I Don't Know What To Say About This

All It Is

I'm walking down Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. I just moved out here and was feeling pretty good about it. I mean, you got the whole vibrant, alive city thing going and everything. You got the 2 million-plus people living just in your borough and what have you--all that personality and all those cultures from lands far away mixed in with the culture that all have come together and created that is NYC culture. It makes you happy. It makes me happy. Then I see a poster for Disney's Beverly Hills Chihuahua (chee'WOW'wa). Immediately the vitriol rises from darker places, the places that police the culture influx to my mind. Then and there my heart is filled with disgust and what of me that feels compulsion to voice goes to work and I can't wait to get home to write up something especially damning for this movie.

Then I think about who it is that would hear my voice, that would listen. It would be my like-minded friends, it would be the choir. The mothers and children, the teens on unnecassarily wholesome dates, and the fucking Chihuahua owners for whom this movie is meant have no channels tuned to me. These are people who delight in seeing toy dogs talk like people and give an overabundance of 'tude that has long been blunted and limp since the late 80s, and they are so far from me and out of my reach. And I am defeated, my voice squashed for those people are in multitude. Nothing I can say will diminish its opening night box office take. Nothing you or I can do will stop the jaugernaut that is Disney, that is mediocrity.

So I'm left with nothing to do for it but close my eyes, breathe in, and breathe out. It's just stupid talking dogs. It's just occasion for fools to gather and leave the streets to us and ours. That's all it is. So let's you and I, dear choir, keep dancing. Let's break out the booze and have a ball, if that's all that is.

Jody Callahan

My Freedoms

He reminds me of the Tall Man in Phantasm.

I'm not a fan of talk radio. Sports, religious, political or otherwise. But I loves me some free speech, and will support it in even its most despicable and ignorant exercises. and this is a very good article about the latest Imus "scandal", which doesn't qualify as despicable, though maybe ignorant.

In a related note on racism.

I know it's out there. I know it will never really die. But I had thought it was diminished, or diminishing, to a state of innocuousness. And, no, I don't think it's because people are getting smarter. I just think that the God of Commerce is finally binding us together as one common consumer demographic. Meaning, everything is so cross marketed these days it's hard to tell one group of people re-enacting the media pushed stereotypes of another group from the original or the other group re-enacting the stereotypes of the first group, which has got me all bugaboo and is a totally different tangent. I digress. I thought, naively, that racism was something isolated to the aging ignorant and the rural bumpkin. Also, to throw out the curve ball now, I believed that gamers being such a hounded and stereotyped bunch themselves with their tech-savvy and embracing of this quasi-wonderful age of information would be more open minded. Nope. Not really, anyway. Every time I log on to Call of Duty 4, my current fave on Xbox Live, my poor right ear is beleaguered with rants of youths calling everyone in the virtual world nigger, or faggot, or nigger-faggot, nigger lover, fucking fuck faggot nigger fucks, noob faggot... And they are free to say it. My first instinct is to ban them. Which I can do as an Xbox Live member. I can make a couple of clicks and have them banned for in-game speech violations. And I've done it. Not every time, but when I'm playing with a black or gay friend and they want to leave a "game lobby" because of the racial slurs thrown around I do it just to feel like I'm doing something. And it's ultimately nothing. The offending gamer can just log on under a new tag and hurl slurs as he feels they are due. I never get into it with them. There is no point or end to a flaming war, especially one that would not be a debate or any call to reason from both sides. It would go like this:

Awful Gamer: Fucking nigger keeps nading (grenading) me like a noob pussy.

Me: Dude, it's just a game.

Awful Gamer: Nigger lover. I bet you fuck niggers and little nigger boys, faggot.

Me: Wow, let's just play the fucking game, man.

Then he replies with more awfulness. And all of these phrases I have heard. I'm not going to offer up my versions of a cure. I'm just saying it's real disappointing.

Another thing:
I have never heard a female gamer (who get their own share of abuse) engage in any of the above. And I'm glad that femal gamers are growing in numbers.

Jody

What The Pug

Where are these things running wild?

Don't get me wrong I actually like pugs. With their charming ineptitude and snotty noses, ceaseless yipping, and boundless energy they are like eternal 2 yr olds on steroids. They are a jolly and friendly breed and are very, utterly harmless. Manic though they are I've never seen one go rabid or angry. Protection-wise they'll yip at an intruder but only to hearken a new playmate.

I'm not a dog owner. This isn't one of those blog posts. I would however be fine with owning a pug. A friend of mine when I was younger, his family had them some pugs, and I recall laughing my ass off at them like they were that one bearded, robust frat brother whose shameless Chris-Farley-esque humor could win over any cynical company.

But my question is where do these guys run wild? Wikipedia suggests they were bred in the way-back times of the Shang Dynasty in East China. But nothing before that. And they were kept solely as lap dogs for company. And, I imagine, entertainment. I mean they are the monkeys of the dog world.

Having thought about the pug's temperament for much longer than I should have, I placed the dog in the arena of my mind against that of the most formidable beast-warriors of the wild, the bear. And I have come up with two possible outcomes. The bear swats down the spritely pug as it leaps itself up at the bear to ferociously lick its face and is then devoured in about three bites.

Secondly, and highly more probable is that the bear is perplexed by the very nature of the energetic pug. At first bear wants to annihilate pug. But pug is oblivious to the impending confrontation and keeps finding small twigs and pine cones to place in front of bear in hopes bear will go a few rounds of fetch. Bear just stares menacingly at pug. Pug stares back with vacant eyes, licks its lips twice, blinks just the once, and then scurries yipping under the bear, through its hind legs and comes half circle back and then bounds itself over the bear. Tail waggingly excited to have an audience, pug then rolls around in the cool dirt, stops to pant, then darts off into the brush in one direction, and with much benign barking and pitty-patty steps over forest floor comes happily back into view from an entirely new and unexpected direction.

Bear is exhausted from the spectacle, and cannot bring himself to destroy something so unassuming. He lumbers back from whence he came. Pug follows yipping and licking all the way. Days pass and the pug gives the sleep deprived bear no peace. Finally, one day a mountain lion comes into bear's territory. Bear is ready to bear down on it when pug finds himself enamored with and then attaches himself to the mountain cat. Bear lets it be. Lion and pug go off together, lion begrudgingly so. Bear is happy and gets his first full night of sleep in days. He wakes up refreshed and approves of his life back to normal. But all in all, there is a sadness. He'd never ever take the pug back, but there is a sadness.

Such is the life of the wild pug, the one creature that God leaves alone and unencumbered because He doesn't rightly recall why he invented the damn thing, and until He remembers its proper purpose He cannot dole out judgment and punishment justly. Go forth, all ye befuddling pugs. Go forth and be blessed by your purposelessness and unappointment in the majesty of creation.

Also, they look like a beatle fucked a monkey, and that offspring fucked a bulldog. Or something, I don't know.

Who Needs Tim and Eric

When you have a Fred and Sharon! This made me feel stoned. After I watched it I couldn't remember if it actually exists or I made it up. Like a good Tim and Eric episode everything is so mashed up and barely strung together that it borders on experimental and registers more as a vision than a memory. Does that make sense? Does anything anymore?

Good, Like Crossing the Streams Good

At the moment this is my favorite thing.

The Red Velvet Rope Between Ourselves and Not-Ourselves

There's not much I can write to hype this vid up.



The truly awe inspiring ironically enough defies hype. I mean what can you say but open your eyes and bear witness? This vid and this site seem to defy internet norms of embedded pseudo-gonzo journalism opinions and typical snarkyness, yet both vid and site encompass the ideal intent of global communication and awareness. If it helps she holds a human brain in her hands and shows it off to some people. As I wrote to another: "It's like walking on the moon. There's so very few who can articulate such an experience. It makes me feel unimpressive and dumb, which is to say humbled." And in keeping with anti-internet fashion I wish I hadn't said that to someone before posting this. The devil take all this self-referencing!

I hope you enjoy.

Jody

Be Kind Rewind

Be Kind Rewind is not a comedic romp, nor is it meant to be. Rewind is an homage to video/film buffs and imagination. It more celebrates the fun of cinema as the two lead characters Mike (Mos Def) and Jerry (Jack Black) seek to “revision” their video rental store's lost collection of VHS tapes into 20-minute homemade movies. This is most evident in the remake, or sweded version, as it’s called in the film, of RoboCop. The actual movie is bleak and violent with its intended commentary on fascism. Mike and Jerry’s movie speaks more to our collective vision and remembrance, which is to say it’s about a bitchin’ cyborg cop kicking some major ass!

When Mike’s boss and father figure, Mr. Fletcher (Danny Glover), is pressed by local zoning officials to vacate his condemned building, which is home as well as business space, Mr. Fletcher goes on a quest to find out what makes major Blockbuster-style rental businesses work. He leaves Mike in charge while he is away with the caveat that Mike must “keep Jerry out!” Jerry, a paranoid, holds beef with the electric plant he lives beside and in an act of terrorism against it is electrocuted and thusly magnetized, and needless to say Mike fails to keep Jerry out, and so the magnetized Jerry enters the video store and erases all the movies. To meet the demands of a couple of customers who threaten to tell Mr. Fletcher about his charge’s ineptitude Mike decides that they will remake the movies to fool the patrons. The patrons go unfooled but love the movies anyway and demand more. Enter two lawyers representing Hollywood bearing copyright claims and cease and desist orders.

Despite the acknowledgement of copyright issues and the presence of big bad Hollywood Be Kind Rewind is not about a mom and pop business making a stand against a corporation, but is about a small corner of a town that just wants to hold on to its dignity and not be gentrified into a bland indistinguishable part of a city already sold out to the Starbucks-lifestyle.

The movie isn’t all message either. There are great funny moments, and even some Jack Black buffoonery that harkens back to the days of High Fidelity. Jack Black reprising Jessica Tandy’s role in Driving Miss Daisy is hilarious and innocently offensive. One easily loses themselves in the wonder and DIYness of Gondry’s trademark low-tech special effects.

But the real weight of this film comes at the end in its climax. Not to give it away but the inevitable happens, and we’re left amid a people’s small victory garnering the same results as a non-victory, but a victory nonetheless.

My only problem with the movie is that more time could have been spent on the script. The story drags in parts, especially when we’re not reveling in a sweded moment. To the writer/director’s defense a lesser man would have filled these moments with belabored drama of how one must attack his dreams and whatnot. Gondry purposefully, and anti-Hollywood-y keeps these moments light. But those light moments could use a bit more finesse.

In A Nutshell:

The movie is plenty good and refreshing given Summer’s bloated blockbusters; Fall’s melodrama and, for whatever reason, bevy of run of the mill horror flicks; and Winter’s disparaging throw-away movies. It reminds us movie/video buffs why we are the way we are and even reminds that we don’t just have to be voyeurs of our beloved stories.

My Favorite Moment:

There are a few but one that sticks out and amplifies the “reminds us movie/video buffs…” comment is when Mr. Fletcher is in a Blockbuster-type rental store writing down all that he sees that would help his business. In front of a wall of shelves bearing the same big budget Hollywood film he says to himself something to the effect of “give the customer less choice and more copies of the same movie.” Gondry, I heart thee.