Pardon the double pun, but sex in New Zealand just got harder to come by. According to one newspaper, Kiwi vegans have declared that they will not have sex with anyone who eats meat. They are calling themselves vegansexual. As if any red blooded human would care, since their “no meat touches these lips” mantra implies that they don’t agree with oral sex, either.
I can’t remember the first time I heard the word vegan (pronounced vee-gan), but it was sometime back in the ‘90s. I thought a vegan was some new character from Star Trek. Turns out, I was correct. These alien creatures look like human beings, but they aren’t. At least, not to hear them tell it. According to one vegan, she won’t have sex with a meat eating man because, "When you are vegan or vegetarian, you are very aware that when people eat a meaty diet, they are kind of a graveyard for animals."
Uh-huh.
First thing’s first: you’re an animal, my vegan friend. You are a Homo sapien. You’re not far separated from swinging in the trees. You were not put on this earth as a fibre-friendly, hemp skirt wearing know-it-all. You are, and always have been, an animal. I know it grosses you out to think so, but your mother’s umbilical cord loaded you with enough animal product to get you onto this planet. Then she filled you with enough animal milk (breast fed or store bought, it’s all the same thing) to keep you alive.
You can sue mom later, but it was her as animal mother, and you as animal daughter, that made you what you are today. Without ingesting animal products, you wouldn’t have grown up to become such a pain in ass at the local deli when the lunch line is ten deep and the people behind you need to get back to work.
Second, the broccoli you eat is loaded with animal products. Same with the carrots, turnips, and squash. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and it all goes into the ground and comes back as your veggie-burger.
The vegetarian movement doesn’t bother me too much. It provides for great entertainment. As soon as I hear that a vegetarian is seated at the table, I order the veal. Veal is bar none the food that vegans detest most. It is the poster food for ‘bad meat eater.’ I usually stop short of saying ‘moo’ when it arrives in front of me, but it is still fun all the same.
Two questions for the vegans. The first, from PJ O’Rourke: if meat is murder, are eggs rape?
The next question’s mine: if you require surgery at some point in your life, will you allow a blood transfusion?
Please explain.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Monday, July 30, 2007
Fade to Black - Ingmar Bergman
One of the greats is dead.
Ingmar Bergman died in Sweden today. He will be hailed as one of the most influential filmmakers of the 20th Century. I buy that, and I also don't. Mark Twain defined a classic as a book which everyone praises but nobody reads. Bergman probably falls into this category. I doubt that many of the movie buffs that whisper his name as if it were a vesper have seen too many of his films, if any.
In any event, happy trails Ingmar Bergman. My pick for a Bergman film you must see before the week is over is The Seventh Seal. Watch it, if only to sound cool at the weekend party when a movie junkie mentions Bergman's name.
Ingmar Bergman died in Sweden today. He will be hailed as one of the most influential filmmakers of the 20th Century. I buy that, and I also don't. Mark Twain defined a classic as a book which everyone praises but nobody reads. Bergman probably falls into this category. I doubt that many of the movie buffs that whisper his name as if it were a vesper have seen too many of his films, if any.
In any event, happy trails Ingmar Bergman. My pick for a Bergman film you must see before the week is over is The Seventh Seal. Watch it, if only to sound cool at the weekend party when a movie junkie mentions Bergman's name.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Rescue Dawn - Review
Director: Werner HerzogWriter: Werner Herzog
Starring: Christian Bale/Steve Zahn
Runtime: 120 minutes
If you’re looking for an old-fashioned film where the good guy comes out on top, Rescue Dawn is right up your alley. It isn’t a poignant film, and doesn’t try to be. It’s about a Navy pilot who gets shot down in Laos during the early stages of the Vietnam War. He’s captured, gets treated like garbage, and then he escapes.
You can’t get more straightforward than that. At the beginning of the film, we find Christian Bale as a lean, healthy All-American pilot. We learn that this is to be his first mission into enemy territory, and like all young guns, he’s nervous but looking forward to it.
A few moments later, he’s probably wishing he hadn’t made the flight, or maybe even joined the Navy, because he is shot down behind enemy lines. A small pursuit follows, and then he is thrown into a POW camp.
It was interesting to see how the film presented his captors and their treatment of POWs. It has become the norm in all forms of media to depict enemies of the United States as well rounded characters. Yes, they might force you to eat maggots. Sure, they might stick a bayonet in your crotch. But, hey, nobody’s perfect.Postcards from Iwo Jima was a total farce in that respect. It depicted the Japanese as virtual victims of the US. No movie today would show the Japanese as they mainly were: men who executed their prisoners (civilian and military) through torture, beheading, and bayoneting in the stomach. Sometimes they burned their victims alive. Other times they marched them until they dropped. At no time were prisoners treated with anything bordering on respect. The Geneva Convention might as well have been written on toilet paper.
The North Vietnamese have not gotten off so lucky in the film world. The Deer Hunter was quite candid (some would say unkind) in its depiction of the Vietnamese, but make no mistake: when Americans are captured by her enemies, they are in for a hell of a rough ride. The Pacific islands, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq. None of these places have been home to an altogether merciful captor.
Christian Bale goes through hell in Rescue Dawn. It isn’t laid on thick. It merely shows you what it would have been like to be captured by the enemy in Vietnam. Horrible food. Beatings. No sanitation. The threat of being shot at a moment’s notice. How these POWs survived it intact is beyond me. It would drive most men crazy, as it does Jeremy Davies, who plays a POW in Bale’s camp.
The film has a certain documentary quality to it. The camera-work is lean and by the book. An establishing shot here, a close-up shot there. Bale and his comrades are allowed to act, without a lot of camera tricks getting in the way. I was surprised by the lack of quality in the flying shots at the beginning of the film. I’m sure the film had a large budget, but the money wasn’t spent there. That’s small potatoes, though, because the film pays off later on.Bale and his fellow escapee, played by Steve Zaun, are very believable. They are so thin and gaunt by the end of the film that it made me worry about their health in real life. Is it really necessary for actors to go to these extremes? While it is nice to read about their dedication in Variety magazine, I’m not sure I would have believed Bale any less if he’d had an extra 20 pounds on him. Method acting is fine, but I’m curious if one day an actor might method act himself right into the hospital or worse.
While we’re on the subject, I did take issue with the dog in the film: he stays as plump and chipper from beginning to end, even though the guards themselves are starving. Certainly the guards would have eaten the dog’s food, if not the dog itself, once the rations ran dry.
Bale has a certain quality about him that is hard to nail down. I detested him in American Psycho, but that might have been a by-product of not liking the film in general. In Batman Begins, I thought he was great, but wasn’t sure why. Again in The Prestige, and once more in this film. There’s something about his voice and his manner that is very good, but I can’t get a handle on it, and so I will surrender and merely say that it is interesting to watch him ply his craft.
Rescue Dawn is not meant for anyone who wants a deep understanding of the Vietnam War, or anything else for that matter. It is a simple story about a man and his will to survive. It is simply told, and it is simply quite good.
Saturday, July 28, 2007
K-Can-You-Repeat-That?
You have to hand it to the FCC. If they think a DJ has said something they deem offensive, they'll rake him over the coals in no time. But giving away these call letters is no big deal. Right.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Random Musings
A few random musings from a lazy Friday:
Favorite movie lines are funny. They pop in and out of your head at a moment’s notice, and then they’re gone. Here’s a few of mine that have climbed out of the subconscious recently. Apologies if they’re not exact. This is from memory.
“I guess you don’t listen so good, do you, asshole?”
-- Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. Said while sticking his .44 in a mugger’s face.
“They were gonna make me a major for this. And I wasn’t even in their fucking army anymore.”
-- Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now, right before he does in Kurtz.
“It wasn’t exactly a well thought out plan.”
-- Ben Stiller in There’s Something About Mary, after his zips up his fly over his testicles.
“Whoa. Check out the cans on that bimbo.”
-- Adrian Zmed (remember him?) in Bachelor Party. Said immediately after he talks about the fact that he’s going to appreciate women from now on.
“I’m German-Irish.”
-- Robert Duvall in The Godfather. Said after a movie executive accuses Duvall of being a "Guinea."
“He’s in the suspicion business.”
-- Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor, regarding a CIA agent.
“Well, he should have armed himself.”
-- Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven. Said after the sheriff accuses Eastwood of shooting an unarmed man.
Random Musing on a Karaoke Bar:
I was in a karaoke bar last night. It’s actually an Irish pub, one of those places that has the symbol “&”in the middle of its name. It’s a dive of a joint, and I guess they throw karaoke parties to try and bring in the crowds. It doesn’t work, but at least they’re making an effort.
The crowd of regulars was about twenty deep. Most of them were old guys that would drink there every night whether there’s karaoke or not. The rest were a mixture of misfits, from the dude with the red mohawk, to the big girls wearing their clothes too tight.
One guy sitting at the bar was obviously slow. Mentally touched. He wore his baseball cap square on his head, the bill just as straight as the day he bought it. It was a green cap with the name of some gas station or other. He’ll probably wear that hat until it dissolves and he’s forced to get a new one. He looked about twenty-two and is probably thirty.
I watched him for a while, and I was happy for him. The down and out Irish pub is obviously his second home. I’ll bet he goes every night. Everyone knows his name, and he gets treated with respect. He probably never got any in elementary school or high school, and he probably doesn’t get much at his job. But in the Irish pub, he does.
I’m glad there’s places like that for guys like him. Sometimes, life is good to people. It all depends on your point of view: I couldn’t wait to get out of the joint, and he can’t wait to get in it. A dive to some is ritzy to others.
Random Musing on Shaving:
Why do some guys get away with the Brad Pitt look while other do not? Namely, me. A buddy of mine has a brother that looks like a movie star if he puts the razor away for a couple of days. In fact, he looks better if he forgets to shave.
Not me. If I don’t shave, I either look lazy or like a hobo, or like a lazy hobo.
No matter how good you look, though, there is one truth to a three-day beard: women all hate whisker rash.
Random Musing on Old Stuff:
I miss old words and old names. It’s been ages since I met a guy named Lou. Same with George, Zeke, Ted, Al, Ron, Bill, Gus, Hank, Bart, Max, Bruce, Sam, Ralph, or Joe. Where did they all go? Even at the service stations the guys are wearing two syllable names. Wasn’t it a rule that you had to have a one syllable name to work on a guy’s car?
I miss the old words, too. Stuff you never hear anymore. Like ‘tomfoolery.’ That is a great word, and it’s a shame to think it’s gone. Just once I want to hear an old guy come out of his house and yell at some kid, “Knock off that tomfoolery!”
Where’d ‘nincompoop’ go? Or ‘buffoon’?
I miss them.
Random Musing on Hot Women with Tattoos:
If a woman is pretty, did their parents know they would be pretty? And if so, is that why they are all branded with a tattoo at the small of their back?
It seems like every woman in a tight shirt and low jeans was born with one of those Asian symbols just above their butt crack. I ponder what the symbols mean. I’d ask, but I know the ladies haven’t the foggiest. They got it because they thought it looked cool. Then the ladies give you dirty looks for staring at their butts, when all you’re trying to do is figure out what their butt is trying to say.
I wonder sometimes if they’re getting busy with an Asian guy, does the man ever think, “Why does this woman have ‘I’m With Stupid’ written above her butt in Mandarin?”
Favorite movie lines are funny. They pop in and out of your head at a moment’s notice, and then they’re gone. Here’s a few of mine that have climbed out of the subconscious recently. Apologies if they’re not exact. This is from memory.
“I guess you don’t listen so good, do you, asshole?”
-- Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. Said while sticking his .44 in a mugger’s face.
“They were gonna make me a major for this. And I wasn’t even in their fucking army anymore.”
-- Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now, right before he does in Kurtz.
“It wasn’t exactly a well thought out plan.”
-- Ben Stiller in There’s Something About Mary, after his zips up his fly over his testicles.
“Whoa. Check out the cans on that bimbo.”
-- Adrian Zmed (remember him?) in Bachelor Party. Said immediately after he talks about the fact that he’s going to appreciate women from now on.
“I’m German-Irish.”
-- Robert Duvall in The Godfather. Said after a movie executive accuses Duvall of being a "Guinea."
“He’s in the suspicion business.”
-- Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor, regarding a CIA agent.
“Well, he should have armed himself.”
-- Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven. Said after the sheriff accuses Eastwood of shooting an unarmed man.
Random Musing on a Karaoke Bar:
I was in a karaoke bar last night. It’s actually an Irish pub, one of those places that has the symbol “&”in the middle of its name. It’s a dive of a joint, and I guess they throw karaoke parties to try and bring in the crowds. It doesn’t work, but at least they’re making an effort.
The crowd of regulars was about twenty deep. Most of them were old guys that would drink there every night whether there’s karaoke or not. The rest were a mixture of misfits, from the dude with the red mohawk, to the big girls wearing their clothes too tight.
One guy sitting at the bar was obviously slow. Mentally touched. He wore his baseball cap square on his head, the bill just as straight as the day he bought it. It was a green cap with the name of some gas station or other. He’ll probably wear that hat until it dissolves and he’s forced to get a new one. He looked about twenty-two and is probably thirty.
I watched him for a while, and I was happy for him. The down and out Irish pub is obviously his second home. I’ll bet he goes every night. Everyone knows his name, and he gets treated with respect. He probably never got any in elementary school or high school, and he probably doesn’t get much at his job. But in the Irish pub, he does.
I’m glad there’s places like that for guys like him. Sometimes, life is good to people. It all depends on your point of view: I couldn’t wait to get out of the joint, and he can’t wait to get in it. A dive to some is ritzy to others.
Random Musing on Shaving:
Why do some guys get away with the Brad Pitt look while other do not? Namely, me. A buddy of mine has a brother that looks like a movie star if he puts the razor away for a couple of days. In fact, he looks better if he forgets to shave.
Not me. If I don’t shave, I either look lazy or like a hobo, or like a lazy hobo.
No matter how good you look, though, there is one truth to a three-day beard: women all hate whisker rash.
Random Musing on Old Stuff:
I miss old words and old names. It’s been ages since I met a guy named Lou. Same with George, Zeke, Ted, Al, Ron, Bill, Gus, Hank, Bart, Max, Bruce, Sam, Ralph, or Joe. Where did they all go? Even at the service stations the guys are wearing two syllable names. Wasn’t it a rule that you had to have a one syllable name to work on a guy’s car?
I miss the old words, too. Stuff you never hear anymore. Like ‘tomfoolery.’ That is a great word, and it’s a shame to think it’s gone. Just once I want to hear an old guy come out of his house and yell at some kid, “Knock off that tomfoolery!”
Where’d ‘nincompoop’ go? Or ‘buffoon’?
I miss them.
Random Musing on Hot Women with Tattoos:
If a woman is pretty, did their parents know they would be pretty? And if so, is that why they are all branded with a tattoo at the small of their back?
It seems like every woman in a tight shirt and low jeans was born with one of those Asian symbols just above their butt crack. I ponder what the symbols mean. I’d ask, but I know the ladies haven’t the foggiest. They got it because they thought it looked cool. Then the ladies give you dirty looks for staring at their butts, when all you’re trying to do is figure out what their butt is trying to say.
I wonder sometimes if they’re getting busy with an Asian guy, does the man ever think, “Why does this woman have ‘I’m With Stupid’ written above her butt in Mandarin?”
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Transformers - Review
Director: Michael BayWriters: Alex Kurtzman/Roberto Orci
Starring: Shia LaBeouf/Jon Voight
Runtime: 2 hr. 20 minutes
It took me a moment to figure out why I didn’t like Transformers. Then it occurred to me that the filmmakers didn’t give me a chance to care about the characters it's named after.
Transformers opens with a nifty monologue from Peter Cullen. You might recognize his booming voice from the hundreds of animated shows that he’s done, including the Transformers from 20 years ago. It’s the kind of voice that could read the phone book and sound good, and it makes you look forward to hearing more of it in the movie. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen until you’re an hour into the film and wondering, “Where is everybody?”
The Transformers, that is. In the first hour of the film we meet an evil scorpion Transformer that wrecks havoc in the desert and gives the army fits trying to destroy it. We meet an evil police car Transformer that chases around the Teenage Hero and his babe. And we meet a Chevy Camaro Transformer, who belongs to the Teenage Hero, but can’t talk to him because the Camaro Transformer is broken (wounded?) and cannot speak.
I guess director Michael Bay and the producers of the film never bothered to watch the original animated adventures of these organic robots. If they had, they would know that the Transformers are the heroes and villains, while the humans are runners-up.
Not here. The film follows the tedious routine of all hi-tech adventure sagas: Teenage Hero (Sam Witwicky, played by rising star Shia LaBeouf) is a loser. He meets Hot Babe, who is tired of touchdowns and suddenly likes losers. The US military and Pentagon staff are idiots, so Video Game Geek -- surprise, surprise, he's an unemployed slob that lives with his mom -- must decipher the cryptic codes for them. Car chase, car chase, crash-bang. Roll credits.The film tips its hat to American culture in two ways. One, it takes a shot at Bush by showing a President lounging on Air Force One’s bed while the world is under attack. We only see his socks, and they are red (get it, get it?). The President drawls his one line, “Can you rustle me up some ding dongs?” to the stewardess, and then he disappears from the film. From that moment on, the Defence Secretary (Jon Voight) is running the show.
Later in the film, we meet the Transformer Jazz. He’s a throwback who talks like an ‘80s breakdancer and does a quick dance move to prove it. It is out of touch in the extreme: not one kid today will know what he’s doing or why he’s talking like that. It was hip and funny in the ‘80s cartoon, but now it just sounds lame. It doesn’t matter, though, because we never hear him speak again. And there’s Ratchet, the Transformer medic. He says a line about fixing the Camaro Transformer’s voice box, and then we never hear him speak again, either.
And that’s my problem with Transformers. You don’t get to know a single one of them. The head honcho evil Transformer (Megatron, voiced by The Matrix's Hugo Weaving) doesn’t get any screentime until the last fifteen minutes of the film. He’s been cryogenically frozen for a hundred years, and the filmmakers were obviously content to leave him that way. Had it not been for the humans goofing up and stumbling across him in a secret military base (the scene is a rip-off of Independence Day) he wouldn’t have made it into the film at all.
As for Optimus Prime, not much there, either. He’s the main guy I remember from my childhood, and I was disappointed to see that he makes a very late entrance and is completely underused.
The effects in Transformers are often very good. The audience is cheated by a lot of close-up, ultra-fast photography during the fight scenes, making it difficult to tell who’s hitting whom, but the effects are still impressive. Unfortunately, watching Transformers actually transform is a one-trick pony. Without story and character to back them up, why should you care if they can change in the blink of an eye?
Example: in the final battle scene, one of the good guy (called Autobots) Transformers is completely ripped in two. He’s dead. And you’re not going to care, because you didn’t get to know the guy. It could be any of them or all of them, and it won’t make any difference on an emotional level. Besides, if the good guy Autobots are supposed to care so much about humans, why do they drag the final fight away from the Arizona desert and into the heart of a city? Half the place gets trashed and buildings fall down for no other reason than that it looks cool on screen.
The musical score of the film is very Michael Bay. It has been the same soundtrack since The Rock and Armageddon. Bay has cooled it on the amount of American flags in his films. Maybe he's voting Democrat next year. If you liked the use of flares in The Rock's finale, then you'll like Transformers, too. Bay still likes his use of slow motion and close-ups, and teenage boys will not be upset to see that most of the innocent bystanders in the film have plunging necklines and wonderful breasts.So why gripe? Indeed, a friend asked me as much, reminding me of the film’s target demographic. True. Yet it’s been twenty years since I last saw a Transformers cartoon, and I can still remember Optimus almost dying but coming out on top, and Megatron screaming ‘Avenge me!’ at the end of a particularly violent episode. These guys were the leaders of two gangs, one good, one evil. They were at each other’s throats, and more importantly, I knew why they were at each other’s throats. I cared about the outcome. Those cartoons and their stories had an impact that I can still see and feel today.
This film does not.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Michael Vick - In the Dog House
Photo - Getty/Jonathan Ernst
Michael Vick has found himself in the dog house of the National Felony League. According to Federal prosecutors, Vick and a couple of his buddies were running a dog fighting ring out of his Virginia kennel. The betting was in the hundreds and thousands of dollars. Pit bulls not deemed strong enough to fight were killed either by electrocution, hanging, drowning, or being slammed to the ground. The offence carries a 6-year sentence and a fine of $350 000 dollars.
First, the crime: it’s brutal. If guilty, Vick and his buddies deserve everything that they get.
The uproar from the community shouldn’t come as any surprise. There’s an old rule in the screenwriting business that if you want to show a villain as truly evil, don’t have him shoot the grandma. Show him shooting the family dog. The audience will hate him forever. Having NOW or Greenpeace on your case is as nothing compared to the angry hoards that make up PETA. These people want to burn you at the stake for eating a cheeseburger, let alone hurting man’s best friend.
Second, the penalty: Vick’s celebrity status might work against him on this one if he’s found guilty. $350 000 might sound like a hefty fine for some backwoods dude that runs a two-bit dog fighting ring. For Michael Vick, who earns about ten million dollars a year, that’s less than two quarters of football. By the time he hits the locker room at half-time, he’s earned well over half a million dollars. The judge, weighing this, might throw him a prison sentence just to make a point.
Third, the choice: I’ve heard a lot of people say, “Like he needs the money,” upon getting the news that Vick might be involved in this crime. But money has nothing to with it. Have you ever seen two dogs fight in the street? It’s scary. Carnal. The sounds alone are terrifying. Now imagine betting on it, cleaning up the blood, and hanging the dog that didn’t do as well as expected. Ask yourself what kind of man could do that, and you will have a better picture of the spirit that burns inside Michael Vick and others that breed pit bulls for battle.
It’s extremely dubious that Vick was doing this for any other reason than entertainment. He wasn’t forced to do it, and he didn’t need the cash. He simply likes dogfights.
We’re always looking for reasons to explain the activities of others. Why did they do it? Why do they feel that way? Sometimes, it’s simply because that’s the way it is. I’m already getting tired of hearing how Michael Vick should have stopped hanging out with his pre-football friends. They are the ones, this theory goes, that led him astray.
Michael Vick was the Atlanta Falcons’ number one draft pick in 2001. That’s six years ago. We’re not talking about some rookie who hasn’t had time to think about his ‘mistakes.’ We’re talking about an adult professional who likes his hobby. In this case, dog fighting.
Pit Bull
Vick could have dumped his friends, or put them through college, or ratted them out to the cops, or told them to go home, or bought them a house in New Zealand, or whatever. But he didn’t. Remember that this was going on at his kennel, not in some parking lot on the outskirts of town. Vick wasn’t caught up in anything. He was chiefly responsible for it. The dead dogs are buried on his property. The kennel, incidentally, was bought by Vick in 2001 for a little over $34000. With a flair for prophesy, these clowns named it Bad Newz Kennels.
The sycophantic sports writers are in quite a dilemma over this. Dog beats athlete for America’s heart every time, and the sports writers are in a pickle. They are, after all, writers, not reporters. There is no such thing as a sports reporter. Like me, emotions run their version of typing. They have steadfastly refused to investigate steroids in baseball (have you seen Jason Grimsley’s name lately), or football. While Barry Bonds cheats his way past Henry Aaron, the sports writers go whistling through the locker room as if nothing’s amiss. Now they have a problem: America likes dogs.
What to do? It’s easy. Become a mouthpiece for the other athletes, the ones that will protect Vick. Emmitt Smith, Allen Iverson, Michael Irvin, they’ve already had their press and their interviews. None of them have talked about crime, only ‘mistakes.’ Emmitt Smith is claiming that Vick is a target because of his fame. And yes, he might have made a mistake. Right. Vick made an ‘error’ in drowning dogs and watching them rip each other’s throats out.
I’ll give Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly a break on this. Years ago, in a face to face meeting, he asked Sammy Sosa point blank if he would take a steroids test. There was a great deal of controversy over whether Reilly should have asked the question. Not much controversy, though, over the fact that Sosa did not say yes or no. He still hasn’t. He just ignored it, it went away, and the sports writers let it, just as they let his corked bat slip from memory every time they discuss his homerun totals.
NBC’s Jim Gray also deserves a break. At the 1999 All-Star game, he asked Pete Rose if it was time to come clean about betting on baseball. Pete was not amused, players and fans called Gray a jerk, and the sports networks backed them up. Five years later, Rose published a book about…how he bet on baseball.
That is what is going to interest me about the Michael Vick drama. Not what penalty he pays for it (it will be too stiff for some; not tough enough for others), but how the sports writers spin it. Get ready. You’ll be dizzy by the time it’s over.
I guarantee you this: no matter what happens, if Michael Vick returns to the NFL and wins a Super Bowl, you will hear these words: “What a comeback for Michael Vick. Perhaps this will put the demons behind him.”
Dog beats athlete, but pigskin beats dog.
Michael Vick has found himself in the dog house of the National Felony League. According to Federal prosecutors, Vick and a couple of his buddies were running a dog fighting ring out of his Virginia kennel. The betting was in the hundreds and thousands of dollars. Pit bulls not deemed strong enough to fight were killed either by electrocution, hanging, drowning, or being slammed to the ground. The offence carries a 6-year sentence and a fine of $350 000 dollars.
First, the crime: it’s brutal. If guilty, Vick and his buddies deserve everything that they get.
The uproar from the community shouldn’t come as any surprise. There’s an old rule in the screenwriting business that if you want to show a villain as truly evil, don’t have him shoot the grandma. Show him shooting the family dog. The audience will hate him forever. Having NOW or Greenpeace on your case is as nothing compared to the angry hoards that make up PETA. These people want to burn you at the stake for eating a cheeseburger, let alone hurting man’s best friend.
Second, the penalty: Vick’s celebrity status might work against him on this one if he’s found guilty. $350 000 might sound like a hefty fine for some backwoods dude that runs a two-bit dog fighting ring. For Michael Vick, who earns about ten million dollars a year, that’s less than two quarters of football. By the time he hits the locker room at half-time, he’s earned well over half a million dollars. The judge, weighing this, might throw him a prison sentence just to make a point.
Third, the choice: I’ve heard a lot of people say, “Like he needs the money,” upon getting the news that Vick might be involved in this crime. But money has nothing to with it. Have you ever seen two dogs fight in the street? It’s scary. Carnal. The sounds alone are terrifying. Now imagine betting on it, cleaning up the blood, and hanging the dog that didn’t do as well as expected. Ask yourself what kind of man could do that, and you will have a better picture of the spirit that burns inside Michael Vick and others that breed pit bulls for battle.
It’s extremely dubious that Vick was doing this for any other reason than entertainment. He wasn’t forced to do it, and he didn’t need the cash. He simply likes dogfights.
We’re always looking for reasons to explain the activities of others. Why did they do it? Why do they feel that way? Sometimes, it’s simply because that’s the way it is. I’m already getting tired of hearing how Michael Vick should have stopped hanging out with his pre-football friends. They are the ones, this theory goes, that led him astray.
Michael Vick was the Atlanta Falcons’ number one draft pick in 2001. That’s six years ago. We’re not talking about some rookie who hasn’t had time to think about his ‘mistakes.’ We’re talking about an adult professional who likes his hobby. In this case, dog fighting.
Pit Bull
Vick could have dumped his friends, or put them through college, or ratted them out to the cops, or told them to go home, or bought them a house in New Zealand, or whatever. But he didn’t. Remember that this was going on at his kennel, not in some parking lot on the outskirts of town. Vick wasn’t caught up in anything. He was chiefly responsible for it. The dead dogs are buried on his property. The kennel, incidentally, was bought by Vick in 2001 for a little over $34000. With a flair for prophesy, these clowns named it Bad Newz Kennels.The sycophantic sports writers are in quite a dilemma over this. Dog beats athlete for America’s heart every time, and the sports writers are in a pickle. They are, after all, writers, not reporters. There is no such thing as a sports reporter. Like me, emotions run their version of typing. They have steadfastly refused to investigate steroids in baseball (have you seen Jason Grimsley’s name lately), or football. While Barry Bonds cheats his way past Henry Aaron, the sports writers go whistling through the locker room as if nothing’s amiss. Now they have a problem: America likes dogs.
What to do? It’s easy. Become a mouthpiece for the other athletes, the ones that will protect Vick. Emmitt Smith, Allen Iverson, Michael Irvin, they’ve already had their press and their interviews. None of them have talked about crime, only ‘mistakes.’ Emmitt Smith is claiming that Vick is a target because of his fame. And yes, he might have made a mistake. Right. Vick made an ‘error’ in drowning dogs and watching them rip each other’s throats out.
I’ll give Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly a break on this. Years ago, in a face to face meeting, he asked Sammy Sosa point blank if he would take a steroids test. There was a great deal of controversy over whether Reilly should have asked the question. Not much controversy, though, over the fact that Sosa did not say yes or no. He still hasn’t. He just ignored it, it went away, and the sports writers let it, just as they let his corked bat slip from memory every time they discuss his homerun totals.
NBC’s Jim Gray also deserves a break. At the 1999 All-Star game, he asked Pete Rose if it was time to come clean about betting on baseball. Pete was not amused, players and fans called Gray a jerk, and the sports networks backed them up. Five years later, Rose published a book about…how he bet on baseball.
That is what is going to interest me about the Michael Vick drama. Not what penalty he pays for it (it will be too stiff for some; not tough enough for others), but how the sports writers spin it. Get ready. You’ll be dizzy by the time it’s over.
I guarantee you this: no matter what happens, if Michael Vick returns to the NFL and wins a Super Bowl, you will hear these words: “What a comeback for Michael Vick. Perhaps this will put the demons behind him.”
Dog beats athlete, but pigskin beats dog.
Friday, July 20, 2007
Here, Kitty
I've gone on the record as saying that Bordeaux is my favorite city in Europe. Just maybe not this week. I think I'll wait until Ringling Brothers recruits this furry friend before I wander around the outskirts of the town.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
A "Hero" From the Ashes
From Breitbart.com:
Filming started Thursday on a movie starring Tom Cruise as the real-life mastermind behind a plot to kill Adolph Hitler, amid German grumbling about the high-profile Scientologist playing a national hero.
A "national hero." That's rich. The Germans didn't think so then. Take another look at William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and you'll find plenty of instances where the German people in general, and the army brass in particular, had plenty of chances to bring Hitler down, yet didn't.
The film is going to follow the story of Count von Stauffenberg, the dashing Nazi officer of glorious Prussian stock (his great-grandfather fought against Napoleon). He would lose an eye, all of one hand, and a piece of another fighting the allies during WWII.
In 1944 he was shot as a co-conspirator in the plot to kill Hitler. He wasn't just any co-conspirator. He was the one who put the bomb under Hitler's table prior to a meeting, only to be thwarted by an army officer, General Brandt, who moved the bomb behind a table leg.
The assassination attempt lends itself to cinema: The bomb is inside a briefcase. Stauffenberg places it to the inside of one of the table's two end-supports. He then excuses himself from the room, while Hitler and other officers go over a map. Just then, General Brandt leans in to get a better look. His feet hit the briefcase. He tries to shove it aside with his foot, and finally picks it up and places it on the other side of the large table support. In doing so, he unknowingly saves Hitler's life. Moments later, the bomb goes off and Hitler is wounded but not killed. Brandt, his accidental saviour, dies, along with a few other officers. Stauffenberg and his accomplices are later rounded up and shot.
All well and good. But for the Germans to regard Stauffenberg as a national hero is a joke. Americans, Canadians, British, and other allies might give a tip of the hat to Stauffenberg on their way by, but the Germans have no right to claim him as a hero. The Russians certainly wouldn't.
Notice the date of the attempted assassination: July 20, 1944. Almost two months after D-Day. Stauffenberg and others involved in the attempted putsch didn't get around to their overthrow bid until the war was virtually lost.
While there is evidence that Stauffenberg was anti-Hitler, don't kid yourself in thinking that he was part of any German "resistance" (the Germans have the gall to call it this; at Bender Block, there is a memorial to these supposed, and fabricated, heroes). Stauffenberg was only anti-Hitler well after fighting in Poland and France. When he was shifted to the Eastern Front and saw the calamity there, he began to change his tune. Prior to that, as Shirer says, "he threw himself into [the war] with characteristic energy."
The results of a Stauffenberg-led overthrow make for interesting reading. It is not as heroic as the German revisionists would have us believe. In hero-dreamland, Stauffenberg would have assassinated Hitler, got the Allies on the phone and said, "We quit."
Not quite. The plan was to kill Hitler, install a social democratic government, and assure the Western Allies of a peace settlement under a new United States of Europe. That is, the lands that Germany had conquered would not be returned immediately and intact to their own deserving peoples, but would become a new state altogether. Further to that, the war in the East would continue, the conspirators believing that the Americans and British would aid them in their fight against Russian Bolshevism.
No unconditional surrender, no repayment to the conquered countries of Western Europe, and no end to the war in the East. These were the results the conspirators were after.
Some heroes. These were men who saw the end of the war coming, and that they might swing from a rope for all the trouble they'd caused. No matter what the German revisionists say now, these men were Nazis. They had been Nazis for years. They were an integral part of a German war machine that killed millions of men, women, and children. It was only after the war looked lost that they went into action. To suggest that they were anti-Nazi heroes is ridiculous. They were criminals looking for a plea bargain.
Today, some German people seem taken with the idea that they can pretend this is not their past. They can't. Calling an opportunistic Nazi a hero doesn't change a thing.
Only five years ago, German Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin made an allusion to George W. Bush using the tactics of Hitler. Talk about the pot and kettle. I've got a line for her. It comes from Hans Frank, the Governor General of Poland during WWII. He was hanged at Nuremberg. He said this:
"A thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will not be erased."
Looks like it took only sixty. But its still a guilty history. Read it and weep.
Filming started Thursday on a movie starring Tom Cruise as the real-life mastermind behind a plot to kill Adolph Hitler, amid German grumbling about the high-profile Scientologist playing a national hero.
A "national hero." That's rich. The Germans didn't think so then. Take another look at William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and you'll find plenty of instances where the German people in general, and the army brass in particular, had plenty of chances to bring Hitler down, yet didn't.
The film is going to follow the story of Count von Stauffenberg, the dashing Nazi officer of glorious Prussian stock (his great-grandfather fought against Napoleon). He would lose an eye, all of one hand, and a piece of another fighting the allies during WWII.
In 1944 he was shot as a co-conspirator in the plot to kill Hitler. He wasn't just any co-conspirator. He was the one who put the bomb under Hitler's table prior to a meeting, only to be thwarted by an army officer, General Brandt, who moved the bomb behind a table leg.
The assassination attempt lends itself to cinema: The bomb is inside a briefcase. Stauffenberg places it to the inside of one of the table's two end-supports. He then excuses himself from the room, while Hitler and other officers go over a map. Just then, General Brandt leans in to get a better look. His feet hit the briefcase. He tries to shove it aside with his foot, and finally picks it up and places it on the other side of the large table support. In doing so, he unknowingly saves Hitler's life. Moments later, the bomb goes off and Hitler is wounded but not killed. Brandt, his accidental saviour, dies, along with a few other officers. Stauffenberg and his accomplices are later rounded up and shot.
All well and good. But for the Germans to regard Stauffenberg as a national hero is a joke. Americans, Canadians, British, and other allies might give a tip of the hat to Stauffenberg on their way by, but the Germans have no right to claim him as a hero. The Russians certainly wouldn't.
Notice the date of the attempted assassination: July 20, 1944. Almost two months after D-Day. Stauffenberg and others involved in the attempted putsch didn't get around to their overthrow bid until the war was virtually lost.
While there is evidence that Stauffenberg was anti-Hitler, don't kid yourself in thinking that he was part of any German "resistance" (the Germans have the gall to call it this; at Bender Block, there is a memorial to these supposed, and fabricated, heroes). Stauffenberg was only anti-Hitler well after fighting in Poland and France. When he was shifted to the Eastern Front and saw the calamity there, he began to change his tune. Prior to that, as Shirer says, "he threw himself into [the war] with characteristic energy."
The results of a Stauffenberg-led overthrow make for interesting reading. It is not as heroic as the German revisionists would have us believe. In hero-dreamland, Stauffenberg would have assassinated Hitler, got the Allies on the phone and said, "We quit."
Not quite. The plan was to kill Hitler, install a social democratic government, and assure the Western Allies of a peace settlement under a new United States of Europe. That is, the lands that Germany had conquered would not be returned immediately and intact to their own deserving peoples, but would become a new state altogether. Further to that, the war in the East would continue, the conspirators believing that the Americans and British would aid them in their fight against Russian Bolshevism.
No unconditional surrender, no repayment to the conquered countries of Western Europe, and no end to the war in the East. These were the results the conspirators were after.
Some heroes. These were men who saw the end of the war coming, and that they might swing from a rope for all the trouble they'd caused. No matter what the German revisionists say now, these men were Nazis. They had been Nazis for years. They were an integral part of a German war machine that killed millions of men, women, and children. It was only after the war looked lost that they went into action. To suggest that they were anti-Nazi heroes is ridiculous. They were criminals looking for a plea bargain.
Today, some German people seem taken with the idea that they can pretend this is not their past. They can't. Calling an opportunistic Nazi a hero doesn't change a thing.
Only five years ago, German Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin made an allusion to George W. Bush using the tactics of Hitler. Talk about the pot and kettle. I've got a line for her. It comes from Hans Frank, the Governor General of Poland during WWII. He was hanged at Nuremberg. He said this:
"A thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will not be erased."
Looks like it took only sixty. But its still a guilty history. Read it and weep.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
1408 - Review
Director: Mikael HåfströmWriters: Matt Greenberg/Scott Alexander
Starring: John Cusack/Samuel L. Jackson
Runtime: 94 minutes
1408 is a gutsy little suspense movie, and it works. I wouldn’t call it the best in its genre, though in the first twenty minutes, I wondered if it might come close. That’s the trouble with stories: can they pay off?
This film, based on a Stephen King short story, makes a good effort, and manages to avoid a lot of the clichés that destroy others of its kind.
The film stars John Cusack as a haunted house writer. He’s an iconoclast. He tours the country and stays the night in creepy hotels, trying to find evidence (or lack of it) of ghosts. At the beginning of the film, we learn that he has never stayed in a bonafide haunted house, and that the task bores him. He doesn’t believe in ghosts or haunted houses, so staying the night in a creepy place doesn’t bother him in the least. Once he has compiled a bunch of articles on various places, he publishes them, and makes a buck.
Then comes The Dolphin, a hotel in New York City. He receives a postcard that tells him not to stay in room 1408. Curious, he goes to NY and tries to check in.
Tries, because the hotel manager (played by Samuel L. Jackson), attempts to dissuade him with stories of the horrors that await in the room. Over the years, more than 50 people have died in the room, either by suicide or “natural” death. One man poked his own eyes out. Several have jumped to their deaths. Another slit his own throat. Jackson has the photos and documentation to prove it. He declares that Cusack won’t last one hour in the room. Cusack, ever the sceptic, checks in anyway.And that’s the setup. Jackson more or less disappears from the film after that, having done a turn as ‘office cameo.’ Office cameos are amusing. You know the actor had some time on his hands and that the producers wanted another name on the marquee. So for a day’s work, Jackson picked up a bunch of money to play an office scene with John Cusack.
I’d knock it, except that it is a very good scene. Jackson plays it very well, and doesn’t act as if he’s just walked onto the set for a quick money grab. It’s also a hard scene for an actor: you know Cusack is going to check into the room no matter what Jackson says, otherwise there would be no movie. It’s an exposition scene, put there for backstory. Scenes like that can be good, or they can be transparent and boring, like painting by numbers. Cusack and Jackson make it good.
After Cusack checks into the room, all kinds of things happen, not many of which I will go into here. It would ruin the film to talk about specifics.
The reason I called the film gutsy is that it is a hard story to film. Movies have a tough time keeping things interesting when shot in one location. The most famous movie for that was 12 Angry Men. Starring Henry Fonda and J. Lee Cobb, the film is about a group of jurors who spend the entire movie arguing the guilt or innocence of a man on trial. I’ve heard film directors say that filming a restaurant scene is tough, because nothing is more boring than a group of people sitting around a table. That’s just one scene. In 12 Angry Men, the entire movie is about people sitting around a table.That’s hard to keep interesting, but it worked, because the director, Sidney Lumet, used areas of the room as different locations. He split the characters up by the watercooler, in the coat room, in the corner, whatever, and used these spaces as locations. The fact that he had a stellar cast didn’t hurt, either.
In 1408, the same problem exists, but it’s even tougher: Cusack has no one to talk to. He’s alone in the room, except for the various ghosts that come along, and the psychological stuff that takes place in his own mind. The director, Mikael Håfström, gets around this by using the bedroom, the bathroom, the lounge, and the windowledge as different locations for different “scenes.” He also has John Cusack, a fine actor who has been accused of playing himself, but if “himself” means good, so what?
Cusack also carries a tape recorder with him, giving him a chance to speak. This is an old device, but a necessary one. In Cast Away, Wilson the volleyball wasn’t there to give Tom Hanks a friend. It was there so Hanks could speak without sounding like a lunatic. It’s an odd truth: why do you appear more crazy for talking to yourself than for talking to a volleyball? In any event, whenever a film has a solo cast, look for the character to start talking to something – anything – in a fairly short time.1408 sloshes around a bit in the middle, which is forgivable. A feature-length film tops out at over 90 minutes, and it’s tough to keep a lonely Cusack occupied for that long. I did take issue with a couple of the spooky characters. The film seemed more interested in scaring the hell out of John Cusack than in telling the story behind the room.
1408 is an enjoyable chiller. Cusack is very good considering he had no actors to act against, and the ending of the film is satisfying. It leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but it doesn’t cheat you, either.
Side note: The previews showed that Rob Zombie has directed a remake of Halloween, which will be released next month. Hollywood feeds off itself yet again. Its lack of fresh ideas is getting more depressing by the day.
Monday, July 16, 2007
David Beckham Go Home
Photo/Reuters
Man, that's gotta suck.
That line is reserved for a friend of mine. We were on the phone yesterday and she said that Argentina was going to beat Brazil in some kind of soccer tournament, because Brazil was missing their best players.
News to me. I didn't know that the Copa America (America's Cup) final was even being played. Turns out that Brazil beat Argentina 3-0, even though they were missing Ronaldinho, Lucio, Kaka, Ronaldo, Ze Roberto and Adriano. I just copied and pasted those names from a website because, like you, I don't know who plays for the Brazilian team and nor do I care. I do find it cool, however, that a man can strut around a field while wearing Kaka (pronounced the way children say the word 'shit' without swearing) on his back.
The soccer tournament involved all of the qualifying countries in the Americas, including the United States. Canada didn't make it because Canada is so involved in soccer that they suck at it, ranking out of the top 50 countries in the world. When Bosnia-Herzegovina (28), Morocco (35), and Guinea (50) are better than you at a sport, you know it's time to stop asking when that sport will become popular in your country.
I flicked on CNN this morning and they were talking about David Beckham's arrival in Los Angeles. He used to play for Manchester United and Real Madrid. He's now come over to play with the LA Galaxy. Headlines on Yahoo are asking if he can save US soccer. The rest of us are asking if he can get out of the way so we can get another look at his hot wife.
Every couple of years, this soccer issue rises to the surface, bubbles for a few moments, and then goes back down the drain where it belongs. It is phony-hype, as the Beckham arrival indicates.
I don't know too much about soccer, but it's doubtful that David Beckham is here in order to save US soccer. It's more believable that the guy just needs a job. He was cut as captain from the England team, and Madrid obviously didn't want his services. If he was still the premier player he once was, he wouldn't be coming to the United States to play as Mr. Nobody. He'd be in Europe signing autographs every time he steps out of his house. Him coming here to save US soccer is like saying Matt Lainert should skip the NFL and go play in Germany to save Deutsch Football.
And how, exactly, is David Beckham going to save US soccer? I didn't know US soccer needed to be saved. I thought it was one of those fringe sports. Illegal immigrants and 10th generation English people might want to watch 11 of their favorite players jog around a field for 90 minutes, but the majority of Americans couldn't care less. And again, it doesn't matter if a lot of kids play it when they're younger. That does not mean that they are going to play it when they are older, or even watch it on television. As I said last year:
"To the Euro-weenies, let's put something on the record: the kids who play soccer are there because their parents won't let them play a violent sport. Football and hockey are out, and fastballs scare the hell out of mothers, so baseball's out, too. Unless you're over six feet tall by the time you hit grade 11, basketball is also a no-go. That leaves soccer. Your passionate game of kick-the-ball-around is there to raise the self-esteem of children that wouldn't have amounted to a damn on the grid iron, and to keep hockey players in shape during the off-season.
People are not going to watch soccer in North America. It's made up of all the people that got cut from the other sports. Sure, there might be a few kids that played soccer as their first choice, but who the hell wants to watch a guy like that play anything? And just because we did something as kids doesn't mean we're going to keep doing it as adults. Using the old 'you show me yours, I'll show you mine' might have worked while hiding in the cushion fort, but it doesn't go over so well on the nightclub circuit.
This argument is so old that it's no longer an argument. It's more like an article of faith, like the second coming of Christ. When I was a kid, people were saying that more kids playing soccer meant that it would be huge a few years down the road. When I was in high school, they said the same thing. When I was in my 20's, ditto. I'm now over 30. I still don't watch soccer, and neither do my friends. When I am old and decrepit, some damn nurse is going to give me my orange juice and say, "My son plays soccer. So many kids are playing it, it will be huge in a few years." And I will die screaming.
Honestly: when is the last time you said to anyone, I need to get home by 7 o'clock because the soccer game is on? As for me, I use the webpages to see just how popular soccer is. On Yahoo Sports, the soccer tab is tenth in line, right behind tennis and right before boxing. On ESPN.com, soccer comes in the 14 hole, before tennis, but behind such items as women's basketball and NHL hockey, which won't be played for another two months. The Sporting News website doesn't even have soccer on their menu bar. Must have been a misprint.
Here's a nice look at the joys of a game where ties are victories, scoring is non-existent, and it's considered good play to roll around like a wimp when someone comes within five feet of you. Beckham's in this clip, too. He's twelve steps from the goal and misses it by 50 feet. Gotta love the "beautiful game."
That line is reserved for a friend of mine. We were on the phone yesterday and she said that Argentina was going to beat Brazil in some kind of soccer tournament, because Brazil was missing their best players.
News to me. I didn't know that the Copa America (America's Cup) final was even being played. Turns out that Brazil beat Argentina 3-0, even though they were missing Ronaldinho, Lucio, Kaka, Ronaldo, Ze Roberto and Adriano. I just copied and pasted those names from a website because, like you, I don't know who plays for the Brazilian team and nor do I care. I do find it cool, however, that a man can strut around a field while wearing Kaka (pronounced the way children say the word 'shit' without swearing) on his back.
The soccer tournament involved all of the qualifying countries in the Americas, including the United States. Canada didn't make it because Canada is so involved in soccer that they suck at it, ranking out of the top 50 countries in the world. When Bosnia-Herzegovina (28), Morocco (35), and Guinea (50) are better than you at a sport, you know it's time to stop asking when that sport will become popular in your country.
I flicked on CNN this morning and they were talking about David Beckham's arrival in Los Angeles. He used to play for Manchester United and Real Madrid. He's now come over to play with the LA Galaxy. Headlines on Yahoo are asking if he can save US soccer. The rest of us are asking if he can get out of the way so we can get another look at his hot wife.
Every couple of years, this soccer issue rises to the surface, bubbles for a few moments, and then goes back down the drain where it belongs. It is phony-hype, as the Beckham arrival indicates.
I don't know too much about soccer, but it's doubtful that David Beckham is here in order to save US soccer. It's more believable that the guy just needs a job. He was cut as captain from the England team, and Madrid obviously didn't want his services. If he was still the premier player he once was, he wouldn't be coming to the United States to play as Mr. Nobody. He'd be in Europe signing autographs every time he steps out of his house. Him coming here to save US soccer is like saying Matt Lainert should skip the NFL and go play in Germany to save Deutsch Football.
And how, exactly, is David Beckham going to save US soccer? I didn't know US soccer needed to be saved. I thought it was one of those fringe sports. Illegal immigrants and 10th generation English people might want to watch 11 of their favorite players jog around a field for 90 minutes, but the majority of Americans couldn't care less. And again, it doesn't matter if a lot of kids play it when they're younger. That does not mean that they are going to play it when they are older, or even watch it on television. As I said last year:
"To the Euro-weenies, let's put something on the record: the kids who play soccer are there because their parents won't let them play a violent sport. Football and hockey are out, and fastballs scare the hell out of mothers, so baseball's out, too. Unless you're over six feet tall by the time you hit grade 11, basketball is also a no-go. That leaves soccer. Your passionate game of kick-the-ball-around is there to raise the self-esteem of children that wouldn't have amounted to a damn on the grid iron, and to keep hockey players in shape during the off-season.
People are not going to watch soccer in North America. It's made up of all the people that got cut from the other sports. Sure, there might be a few kids that played soccer as their first choice, but who the hell wants to watch a guy like that play anything? And just because we did something as kids doesn't mean we're going to keep doing it as adults. Using the old 'you show me yours, I'll show you mine' might have worked while hiding in the cushion fort, but it doesn't go over so well on the nightclub circuit.
This argument is so old that it's no longer an argument. It's more like an article of faith, like the second coming of Christ. When I was a kid, people were saying that more kids playing soccer meant that it would be huge a few years down the road. When I was in high school, they said the same thing. When I was in my 20's, ditto. I'm now over 30. I still don't watch soccer, and neither do my friends. When I am old and decrepit, some damn nurse is going to give me my orange juice and say, "My son plays soccer. So many kids are playing it, it will be huge in a few years." And I will die screaming.
Honestly: when is the last time you said to anyone, I need to get home by 7 o'clock because the soccer game is on? As for me, I use the webpages to see just how popular soccer is. On Yahoo Sports, the soccer tab is tenth in line, right behind tennis and right before boxing. On ESPN.com, soccer comes in the 14 hole, before tennis, but behind such items as women's basketball and NHL hockey, which won't be played for another two months. The Sporting News website doesn't even have soccer on their menu bar. Must have been a misprint.
Here's a nice look at the joys of a game where ties are victories, scoring is non-existent, and it's considered good play to roll around like a wimp when someone comes within five feet of you. Beckham's in this clip, too. He's twelve steps from the goal and misses it by 50 feet. Gotta love the "beautiful game."
Friday, July 13, 2007
The Sun Also Gores
Every time I get the urge to be Hemingway, the traditional running of the bulls in Pamplona rolls around and convinces me otherwise.
Click here to see what I'm talking about. Warning: the first pic in the slideshow is a nasty one, as a genius from Norway gets it in the leg.
This photo from AP/Alvaro Barrientos
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Live Free or Die Hard - Review
Slight spoiler warning: the ending isn't blown, but a secondary character's demise is talked about. Still, if you've seen more than one movie in your life, you'll know it's coming a mile away.Director: Len Wiseman
Writer: Mark Bomback
Starring: Bruce Willis
Runtime: 2 hr 10 minutes
Die Hard in its first version changed the landscape for action movies in Hollywood. It still remains the quintessential film of the genre. Live Free or Die Hard undermines all of the work the franchise has done since, and comes out as a regular ho-hum actioner, complete with terrible clichés, bad dialogue, and a cowardly plot.
One line from the latest instalment completely sums up how tired the Die Hard franchise has become: “They’ve got my daughter.”
And that is all you need to hear from the film to know that it is a complete waste of time. They’ve got my daughter? You can’t get more tired than that, unless you use such lines as, “They killed my partner.” Or perhaps, “This time it’s personal.”
Though it appears a good 70 minutes into the film, I don’t think I’m giving much away with the “They’ve got my daughter” line. We meet John McClane’s daughter in the first five minutes. Surprise, surprise, she hates her father. He catches her making out with a teenage boy, there’s a father/daughter argument, and she walks off in a huff, disappearing from the movie. Any thinking audience member has got to be groaning at this point, because we know that we’ll see her again, only it won’t be at a birthday party. It will be in the hands of some maniac, whom McClane will kill, saving the world and his familial relationship with one quick bullet.I was hoping that Live Free would be the first movie to take on Al Queda. Hollywood is so politically correct that not one film has been made where the hero is specifically trying to outwit and outfight America’s arch enemy: militant Islam. Hollywood’s aversion to calling Al Queda and militant Islam an ‘enemy’ is beginning to border on the pathological, if not the downright obscene.
Since the 90’s, Islamic terrorists have bombed the World Trade Center, blown up two US embassies in Africa, killed American sailors aboard the USS Cole, knocked down the World Trade Center, flown a plane into the Pentagon, crashed another in Pennsylvania, killed scores of civilians in Madrid and London, and most recently tried to detonate another couple of carbombs in Piccadilly Circus. Nevermind the havoc they’ve played in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Far East.
What does Hollywood have to show for it? A play-by-play of Flight 93 with no moral judgement in it whatsoever. A film about two firefighters trapped under the rubble of the Trade Center and keeping each other company until help arrives. A movie about the bad boy history of the CIA which ends in the 60’s. One movie about Iraq where the soldiers delight in masturbation, sit around in the desert, but don’t shoot anyone. A story about a US sniper who is framed by a US Senator for trying to kill the President. A release coming out later this month about a pilot shot down and taken prisoner in Vietnam.
Gutsy stuff.
The amount of WWII, Korea, and Vietnam movies prove that Hollywood could talk about America and its enemies at length. So why does militant Islam get a free pass, especially when they are the only enemy to have ever specifically targeted and killed US civilians, the same civilians that buy movie tickets? Vietnam movies and history lessons about the 1950’s CIA are not exactly ripped-from-the-headlines stories that we should expect from filmmakers.
With a title like Live Free or Die Hard, one would think that it would be a story about defeating today’s enemy that is opposed to freedom. Instead, the title is merely a pun taken from a New Hampshire license plate.
In the first Die Hard, the robbers posed as terrorists. In Live Free, the robbers…pose as terrorists. But these terrorists are not Islamic. The head honcho, Thomas Gabriel (played Timothy Olyphant), is as WASP as the character's name suggests, and guess what? He has a beef with the US because he used to work for the Pentagon. They fired him for saying that their security was lax. Now he’s out to prove it. In other words, it’s all America’s fault. Again. If they had only listened to him, they wouldn’t be in this fix right now (he messes up the communications systems, gas pipelines, and generally throws a monkey wrench into the infrastructure of the country, all with a few handy laptops and some computer-geek American cronies).Not once in the film are the words Al Queda, Islamic terror, or bin Laden mentioned, if only to lead the audience down the wrong track. The words are ridiculously conspicuous by their absence, since you have to believe that at least one person working for the FBI might casually say, “Hmmm. Maybe this is an Al Queda attack.” In the world of Live Free, as in the world of Hollywood, Al Queda and Islamic terrorists do not exist.
The robber/terrorist’s girlfriend is an Asian woman. Willis as McClane reminds us of this on several occasions, by calling her an “Asian bitch.” Indeed, one of the biggest fight scenes in the movie is where Willis and the woman beat the crap out of each other, and Willis delights in telling her boyfriend that his “Asian” girlfriend is dead.
Well. What are we to make of all this? It would seem Hollywood is afraid of being called racist by showing terrorists as they are today (Islamic fundamentalists), but they aren’t afraid to be racist against Asian people. Imagine “black bitch” or “Mexican bitch.” Even “black girlfriend.” The hue and cry from the media would be appropriately loud, yet Asians can take it on the chin.
This is not new. I was in an LA comedy club some years back, where three comics in a row had all kinds of jokes about Asians. One talked about what bad drivers they were, and made slant-eye gags and jokes about how Asian people can’t see properly. The audience chortled and giggled, while a friend and I blanched. I am not surprised to see that the LA anti-Asian culture has seeped it’s way into a summer release with nary a whisper from the Hollywood media.
The filming of Live Free as a high flying actioner is so-so at best. You don’t need the credits to tell you that John McTiernan didn’t direct it, as he did two of the others. The effects are fairly lame, especially a sequence involving a fighter plane that is pure fantasy (a cross between a Harrier jet and an F-15). The banter between McClane and his sidekick buddy doesn’t remotely come close to the dialogue and chemistry between Willis and Samuel L. Jackson in Die Hard: With A Vengeance.
The Die Hard franchise has indeed died hard, and not with a bang, but a whimper.
Monday, July 09, 2007
All Of Us: Strangers
The other day I was on a flight from Washington DC to Toronto. It was a puddle jumper of an airplane, but it had jets, so it was noisy as hell in the cabin and the seats were too close together.
A little girl was across the aisle from me, looking out the window, and she turned to me and asked me how long the flight was going to last.
And I didn't know if I should say anything.
Such are the times we live in today, where speaking to a lone child is not something to cherish (the child might learn something; for that matter, so might you). Rather, speaking to a child makes you look over your shoulder, to see if anyone thinks you're some sicko who's trying to take advantage of a young innocent.
Poor kid. I told her that the flight was about an hour long and that we would be there in no time. And I went back to my book.
"Do you live in Toronto?" she asked.
I looked at her and she wasn't smiling or frowning, she was just doing what kids have always done: saying what was on her mind. She hasn't learned how to bullshit beyond I-didn't-hit-him in the playground. She wasn't making small talk. She just wanted to know if I lived in Toronto.
"No," I said. "But my family does. I'm there a lot." I couldn't help myself, so I said, "Where are you from?"
"New Orleans," she said.
"Cool," I said. Cool? Whatever. Back to the book.
The flight went on for a while and my mind was bouncing with questions. I never learned not to talk to strangers, and maybe this kid hadn't either. I wanted to asking how New Orleans was doing these days, and if she was there during Katrina. I wanted to ask her what she thought about all that, and if she'd been scared, or if she even remembered it.
"I'm Whitney," the kid said.
I already knew that, because it was hanging from her knapsack in the form of a plastic nametag, roughly the size of a credit card. It was the same knapsack that the plastic stewardess had rifled through. She was making sure the kid wasn't bringing fruit or meat across the border, lest the customs officials put the kid against the wall and arrest her for an agriculture infraction.
"I'm Sean," I said. And, not knowing any better, "Do you have family in Toronto?"
She smiled. "Yes," she said, "My cousins live there. I go every summer for two weeks."
Every summer. To a kid, that must sound like a lot.
"How old are you?" I said. And I looked around, trying to see if anyone thought I was some lecherous bastard.
"Nine," she said.
So every summer for maybe the past two summers, her family has put her on a plane to see her extended family in another country, and little Whitney thinks two summers is 'every summer.' Which I thought was the best news I'd heard in ages. Nowadays there's a virtual traffic jam in front of the elementary schools, or even high schools, because parents won't let their offspring walk five feet without them, nevermind sending them 2000 miles to a different city. But maybe after Katrina, the parents of New Orleans are thinking, "Screw it. Let the kid live a little."
The flight continued. It crossed my mind to ask Whitney if the stews were going to make sure she got to the customs terminal all right, or if she wanted me to show her there myself. And I thought, what a crazy question. You simply do not accompany children anywhere today. If you look cross-eyed at a kid in a restaurant to make them laugh, the mother will cluck her tongue and turn the kid around.
I wonder how many lost children are completely ignored on streetcorners and in malls because people are afraid to touch them? To help them? I bet it's a lot. Help a kid find their mother in a mall parking lot and they'll have an Amber Alert on CNN with your face plastered to it in no time.
We started our descent. The kid pointed out the window and asked me, "Is that Toronto?"
I wanted to say, "You come here every year, shouldn't you know?" but I decided to cool the smartass stuff. So I pointed out the window and showed her the CN Tower ("I've been there," she said), Rogers Centre ("I saw a game there," she said) and Lake Ontario, to which the kid said nothing, reminding me that kids couldn't care less about geography.
The flight landed. I pulled out the customs card and then reached into my pocket. Damnit. I searched in my bag. Damnit. I looked to the kid.
"You got a pen?" I asked.
She did. More responsible than me. More helpful than me, too.
When the plane got to the jetway, I stood up and told the kid to have a nice time with her cousins. She smiled from ear to ear, and it was a great smile. Then I left her standing there in the aisle, without once asking if she was going to be all right, or making sure that the stews hadn't forgotten her. I still feel bad about that.
The modern world is beating us down slowly but surely. No vices, no passions, no joys, no humanity. Making us into insular automatons, where the environment in Brazil is worth more than a human anywhere. Mind your business, and for God's sake don't reach out to anyone. Why, just this month in Kansas, a store video showed people walking over a woman who'd been stabbed. She was lying on her stomach and no one asked her if she was all right. They just walked over her and into the store to buy their beer, Coca-Cola, and tampons. And she bled to death.
I don't like kids. I don't get along with them very well. But I miss them sometimes.
A little girl was across the aisle from me, looking out the window, and she turned to me and asked me how long the flight was going to last.
And I didn't know if I should say anything.
Such are the times we live in today, where speaking to a lone child is not something to cherish (the child might learn something; for that matter, so might you). Rather, speaking to a child makes you look over your shoulder, to see if anyone thinks you're some sicko who's trying to take advantage of a young innocent.
Poor kid. I told her that the flight was about an hour long and that we would be there in no time. And I went back to my book.
"Do you live in Toronto?" she asked.
I looked at her and she wasn't smiling or frowning, she was just doing what kids have always done: saying what was on her mind. She hasn't learned how to bullshit beyond I-didn't-hit-him in the playground. She wasn't making small talk. She just wanted to know if I lived in Toronto.
"No," I said. "But my family does. I'm there a lot." I couldn't help myself, so I said, "Where are you from?"
"New Orleans," she said.
"Cool," I said. Cool? Whatever. Back to the book.
The flight went on for a while and my mind was bouncing with questions. I never learned not to talk to strangers, and maybe this kid hadn't either. I wanted to asking how New Orleans was doing these days, and if she was there during Katrina. I wanted to ask her what she thought about all that, and if she'd been scared, or if she even remembered it.
"I'm Whitney," the kid said.
I already knew that, because it was hanging from her knapsack in the form of a plastic nametag, roughly the size of a credit card. It was the same knapsack that the plastic stewardess had rifled through. She was making sure the kid wasn't bringing fruit or meat across the border, lest the customs officials put the kid against the wall and arrest her for an agriculture infraction.
"I'm Sean," I said. And, not knowing any better, "Do you have family in Toronto?"
She smiled. "Yes," she said, "My cousins live there. I go every summer for two weeks."
Every summer. To a kid, that must sound like a lot.
"How old are you?" I said. And I looked around, trying to see if anyone thought I was some lecherous bastard.
"Nine," she said.
So every summer for maybe the past two summers, her family has put her on a plane to see her extended family in another country, and little Whitney thinks two summers is 'every summer.' Which I thought was the best news I'd heard in ages. Nowadays there's a virtual traffic jam in front of the elementary schools, or even high schools, because parents won't let their offspring walk five feet without them, nevermind sending them 2000 miles to a different city. But maybe after Katrina, the parents of New Orleans are thinking, "Screw it. Let the kid live a little."
The flight continued. It crossed my mind to ask Whitney if the stews were going to make sure she got to the customs terminal all right, or if she wanted me to show her there myself. And I thought, what a crazy question. You simply do not accompany children anywhere today. If you look cross-eyed at a kid in a restaurant to make them laugh, the mother will cluck her tongue and turn the kid around.
I wonder how many lost children are completely ignored on streetcorners and in malls because people are afraid to touch them? To help them? I bet it's a lot. Help a kid find their mother in a mall parking lot and they'll have an Amber Alert on CNN with your face plastered to it in no time.
We started our descent. The kid pointed out the window and asked me, "Is that Toronto?"
I wanted to say, "You come here every year, shouldn't you know?" but I decided to cool the smartass stuff. So I pointed out the window and showed her the CN Tower ("I've been there," she said), Rogers Centre ("I saw a game there," she said) and Lake Ontario, to which the kid said nothing, reminding me that kids couldn't care less about geography.
The flight landed. I pulled out the customs card and then reached into my pocket. Damnit. I searched in my bag. Damnit. I looked to the kid.
"You got a pen?" I asked.
She did. More responsible than me. More helpful than me, too.
When the plane got to the jetway, I stood up and told the kid to have a nice time with her cousins. She smiled from ear to ear, and it was a great smile. Then I left her standing there in the aisle, without once asking if she was going to be all right, or making sure that the stews hadn't forgotten her. I still feel bad about that.
The modern world is beating us down slowly but surely. No vices, no passions, no joys, no humanity. Making us into insular automatons, where the environment in Brazil is worth more than a human anywhere. Mind your business, and for God's sake don't reach out to anyone. Why, just this month in Kansas, a store video showed people walking over a woman who'd been stabbed. She was lying on her stomach and no one asked her if she was all right. They just walked over her and into the store to buy their beer, Coca-Cola, and tampons. And she bled to death.
I don't like kids. I don't get along with them very well. But I miss them sometimes.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Lift the Lid
I was talking to a girl the other night, and she told me that "all good things end, so what's the point?" She was talking about some relationship that had blown up in her face.
I felt sorry for her. She's twenty-five years old, cute as a button, funny, and has a butt like an East German gymnast. For someone like that, life should be all sunshine and roses. But of course it isn't.
When I visited Henley-on-Thames last year, I was confronted by a storybook English town, complete with quaint bridges and people that said good morning to strangers. After staying there a week, I'd seen drunken debauchery, a fight, adultery, mudslinging at a wedding, and a dude whose doctor told him to quit the sauce or he'd die drunk.
Both of these are examples of looks being deceiving. Nothing new there. But it still surprises me what can happen if you lift the lid off something and peer underneath. You might like what you find. Then again, you might not.
Life is funny like that. Take the Austrian girl, the one with the glorious butt. I was sure that she was a hell of a nice person, with a gracious smile and a quick laugh. And I was right. Yet she doesn't see herself that way. She told me that she is 'angry.' When I told her that I saw no anger in her whatsoever, she replied that I didn't know her well enough. It's been another couple of weeks, and I still haven't seen it. I've talked to her about all kinds of stuff, and there's no cynicism there, just a touch of sadness.
Mmmm.
I've heard this story before, and it came from me. And I can tell you now that this young lady is not angry, no matter what she thinks of herself. I used to think I was an angry young man, but on the whole I would say I am happy about 90% of the time. Yet sometimes I want to be angry. I think she does too, but she can't pull it off because hers is not an angry soul.
The truth will out. We may see ourselves as something (a quaint town, an angry person), but that doesn't make it true. Our own conceit can get in the way time and again, blinding us to the simple fact that we are who we are, if we're brave enough to admit it. We were formed sometime in our childhood, and we more or less carried on from there.
Yes, you can change, at least a little bit. When I was a kid I was brought up to believe that fighting was bad and that violence didn't solve anything. I got pushed around. Sometime around the age of 18, I punched somebody in the face and haven't look back since. It was a life-changing moment, and a good one. I'm not recommending it to everybody, and I certainly didn't become a bully, but I did learn that you have to stand up for yourself. That was a good thing.
But on the whole, I'm more or less the same person I was back then. Older, maybe a bit smarter, but not altogether different. If I look under the hood, the same engine fires. Maybe yours does, too.
I'm not talking about maturity. Saying that I am the same person as I was in University does not mean I still like sleeping on a lawn while covered in beer, or that I like to pull on someone's brastraps. But the desire to seek out the world and the willingness to laugh at it hasn't left me. And okay, sure, I still like a good party now and then. All right, all right, mostly now.
The trouble with looking at yourself is the looking. Being bold enough to examine yourself, to be honest about what you see, is tough. I think it was Freud that said no one can psychoanalyse themselves (he also said the Irish are impervious to psychoanalysis, so I guess they can forget my whole point), but it's worth giving it a shot now and then.
Scary proposition. Along with the old line of looks being deceiving, don't forget its partner, "Truth hurts."
I felt sorry for her. She's twenty-five years old, cute as a button, funny, and has a butt like an East German gymnast. For someone like that, life should be all sunshine and roses. But of course it isn't.
When I visited Henley-on-Thames last year, I was confronted by a storybook English town, complete with quaint bridges and people that said good morning to strangers. After staying there a week, I'd seen drunken debauchery, a fight, adultery, mudslinging at a wedding, and a dude whose doctor told him to quit the sauce or he'd die drunk.
Both of these are examples of looks being deceiving. Nothing new there. But it still surprises me what can happen if you lift the lid off something and peer underneath. You might like what you find. Then again, you might not.
Life is funny like that. Take the Austrian girl, the one with the glorious butt. I was sure that she was a hell of a nice person, with a gracious smile and a quick laugh. And I was right. Yet she doesn't see herself that way. She told me that she is 'angry.' When I told her that I saw no anger in her whatsoever, she replied that I didn't know her well enough. It's been another couple of weeks, and I still haven't seen it. I've talked to her about all kinds of stuff, and there's no cynicism there, just a touch of sadness.
Mmmm.
I've heard this story before, and it came from me. And I can tell you now that this young lady is not angry, no matter what she thinks of herself. I used to think I was an angry young man, but on the whole I would say I am happy about 90% of the time. Yet sometimes I want to be angry. I think she does too, but she can't pull it off because hers is not an angry soul.
The truth will out. We may see ourselves as something (a quaint town, an angry person), but that doesn't make it true. Our own conceit can get in the way time and again, blinding us to the simple fact that we are who we are, if we're brave enough to admit it. We were formed sometime in our childhood, and we more or less carried on from there.
Yes, you can change, at least a little bit. When I was a kid I was brought up to believe that fighting was bad and that violence didn't solve anything. I got pushed around. Sometime around the age of 18, I punched somebody in the face and haven't look back since. It was a life-changing moment, and a good one. I'm not recommending it to everybody, and I certainly didn't become a bully, but I did learn that you have to stand up for yourself. That was a good thing.
But on the whole, I'm more or less the same person I was back then. Older, maybe a bit smarter, but not altogether different. If I look under the hood, the same engine fires. Maybe yours does, too.
I'm not talking about maturity. Saying that I am the same person as I was in University does not mean I still like sleeping on a lawn while covered in beer, or that I like to pull on someone's brastraps. But the desire to seek out the world and the willingness to laugh at it hasn't left me. And okay, sure, I still like a good party now and then. All right, all right, mostly now.
The trouble with looking at yourself is the looking. Being bold enough to examine yourself, to be honest about what you see, is tough. I think it was Freud that said no one can psychoanalyse themselves (he also said the Irish are impervious to psychoanalysis, so I guess they can forget my whole point), but it's worth giving it a shot now and then.
Scary proposition. Along with the old line of looks being deceiving, don't forget its partner, "Truth hurts."
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