NO MATTER WHERE YOU GO, THERE YOU ARE

The new President Bush Aviator Action Figure G.I. Joe is just cracking me up. Whoever ends up running against Dubya should buy up truckloads of these things and pass them out at every whistle stop, with a small booklet detailing Bush’s actual military career tucked into the front of the doll’s flack vest. (It would be a small booklet indeed.) I’m totally serious. I’m trying to imagine something that would better underscore just how completely ridiculous Dubya’s military pretensions are and honest to God, I can’t.

What with the major black out up north, I have to say, God seems to have a serious response time problem. I mean, I moved out of Syracuse six years ago. This probably means He’ll get around to hitting the Florida area with a major black out six years from now, when hopefully I’ll be living somewhere else. Hmmmm. I guess I have to keep moving on every six years or so, to stay ahead of slow but certain Divine Fuckery.

Or, I suppose, I could accept that not everything in the universe is about me, but honestly, that concept seems rather whack.

I’m still in touch with Alli, which is odd but nice. I’d completely written her off (rather angrily, in fact) after she seemed to spurn a couple of attempts I made to get in touch with her via email over the last couple of years, assuming she wanted nothing to do with me. But, ever since she wrote me to tentatively inquire as to my policy on the privacy of ex lovers (she seems troubled by the idea that, since her name appeared on my blog a while back, some of her non-admirers might write to me and ask me for details as to our and her history), we’ve maintained email contact, and she insists that her not writing me back those previous times was simply a misunderstanding, and not at all intentional.

It’s pleasant having a casual but positive contact with her, because I’m sentimental about anyone I’ve ever slept with. However, past experience teaches me that the half life of these things is short; eventually I’m going to say or do something appalling and this short period of long distance, reasonably civil interaction will abruptly end.

However, for right now, it’s pleasant to be chatting with someone who was once attracted enough to me to sleep with me (in direct contrast to women who, without actually meeting me, still find me so distasteful that they won’t even meet me, and they ridicule me for asking them if they would), and I’ll enjoy the interaction while it lasts.

I’ve watched a bunch of movies lately… Empire Strikes Back, the first fifteen minutes or so of Jedi, Evil Dead II, and something weird directed by Abel Ferrera called New Rose Hotel, which is based on a lot of Walter Gibson’s cyberpunk science fiction.

Empire remains the best Star Wars movie. Some of the dialogue is dreadful but a lot of it is quite memorable, the plot works reasonably well and hasn’t yet been disfigured by the horrible blotch of Darth not only really being Luke’s father, but Lea winding up being Luke’s sister (don’t get me started on how appallingly stupid this is), there are some seriously kick ass action sequences, and for this film only, Yoda is extremely cool. It also ends on a really excellent cliffhanger and the characterizations are all interesting, reasonably three dimensional, and fairly believable.

I tried to watch Jedi again because I’ve only seen it once and I loathed it back then and have relentlessly insulted and put it down ever since, and I was hoping it would be better than I remembered. But it’s not. Even the rescue sequence at the start is much less well done than I’d remembered (and I do not get this ‘Leia in a slave girl outfit’ fetish geeks are supposed to have. She ain’t that cute. Sorry, but she just ain’t.)

Once the rescue sequence is over, though, the movie heads for the toilet at hyperspeed. Luke’s return to Dagobar, just to watch Yoda go through one of the most tiresome and annoyingly badly written death scenes ever filmed, is tedious and, when compared to how cool and interesting Yoda was in the previous installment, really painful to watch. When the ghost of Obi Wan shows up and actually hunkers down on a log (‘hunkers down’ is, honestly, the only accurate way to describe the movement and posture) to talk to Luke, and does nothing but speak in truly dreadful cliches for the entire course of the conversation, it’s really hard to sit through. However, when we go from that to a scene where Han, Leia, and Lando are all talking at the rebel headquarters, and they’re trading really stupid quips and going ‘ah ha hah’ back and forth, right before the Rebel leader starts explaining that the new Death Star is protected by in impregnable force field that isn’t, you know, mounted on the Death Star itself, where it would be, what’s that word, oh yeah, SAFE, but is instead being projected from a nearby planet poorly guarded by a small cohort of the most incompetent soldiers in the history of the universe, well, I simply gave up. (Paul explained to me, or reminded me, although I honestly don’t remember it and don’t care, that the Empire did this on purpose to set a trap for the Alliance. Personally, I think if the Empire spent a little more time ruling the galaxy and a little less time setting traps for the Alliance, they’d get a lot further along. And if you just HAVE to set a trap for the Alliance, why not have a secret back up force field generator on the Death Star itself? Wouldn’t that be a good idea?)

Anyway, it’s possible Jedi is better than I remember it, because I couldn’t make myself watch it again after all, but the stuff I did make myself watch was dreadfully and appallingly stupid.

Evil Dead II is just dumb. Apparently, Sam Raimi wasn’t all that happy with the first one, because he effectively remakes the first film in the opening ten minutes of this one, and then proceeds to do a completely campy horror parody instead of a real horror movie for the remainder of this movie’s running time. Paul loves that kind of shit; I tend to find it obnoxious. ‘Camp’ seems to be a way of saying ‘yes, we didn’t bother to do anything in this movie particularly well, but as long as we tell you we did it that way on purpose, then it’s cool’. Personally, I think if you make a lousy movie on purpose, you still made a lousy movie. But Paul tells me I’m too picky, and he’s not the first.

In fact, Paul and I were having an argument about something… the sixth season of Buffy, I think, which I mostly loathe and Paul really enjoys… and Paul told me that while he admitted the sixth season wasn’t as good as the preceding five, he still thought it was better than the rest of the crap on TV. I responded that ‘better than crap’ had never been good enough for me, and Paul, who I don’t believe had smoked up that night because he was out of weed, got irritable and snapped something like ‘well, not everyone imposes these impossible and ridiculously high standards on everything’.

I stopped arguing at that point because I consider that, well, I won. I know most people don’t agree with me, in fact, they agree with Paul, but they just are never going to understand my point of view, which is actually fairly simple: high standards are not bad. High standards, in fact, are generally regarded as, you know, what’s that word, oh yeah, GOOD. Saying I impose high standards that creative products must measure up to before I like or respect them isn’t an insult, regardless of what most people seem to feel; it’s a compliment, and, to my way of thinking, a capitulation of the debating field to me. It is a concession of victory, a full and unconditional surrender. When someone sneers at me ‘you’re too picky’, they may not realize it, but what they have basically just said is, ‘I have absolutely no taste, judgement, or capacity to distinguish quality from swill whatsoever, and I think that makes me cooler than you, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am not, and I’m actually a moron, and you just completely rule’.

As to ‘impossible’ or ‘ridiculous’, that’s nonsense. I own at least a hundred videotapes that measure up to my ‘impossible’ and ‘ridiculous’ standards, and have a list in my wallet of at least a hundred more I keep wishing people would consult for Christmas and birthday presents for me, but no one ever does. I’ve read probably thousands of books that measure up to these standards, and the first three seasons of Buffy meet and exceed those same standards. They are neither ‘impossible’ nor ‘ridiculous’. They are, however, somewhat more demanding than simply being ‘better than crap’, which is, apparently, the entirety of Paul’s standards. And, personally, I wouldn’t say Evil Dead II, or three out of five Star Wars movies, even manage to achieve the ‘better than crap’ standard.

New Rose Hotel isn’t a good movie, but it’s an interesting one. Anything directed by Abel Ferrera is almost certainly going to be interesting but not very good. Ferrera has an unusually sharp and somewhat odd visual sense, but really can’t direct a film or tell a story very well, and he has no real grasp of how to do characterization. To that extent, he’s sort of a like a low budget Ridley Scott. He always tries to make sure his movies (which generally go straight to video) will appeal to a certain demographic by including sexual material and some female nudity, which, I admit, rarely troubles me.

Sometimes (not often) his movies have interesting ideas in them. This one, since it’s based on a bunch of fragments from various different William Gibson stories, has quite a few fascinating concepts (although they work better in prose than on the screen; Ferrera’s budgets simply aren’t adequate to making Gibson’s cyberpunk future look good), but Ferrera has absolutely no idea how to direct the various characterizations, and dialogue has never been either Gibson’s or Ferrera’s strong suite. What we’re left with is a mishmosh of characters that seem like they should be fascinating but never really are, living in a world that should look a great deal cooler than it ever does, exchanging dialogue and going through plot events that no one will ever be able to comprehend unless they’ve read Count Zero and/or Neuromancer.

The movie isn’t helped by a typically wretched non-performance from Christopher Walken, who shrieks and screams and gesticulates with a cane and chews the scenery relentlessly, a typically clueless performance from Willem Dafoe, who simply coasts on his truly weird facial features and his absolute mastery of expression, body language, and vocal intonation, all of which he uses to make his character seem somewhat three dimensional while clearly having absolutely no idea who the guy is supposed to actually be, and an impressive seeming performance from newcomer Asia Argento, whom I’d guess has quite a lot of acting ability from what I see here, but who is, again, stuck with a characterization that makes no coherent sense from one moment to the next.

Annabella Sciorra shows up in a small role, which is fun because I’ve always thought she was a complete babe, but honestly, if I hadn’t read some Gibson, I would never have been able to make heads or tails out of this film, nor would I have even remotely cared. Paul complained that the ending made no sense, so I watched it all the way through confident I’d spot something he’d missed (Paul would read about half a paragraph of anything by Gibson, throw it vigorously against the closest sheer surface, and reach gratefully for either a Spider Robinson paperback or a great big bowl o’ weed, whichever was closest to hand), but, he was right, the ending makes no sense.

Moving on from movies, an ego search on Google yesterday turned up the flattering fact that someone I didn’t know, calling himself the Pop Culture Gadfly, had blogrolled me. I sent him a nice thank you note and was all prepared to put him on my blogroll, but since the page of his I’d pulled up was an old archive, I decided to check out his most recent stuff while I was in the neighborhood. And at some point towards the start of this month, for some reason, he dropped me from his blogroll, so I guess he’s a dick. Pity. Well, I don’t have to blogroll him, then.

I should go around to the small number of blogs on my blogroll and see if they all still have me listed, but honestly, I don’t want to. Elayne Riggs has an endless blogroll I can’t find my way through easily (especially since she lists blogs by either the author’s name or the blog’s name, with no apparent rhyme or reason I can see), and if she did drop me from her blogroll, I’d have to be depressed and cry. Eyesicle I simply have no desire to check out; I’m sure Trinity isn’t talking about me at all any more, but, well, I’m not sure which would be more depressing, her bitching about what an ass I am, or her acting as if I simply don’t exist. I’m still on the blogroll at Flashbulb Moments, but Marie seems to have been exiled to the Phantom Zone or something. I think I’m still on the blogroll at Dean’s World, but I swear to God, every time I drop by Dean’s blog his top entry is some fucking idiotic and obnoxious blather about how wonderful Resident Bush is and how people who critique him are no different from the chaff heads who used to bitch about Clinton, which is, in my opinion, an astonishing and cogent comparison. Conservatives hated Clinton because of (a) his sex life and (b) his wife is so smart they find her deeply threatening, while on the other hand, liberals (and many conservatives) dislike Dubya because (a) he wasn’t fairly elected, (b) he’s been a horribly bad leader, both domestically and internationally, since his first day in office, and (c) he promised to restore honor to the office and since then he’s lied about sixteen times a day about pretty much everything you can think of, while being shamelessly opportunistic at every conceivable juncture in exploiting international unrest, the American military, and the events of 9/11 for political points and to bolster his own approval ratings.

This is all old old news, sorry, I try to avoid the political stuff here, but nonsense like this is why I can’t read Dean Esmay’s blog, despite the fact that he’s always been very nice to me and seems like a quality human being when he’s not babbling moronically about politics, and specifically, what a great great guy El Jefe Bush is.

Oh, I think I mentioned in a comment on the last entry, but I may as well mention it here as well… the guy who runs the Speedmonkey site has asked me to submit columns to him, offering me a page of my own and 10% of whatever profits he makes per month, a percentage he may dial up in the future if my stuff seems to increase his traffic. I will, at this point, be pleasantly surprised if I ever get any actual money from him (I’m not ruling it out, just, you know, after Jonathan, and past troubles with other dickhead editors, no longer really expecting it, either). However, he gets a LOT more traffic than I do, and exposure is exposure… maybe someone will read something I said over there, think I’m a pretty good writer, and… well, who knows. Stranger things have happened, albeit not to me, recently.

Oh, yes, one more note: fans of The Muppet Show, do yourselves a favor: do NOT watch it as an adult, no matter how tempted you are. Paul has several episodes on DVD and I made the mistake of watching a few, or fast forwarding through a few, anyway, watching the stuff I could actually stand to watch without wanting to die of embarrassment at just how really unfunny, clumsy, stupid, and obvious most of the so-called ‘humor’ was. (And there wasn’t much of it.)

So now I have lost another cherished childhood memory. I mean, jesus. The Swedish Chef isn’t particularly funny, nor is Muppet Labs, nor is Pigs In Space, and even the antics of the Great Gonzo are more sad and kind of dopey than they are trenchant and witty, as I thought I’d remembered.

I mean, I know, it figures anything you really liked when you were, like, 12, isn’t going to hold up well to repeat viewings when you’re 41. And I’d already learned this lesson with Speed Racer and Scooby Doobie Doo. But I was just hoping that somehow, the Muppets really were as brilliantly witty and hilarious as I remembered them being. So if you remember them being that way, trust me… treasure your memories and stay far away from syndicated reruns or DVD collections.

THIS BOY’S AN ESKIMO

Now I have to straighten something out, although it will make this a very long blog entry and few if any will care:

High standards does not in any way, shape or form mean literary standards.

In film (and other forms of fiction I consume) I look for four elements: characterization, plot, atmosphere/setting, and intrigue. A work of fiction need not contain all four of these, but it should generally have at least three or it probably won’t interest me much. And when I say it needs at least three of these elements, I don’t mean it simply has to have cardboard characters, a trite storyline, a generic backdrop, and at least one reasonably unpredictable plot twist. I mean, these are the elements that are important to me and that I measure something by. If a movie or TV show or book or comic has lousy characterization, a stupid plot, a ridiculous setting, and doesn’t manage to surprise me in the slightest, I will think it’s a piss poor work of fiction.

On the other hand, sometimes a work of fiction is so good in one or two of these areas that it can more than make up for substandard performances in others. For example, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is one of my favorite movies. Its plot makes no sense whatsoever and it really has no intrigue (anyone who can’t figure out that the annoying blonde guy is Kirk’s son, or that Spock means ‘hours’ when he says ‘days’, simply isn’t paying any attention at all). However, this film has the best characterization that has ever been done in Star Trek, and while I’m aware that seems like the very definition of damning with faint praise, it also has some of the best characterization (and THE best heroic death/sacrifice scene, bar none) in adventure cinema.

It also has a reasonably high level of atmosphere; Nicholas Meyer establishes a rather credible seeming 23rd Century backdrop for this movie in a way that has rarely been accomplished in Star Trek over the years. (It’s ridiculous that Kirk got a commendation for original thinking for cheating on the Kobyashi Maru scenario, but, well, that goes back to ridiculous plot crap. The fact that Kirk would do that is perfectly in character, but Starfleet should have written him up for it. The test is supposed to be one of character; by definition, if you cheat, you fail.)

Getting back to my standards: I am in no way, shape or form stating that a film has to be arty or expressionistic or new wave or trendy or uplifting or deeply meaningful for me to enjoy it. No more than I am saying that a novel has to be surreal and employ stream of consciousness and be deeply literary for me to like it. When I say I am imposing high standards, I mean that the characterization has to be interesting and consistent (you can’t have characters whose behavior changes to suit the exigencies of the plot, or who simply seem to have no discernible personalities at all), that the plot has to also be interesting and consistent (your plot shouldn’t be boring or trite, nor is it fair for you to contort physics, ignore previously established continuity, or simply pull a previously unhinted at deux ex machina out of your ass to resolve all your difficulties in the last ten minutes, and yes, you do have to HAVE a plot, preferably one with a beginning, middle and end, in which your various characters go through interesting arcs and end up somewhere different than their starting point), it’s nice if you provide us with some credible and interesting details as to the setting of your story (especially if your story is set someplace other than present day reality), and I’d like to be surprised by the plot (but the surprise has to be fair; you can’t simply declare that the Phantom of the Opera is really God Himself, incarnate in mortal form, and have the Lord turn back time and erase everyone’s memories in order to resolve everything satisfactorily… or, worse, have a dead character suddenly wake up and realize that all the events of the past season were just a dream).

In other words, the stuff I look for has to not only be there, it also has to be executed well. But this is in no way saying that I only watch or read la de da artsy fartsy literati horseshit. I like books about telekinetic chicks blowing up their high school proms, or vampires hiring a former British secret agent to find out who is tracking them down and killing them in the daytime when they’re helpless, as long as those books are well written. I like movies about brilliant halfbreed adventurer-geniuses saving the world from alien owned corporations in New Jersey (another film whose plot, when you think about it, makes absolutely no sense, but which has so much cool characterization, atmosphere, and intrigue, that I don’t care), or meddlesome celestial beings trying to keep someone from committing suicide by whipping up a completely bogus and utterly illogical alternate reality in which that person supposedly never lived. And I like TV shows where a blonde ditz gets appointed the sole supernatural protector of all mankind, and yet spends her entire career in one small town in California, ignoring any and every supernatural menace that doesn’t conveniently manifest itself within her immediate environs.

Now, I admit, I don’t much care for ‘camp’. I have a difficult time understanding what ‘camp’ is, other than, as I said above, a label that seems to indicate that it’s okay to make something that’s really shitty, as long as you do it on purpose, or at least, claim you did it on purpose later. I suppose other people would say that that isn’t camp; camp is something that’s self consciously ridiculous or silly in a manner that’s so obviously absurd as to be funny. And yet, I’ve never heard anyone call Buckaroo Banzai ‘camp’, while everyone points to the Batman TV show as the ultimate example of it, and, well, I intensely dislike the Batman TV show, while adoring Buckaroo Banzai, which seems to me to simultaneously be a hilarious (and often surprisingly subtle) deconstructionist satire of pulp heroics, as well as a fairly exciting science fiction heroic adventure fantasy. So what do I know?

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.