end of each season, creator Joss Whedon avoids the Sopranos-style hangover that ensues during every hiatus.
He also avoids the confusion of a show like Lost. A friend of mine said yesterday that she loved the show, but she never had any idea what was going on. I stopped watching Lost because there was just too much weird stuff going in too many different directions. I didn't want to invest my time in something that just turns out to be a bunch of writers throwing shit at the wall and hoping it sticks, without any idea where it's going. Even when at first something doesn't make sense, like Buffy's sister Dawn just "appearing" out of nowhere at the outset of season five, we all waited a few episodes, and Joss explained it to us. It's nice to have that kind of trust in your storyteller.
Then there's Whedon's ear for dialogue: His characters are hyper-literate, quick-witted, and delightfully pop culture-aware. Funnyman Xander gets most of the best ones, but if you've never believed Sarah Michelle Gellar could be funny, wait until you hear Whedon's words escaping her delightfully curved lips. There's another thing: Gellar has not shown that she can be any kind of presence in Hollywood, despite repeated opportunities. But if you watch enough Buffy, you'll believe she's a star.
In fact, plenty of actors first made their marks on Buffy: a list that includes Michelle Trachtenberg (Six Feet Under, EuroTrip), Alyson Hannigan (American Pie, How I Met Your Mother), David Boreanaz (Bones), Nathan Fillion (Waitress, Slither, Firefly) and Seth Green (Just about everything funny and cool). I'm looking forward to indoctrinating my wife into the cult of Buffy by re-watching the entire series and keeping my eye out for current big-name actors in small parts.
Much was made by critics of Buffy's subtext: that the entire show could be seen as a metaphor for the rigors of teen life, particularly the arc where Buffy sleeps with Angel and he "becomes a monster." To me, all that deeper meaning stuff was beside the point. Whedon created a fascinating universe full of vampires, demons, werewolves, hell-mouths, and slayers. It's modern mythology, the television equivalent of Star Wars.
Oh, and Buffy did love sensationally as well. Ladies, put down those namby-pamby, abstinence-pamphlets-passing-for-literature known as Twilight series. Welcome to the world of real relationships, with all the romance, drama, and heartache that comes along with it. Consider merely the character of Willow: She's on-again, off-again with best bud Xander, then dates a werewolf, becomes a lesbian, and skins a guy alive using her Wiccan powers after he accidentally kills Willow's girlfriend.
Suck on that, Twilight.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
I realize that most everyone has seen this monumental piece of dung well before I did, so this is not exactly a timely revelation. But I'm hoping to turn it into a larger "What's wrong with George Lucas/Steven Spielberg" rant as well, so bear with me.
Instead of playing hockey in SF during the downpour today, I decided to finally get around to watching the new Indy flick. I've had it on Netflix for the past two weeks and hadn't watched it, largely because most people I talked to warned me to lower my expectations.
I wasn't expecting much. What I got was worse than my greatest fears. I wasn't disappointed so much as I was angry by the time I got to the end of that mess.
Here's a list of stuff I hated about the movie (oh, and I guess I'll mention that there are spoilers here, but trust me, this movie's spoiled already):
1. The plot. Here's what I could discern, between yawns: This old archeologist friend of Indy's gets a crystal skull from behind the body of a Spanish conquistador, takes it to this legendary city, then brings it back. Then the Russians find out about it, and they want it. Apparently, the skull allows you to control people's minds from across the world...maybe. Or maybe it just burns your eyes out and disintegrates you. For some reason, Indiana Jones' son knows this old dude and gets a letter that is a riddle that only Indy can unscramble. The Russians bide their time until Indy figures stuff out for them, even though they try to kill him (badly) every other scene. At the end, it turns out the skull belongs to one of 13 aliens(?) and when it's put back on its body (I guess the old guy doesn't do this the first time he takes it to the city, although the movie never tells us), all the aliens(?) come together, create another dimension, and fly into it in a...wait for it...flying saucer.
I'm not trying to be obtuse. That's really all I could follow. I usually had little idea what was going on. I'm willing to admit that this could largely be that I was so bored during lots of the film that my mind started wandering to the election, the transport options for the concert I'm attending tonight, and checking the clock on the dvd player, trying to figure out when it would be over.
2. The CGI. I put this squarely on the shoulders of George Lucas. We've created a monster. Everyone loved the effects in the original Star Wars movies so much that he created an entire company to stay on the cutting edge of special effects. The CGI is one of the fatal flaws of the Star Wars prequels, and it sucks here. Allow me to list all the CGI that looked fake and annoyed me:
-The gophers
-The rolling, magnetized metal in the opening sequence
-The flying refrigerator (more on that absurdity later)
-The jet-powered tram thingee that also made no sense
-The waterfall stuff
-The red ants
-The scorpions
-The snake
-The aliens(?)
-The monkey army (we'll get to them later as well)
-The entire driving-through-the-jungle sequence
-The entire climax
3. The tone. Way to many silly/ridiculous moments and forced banter. Again, a list (with the ones that made Eileen and I look at each other and say things like, "This is so bad," "Are you kidding me?" and "Goddamn, this sucks" in bold):
-When Indy falls into the truck and makes a wisecrack before dealing with the Russian baddies
-That a 65-year-old man can jump along the rafters while dodging bullets
-Falling on the control panel and starting the jet-powered tram
-Indy hides in a lead-lined refrigerator during a nuclear bomb test and surviving when the blast hurls him (and the fridge) miles from the epicenter. Note: The rest of the film could've been Citizen Kane, and this would've been enough for me to dislike it.
-The diner fight between the jocks and the greasers
-When the Russian baddies hit the statue with their car and the head falls into their laps
-When the guy in the library asks Indy a subject matter question after Indy and Mutt skid into the hall on a motorcycle, and when Indy answers calmly.
-Those weird ninjas in the Peruvian graveyard- what the hell?
-Those savage guys who apparently live in the walls of that ancient fortress
-The unexplained Russian officer whom the guards at the gate recognize and call "Sir" before they are shot by his henchmen
-When Mutt straddles two speeding cars, fencing with Cate Blanchett while getting smacked in the balls by flora repeatedly, all while his mom shouts advice whilst driving.
-When Mutt swings like Tarzan through the trees with a monkey army. I had heard about this scene beforehand, and thought I had prepared myself for its awfulness. I was wrong. It's so terrible, I started imagining test audiences' reactions to it. I can't decide which was worse: that scene or when Jeff Goldblum's daughter uses gymnastics to beat the raptors in Jurassic Park II. You know what? Let's just call it a tie.
-Using a snake to pull Indy and Marion out of the quicksand
-Going over three gigantic waterfalls in a car without a scratch
-Indy repeatedly using his fists to beat down multiple Russians
-The Russians in general. They make stormtroopers look like the sniper in Saving Private Ryan
-The part in the end where Indy tries to rescue Mac, but he's stealing stuff, so he says he'll be ok, even though it's very clear he's going to be sucked into the vortex, which he is.
It comes down to this: That South Park episode was right: George Lucas must be stopped. At some point he started making movies for kids under the age of 10 and people who think Sarah Palin is an intellectual. All this jokey nonsense has got to go. This movie reminded me most of Attack of the Clones, but without the cool Yoda fight at the end to redeem it.
In fact, if you look at the parallels between the Star Wars saga and Indy, it's a little creepy. A revolutionary first film that breaks the mold. A dark sequel that many now regard as the best of the bunch. A third film with a feel-good ending that got a bit too cute and sentimental for the die-hard fans (right down to the reconciliation with the father at the end). Then a long wait...followed by CGI-heavy, clunky-plotted, overly-cryptic nonsense, replete with bumbling villains, annoying new sidekicks, and a dumbed-down tone to make things more "accessible."
Spielberg deserves his share of the blame, too, of course. But that fact that he still manages to churn out a halfway-decent film every now and then (Minority Report, War of the Worlds) trumps Lucas' one notable effort, Episode III (which would've been hard to screw up- it's that good a story).
Together, they are an unholy alliance. If stuff like the piece of shit I just wasted two hours of my Saturday on today (plus another hour writing this blog) is the best they can do, then they deserve a societally-mandated divorce.
One more thing: I realize there are lots of people who liked this film, and not just moronic teenagers. I was stunned to see it running at 76% on Rotten Tomatoes (worse than all the other Indy movies, but still pretty good). I can't explain this, other than to compare it to Transformers, another terrible movie that made a ton of money with a not-as-bad-as-you'd-think Tomato score of 57%. Oh, and Spielberg was involved in that catastrofuck as well, so he just dropped another notch.
Oh, and lastly, Taargus, Taargus, if you're reading this: You PAID to see this piece of shit in the theatre TWICE, and you complain about Cloverfield? I watched that again last night, and Cloverfield is about 1,000 times more realistic than this detritus. Explain yourself.
Instead of playing hockey in SF during the downpour today, I decided to finally get around to watching the new Indy flick. I've had it on Netflix for the past two weeks and hadn't watched it, largely because most people I talked to warned me to lower my expectations.
I wasn't expecting much. What I got was worse than my greatest fears. I wasn't disappointed so much as I was angry by the time I got to the end of that mess.
Here's a list of stuff I hated about the movie (oh, and I guess I'll mention that there are spoilers here, but trust me, this movie's spoiled already):
1. The plot. Here's what I could discern, between yawns: This old archeologist friend of Indy's gets a crystal skull from behind the body of a Spanish conquistador, takes it to this legendary city, then brings it back. Then the Russians find out about it, and they want it. Apparently, the skull allows you to control people's minds from across the world...maybe. Or maybe it just burns your eyes out and disintegrates you. For some reason, Indiana Jones' son knows this old dude and gets a letter that is a riddle that only Indy can unscramble. The Russians bide their time until Indy figures stuff out for them, even though they try to kill him (badly) every other scene. At the end, it turns out the skull belongs to one of 13 aliens(?) and when it's put back on its body (I guess the old guy doesn't do this the first time he takes it to the city, although the movie never tells us), all the aliens(?) come together, create another dimension, and fly into it in a...wait for it...flying saucer.
I'm not trying to be obtuse. That's really all I could follow. I usually had little idea what was going on. I'm willing to admit that this could largely be that I was so bored during lots of the film that my mind started wandering to the election, the transport options for the concert I'm attending tonight, and checking the clock on the dvd player, trying to figure out when it would be over.
2. The CGI. I put this squarely on the shoulders of George Lucas. We've created a monster. Everyone loved the effects in the original Star Wars movies so much that he created an entire company to stay on the cutting edge of special effects. The CGI is one of the fatal flaws of the Star Wars prequels, and it sucks here. Allow me to list all the CGI that looked fake and annoyed me:
-The gophers
-The rolling, magnetized metal in the opening sequence
-The flying refrigerator (more on that absurdity later)
-The jet-powered tram thingee that also made no sense
-The waterfall stuff
-The red ants
-The scorpions
-The snake
-The aliens(?)
-The monkey army (we'll get to them later as well)
-The entire driving-through-the-jungle sequence
-The entire climax
3. The tone. Way to many silly/ridiculous moments and forced banter. Again, a list (with the ones that made Eileen and I look at each other and say things like, "This is so bad," "Are you kidding me?" and "Goddamn, this sucks" in bold):
-When Indy falls into the truck and makes a wisecrack before dealing with the Russian baddies
-That a 65-year-old man can jump along the rafters while dodging bullets
-Falling on the control panel and starting the jet-powered tram
-Indy hides in a lead-lined refrigerator during a nuclear bomb test and surviving when the blast hurls him (and the fridge) miles from the epicenter. Note: The rest of the film could've been Citizen Kane, and this would've been enough for me to dislike it.
-The diner fight between the jocks and the greasers
-When the Russian baddies hit the statue with their car and the head falls into their laps
-When the guy in the library asks Indy a subject matter question after Indy and Mutt skid into the hall on a motorcycle, and when Indy answers calmly.
-Those weird ninjas in the Peruvian graveyard- what the hell?
-Those savage guys who apparently live in the walls of that ancient fortress
-The unexplained Russian officer whom the guards at the gate recognize and call "Sir" before they are shot by his henchmen
-When Mutt straddles two speeding cars, fencing with Cate Blanchett while getting smacked in the balls by flora repeatedly, all while his mom shouts advice whilst driving.
-When Mutt swings like Tarzan through the trees with a monkey army. I had heard about this scene beforehand, and thought I had prepared myself for its awfulness. I was wrong. It's so terrible, I started imagining test audiences' reactions to it. I can't decide which was worse: that scene or when Jeff Goldblum's daughter uses gymnastics to beat the raptors in Jurassic Park II. You know what? Let's just call it a tie.
-Using a snake to pull Indy and Marion out of the quicksand
-Going over three gigantic waterfalls in a car without a scratch
-Indy repeatedly using his fists to beat down multiple Russians
-The Russians in general. They make stormtroopers look like the sniper in Saving Private Ryan
-The part in the end where Indy tries to rescue Mac, but he's stealing stuff, so he says he'll be ok, even though it's very clear he's going to be sucked into the vortex, which he is.
It comes down to this: That South Park episode was right: George Lucas must be stopped. At some point he started making movies for kids under the age of 10 and people who think Sarah Palin is an intellectual. All this jokey nonsense has got to go. This movie reminded me most of Attack of the Clones, but without the cool Yoda fight at the end to redeem it.
In fact, if you look at the parallels between the Star Wars saga and Indy, it's a little creepy. A revolutionary first film that breaks the mold. A dark sequel that many now regard as the best of the bunch. A third film with a feel-good ending that got a bit too cute and sentimental for the die-hard fans (right down to the reconciliation with the father at the end). Then a long wait...followed by CGI-heavy, clunky-plotted, overly-cryptic nonsense, replete with bumbling villains, annoying new sidekicks, and a dumbed-down tone to make things more "accessible."
Spielberg deserves his share of the blame, too, of course. But that fact that he still manages to churn out a halfway-decent film every now and then (Minority Report, War of the Worlds) trumps Lucas' one notable effort, Episode III (which would've been hard to screw up- it's that good a story).
Together, they are an unholy alliance. If stuff like the piece of shit I just wasted two hours of my Saturday on today (plus another hour writing this blog) is the best they can do, then they deserve a societally-mandated divorce.
One more thing: I realize there are lots of people who liked this film, and not just moronic teenagers. I was stunned to see it running at 76% on Rotten Tomatoes (worse than all the other Indy movies, but still pretty good). I can't explain this, other than to compare it to Transformers, another terrible movie that made a ton of money with a not-as-bad-as-you'd-think Tomato score of 57%. Oh, and Spielberg was involved in that catastrofuck as well, so he just dropped another notch.
Oh, and lastly, Taargus, Taargus, if you're reading this: You PAID to see this piece of shit in the theatre TWICE, and you complain about Cloverfield? I watched that again last night, and Cloverfield is about 1,000 times more realistic than this detritus. Explain yourself.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
I finally made up my mind...
about whom I'm voting for this election. Whenever my teenagers ask me whom I'm voting for, I always reply, "I'm not sure yet. But I know whom I'm not voting for."
This confuses the poo out of many of them. They say things like, "But there's only two people running. You have to vote for one of them, don't you?" Do they say such things because they're callow youth? No. They say such things because they're Americans.
I don't want to go into a history lesson of the two-party system, but take any constitutional history class, and you'll see that our current Democrat/Republican gridlock is not what the founding fathers intended. It hasn't served us well. Feel free to disagree with me, but consider the frustration level you normally have when you think about the federal government. Still think things are perfect?
At any rate, I've never voted for either a Democrat or a Republican for president. I'm a registered Green Party member, and proud of it. I'm also not going to take the time to stump for the cause, except to say that whenever like-minded people (esp. students) ask what the Green Party's stances are, and I inform them, they're nearly always in complete agreement.
I voted for Nader in '96 and '00 (yeah, I was one of those- got a problem with that?), and David Cobb in '04 (Nader either left/was booted from the party). I still firmly believe that those men would've been far better choices than either of the two major party candidates.
This year, Cynthia McKinney, a woman I respect, is running on the Green Party ticket. Again, I find myself agreeing with her more on the issues than either Barack Obama or John McCain.
But I'm not gonna vote for her. I'm rollin' with Barack.
It's taken me a long time to come to this decision. There are stances of Obama's I flat-out disagree with, like his objection to gay marriage and his approval of building a wall along the border. Then there's also my belief that the two major parties are by their very natures indebted and beholden to big money interests. I also think it's vital to vote third party. We know we won't win on a national level, but third parties at least tell the big guys that there are people who are being left out of their ideology and can sometimes influence policy. More importantly, you don't just become part of the machine.
So wherefore Obama?
Partly it's because I do agree with him on lots of issues. He was the only Democrat who had a shot at the nomination who was vocally against the war in Iraq before the invasion. He didn't vote with the President and then lamely try to explain it away later when it became unpopular like Hilary and his own VP choice, Biden. I like that he's for taxing the rich to help pay for the gigantic deficit Captain Shit-for-Brains ran up, and giving tax breaks to everyone else. I like that he seems to understand that drilling for more oil is like taking out another mortgage on the home that's being foreclosed on (which is why Americans love it- many of them are stupid).
It's also partly because I admire the man's character, intelligence, and background. He's a lot like Jackie Robinson back in the 50's. He had to be the perfect black man to integrate the Major Leagues: even-tempered, well-spoken, dignified, and extremely good at what he did. That's Obama. He's brilliant, never rattled, articulate, and a master politician. Whatever happens on his watch if he is elected, at least we'll have the comfort of knowing that we have someone of keen intellect making the calls, not Captain Shit-for-Brains.
Just as importantly, the sign an Obama presidency would send to the rest of the world would be significant. I know many Americans don't care what other countries think of us, that it doesn't matter. You heard it here first: those people are fucktards. Captain Shit-for-Brains spent all the credit and goodwill that we earned after 9/11 and then some. The rest of the world thinks we're uptight, racist, warmongering religious zealots. And they'll still be right about lots of us. But at least we can show the world that we're capable of change. That we're willing to try new things. That we repudiate the despicable regime of Captain Shit-for-Brains.
But mostly it comes down to this: I'm a student of history. I was a U.S. history major in college. Anybody with half a brain knows that racism has played a large role in this country's past, but most people seem to think that's what it is: our past. "What are they still complaining about?" they ask. Please. You don't have legal discrimination in a republic for the first 200 years of its history that all gets washed away by the next generation. Sure, it's getting better, but we're not there yet. Go to a McCain/Palin rally if you don't believe me.
I truly believe that this is going to be a transformative election. As naive as it sounds, I have something I'd lost for the past eight years: hope. I want this to be an election where I remember years later that I participated in something that changed my country and the world for the better.
Noted labor activist Delores Huerta once said, "Walk the street with us into history. Get off the sidewalk."
I'm walkin' with you, Barack. Don't let me down.
This confuses the poo out of many of them. They say things like, "But there's only two people running. You have to vote for one of them, don't you?" Do they say such things because they're callow youth? No. They say such things because they're Americans.
I don't want to go into a history lesson of the two-party system, but take any constitutional history class, and you'll see that our current Democrat/Republican gridlock is not what the founding fathers intended. It hasn't served us well. Feel free to disagree with me, but consider the frustration level you normally have when you think about the federal government. Still think things are perfect?
At any rate, I've never voted for either a Democrat or a Republican for president. I'm a registered Green Party member, and proud of it. I'm also not going to take the time to stump for the cause, except to say that whenever like-minded people (esp. students) ask what the Green Party's stances are, and I inform them, they're nearly always in complete agreement.
I voted for Nader in '96 and '00 (yeah, I was one of those- got a problem with that?), and David Cobb in '04 (Nader either left/was booted from the party). I still firmly believe that those men would've been far better choices than either of the two major party candidates.
This year, Cynthia McKinney, a woman I respect, is running on the Green Party ticket. Again, I find myself agreeing with her more on the issues than either Barack Obama or John McCain.
But I'm not gonna vote for her. I'm rollin' with Barack.
It's taken me a long time to come to this decision. There are stances of Obama's I flat-out disagree with, like his objection to gay marriage and his approval of building a wall along the border. Then there's also my belief that the two major parties are by their very natures indebted and beholden to big money interests. I also think it's vital to vote third party. We know we won't win on a national level, but third parties at least tell the big guys that there are people who are being left out of their ideology and can sometimes influence policy. More importantly, you don't just become part of the machine.
So wherefore Obama?
Partly it's because I do agree with him on lots of issues. He was the only Democrat who had a shot at the nomination who was vocally against the war in Iraq before the invasion. He didn't vote with the President and then lamely try to explain it away later when it became unpopular like Hilary and his own VP choice, Biden. I like that he's for taxing the rich to help pay for the gigantic deficit Captain Shit-for-Brains ran up, and giving tax breaks to everyone else. I like that he seems to understand that drilling for more oil is like taking out another mortgage on the home that's being foreclosed on (which is why Americans love it- many of them are stupid).
It's also partly because I admire the man's character, intelligence, and background. He's a lot like Jackie Robinson back in the 50's. He had to be the perfect black man to integrate the Major Leagues: even-tempered, well-spoken, dignified, and extremely good at what he did. That's Obama. He's brilliant, never rattled, articulate, and a master politician. Whatever happens on his watch if he is elected, at least we'll have the comfort of knowing that we have someone of keen intellect making the calls, not Captain Shit-for-Brains.
Just as importantly, the sign an Obama presidency would send to the rest of the world would be significant. I know many Americans don't care what other countries think of us, that it doesn't matter. You heard it here first: those people are fucktards. Captain Shit-for-Brains spent all the credit and goodwill that we earned after 9/11 and then some. The rest of the world thinks we're uptight, racist, warmongering religious zealots. And they'll still be right about lots of us. But at least we can show the world that we're capable of change. That we're willing to try new things. That we repudiate the despicable regime of Captain Shit-for-Brains.
But mostly it comes down to this: I'm a student of history. I was a U.S. history major in college. Anybody with half a brain knows that racism has played a large role in this country's past, but most people seem to think that's what it is: our past. "What are they still complaining about?" they ask. Please. You don't have legal discrimination in a republic for the first 200 years of its history that all gets washed away by the next generation. Sure, it's getting better, but we're not there yet. Go to a McCain/Palin rally if you don't believe me.
I truly believe that this is going to be a transformative election. As naive as it sounds, I have something I'd lost for the past eight years: hope. I want this to be an election where I remember years later that I participated in something that changed my country and the world for the better.
Noted labor activist Delores Huerta once said, "Walk the street with us into history. Get off the sidewalk."
I'm walkin' with you, Barack. Don't let me down.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Watch Lance's Head Explode
In case you hadn't heard, John McCain just picked his running mate today. In a pretty transparent attempt to siphon off bitter Hillary supporters, he picked the no-name female governor of Alaska. OK, she has a name, and it's Sarah Palin, but none of you have ever heard of her. She was apparently a runner-up Miss Alaska in the 80s.
Anyway, Palin has all the usual Republican credentials: pro-life, pro-death penalty, pro-rich white people, all that. But one thing I just read about her stands out. She's one of those people who believes when it comes to creationism vs. evolution, you've got to "teach both sides."
Check this out:
The volatile issue of teaching creation science in public schools popped up in the Alaska governor's race this week when Republican Sarah Palin said she thinks creationism should be taught alongside evolution in the state's public classrooms.
Palin was answering a question from the moderator near the conclusion of Wednesday night's televised debate on KAKM Channel 7 when she said, 'Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both.'
My favorite line is "don't be afraid of information." It's so twisted and conniving on so many levels; it's friggin' brilliant. As if biology teachers are "afraid" of the first page of the Bible suddenly being proven as fact. And as if all "information" is the same.
Look, Lance does a much more thorough job going into just how full of shit creationists/intelligent designers are, so read his blog if you want a full explanation of the reasons saying the sort of thing Palin believes in makes you a giant asshole.
The thing that really troubles me is this. If McCain is elected (shudder), the person next in line for the presidency believes that we should teach children in a science class that the world was created in six days, with each day being its own stage, and that a talking snake fucked us over, and we all descended from two people, and humans used to live to be as much as 900 years old, and....
And McCain is old. Like, could die at any time old.
Go ahead, try to sleep tonight.
Anyway, Palin has all the usual Republican credentials: pro-life, pro-death penalty, pro-rich white people, all that. But one thing I just read about her stands out. She's one of those people who believes when it comes to creationism vs. evolution, you've got to "teach both sides."
Check this out:
The volatile issue of teaching creation science in public schools popped up in the Alaska governor's race this week when Republican Sarah Palin said she thinks creationism should be taught alongside evolution in the state's public classrooms.
Palin was answering a question from the moderator near the conclusion of Wednesday night's televised debate on KAKM Channel 7 when she said, 'Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both.'
My favorite line is "don't be afraid of information." It's so twisted and conniving on so many levels; it's friggin' brilliant. As if biology teachers are "afraid" of the first page of the Bible suddenly being proven as fact. And as if all "information" is the same.
Look, Lance does a much more thorough job going into just how full of shit creationists/intelligent designers are, so read his blog if you want a full explanation of the reasons saying the sort of thing Palin believes in makes you a giant asshole.
The thing that really troubles me is this. If McCain is elected (shudder), the person next in line for the presidency believes that we should teach children in a science class that the world was created in six days, with each day being its own stage, and that a talking snake fucked us over, and we all descended from two people, and humans used to live to be as much as 900 years old, and....
And McCain is old. Like, could die at any time old.
Go ahead, try to sleep tonight.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
A White Liberal's Nightmare, Part 2: Not All Cultures are Created Equal
As someone who's so to the left he's never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate (go, Nader!), there are certain truths people like me hold to be self-evident. One of the biggees is that one must respect and appreciate all cultures different from our own. In fact, many liberals tend to deify foreign cultures as being superior to our own consumer-driven mores.
Well, I'm not one of them. Some lean over so hard in an attempt to seem tolerant of other customs that they become tolerant of intolerance. Nowhere is this more evident than in the attempt to excuse the actions of followers of Islam.
To be fair, nobody I know tries to defend extremists like the ones who fly planes into buildings. But they do claim that those are just a few "bad apples." That those people are to Muslims what the KKK is to Christianity.
Ideologically, I think they're right. Both groups have taken something that theoretically should promote peace and used it to justify division and violence. But in terms of cultural acceptance and sheer numbers, the KKK doesn't hold a candle to Islamic extremism.
I don't like using the word "fundamentalist" because it's so vague. As The Daily Show's Senior Religion Expert Lance Johnson has astutely pointed out, if any of the major religions (and yes, I'm lookin' at you, Christianity) followed the stuff in their books to the letter, the world would be replete with child beating, slavery, rape, etc...
So I'll stick with "extremist" instead. And as far as that word goes, the Muslims are winning that contest by a mile. Here's the other article I mentioned in my blog about African-American culture a few days back: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/15/DDRH12BA7N.DTL&hw=salman+rushdie&sn=001&sc=1000
Again, in case you're too lazy to read it (it's short), it's about author Salman Rushdie's frustration over his publishing house's decision not to distribute a novel by Sherry Jones. The book deals with the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and his child bride. According to Random House publishing, they pulled the book because "'credible and unrelated sources' had warned that the book 'could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment.'"
One of the world's biggest publishing houses can't print a book because it's afraid of people GETTING KILLED. OVER A BOOK.
I don't know anything about Muhammad and his child bride. I don't know if it's true/false/tawdry/offensive, or what. All I know is that threatening to commit terrorism over a STORY is ludicrous. And they've succeeded! Using fear and violence, these lunatics have gotten what they wanted. Just as they do every time a depiction of Muhammad gets pulled by any media outlet (there's a great episode of South Park about this).
I know, I know. This is just a few crazies, right? What about this paragraph, then:
"The Satanic Verses" referred to a legend - about Muhammad being tricked by agents of the devil - that enraged some Muslims. The book was banned in India, and burned by demonstrators in England. The novel's Japanese translator was murdered, the Italian translator stabbed.
People who translated the book were targeted. And as far as the "just a few extremists" goes, I don't think that the country of India qualifies.
There's a huge element of "the lady doth protest too much" in the Islamic mindset. One of their most sacred sayings is "No God but God" (I'm still workin' on the book, Lance). That phrase is some sort of logical fallacy for one thing. But what interests me more is the defensiveness of it. They want to make very clear that any other god anyone else thought up isn't their god.
We live in a varied world. Most everyone else (there are exceptions, I know, but none with the numbers of Islam) at this point has accepted the plurality of opinions and beliefs of other cultures. Muslims in vast numbers riot over cartoons.
I haven't even touched on most Muslim cultures' mistreatment of women. One of the most regrettable moments of my teaching career came when a student of mine told me she was going to Iran to see family. I replied glibly, "Oh! You're not gonna come back wearing a burka, are you?" I said it completely jokingly- this was clearly an American girl, fully assimilated in manner and dress. Still, I can't believe I said that. Talk about culturally insensitive. I think they almost revoked my Green Party membership.
Anyway, it didn't end well. The girl was upset, and understandably. I'd rather not rehash the embarrassing details. However, I stand by one thing: women shouldn't wear burkas. I don't care if it's the law, like in some places, or if it's the women's "choice," as I've heard some defenders proclaim.
Please. It's a cultural expectation, and a backward one. To paraphrase Bill Maher, this isn't just a "difference" in societal values that's to be respected. One is better; one is worse. Until the majority of the world's Muslims figure that out, I'm not letting them off the hook.
Lance wrote in one of his recent blogs "that doesn't mean that the rest of the world gets to sit pretty and say, 'Yeah, Muslims - get it together.'" Well, I don't know about the rest of the world, but I'm saying it. Until they can accept freedom of the press, differences of opinion, stop treating their women as second-class citizens, and most importantly, stop solving every problem with barbaric violence, I'm not going to respect or defend their behavior, liberal cred be damned.
However, I do oppose one element of the conservative party line: The school of thought that my father-in-law espouses that all Muslims should be doing more to apologize and condemn the behavior of the extremists.
First of all, I think they are doing this. It's just not as sexy to run sane, sensible, peaceful Muslims on the nightly news as it is to show them burning flags and hanging Danish cartoonists in effigy.
Secondly, I don't think it's fair. The Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was an army veteran. There was no rush after the attack for all the armed forces vets to apologize for something one of their brethren had done. After all, they hadn't bombed anyone, and would never think of it.
I'm sure the vast majority of Muslims felt the same way, particularly American Muslims. As far as I know, not one American Muslim has ever been implicated in a terror plot or incident. I don't know what the hell's going on over there in Britain. USA! USA! USA!
Well, I'm not one of them. Some lean over so hard in an attempt to seem tolerant of other customs that they become tolerant of intolerance. Nowhere is this more evident than in the attempt to excuse the actions of followers of Islam.
To be fair, nobody I know tries to defend extremists like the ones who fly planes into buildings. But they do claim that those are just a few "bad apples." That those people are to Muslims what the KKK is to Christianity.
Ideologically, I think they're right. Both groups have taken something that theoretically should promote peace and used it to justify division and violence. But in terms of cultural acceptance and sheer numbers, the KKK doesn't hold a candle to Islamic extremism.
I don't like using the word "fundamentalist" because it's so vague. As The Daily Show's Senior Religion Expert Lance Johnson has astutely pointed out, if any of the major religions (and yes, I'm lookin' at you, Christianity) followed the stuff in their books to the letter, the world would be replete with child beating, slavery, rape, etc...
So I'll stick with "extremist" instead. And as far as that word goes, the Muslims are winning that contest by a mile. Here's the other article I mentioned in my blog about African-American culture a few days back: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/15/DDRH12BA7N.DTL&hw=salman+rushdie&sn=001&sc=1000
Again, in case you're too lazy to read it (it's short), it's about author Salman Rushdie's frustration over his publishing house's decision not to distribute a novel by Sherry Jones. The book deals with the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and his child bride. According to Random House publishing, they pulled the book because "'credible and unrelated sources' had warned that the book 'could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment.'"
One of the world's biggest publishing houses can't print a book because it's afraid of people GETTING KILLED. OVER A BOOK.
I don't know anything about Muhammad and his child bride. I don't know if it's true/false/tawdry/offensive, or what. All I know is that threatening to commit terrorism over a STORY is ludicrous. And they've succeeded! Using fear and violence, these lunatics have gotten what they wanted. Just as they do every time a depiction of Muhammad gets pulled by any media outlet (there's a great episode of South Park about this).
I know, I know. This is just a few crazies, right? What about this paragraph, then:
"The Satanic Verses" referred to a legend - about Muhammad being tricked by agents of the devil - that enraged some Muslims. The book was banned in India, and burned by demonstrators in England. The novel's Japanese translator was murdered, the Italian translator stabbed.
People who translated the book were targeted. And as far as the "just a few extremists" goes, I don't think that the country of India qualifies.
There's a huge element of "the lady doth protest too much" in the Islamic mindset. One of their most sacred sayings is "No God but God" (I'm still workin' on the book, Lance). That phrase is some sort of logical fallacy for one thing. But what interests me more is the defensiveness of it. They want to make very clear that any other god anyone else thought up isn't their god.
We live in a varied world. Most everyone else (there are exceptions, I know, but none with the numbers of Islam) at this point has accepted the plurality of opinions and beliefs of other cultures. Muslims in vast numbers riot over cartoons.
I haven't even touched on most Muslim cultures' mistreatment of women. One of the most regrettable moments of my teaching career came when a student of mine told me she was going to Iran to see family. I replied glibly, "Oh! You're not gonna come back wearing a burka, are you?" I said it completely jokingly- this was clearly an American girl, fully assimilated in manner and dress. Still, I can't believe I said that. Talk about culturally insensitive. I think they almost revoked my Green Party membership.
Anyway, it didn't end well. The girl was upset, and understandably. I'd rather not rehash the embarrassing details. However, I stand by one thing: women shouldn't wear burkas. I don't care if it's the law, like in some places, or if it's the women's "choice," as I've heard some defenders proclaim.
Please. It's a cultural expectation, and a backward one. To paraphrase Bill Maher, this isn't just a "difference" in societal values that's to be respected. One is better; one is worse. Until the majority of the world's Muslims figure that out, I'm not letting them off the hook.
Lance wrote in one of his recent blogs "that doesn't mean that the rest of the world gets to sit pretty and say, 'Yeah, Muslims - get it together.'" Well, I don't know about the rest of the world, but I'm saying it. Until they can accept freedom of the press, differences of opinion, stop treating their women as second-class citizens, and most importantly, stop solving every problem with barbaric violence, I'm not going to respect or defend their behavior, liberal cred be damned.
However, I do oppose one element of the conservative party line: The school of thought that my father-in-law espouses that all Muslims should be doing more to apologize and condemn the behavior of the extremists.
First of all, I think they are doing this. It's just not as sexy to run sane, sensible, peaceful Muslims on the nightly news as it is to show them burning flags and hanging Danish cartoonists in effigy.
Secondly, I don't think it's fair. The Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh, was an army veteran. There was no rush after the attack for all the armed forces vets to apologize for something one of their brethren had done. After all, they hadn't bombed anyone, and would never think of it.
I'm sure the vast majority of Muslims felt the same way, particularly American Muslims. As far as I know, not one American Muslim has ever been implicated in a terror plot or incident. I don't know what the hell's going on over there in Britain. USA! USA! USA!
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