We’ll have to see how things go from here… how quickly they run the Wolfram & Hart thing into the ground, how well or badly they use Spike in this ensemble, whether or not a lot of Nazi demons show up and Gunn sacrifices himself heroically to save the day, how often Gwen Raiden shows up to make out on-camera with Eve… all of that will have a great deal to do with how well this season of Angel works for me.

DARK CLARK

Smallville was mostly aggravating, because I spent pretty much the entire episode wanting to scream at the screen “STOP BEING SUCH AN ASSHOLE, CLARK!!” I mean, yeah, Dark Clark is kind of fascinating, but Jesus! His parents are losing the farm! Lex is missing! Chloe is sad! (I don’t much care about stuck up bitch Lana, but the other stuff concerns me.) And all Clark wants to do is run around in Metropolis being a bad boy. It was extremely aggravating.

It was nice to see yet another character from old Superman continuity re-surface in Morgan Edge, and a clearly desperate Rutger Hauer did a nice job portraying him. But in point of fact, the entire episode mostly just annoyed me.

However, the ENDING totally rocked! Pa Kent with super powers kicking Clark’s evil ass! OH YES!! He’s not too old to be put over your knee, Jonathan. Give him a damned GOOD ass whuppin’ and take the lad home.

J LO’s A NO-GO, BRING ON GUGINO

Karen Sisko was kind of disappointing, especially with all the hype ABC’s been throwing around regarding the show. Ultimately, for all that I read about Gugino’s work ethic and her complete commitment to doing her best performance in every scene, I just didn’t see a whole lot up on the screen. Mostly this seemed like a generic cop show set up around a hottie who likes to wear slinky clothing… much like V.I.P., I suppose, without the supporting ensemble (and with, admittedly, much more intelligent scripting and better actors, but you’d think that would go without saying).

I’m not saying it was bad, I am saying it didn’t impress me much. However, a lot will depend on whether this first episode, in which Karen did indeed get torridly involved with a guy who turned out to be a very personable and hunky bank robber, and had to take him in, is an anomoly (meant to, more or less, introduce the character by vaguely reprising the movie the TV show is derived from), or whether this is the formula for every episode... in which case, it's going to get really really old really really fast. While I admit, I’ve been crying out for more female protagonists being allowed to be as slutty and sleep around as, say, all male protagonists used to be and sometimes still are(think James T. Kirk and Jim Rockford, back in the old pre HIV days), I don’t think I’m going to be able to sustain any interest in a show in which a female Federal marshall keeps getting involved with, and then having to arrest, a different cute male criminal every episode.

Now, if they throw a few cute FEMALE criminals into that mix, they might have a winning formula. But I don’t think ABC is that bold.

It also seems like they’re going to use the father character to do so called humorous B stories a lot, and if so, that’s a mistake. The ‘humorous’ B story in this one involved the dad trying to find a way to trick a disability cheater into getting up out of his wheelchair, and there wasn’t anything particularly funny about it. Nor was there anything at all entertaining about it. It’s nice to see a character on TV who has a visible, older parent figure, and the dynamic between the two is an interesting one… but so far, as I say, I’m just not impressed.

YOU’VE SEEN A DIFFERENCE AND IT’S GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME

Well, Paul didn’t get lucky. His chiquita apparently went through one of those second thoughts things so many chicks go through after they come on strong with a guy at their first meeting, and she was considerably cooler and more distant to poor Paul when he went out there again. What makes this worse is that Paul really wasn’t in the mood to go out again, he only went back because she’d insisted he show up the next night and seemed to really be into him. Ahhhh, us guys… give us a whiff of it and we will walk through fire and over broken glass.

I’m not laughing at my gender; I’m exactly the same way. And I’m not precisely bitching at women who jerk us around, either, because I think nine times out of ten, most women who do this didn’t do it on purpose and didn’t really think it through… but still, it sucks. If a woman has no intentions of going for it, she shouldn’t act otherwise… and if women are going to send mixed signals this way, they should all stop bitching at men when we can’t figure them out and don’t do what they want us to.

I felt bad for Paul, but, well, she was going back to Texas soon, and anyway, if she’s that kind of tease, he’s better off not getting started with her.

It is, for a fleeting moment, a fairly good life here on Planet Darren. For one thing, I’ve had some good exchanges with my ex girlfriend Kristy lately. Nothing dramatic, nothing that wouldn’t sound completely boring articulated into text for a general audience, just talking back and forth about her kids and her hobbies and my complete lack of anything remotely approaching a life, but it’s nice to have someone out there who knows me as well as Kristy does and who still has some genuine affection for me. So that’s been very pleasant. I may not have done much worthwhile with my life, but spending six years of it on and off with Kristy was definitely not a waste of time or a bad decision.

Also, last night I got email from an old buddy of mine, Scott, who back in 1996 or thereabouts, when he was 16, played for a longish period in my RPG up in Syracuse. Scott was one of my better players and easily the coolest 16 year old I’ve ever known as an adult, and he seems to have grown up and stayed pretty cool, too, after a stint in the Army. It’s nice hearing from him again. He’s the ScottR who hung a comment down below regarding ‘upsetting the wimmenfolks’, and, hey, folks, cut him some slack, he’s like all of 23 years old. He’ll get there.

In addition, the local U-Stor sent me a completely unanticipated check for $20, which, well, it’s not a winning Lotto ticket, but $20 (apparently it’s a refund of a security deposit I don’t remember making) out of nowhere is a lot better than being pelted with rotten eggs. So that’s cool.

Jillian, whom I, well, not so much suspected but at least theorized might be Jess posting comments under a pseudonym, has told me directly via email that she isn’t, and I make it a policy to believe people until they prove to me I shouldn’t. I understand that’s pretty gullible and foolish on one level, but it seems to me you can either do it that way, or you can do the opposite… disbelieve everything until people show you you can trust them, or at least, that their claims are objectively and inarguably accurate… and I think that’s a grim and sad way to go through life. So Jillian says she’s not Jess, I believe her. Jillian has pretty much proven to me she’s not Jess, anyway, by answering my subsequent email to her within hours, while Jess, in my experience, generally takes weeks to answer emails. So, Jillian is not Jess, just yet another of these people quietly reading my work who continue to delight me when they finally reveal themselves to me. I really have to wonder how many people do read my blog. And wish to hell I could charge all of you a subscription fee. ::grin::

WELL THERE’S A LIGHT IN YOUR EYE THAT KEEPS SHININ

What the hell is wrong with us men?

Rereading what I wrote above, about the way women come on strong and then often have second thoughts between the first, perhaps fortuitous, meeting, and the second one, which often they insist we show up for, and how annoying this is, and how I wish they’d just stop advertising the goods if they’re not going to deliver the goods, well… yes, I’m moved to ask: What the hell is wrong with us men?

Can’t we understand that sometimes, an attractive woman may just be feeling lonely, and she just wants a little bit of friendship, some companionship, someone to talk to her and pay flattering attention to her, maybe, yes, to touch her and hold her a little, to dance with her, to make her feel beautiful and wanted? Why don’t we get that? Why do we always have to make it about sex? Why can’t we comprehend that for women, it’s sometimes, or often, or usually, or even always, more about friendship and enjoying each other’s company and hardly ever about, you know, sweaty coitus with a near stranger? Why can’t we get that? Why do we goddam shallow stupid mindless Cro-Magnon troll men always make it about sticking our dicks in them? Why can’t we just be nice and sweet and hold their hands and hug them and compliment them on how nice their hair looks and notice their goddam shoes?

Well, I’ve thought about this for quite a while, at least the thirty or ninety or 120 seconds or so it took me to type out all that above, and I’ve decided to let whatever women may read my blog in on a closely held secret of my particular gender:

We are evil.

Yes. Every single one of us. We are wicked, and cruel, and corrupt, and bad. We are vicious and mean. We are horrible and terrible and every last one of us should be killed and honest to God, all you chicks out there would be much happier just having lesbian sex (and we won’t mind either if you let us watch).

It’s true. I mean it. I’m entirely sincere. Seriously. How else can you explain an entire gender that simply willfully refuses to acknowledge or accept that the only important thing in any male/female interaction is what the WOMAN wants, every time, all the time?

It is wrong, it is deranged, it is unhinged, demented, vicious, cruel, and evil, for any male anywhere to think that what a GUY wants from a woman matters at all. It does NOT matter. God (who is a woman) created men as little more than fashion accessories that talk. We are here on Earth for no reason other than to provide hugs, give neck rubs, and notice women’s new hairstyles and shoes. It’s all about the chicks. That is the natural order. If all a woman ever wants out of a relationship with a guy is positive attention and to be made to feel gorgeous and needed and wanted, without her ever having to provide her male accessory with anything at all in return except the pleasure of her company, well, that is the way it was meant to be. And it is wrong, deeply and immeasurably wrong, for any man, anywhere, to ever in any way expect any woman, anywhere, to provide him with sex.

Sex is horrible. Sex is bad. All guys want is sex! And it’s just groady. What the hell is wrong with us? Hugs are much better than sex. Pleasant conversation about soap operas and fabric stores and feminine hygiene products and craft shows are the be all end all of life. Dancing and talking about our relationships and going shopping for new shoes, all of these are the only activities it is proper and right for men to share with women. Sex? Oh, please. That’s something between a woman and her vibrator.

No, I’m serious. All men ever want from an attractive woman is sex. When we’re out with a chick it’s much like the adults talking to the kids on Charlie Brown cartoons… we can’t hear anything except some weird french horn blatting, unless she starts talking about sex. We just smile and nod, smile and nod, and all the time we’re staring at her tits and thinking “Jesus Christ let’s go home and have sex” or worse “hey, we don’t even have to go home let’s just climb up on this table and have sex”. And that is truly unacceptable. Sex… why, it’s not like sex is pretty much what life is all about, like sex is pretty much the one evolutionary reason WHY the human race is divided into two genders, like sex is, honestly, about the only physically and biologically valid reason FOR interactions between men and women. Oh, no! I completely understand. In fact, all men understand… our purpose in life is to carry women’s purses while they try on completely unflattering clothes that cost way too much.

But, again: we are evil. We are vile. We are foul and wretched, we are calculating miscreants and fiendish imps of hell. We just want sex. We know it’s wrong. We know women find it disgusting. We know we are all perverts because we look at attractive women and want to stick our horrible hairy penises into them (a LOT). We know all that. We know that sex has no legitimate part in a truly romantic relationship, and that if we were mature, or if we REALLY REALLY LOVED YOU, we would never want you to do anything so totally disgusting as to have sex with us. But we don’t care. It doesn’t matter to us what you want, nor do we ourselves care about simple physical affection, or hugs, or loneliness, or just wanting to be with someone who loves us. We are far too shallow to understand or appreciate fine, delicate sentiments like that. No.

We are men. All we want is sex. We find it extremely annoying that you won’t give it to us whenever, wherever, and however we want it, and that’s completely wrong and unreasonable of us, and, well, we admit it. Or I do, anyway.

All I want is sex. I don’t care about affection or intimacy or love. I never get lonely or feel affection starved, I’m simply horny every waking moment of every single day. If a woman is nice to me, if she pays attention to me, if she flirts with me, if she compliments me or flatters me, then by GOD, I expect her to be on her knees fellating me the instant I so much as smile back at her. And if that doesn’t happen, well, I’ll call her a bitch and a cocktease and sulk to myself like a little baby for weeks. Why? Because I’m a guy, and ALL I WANT IS SEX.

There. Are you happy now?

SEX AND CHOCOLATE

Okay.

Now, try to imagine this:

A world in which all chocolate is manufactured by men, and only by men. Only males have the secret of making chocolate, and all men make chocolate, all the time. We’re always carrying chocolate around with us, packaged in our own unique and stylish ways (or, actually, a lot of men at different times have packaged their chocolate in exactly the same way that they see a lot of male celebrities packaging theirs, because, well, that’s fashion). Some guys make really good chocolate… I’m talking, you know, that really expensive Bavarian or Swiss stuff… and other guys’ chocolate isn’t all that great, while the vast majority of guys produce decent Nestles or Hershey level chocolate. We all make it a little bit differently; some of us make white chocolate, some of us put nuts in it, some of us make chocolate bars or kisses, others carry around steaming pots of hot chocolate on trays. Some of us put our chocolate into other, sometimes quite sophisticated pastries and confections. But all males make chocolate, and only males make chocolate.

But the important thing here is, you cannot buy chocolate. (Well… you can… you can walk up to a guy and offer him money for his chocolate. But in this particular world, most guys will at least pretend to be mortally offended by that, the guys who will sell you chocolate generally aren’t guys you want to buy it from for various reasons, and beyond all that… can you BELIEVE it?… IT IS ACTUALLY ILLEGAL TO BUY CHOCOLATE FROM SOMEONE WILLING TO SELL IT TO YOU.)

And of course it is completely forbidden to just take some guy’s chocolate. Hell, so far has male liberation come in this world in the 21st Century that you can’t even joke around about taking someone’s chocolate without their permission. You can be arrested, or at least sued for causing the guy emotional distress. Even walking up and touching a guy’s chocolate without permission will get you arrested if he wants to press charges. I’m serious. It’s called ‘confectionary assault’ and you can go away for quite a while for it.

Beyond that, most men want to give their chocolate to women, for various reasons. So they package their chocolate in attractive, attention getting, even provocative ways. They waft the smell of chocolate into the atmosphere everywhere. Chocolate is on every commercial and in every movie and in every TV show. Chocolate is everywhere; you live in a culture that tells you, a million times a day, a million different ways, that if you’re a woman and you haven’t had some chocolate today, there is something badly wrong with you, and you are constantly surrounded by men holding chocolate out to you, really GOOD chocolate, the premium stuff. They strut around with it. They flaunt it. You are constantly exposed to chocolate, every conscious waking moment.

Astonishing though it may seem to you, in this world, if a woman wants chocolate, (and women are SUPPOSED to want chocolate, if you don’t want chocolate you are told by your culture that you are some sort of horrible horrible freak) the only way she can get it is to somehow persuade a guy to give it to her of his own free will.

And, of course, you know how difficult guys are. Now, you’ve heard rumors, persistent rumors, that a lot of them enjoy providing women with chocolate. It’s said, all over the place, everywhere you look, that men enjoy giving women chocolate just as much as women enjoy eating it. You kind of doubt that… I mean, they certainly don’t ACT like it… but you keep hearing this.

What’s maddening is that nearly every guy refuses to ever actually come out and say ‘I’d like to give you some chocolate’. No. There’s some kind of bizarre social stigma about that. Guys, especially the guys with the BEST chocolate, always play these little head games. They make the women make the first move. If you want chocolate, you have to go up and ask for it, but… oh my God, guys! They’re so impossible! If you just come out and ask for it, they sneer at you and stalk haughtily away, or they act all offended, or they call you a pervert and maybe even slap you. No, if you want chocolate, well, there's this whole complex and baffling labyrinth of social ritual you have to go through. It’s insane and obnoxious and completely frustrating, but, well, that’s just how it is and there’s nothing you can do about it.

And, hey, maybe you’re the sort of woman who has no trouble scoring chocolate. Maybe you have a regular chocolate provider, or guys just really like you and they actually walk up to you and offer you chocolate, just because you’re charismatic, or you carry yourself with that kind of confidence you’re told men really respond to.

In that case, life is, well, sweet. But, if you’re not one of those lucky women… hell, if you’re a woman in that world like I am a man in our world, well, you’re kind of miserable all the time. You LOVE chocolate. You are a serious chocoholic. You think about chocolate all the time, you CRAVE chocolate, and everywhere you go, you see women getting chocolate from guys and guys apparently enjoying giving it to them, and maybe it really bothers you, because a lot of these women seem… well… kind of mean to you. It seems like they just kind of ignore their chocolate providers, or even demean and degrade and belittle them. Hell, you hear about a lot of cases where women actually physically abuse their chocolate providing males… and yet, those guys stay with them and keep giving them chocolate.

Meanwhile, you haven’t had so much as a lousy Hershey’s kiss in years, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Men simply control access to the chocolate. If you’re going to get some, you have to find some way to get a man to give you some, and no matter what you do, no matter how many other women out there who are less pleasant than you get all the chocolate they want, you just can’t get there. At times you get so starved for chocolate you think about calling some of these ‘chocolate packaging providers’ listed in the Weekly Planet, who you know are actually simply chocolate merchants… but you’re just not the kind of person who could ever pay for her chocolate, emotionally, that won’t work for you. If you know the guy who is giving you chocolate doesn’t particularly care for you, if there’s no emotional intimacy, there just seems no point to it, and anyway, that’s dangerous… a guy who will sell his chocolate will steal, and a lot of them have drug habits, and you can actually get sick from eating their chocolate, and you could always run into a confections cop, and you don’t need that shit.

Yes, that would be a truly shitty world… to be evolutionarily wired and physically pretty much addicted to something that you cannot buy or steal or in any way really just control your access to in any definable way. No, this substance you crave, this thing you want and need and that you just really can’t feel good about yourself unless you have it, this thing is completely controlled by other people… people that you have to somehow please in order to get it… people who simply, for whatever reason, do not like you much, do not willingly pay much attention to you, and who become offended if you approach them and attempt to open whatever complex social negotiations and interactions would be required for you to finally, at some point, get some chocolate. Some of these people, in fact, don’t even want you to even suggest it might be nice to actually meet them physically; if you drop a hint or so much as ask if they’d like to ever even in some way actually physically interact with you at all, they jump immediately to screaming in your face “NO I HAVE NO INTEREST IN EVER GIVING YOU CHOCOLATE AT ALL!”… while, in the meantime, they are, like so many other guys who make really good chocolate, giving all their product to some woman who treats them like shit and that they admit is bad for them and will never make them happy.

Okay. Yes, I know… a case can be made that I am, with this extended analogy, offending and demeaning all women by comparing their intimate sexual favors with, well, chocolate. And, well, I do not intend to give offense, nor to demean anyone by doing this. What I am trying to do is point out something that I think most people (both male and female) never consciously articulate to themselves… that in our culture, if an honorable, law abiding heterosexual male wants sex, he has to somehow convince some woman he finds attractive to give it to him of her own free will.

Now, I’m not saying that’s in any way wrong. I am not in any way advocating that women should not be in total and complete control of who they have sex with, or that guys should have any legal way to override a woman’s ‘no’. (I am saying that laws against prostitution are really stupid, but even if prostitutes were legal vendors I wouldn’t use their services; I’m not emotionally wired to enjoy sex bought and sold as a commercial commodity.)

I am, with this extended and perhaps offensive analogy, simply trying to provide some perspective. This is, pretty much, what it’s like to be a heterosexual, law abiding male in our world. I have been told from the cradle to now that I am supposed to want sex, and more than that, that if I can’t get sex, there is something really badly wrong with me. I am surrounded constantly by sexual imagery and sexual references and women who are obviously dressing to subtly offer sex to men they find far more desirable than me.

I can’t buy sex (and don’t want to), I can’t make anyone just GIVE me sex (and, well, I don’t really want to do that either) and I seem to be completely incapable of doing whatever it is that more socially successful men do to get sex (which seems to me to mostly be, getting women drunk and lying to them, not necessarily in that order, but perhaps I’m a little bit bitter).

It’s frustrating. So I created this parallel world, ‘only men have chocolate’ analogy, to try to impart at least a small… er… taste, if you will… of what my life, and the life of many men similar to me in this regard, is like.

If you find it offensive, I regret that, but you are taking offense where none is intended. And if you find it offensive and you’ve been laid, say, within the last week, then while you are welcome to post your offense or email me about your offense, I will most likely simply disregard your offense.

But, hey, at least I can buy a Hershey’s bar whenever I want one. That’s something.

RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, “Wow, I didn’t recognize you in men’s clothing”. According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I’m reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I’d take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here’s The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people’s blogs, you MUST NOT:

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin’s Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron’s blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don’t really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren’t related to me by marriage, I’d most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I’ve learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don’t care if you:

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I’d get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don’t Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.