An open letter to Elton John

Dear Reggie,

The only time we want to hear from, of, or about you is when the topic is your music (although if your next album is really going to be Hip-hop/R&B, nevermind). On EVERY OTHER TOPIC: shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up. We don’t care what you have to say about the internet. We don’t care what you think about religion. And we sure as hell don’t give a flaming rat’s ass about your supermegaflamboyant gayosity. The problem with music today is not the internet. The internet does not produce crappy albums, pay radio stations to play them, and try to get people to pay $15 for an album that only has two decent songs on it. Record companies do that. In case you hadn’t noticed, they do it A LOT.

Bill S.1348 aka The Senate Amnesty Bill

The Senate is trying to pass a back-room bill that will fast track the ~12 million illegal aliens — including convicted felons! — living in this country to a permanent residency/citizen status.  They do this in spite of the fact that less than a quarter of the American public is in favor of the bill, and that a full half of the population opposes it.

When a branch of your government – two branches actually, as the
Bush administration was instrumental in crafting it – ignores the wishes of 75%+ of the population and moves ahead with its own backroom-crafted legislation, that is not representative government.

That is not democracy.

That, my friends, is tyranny.

Revolutions have been fought for far less.

Global Warming

The Earth has a FEVAH. Obviously the only prescription….

IS MORE COWBELL.

The Illusionist and The Prestige

Two movies from autumn of last year that take place in turn-of-the-20th-century Europe (Austria and London, respectively), have magicians as their protagonists, and use the art of magic, misdirection, and illusion to advance their plots. Here, however, the similarities end.

In spite of their similar settings and their use of ‘magic’, these two oft-compared (and oft-contested on internet fora by their respective fans) films are anything but similar.

The Illusionist is a classic love story, plain and simple — so classic, in fact, that the formula is recognizable to the point of cliché. Anyone whose childhood was marked (as yours truly’s was) by Disney movies like Aladdin, The Little Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast, to name a few, would be instantly familiar with The Illusionist’s plot structure: lower-class character (i.e., quick-witted street rat) and upper-class character (i.e., raven-haired daughter of the Sultan) share a societally-taboo love interest, with the ultimate obstacle between their love being an other upper-class character who is in some way both villainous and powerful. The plot consists of the protagonist(s) struggling with and, ultimately, overcoming the antagonist so as to live happily ever after in some idyllic land.

It is as predictable and familiar as the sunrise — and much like a sunrise, it is no less beautiful for its predictability. And this description is an apt one for The Illusionist as a whole. It is beautifully filmed and well-acted — Ed Norton is as usual superb, though it is Paul Giamatti who truly shines — but nothing truly that captivates the mind. The magic that Norton’s Eisenheim performs has more in common with Hollywood and Gandalf than Harry Houdini and Dai Vernon (that is, ‘real’ magic). The Illusionist would be better classified as a romatic fantasy, as one of its plot devices is keeping the audience in a state of uncertainty about the nature of Eisenheim’s illusions — are they ordinary nuts-and-bolts tricks masterfully performed? or something far more mystical? The film feeds this ambiguity with unambiguously-computer-generated special effects and a faux-mysticism, replete with seance candles and references to the ’soul’ and ‘death’.

The Prestige, on the other hand, is a very different animal. Its message is not of the triumph of romance over mysogynistic wickedness; its moral is not the triumph of true love over murderous egoistic ambition. The Prestige is indeed “a morality tale” (to quote another Hugh Jackman character) but one that is far less fantastic and far more realistic.

Real life is very rarely, hardly ever in fact, delineated in the kind of extremetized way that it is in The Illusionist (and countless other romantic fairy tales and Aesopean fables). Real life, real people, are ambiguous. Each man and woman is hero and villain, good and evil, moral and immoral. In The Prestige, we discover two ‘real’ characters: complex, flawed, and ambiguous. It is precisely because these characters are so multilayered, so ambiguous, that the story’s messages (which is really the main reason we tell stories: to pass on some moral or lesson) about the danger of obsession, the corrosiveness of pride, the futility of feuds, the necessity of hope, and how all of the above exist as potential in each person. These messages are more affective because they are played out in characters that are familiar and realistic — not inscrutable avatars whose complicated plans succeed perfectly, who are so full of symbolism that they have little or no room for humanity.

Both Borden and Angier are flawed men who give themselves completely over to their respective obsessions. For Borden, this obsession is of the art of magic, of perfecting it, and of the magician’s code of honor and ethics. Angier’s obsession, however, was revenge on Borden the best way he knew how: to steal Borden’s ultimate trick and do it better. By Angier’s own admission: “The man stole my life. I steal his trick.” Borden’s obsession, while terrible in its own right, is the healthier of the two, for it is born out of his love of magic whereas Angier’s is born out of his hate for Borden. It is this distinction, this fine line, which separates the ultimate fates of the two characters. Borden’s obsession costs him dearly, but Angier’s obsession so bends the man that he is ultimately capable of much that was unthinkable to him in the story’s early scenes.

Now, I could go on and on about the difference in each movie’s approach to and use of magic, or about the different way that each director treats the audience (The Prestige follows the trend set by Christopher Priest in his novel of the same name by incorporating the presentation of the story into the story itself). But what truly distinguishes these movies for me is their stories, and particularly the way in which The Prestige (much like Priest’s novel) presents a world and characters that are more real than fable, characters that have all the depth and complexity and ambiguoity that is found in every human person. The characters in fables and fairy tales are simple because they are written for children. Those who complain that The Prestige’s plot and characters were ‘too complex’ should stick to the children’s fairy tales. As a story, The Prestige thinks highly enough of you to treat you like an adult.

Both films are well-made, well-acted, well-directed, and well-worth a couple hours of your time to watch. But they are not the same caliber story, nor are they similar experiences. The Illusionist tells you a story. The Prestige draws you into its story.

UPDATE: Jesus Tomb Scholars Now Not So Sure

Predictably, the sensationalist and logically-impaired claims of the Jesus Tomb faux-cumentary drew rapid-fire criticism from many
scholars, not the least of which being one of the archeologists who
originally found the place!

The Jerusalem Post’s headline understates it nicely: ” Jesus tomb film scholars backtrack.“

Well, color me surprised. Suck on that, Cameron!

James Cameron “disproves” 2,000 years of Christianity

…or something like that. But this is the guy responsible for Titanic…so obviously I feel safe banking on Christianity.

Time blogger Tim McGirk covers it:

In a new documentary, Producer Cameron and his director, Simcha Jacobovici, make the starting claim that Jesus wasn’t resurrected –the cornerstone of Christian faith– and that his burial cave was discovered near Jerusalem. And, get this, Jesus sired a son with Mary Magdelene.

No, it’s not a re-make of “The Da Vinci Codes’. It’s supposed to be true.

First of all, James Cameron needs to stick to doing what he does best (making movies about time-travelling Austrian robots from the future)
and STOP making movies at the expense of dead people.

Faster please…

Nine months later, Hamas and Fatah still apparently hate each other.

I fail to see a down side to this. They keep killing each other, and in
doing so they waste a bunch of time, ammo, and suicide bombers in the process. Meanwhile, Israel doesn’t have to worry about Hamas
or Fatah attacking them, which allows them to fortify their defenses and deal with real threats — like Iran. And the piss-poor Palestinians who voted butchers into political power get to enjoy all the benefits
of a democratically elected government!

F.E.T.E.

(h/t Cox & Forkum)

Stupid. Spoiled. Whore.

HA-HA!

The beauty of the latest Paris Hilton fiasco is that it appears to be totally legal. And of course that it happened to Paris. Cause who doesn’t like to see clueless, herpes-infected, skanky heiresses
get taken down a peg by their own shortsightedness?

For those who haven’t already heard, while moving from one big-ass mansion to a new big-ass mansion, Paris Hilton rented out a generic self-service storage locker and put more than 6,000 sq. feet of her
stuff into it. And then she failed to pay the $208 maintenance fee.

(Just as an aside, I grew up in a pretty big house. Two floors, finished
basement. Total combined square footage: a little under 2,000. This skank
has more than three stuffed-solid townhouses worth of crap. There has to
be a Just God who’s gonna put right all of the world’s injustices. Because
otherwise, the universe is the stupidest. idea. ever.)

Since they didn’t get paid, the storage company did what they always do when someone doesn’t pay them: they auctioned off the contents of the locker.

Here’s where the delicious irony comes in: the spoiled little idiot had stored all of her personal videos, pictures, letters, contact info,
recordings, diaries, etc. in there. And somebody bought them all.
And put them online.

Thus, ParisExposed.com was born.

What’s great is that, as per the conditions of the rental contract she
signed with the storage company, she lost all legal claim to the
auctioned items. The pictures, videos, etc., that were auctioned off
are the legal property of the site owner(s).

I can not abide useless people, and I love watching stupid people pay
the consequences of their own idiocy. So this whole thing is glorious,
high comedy to me.

UPDATE:  Not surprisingly, given the Scrooge-McDuck-esque pile of
cash that the Hiltons have at their disposal, the website didn’t last
very long.

MSM = teh suck

Mainstream Western news media in general and American news
outlets in particular are probably the worst place to go to in order to learn what’s actually going on in the world.

For example: the message Americans get on their nightly news
programs is that – thanks to the US military invading, overthrowing
a genocidal tyrant, and pouring out their own lives and blood to help
establish a society where the natives can get a taste of what it means
to actually have liberty – Iraq is now an even worse pit of death, destruction, futility, genocide, and corruption than it was under the Butcher of Baghdad. Also, according to the American/Western media, all the Muslims in the Middle East hate what we Westerners are doing there and wish that we had never set our cloven infidel pig-feet on their sacred sands.

The antidote to such manipulative news-skewing: MEMRI. MEMRI’s whole reason for being is to translate Arabic broadcasts into
languages (like English) that Westerners can understand.

Have you believed the bullshit spun by the media — that Muslims don’t want democracy, that Western values (like humanism) won’t fly over there, etc? Have you ever wondered why the fuck you never hear from all the “moderate Muslims” (who are supposed to exist) are when Muslim terrorists blow up a bus full of kids?

Oh they’re around, but we here in the west never hear from them.

Until now.

Yes, it’s long, but do yourself a favor and watch the whole thing. It’s
eye-opening.

Riddle me this…

…WHY the fuck does ARIZONA have a 9/11 memorial in the first place?

Did any planes crash there?   No.

Were any buildings there rammed by loaded passenger jets at a high
rate of speed before crashing down?   No.

Were any major governmental or military structures there attacked on
or around the 11th of September, 2006?   No.

Did Arizona have A SINGLE DAMN THING TO DO with 9/11?   NO!

So then, why did Arizona feel a pressing need to so-quickly erect a
notably-controversial memorial to 9/11? Anyone? Hello? Bueller? Hell,
New York City doesn’t even have a full-fledged memorial there yet — and it was the main site of the attacks!

They should bulldoze the fucking thing in Arizona. On principle alone if
for no other reason. Because, until SOMETHING stands at Ground Zero
(and here is my recommendation), NOBODY else should get to build
memorials. Shanksville, PA has its memorial in the works, and the
Pentagon will be repaired, but Ground Zero remains Hole Zero – and
until that changes, the sunbaked sand people in Arizona don’t get to
build their crappy crescent-moon homage to 9/11 conspiracy theories.

You got that, AZ?