Chasm of Doom

Question of the Day

Is the chasm of hilarity between Kath & Kim and The Office bigger than the Grand Canyon?

Kath & Kim really is this unfunny, right? It's not just me? Right?

I feel bad for Molly Shannon and Selma Blair because I enjoy their work and they deserve a better show or at least a funnier one.

I wonder its replacement will be: maybe something funny?


What's your least favorite new television show?

Is This Music...Or Is It Nonsense?

I remember the moment I discovered The Killers (not the movie, but the synth-driven post-punk band (I remember discovering the movie, too. That's another story)): I was deejaying a radio show with my good friend Doug Roberts and we slid in Hot Fuss, their first album, because we desperately needed something to play. It's odd, now, thinking that The Killers were ever small enough to be considered independent, but in the midwinter of 2004 they were just small enough.

I don't remember which track we played, but I remember being kind of blown away because I'd never heard a contemporary band use synthesizers in the same way as The Killers. Most other synthesizer bands brought the synthesizers to the forefront, making them a novelty. The Killers blended them, seamlessly integrating the synthesizers into their melodies and harmonies.

I kind of lost interest in when they released their second album. They had gotten too big and the concept of the second album was not something that I was particularly interested in, even if it was a spectacular album. I really wouldn't know because I haven't given it too much thought.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, I saw my old friends The Killers on Saturday Night Live and they hooked me again. Something about the songs they're playing now interests me more than their last album. I am eager for the new album to drop in a couple of weeks.

I've been listening to the first single "Human" a lot for the past week. It's one of my favorite current songs. I even embedded one of the many youtube "music videos" at the end of this entry. Give it a listen. The synthesizers start off quite, like a faraway freight train, but it's full steam ahead toward the end.

The only thing that may bother you is one of the lyrics. I know it bothers me...a lot. In the chorus the lead singer asks whether we are humans or if we are dancer.


I'm not joking.

Are we human or are we dancer?

It's something out of the fever dreams of the love child of Frida Kahlo and James Joyce. I'm saying that it doesn't make any sense.

First of all, why "dancer" instead of "dancers"? Is dancer an ancient and unknown human archetype or some different state of being? Are not dancers human, too? If you tickle them, do they not giggle? If you refuse to dance with them at a party, do they not pout and call you an asshole? If you let them eat 3 of your onion rings, do they not disappear for 20 minutes only to come back flushed, eyes bloodshot? The point being: dancers are obviously human, so what is Brandon Flowers (lead singer and writer) smoking?


As it turns out: nothing. Flowers, a devout follower of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (that's a mouth full, so let's just call 'em Mormons from here out), allegedly lives the clean and sober life. So it must not be drugs.


The nonsensical lyrics isn't enough to make me hate the song. I've loved many nonsense-lyric bands, from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Bob Dylan (look all you Dylan supporters out there: I love him and I think he's brilliant, but sometimes his lyrics don't make a lick of sense), but I demand an explanation.

I DEMAND SATISFACTION!


Here's the song.

Against Offices

I'm convinced that whatever created us, whether it be God or something more powerful and mysterious, it did not intend for human beings to work in an office environment.



Consider the gas situation, and this is one of many situations like this.

If you're sitting at work and start having horrible gas, you have to go all the way across the building to the public bathroom, where you're forced to serenade a bunch of random people in stalls with your body's natural, gaseous symphony. One of the most natural and pure acts is relegated to the semi-privacy of the gray-tiled darkness of corporate bathrooms.

I submit that if we humans were meant to work in an office that we'd have found a more suitable way to deal with body gas. Since we have not yet evolved sufficiently, I submit that all offices be moved either outside or all workers be allowed to expel their own gas openly. I'd prefer the offices being moved outside, but either way, we will overcome!

Jolly Old Saint Nick

Today on the news there was a story about the Tyson's Corner Center Santa. The mall recently terminated its contract with Santa because they were using a new photography company: a new company that wanted a new Santa. So the original TCC Santa got ticked off and filed suit against the mall.

Then the community got involved.

The community's outrage was so heated that the local, and eventually national, press picked up on it.

Now I'm fine with the story. The guy should have kept his job and is in talks with Tyson's Corner Center to get it back. Good for him.

What I do have a problem is ruining the mystique of Santa Claus. This story was on the 6:00 news. How many kids now know that Santa's name is Michael Graham? I feel like the Santa myth is a practice of public courtesy. If you don't believe it or don't want your kids to believe it, fine. But don't go fucking it up for everyone whose kids believe in Santa Claus.

It's been really difficult not to write about politics when all i hear about is political. I probably should be writing about how the McCain/Palin campaign is a joke or how they're using misinformation more than actual information. Or maybe I should talk about how George W. Bush and his buds are a couple of months away from getting away with swindling the American public and setting us back years, if not decades. Or how politicians seem to think Israel needs our help instead of the other way around (get real politicians: Israel has lasted almost 60 years surrounded by people that hate Her. They've fought numerous wars and have staved off a couple of intifada without the US getting directly involved. If anything, we need them. If Adam Sandler has taught us anything, it's that you do not mess with the Mossad.)

But I made a promise not to write about politics: a promise to you and, more so, a promise to myself.

I'm not perfect, though and as a compromise between not writing about politics and writing about them, I'm going to fill out a survey as completely and amusingly as I can. It's a total cop-out, I know, but it's all I've got tonight. Between nothing going on in the world but the Us Presidential Election and hating my job, I've got to let some things slide.

The survey is labeled as being "controversial," even if it's not that controversial. I stole it from my old friend Dawn from high school. Here goes.


01] Do you have the guts to answer​ these​ quest​ions and re-​post as The​ Contr​overs​ial Surve​y ?
I have the guts to answer this survey and fore go re-posting it on myspace. I'm taking this shit public, son! Do you have the guts for that? Burn!


[02] Would​ you do meth if it was legal​ized?​
I wouldn't do meth if it was mandatory. The list of things I would do before I'd smoke meth is so desperate and disgusting that it's virtually unprintable. Let's just say that something called the Cincinnati Bowtie would be prominently involved. There are way too many deal breakers with meth: meth mouth, tweeking, the possibility of blowing up while making it...the list goes on and on.

[03] Abort​ion:​ for or again​st it?
I'm mostly pro choice. Like if you ask me whether a woman should have an abortion or not, I'd most likely say that she can do whatever she wants. But if it's my girlfriend or my wife, I'd imagine it'd be a different story. Ultimately a woman should be allowed to do with her body whatever she wants, but it does take two to tango. If I impregnate a lady, I think I have a right to have a voice in the decision process. So, I think it should be legal, but I don't think aborting a fetus (whether it is a human yet or not) should be taken lightly.

[04] Do you think​ the world​ would​ fail with a femal​e presi​dent?​
The world isn't going to fail because of one person. This is a stupid question. No country or group of people fails just because their leader. Rome didn't fail because Romulus Augustus was a shitty leader. You can make the argument that a leader's ideas will help topple an empire, but I think it's the complicity and credulity of the empire's citizens that kills a country.

[05] Do you belie​ve in the death​ penal​ty?​
I'm honestly not sure where I stand on this.

[06] Do you wish marij​uana would​ be legal​ized alrea​dy?
I don't wish it was. I think it should be legal, but I'm not praying for it to happen. I think the government could probably make a whole lot of money by legalizing and regulating marijuana, so it's probably not such a bad idea.

[07] Are you for or again​st prema​rital​ sex?
I think people are more ready for it than others, but to take this one step farther, I am for teaching kids in various stages of school about sex and disease and birth control.

[08] Do you belie​ve in God?
I do. Not in a limited, narrow-minded way, though. If I believe that God is omniscient and omnipotent, shouldn't I believe that God is everything to everybody? What I do know for sure is that the concept of God is not something we will ever fully understand. I do know that Hell isn't other people, though: it's loving you. That reference should only be obscure to some of you.


[09] Do you think​ same sex marri​age shoul​d be legal​ized?​
I think it should be legal, but I also maintain that any religious organization has the right to disallow or refuse to recognize same-sex marriages. First and foremost, religion and government should be separated. If you start telling religions what they can and can't do, that opens up a lot of boxes that can't be closed. It's a complicated issue, but I believe that it is fundamentally wrong to make something legal for one group, but illegal for another. How is that different that the separate-but-equal south?

[10] Do you think​ it's wrong​ that so many Hispa​nics are illeg​ally movin​g to the US?
Illegal immigration hasn't directly effected me, so I can't complain about it. It sure is a problem in other parts of the country, though. I think the only way to fix this is to make Mexico, Central America and South America more habitable for people. Wouldn't that pretty much staunch the flow of illegals into America? I mean, they're not coming here to fuck everything up. They're coming here because living in the lower 3/4 of the Western hemisphere sucks. If Chavez, Calderon, Castro and Velez would be more like the Kirchners, Bachelet and (to a lesser extent)Garcia maybe that would happen. Unfortunately, the former seems either too megalomaniacal or weak-willed, so maybe it will take a little longer. I guess that's what you get in a leader: a real maverick and a guy who thinks he's a maverick, but is really just a politician who will say or do anything for a vote. Good thing it's not like that in OUR country...


[11] A twelv​e year old girl has a baby,​ shoul​d she keep it?
If she's had the baby, she couldn't abort it, so it seems like the only options are keeping it, giving it up for adoption, or the dumpster on the night of the fall dance. In that case, she should either keep it or give it up for adoption.

[12] Shoul​d the alcoh​ol age be lower​ed to eight​een?​
I think it should be lowered to 14, and here's why: if we learn to drink responsibly at an age before we learn how to drive, with our parents' supervision, maybe we won't all act like such assholes when we get drunk for the first time in college. Or maybe that's just me.

13] Shoul​d the war in Iraq be calle​d off?
Can we do that? If we can just do a Zack Morris "Time-Out" and just call off the war, yeah. Let's do that.

[14] Assis​ted suici​de is illeg​al:​ Do you agree​?​
I'm not sure, maybe? I see a movie like The Sea Inside and think that maybe it should be legal. Then I see a movie like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and think it shouldn't. I wish someone would make a movie so I could form a definitive opinion on this matter.

[15] Do you belie​ve in spank​ing your child​ren?
I have never had kids, so I don't know. I think it can be done effectively, but I'm not sure that I would or could. I think spanking is an appropriate punishment for some things, but like abortion, it should be something that we do willy-nilly.

[16] Would​ you burn an Ameri​can flag for a milli​on dolla​rs?​
A million dollars is a lot of money.


[17] Who do you think​ would​ make a bette​r presi​dent?​
Whoever would surround himself with the most qualified Cabinet. I'd lead toward Barack Obama because he seems a little more open to the advice of people more qualified in a specialized subject as Mr. Obama is. That's one way that McCain seems like Bush: both seem to think their word is covenant.



[18] Do you think​ Obama​ will be kille​d?​
I think it's horrifying that we still live in a world where someone could hate an idea or a person or a group of people so much that they'd kill them. I don't think anybody deserves to be killed because someone disagree with them, but you know what? I've seen videos on youtube of some of McCain's supporters and I wouldn't put it past some nutjob to do it. I think it's despicable and disgusting to even think about, though. Whether you agree with his politics or not, Barack Obama (AND John McCain) are good, moral people. They don't deserve to be killed. Nobody deserves to be killed.



So that's it. Thanks for sticking with me. I hope you get some enjoyment out of this post.


If not, I leave you with this: a boy with impossibly chubby cheeks. Enjoy.

Standard Operating Procedures

I watched Errol Morris' excellent documentary about Abu Ghraib called Standard Operating Procedure.



The American military probably does a lot of fucked up shit that we don't know about. Like the difference between torture and "standard operating procedure" is very, very slim. Like being tied with electrical cords while in a stress position? That is standard operating procedure. One gentleman says that this is only someone being put into discomfort in order to obtain information. Humiliation, "softening up" and other uncomfortable things are considered standard.

My understanding is that torture is exactly that: being put into uncomfortable positions (not like a good-natured jibe at the expense of a friend's relative without knowing that the relative has passed away...not that kind of discomfort) to obtain information is exactly what torture is. I'm not totally against it, but let's call a spade a spade.

The more shocking thing about the documentary is how Morris humanizes the torturers, Lynndie England specifically. As it turns out, there's a lot more to the story than we heard in the news and now that I am privy to certain information, I feel a lot more sympathy for England. Yes, she did some pretty despicable things, but she's paid her fine to society and we should let her live her life.

The real crime here is that the people who approved of torture have not been punished. England and her ilk are scapegoats, to an extent, and I letting them take all the blame is just as despicable. England lives in infamy, raising the son she had with Charles Graner (one of the main instigators of the torture, who cheated on England with another of the torturers), and the people who approved of the attrocities walk free. I don't care whether you're a liberal or a conservative, this period of unaccountability in governmental matters has to end.

George Lucas, Bringer of Death or How My Brain Works After a Long Day and a Couple of Beers

I just watched Indiana Jones and The Legend of the Crystal Skull for the second time with my parents and I came to a chilling conclusion:

George Lucas might be Shiva the bringer of death.


After the last three Star Wars movies and the aforementioned Indiana Jones movie, I'm convinced that he's going to destroy the world next. I'm sure he's generally sweet and benevolent, but watch out for his next movie. I don't mean to alarm you, but his next film may really be a herald of the great world-eater Galactus.

He's writing a movie due for release in 2009 about the Tuskegee Airmen. If I was one of those men, I'd be so pissed off. They did something fairly incredible by breaking the race barrier in the air force and this is how they're repaid. If I was about to do something great and someone from the future told me that by doing so George Lucas would make a movie about me, I'd think twice before doing it. Seriously. It's like being told that Carrot Top would be playing you in the movie of your life. Wouldn't you work damned hard to change your life if someone told you that?

Am I racist for getting the Tuskegee Airmen and the Tuskegee Experiment mixed up or for thinking they were related? I don't get them confused because both involve African Americans. I get them mixed up because they both have the word Tuskegee in them. Does that happen to anybody else, because it happens to me ALL THE TIME. Like the name Britney and Whitney. That -itney just screws me up. I can't remember all of the times I've called someone Britney when they should have been called Whitney. Isn't that strange?

Isn't it strange how my posts tend to jump all over the place after I've had a few beers? Sorry for that.

War Machine

Terrence Howard couldn't look much more different than Don Cheadle. Normally, in the real world, this wouldn't be a problem. But since Don Cheadle will be replacing Terrence Howard in the sequel to Iron Man, it matters.  Only a little, but it still matters.

Neither of the actors can be blamed for this, least of all Don Cheadle, so I'm going to leave them out of it. Word on the street is that Howard wanted more money, but since Marvel thinks continuity is a waste of time, they've decided to get someone else in lieu of paying Howard what he has coming to him. When they make Iron Man 3 and Don Cheadle asks for more money, will they replace him with Bow Wow? They all look and act the same, right Marvel?


Okay, true believers, that may have been a little unfair. I'm almost positive that the good people at Marvel are not racists. They were pretty close to 86ing Tobey Maguire in one of the Spiderman movies because he was having some back issues, but they were going to replace him with Jake Gyllenhaal who actually does resemble Mr. Maguire somewhat more than Cheadle does Howard.

Still, though, if a movie is going to make a bundle of money, why not just pay the guy who was in the first movie?

Random Thoughts: October 15, 2008

1. ESPN is the clear leader when it comes to sports news. They seem to be able to break stories before anybody else and they have the prettiest, most accessible sports website in the business. Their vastly inferior rival is Sports Illustrated. Sports Illustrated used to be the be-all-end-all of sports journalism, but they have fallen on hard times, especially their website. Recently they posted a list of the best stadiums in the National Football League. The most glaring mistake is that Giants Stadium is ranked 5 or 6 spots higher than "Jets Stadium". The kicker? Both teams use the same stadium. Way to go SI.
2. I'm not positive why movies that don't need to be remade are green-lighted. Granted, some look better than the original, as is the case with the two Omen films, but for the most part the remake is worse than the original. The only exception I can think of off hand is The Departed, which I think is better than its Hong-Kongish (made up words FTW!) counterpart. I would prefer it if studios would re-release (and effectively market) the original.
3. Would Douglas and Lincoln cherish the idea of debate drinking games? Or would they, as I suspect, be rolling in their graves if they ever found out that young adults were using the Presidential debates as a reason to drink. While I'm thinking about it, would our ancestors be rolling in their graves if they found out that we needed to think of contrived reasons to justify having a drink or being drunk when "It's Wednesday" was good enough for them?
4. Is "al Qaeda second-in-command" officially the most dangerous job in the world? It has to be, right? Those guys are getting killed at a pretty rapid pace. Imagine if administrative assistant was that dangerous.
5. I don't wish marital strife on anybody, but this Madonna/Guy Ritchie divorce couldn't have come at a better time. We need something to bring us all together and I'm betting that "thing" will be a kickass Guy Ritchie movie. Or a great Madonna record. Either way, this divorce is a win-win for the general public.
6. I know I vowed to stay away from politics until after the end of the Presidential race, but it seems like McCain's whole campaign has been based on, at best, misrepresenting Barak Obama and at worst being intellectually irresponsible and manipulative just to get votes. No matter what you believe, I think it's a good idea to vote for the man who has a plan as opposed to voting for the guy who only says the other guy's plan is shitty. Just saying.
7. According to an article on yahoo, Ryan O'Neal, former star/current former star, and his 17-year-old son were arrested for drug possession. Both were in possession of drugs and pepper spray, which leads me to wonder two things:

• Why does Ryan O'Neal need pepper spray? I can understand why he may have needed pepper spray, back when he was palling around with Ali MacGraw (no progress on getting an interview with her, btw), but why does he need it now? Who knows what Ryan O'Neal even looks like now?
• Is Ryan O'Neal officially the worst father ever? He took Tatum O'Neal to parties when she was underage and seemingly introduced her to drugs, which she still has tons of problems with, and now this. Talk about poor judgement.

If You Got the Patience Celebrate the Ancients

Some of you lucky so-and-sos got the day off today. It's Columbus Day, after all. I wasn't so lucky, though. No matter. I still had a productive day and was forced to appreciate Christopher Columbus more than i ever have.

i overheard a person talking about Columbus and saying that he was basically a failure because he couldn't find his way to India. This person, who I see in between 4 and 6 days a week, mentioned that there were so many other explorers, so why celebrate a doofus? She had been complaining about it for about 5 minutes and I couldn't stay silent. Columbus isn't one of my heroes nor do I think he was the best explorer ever (Ibn Battuta anyone?), but he certainly wasn't a doofus.

Me: "Don't you think calling Christopher Columbus a doofus is a little short-sighted?"
Overheard Person: "No."

So that was that. The person clearly thinks just any Joe Sixpack can sail the ocean blue in 1492. Nothing special. No biggy.


Seriously? Sailing the Atlantic, even if you didn't reach your destination, is pretty impressive. Or maybe it's not. Tons of people did it before Columbus, right? A couple of people got there before Columbus, but they pissed off back to their own home country. Columbus isn't the celebrated because he got somewhere: he's famous because he helped prove (along with Vespucci) that this somewhere, where we all live, exists! He helped lead the way to uncovering half of the world! Sure, someone would have stumbled onto the Americas eventually, but Columbus helped people see that there was something over here, blocking them from getting to those precious spices. Columbus did some bad stuff, sure...but so did ALL of the explorers. That's kind of the nature of exploration, isn't it? Nobody back then explored for explorations sake. They did it for money and the people who paid them did it because they trying to gain an advantage over another country. So, I'm blowing a big Internet raspberry at everyone who thinks Columbus was just some doofus who stumbled on something bigger than himself. If that's the case, Alexander Fleming is a doofus, too, right?



In any case, Happy Columbus/Explorer/Indigenous Persons Day.

The Nobel Farce

Today the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio and I would be fine with that if not for this article.

To recap for those that don't want to read the article, the gist is that a Nobel judge things the US is too irrelevant in the literary world to be considered for a prize.

Horace Engdahl, a permanent Nobel judge, says that "[t]he U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature," and that our collective "ignorance is restraining".


So instead of giving the award to any American author that deserved it (who apparently hasn't existed since 1993 when Toni Morrison won the award), they give it to an obscure French writer, who, by the way, lives in New Mexico.

The Nobel Prize is a great honor, but it loses some legitimacy when you consider how many brilliant writers didn't win: Tolsty, Chekov, Joyce, Borges, Nabokov, Auden, Twain, Zola and Ibsen come to mind. It's not as though the awards were given to better authors and the reasons for not awarding the writers listed above seem to be purely political.


So I don't think Le Clezio is undeserving (how could I: I've never read or even heard of anything he's written), but I think you could make a pretty good case for Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Joyce Carol Oates, John Updike, Cormac McCarthy, Carson McCullers, Truman Capote etc. ad nauseam. Is Le Clezio really a better written or more important culturally than anybody I've listed? I don't think he is, but (for those who may think I'm being a literary Jingo) is he more important than Rushdie or Amis or Margaret Atwood or Alan Paton or Chinua Achebe?

Not even close, right?

And to claim that the United States doesn't play a big enough role in the literary world? Really? The can't be true, can it?

The irony of it all is that the Nobel judge says that the US doesn't translate enough, but how many English translations of Le Clezio's 30 books have I found at my library?

One.

What Isn't Love?

Diet Pepsimax is a new soda being marketing the United States, although it seems to have been available in Europe for a couple of years. It is a low-calorie option for people who don't like diet sodas, but also don't really like regular soda. Whatever. The soda doesn't matter.

The advertisement does, though.

The people over at Pepsi decided to use a popular Saturday Night Live sketch as the inspiration for their new Diet Pepsimax add campaign. The problem? The popular Saturday Night Life sketch is over a decade old. The Butabis are two brothers, played by Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan, who go to clubs and dance with women in an awkward and invasive manner. It was a funny sketch and a watchable comedy, but as a commercial?

You be the judge.

This wouldn't have been a horrible commercial ten years ago. It's like Pepsi is living in the past: even all of the rappers are either irrelevant or on the verge. Macy Gray? Busta Rhymes? Jeez. Was DJ Kool Herc too busy? Couldn't find any footage of Al Jolson?

The cool thing about this commercial is the meta-scene at the end, where Chris Kattan tells the people in the commercial to stop doing the Butabi dance. It's like I'm Chris Kattan and I'm telling the commercial to stop. Because that's what the commercial should do. Just stop.

Back in Action

I've made a lot of promises to my readers and I've broken all of them. I feel horrible about that so I'm starting anew.



I decided against watching the debates tonight. It's not that I don't care about it or that I am trying to be willfully ignorant. I'll read about it and ruminate at length on its implications. I'm just not interested in watching it. I know who I'm voting for. I know why I'm voting for him. Furthermore, I'm confident that my electoral vote is going to the man I'm going to vote for whether I do or not. If you know anything about Maryland, you'll know who I'm talking about, but, if not, his name rhymes with Barack Obama.



I've reached an election overload. My election reactor has reached critical mass. I'm going to do all I can in the next month to not think about the election without losing a grasp of what is going on in this country.

So that's why, from now until the election, I'm going to be avoiding everything political in this blog. I'm not saying that you should avoid reading anything political, but I do urge you to join me here and take a rest from all of the politics. Think of the next month as a sweet respite, shelter from the storm.


Now who's comin' with me?