Here’s the kicker: it’s all shot by Swedes. Swedes are killing us with vampire movies, mystery thrillers and now documenting the history of our own civil rights movement. It goes without saying that we’re gonna find an overqualified American director to slickly remake the shit out of this one. Then it’ll be your move again, Sweden.

Swedish news crews and documentarians came to the states to cover an interesting story. Not being a part of our history these people had a much different perspective and didn’t follow the same rules as American media about what they were supposed to show or who they were supposed to sympathize with. They could be outraged by the massacre at Attica, they could show Carmichael on a couch with his mom or signing books for lines of admiring white people in Stockholm. The difference in perspective actually becomes a topic in a segment about the editor of TV Guide visiting Sweden and deciding their coverage of U.S. news is anti-American. He says in the U.S. we can cover the bad stuff because we live here and know the context of the good things that happen here. He never says if he’s also against American news covering bad things that happen in the rest of the world. He also never says what happens this week on Marcus Welby M.D. or what time it’s on which is all I personally wanna hear out of this individual. Get back to work, fella.

It’s kind of sad that the commentators from our own era always end up being rappers, it seems like there should be a wider variety of black thinkers that get to do this type of stuff. But then again, I honestly believe hip hop has been a major force in changing racism in this country. As recently as the ’80s and early ’90s the mainstream media was fucking terrified of black culture. Magazines and newspapers constantly did pieces on the threat of rap music. They thought DO THE RIGHT THING was gonna cause riots. MALCOLM X was incredibly controversial when it was in theaters, now it’s new on blu-ray and it’s about as explosive as QUIZ SHOW or something. (but a great movie.)

I think England was kind of like the Swedes for some of the hip hop. Public Enemy was blowing up there before here, that’s why they got those live clips form London on It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back. Their music was demonized just like some of the leaders shown in this movie, now they’re oldies. There’s a couple generations that grew up on hip hop. It can’t be dangerous anymore, it dominates pop culture. It’s Phil Collins and Huey Lewis & the News.

To my ears most of the music has devolved, but its prevalence has caused undeniable cultural advances. It’s hard to make white kids afraid of all black people when they grew up watching reality shows about Snoop Dogg coaching peewee football. There’s still plenty of racism, but it’s different. And I really believe some of it will die off with the old fuckers who still practice it.

Whether or not all that justifies having more rappers on here than academics I think it’s okay because they chose them well. Kweli has some good observations about the footage and makes some personal connections without ever seeming pretentious or full of himself. He even has a story about being questioned at an airport for having a recording of a Stokely Carmichael speech.

It’s also not the typical type of commentary you expect. For example Oyewole keeps off-handedly mentioning not agreeing with Martin Luther King. So there are some interesting viewpoints. At this time I would like to show off my vast breadth of knowledge by telling you that not only did I know Abiodun Oyewole by the sound of his voice, I think I also know how to pronounce his name: abby oh dune oy uh whoah lay. That’s right. Off the top of my head. Boom.

With the “mix tape” format – and also with straightforward  on-screen text – the movie announces that it’s not trying to be a definitive statement about the black power movement, it’s just an idiosyncratic* selection of deep cuts to put you in a mood. Little bit of Malcolm X speaking, some kids playing with the fire hydrants, some people on the street talking, an interview with the owner of a black book store.

Fair warning though: this is not the party mix. It’s kind of a bummer. There’s a part where some time after the assassinations of Dr. King and RFK they ask people on the streets about “the future,” and one black woman says very matter of factly that she doesn’t believe there is any future for the country. I couldn’t help but think back to the white diner owner in the opening who talked about how great things were in his part of America, and wonder if he still felt that way at this point, or if he knew other people felt that disillusioned and hopeless.

It’s interesting to look at from a 2011 perspective. I always sympathize with black militants, even ones that would call me a white devil. If you can’t handle an occasional “white devil” just imagine how bad a time you would’ve had being called all the worse names they got called back then. You’d never cut the mustard. But watching this I think enough time has passed that I can be a little embarrassed by some of the things they say, the way I am with my fellow leftists at war protests, or some well-meaning hippie that’s not hurting anybody but maybe says some corny shit. They tend to go a little over-the-top in their language and maybe hurt their point a little bit. Angela Davis is speaking to the world but she sounds just like activists today who are mostly speaking to a college campus or a protest somewhere. She tries to be constantly confrontational even in her choice of words, instead of trying to communicate and talk some sense into some dumb motherfuckers.

But she’s also right. This is a really good time capsule. I definitely recommend it for all Americans and Swedes interested in these issues. Thank you Sweden.

* yeah, I know that word, motherfuckers. And I’m willing to use it.

Seattle’s own Phoenix Jones is not represented. I’m not sure if this was filmed before his time or if he was too mysterious to be caught on camera. They do have a couple guys from Seattle, but one is just a fat guy in a t-shirt that says “Sky Man” on it. Another one carries a bow and arrow – what the fuck are you gonna do with that, shoot an arrow at some drunk guys fighting outside a club? Phoenix Jones got in trouble just using pepper spray. I don’t know about other cities, but I feel that Seattle is not bow-appropriate.

The main subject of SUPER HEROES is a guy in San Diego called Mr. Xtreme. He’s a tubby guy with a helmet, vest and goggles covered in stickers, like the word “evil” crossed out and stuff like that. He kind of has the appearance of a mall security guard and sounds like a rejected COPS narrator as he talks about his mission to stop what he variously calls “thugs,” “bad apples,” “slime buckets,” “sleaze balls,” “villains” or “evildoers.” We see him passing out flyers for “The Xtreme Justice League” (actual slogan: “it’s not the NFL, it’s the XJL”). He talks about “what we’re doing out here today” but when pressed admits that “we” is currently only him. We later see him with a younger sidekick called Vigilante Spider, whose mouthless mask gets a wet spot from his breath or his spit or something. They don’t tell you about that in the comic books.

I will say this about Mr. Xtreme – they follow him to a Brazilian Jiujitsu competition where he’s trying to earn his blue belt. And okay, he does lose, but he does put up a fight against an opponent that looks more intimidating than him. It’s not a completely one-sided fight. So give him that at least. But if he’s scary to criminals it’s because “holy shit, who is this weirdo?” He’s not exactly the Punisher, more like a local weirdo that decides to be a crossing guard or something.

A little bit more credible is The New York Initiative, a group who live together in Brooklyn. They actually moved to New York for the crime fighting possibilities. There’s a masked woman, an angry skateboard punk and an openly gay parkour guy named Zimmer. Inside their scrappy apartment they train in martial arts and have strategy meetings, taking notes and holding clipboards.

Zimmer sort of seems to be their leader, but he’s near the back on the movie poster (second from left) because his costume looks more like a bike messenger than a batman. He says he doesn’t wear a mask because it’s important to him to be out of the closet. He talks about his first patrol on the anniversary of the death of Kitty Genovese in 1964. An animated scene shows how 38 witnesses in an apartment building failed to intervene as she was raped and killed in plain view. This seems to be a touchstone or a rallying cry for the Real Life Super Hero community – Mr. Xtreme has a picture of Genovese on his armor.

But wait a minute, we’re supposed to believe these people had had enough and had to start doing something… because of an incident that happened 15 or 20 years before they were born? And you know, from what I’ve read the legend of the 38 witnesses wasn’t true at all. That was claimed in a New York Times article but a study in 2007 found it to be false. Apparently there were really only about a dozen people who heard any part of the attack, and almost all of them didn’t realize it was an attack. I can believe this because I hear indiscernible yelling and loud noises outside of my apartment pretty much every night, and I only live in Seattle. There was also a guy who yelled out the window at the killer and scared him away, although unfortunately he later came back and attacked her in another location that was out of view.

I mean I’m not denying that there is some callousness and cowardice in the world. You see something going down maybe you just hope somebody else is gonna get involved, not you. But what they’re repeating is basically an urban legend, so it makes their super hero origin stories kinda weak. It’s like if Batman’s parents weren’t ever killed but he trained to fight crime because of a story he read in The Enquirer. Or if Harvey Dent decided to quit law because he heard about that lady who sued McDonalds just because she spilled some hot coffee on herself. He never heard the part about how it was a 79 year old woman and the coffee was served so hot she suffered third degree burns on her groin, was in the hospital for 8 days getting skin grafts and had to be treated for 2 years afterwards. Silly old gal.

Oh shit, I just got to the “In popular culture” part of the Wikipedia entry and it says that the Genovese murder was what inspired Rorschach to fight crime in Watchmen. Okay, so that explains it. Apparently it’s also mentioned in THE BOONDOCK SAINTS.

Zimmer seems very sincere about his desire to make the world a better place, but no matter how sincere they are you can’t deny there is an element of nerd play time in this. I mean they show him leaping across roof tops and doing hand stand pushups and shit, but of course none of that is ever relevant to what he does in the field. What, is he gonna chase a mugger up a fire escape and have to do a flip to catch him? No, when Zimmer actually goes on patrol all he does is dress “flamboyant” and hang out by a pay phone for hours hoping homophobes well do something to him. They don’t, but he does get to use his EMT training when an old (drunk?) dude gets clipped by a passing minivan.

That’s why I gotta respect this guy with the unimaginative name “Super Hero,” because he’s the only guy that admits he just likes to do it because it’s fun. He wears a tight uniform to showoff his giant pecs, and does the interview in front of his Corvette “The Supermobile.”

There’s another team that operates out of a tattoo parlor, those guys definitely seem more above creating elaborate masks than anything else. The leader also has a fake dreadlock wig. It’s weird, he looks way more threatening without all that shit on. I don’t know what he thinks it’s helping.

Maybe the most convincing guy is Dark Guardian. He’s a martial arts instructor with the balls to chase a much-larger-than-him drug dealer out of a park. But he only wears a motorcycle jacket, I don’t think anybody knows he’s supposed to be a super hero. Calling himself “The Dark Guardian” is clearly a detriment to his work. He even looks kind of ashamed when he says it to some beat cops, who just laugh at him.

The biggest clown in the movie is Orlando’s Master Legend, a crazy long-haired ex-hippie or rock no roller type in armor and helmet. He hits on “pretty ladies,” can’t stop pulling beers out of his “Justice Van” and stops in a bar for more alcohol and more hitting on girls. He likes to dramatically kick doors open, and on the DVD extras he punches a bunch of holes through a door while acting out some kind of cartoonish hostage rescue. It’s not clear if he was trying to pass it off as a real incident or not.

But even that nutball does serve a purpose, because he goes around giving protein bars to homeless people. This seems to be what all the “RLSH”s have figured out is a good use of their time, especially Portland’s Zeta Man and his wife/sidkick Apocalypse Meow, who spend alot of money putting together “Zeta Packs” of toiletries, socks and other useful items for the homeless. It seems to me like it’s more of a justification for their weird hobby of dress-up than it is an actual mission in life (Jesus didn’t need to dress up to do shit like that) but it doesn’t matter because the ultimate result is positive and it’s more than most of us are doing.

In one scene, Mr. Xtreme and some friends pass out food and water, supposedly while Comic-Con is going on not far away. “Are you guys from Comic-con?” a homeless woman asks. “No ma’am, we’re the real deal.”

I like this type of documentary. I have to admit it’s a freak show type appeal, I am mystified by these people and want to see them be crazy. But the filmatists are obviously sympathetic and trying to show where they’re coming from, and I do feel like I understand them more as people now even if it’s still their wackiness that I find interesting about them.

There are some sad and uncomfortable moments. In one scene Xtreme Man’s parents are helping him move out of his apartment. He tells the cameras that it’s to avoid retaliation from drug dealers and because living in his van is a better crime fighting strategy. In an easier-to-laugh-at moment Vigilante Spider talks about the life of a super hero, saying goodbye to your girlfriend before going out on patrol, etc. Asked if he really has a girlfriend, he says he meant it “metaphorically.” But that’s a rare moment where it seems like you’re supposed to be laughing at them for being nerds. Mostly it tries to give them a dignity that they sure aren’t giving themselves.

This is a well put together documentary, nicely shot, without narration. It does have shots that turn into comic book panels, a cliche I was just complaining about in my BUNRAKU review, but here the drawings are better so it works pretty well. The opening uses animation to illustrate a story that Mr. Xtreme tells about stopping a guy attacking a woman in an alley. He claims the guy got 34 years. Especially later in the movie after you’ve learned more about Mr. Xtreme it seems like the story can’t possibly be true, but he doesn’t make up any other blatant tall tales. I kinda wish they pressed him more on that story, or tried to find documentation of the alleged criminal case, but I guess that might tip this into too-uncomfortable, sweaty James Frey territory.

I feel like it gets a little repetitious in the middle section, but not too bad, and it’s a good pretty-short length for the subject. I like that it doesn’t really tell you what to think about all this. Obviously the people try to explain where they’re coming from (and you hear from a polite but not-on-board-with-this police officer too), but I felt like the filmatists left it at an appropriate question mark. Like The Riddler, from the comic books.

I was joking about this being the new DECLINE OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION, but I think the comparison almost works. In a world where the punk rock of old has been popularized, commodified and turned into a Broadway musical; where you don’t even have to not know how to play instruments, because many kids can create and distribute professional sounding music using their parents’ computers; where athletes and movie stars can wear mohawks, candy-colored hair, facial piercings and tattoos without anybody blinking an eye; where the director of HATED: GG ALLIN AND THE MURDER JUNKIES’s most recent movie grossed $581,464,305 worldwide according to Box Office Mojo – none of that punk rock shit is gonna shock anybody ever. But dressing up like a cartoon and trying to put your body in front of criminals is  kind of shocking. It’s crazy in both a he’s gonna get himself killed and a that lady is wearing a Star Trek uniform to jury duty on the Whitewater trial type of way, a combination of self delusion, selflessness, extreme nerdiness and probly in some cases mental imbalance. But in all cases they either don’t care about or don’t understand what the larger society thinks about them. And that’s how they’re like the punk rockers. They live with people staring or laughing at them and it doesn’t stop them from doing it, because their way of life is more important them than other people’s opinions of them. They find self-worth in the attention they get, or family in the people they meet who do the same things as them.

So why did this never happen much before? Comic book super heroes and masked vigilantes have existed in drawing form for, what, about 80 years? And I’m sure some people have tried to “patrol” before, but why did it take this long before it was widespread enough to do a documentary like this? Did it take postmodernism? Did there have to be a generation growing up on the movies based on the comic books commenting on the older comic books those comic book makers grew up on? Or was it just the internet? Was it just that people who did this knew they could show their costumes on the internet, and when they did it inspired other people and there were enough people doing it that it became a thing you can do instead of just a common fantasy?

Or was it the related phenomenon of The Nerdening of America (and the world)? The Harry Knowleses took back the word “geek,” younger kids grew up with it as something you want to be, super heroes became more mainstream entertainment as they took over as the primary source of big summer movies, “geeks” started to run parts of the media and Hollywood, other parts of the media and Hollywood started thinking they had to cater to “geeks,” big movie stars started thinking it was important to appear at the comic books convention… did it take that world existing for people to start “fighting crime” wearing crazy masks and shit? What would’ve happened if Death Wish ripoffs were as big as Spider-man?

I don’t really know what it is that caused this, but it’s an interesting phenomenon. I can’t wait until one of these nutballs catches a serious criminal. Hopefully that happens before one of them catches a bullet.

I guess I should mention it’s a G-rated documentary about cave paintings directed by that weirdo Werner Herzog. So alot of it is just the camera slowly panning back and forth across the same cave wall while squeaky violins and creepy chants lull you into a trance. In 3D!

As much as I loved BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS and as many good things I’ve heard about them I haven’t rushed out to see Herzog’s previous documentaries. But this really is released in 3D and has been playing for weeks at the Regal multiplex downtown. I had to support that. I don’t know if it’s playing in your town or not but I was surprised that it was still playing here when I went to see TRANSFORMERS 3. I might have to see it again to restore my karmic balance.

The subject is a cave in France, discovered by three explorers in 1994. A landslide sealed the entrance and freakishly preserved the oldest known cave paintings in the world, a bunch of fresh-looking drawings of animals like horses, lions and fighting rhinos. The crazy thing is these are great drawings, elegant lines that beautifully capture their subjects. You gotta wonder – how did these cave painters get that good? Before the landslide was the area littered with practice drawings that have been lost to time? Or was this an ancient person (or persons) just born with an incredible artistic gift? And if so how long has this sort of thing been going on? Back in the neanderthal days were there hairy motherfuckers born with the artistic soul of a Michelangelo or a Beethoven or a Michael Jackson? And did they find some way to express it before they got disemboweled by saber-toothed tigers?

How rare or appreciated were these particular paintings back in their day? Was this cave more like a museum, or an abandoned building covered in graffiti? Did we get lucky and the cave that got preserved happened to be one of the best, or were there tons of them as good as this?

Herzog narrates in his weird Peter Lorre-ish voice. He explains the discovery of the cave, who’s allowed to go in and how they’re studying it. Archaeologists tell us what they believe happened in the cave, what the area was like at the time, demonstrate how we believe their hunting weapons worked. Standard historical stuff, but this is Herzog, so he also goes off on some weird notions and tangents. And you will too during all that slow panning across horses and lions as the soundtrack haunts you with its avant garde music, whispers and heartbeats.

For example I started wondering about why all the paintings just show animals. Wouldn’t it be great if we had first-hand testimony of what people looked like back then? Was it taboo to draw humans? Or maybe this/these artist(s) only liked to draw animals, like a girl that only draws Hello Kitty. There actually is one place in the cave that they say depicts a human, but nobody ever saw it until Herzog extended a camera out on a pole to where it could film it. I couldn’t make out the human, but Herzog compares it to some of those old wide-hipped fertility statues you see some time. And he compares it to a BAYWATCH body type, but I don’t see it. Those are some big ladies, and it makes me wonder: does that mean that’s humanity’s natural shape? Is that what we’re actually supposed to look like, but we’ve molded ourselves unnaturally to where smaller is considered healthier? Or is that just evolution, and therefore natural?

How were the ladies getting that big back then, anyway? How much success were the hunters having? I guess maybe there were animals crawling all over the place for this painter to use as reference, maybe it was Meat Lovers Pizza every day. On the other hand why did he bother to paint them if everybody was kicking them out of the way everywhere they went? It would make sense if they were kinda hard to find and that’s why he wanted to share what they looked like.

There’s also a part of the cave that’s just a bunch of dots made out of hand prints. It’s abstract art! So that kinda proves that it’s not just some bullshit made up in the last century, there is actually a long tradition of non-representative art. Like, real fuckin long.

That would be crazy if there was all these antelopes and lions and then in one spot they just got a picture of a bowl of fruit. Or a butt.

There’s more to the cave than just paintings, by the way. There are animal bones, bear scratches, a skull set up almost like an altar. There’s a whole history in there, shit going down over thousands of years. People and bears trading off living in the same cave. I hope the bears appreciated the art in there. There are all kinds of stalactites that formed long after the paintings were made, they look like dripped wax to me. Beautiful.

This would be good in regular D, but I thought it was a good use of the 3D technology. It shows you how the artists used the curves of the walls. Like James Cameron’s GHOSTS OF THE ABYSS, where 3D Imax put you inside a tiny submersible with Bill Paxton, this makes you feel the claustrophobia of cramming into a narrow space with a crew and a bunch of camera equipment. And most of all it just adds that extra sense of being there in this sacred spot to receive a message of expression from a dude 32,000 years ago. I guarantee you this is the most exposure this artist ever got. Appreciated more after his death, like Van Gogh or Brandon Lee.

It does point to some limitations of 3D, though. There’s one scene where they’re walking to the cave, shot with a handheld camera, and that gave me the ol’ Blair Witch motion sickness some people complain about. I don’t usually get that. I can only imagine what those CRANK dudes plan to put us through with their 3D GHOST RIDER sequel. Somebody’s gonna get a detached retina I bet.

I’m not one of these people (James Cameron, one or two others) who thinks everything will be or should be in 3D. But I hope people continue to use it for interesting things. Hell, I’d even say this is an example of using it for important things. This cave was an awe-inspiring discovery, and it’s already growing mold from the people and air getting in there. It won’t stay preserved forever. They’ve made laser measurements of it, I’m sure they’ve heavily photographed it, but bringing in 3D cameras is a good idea too. Shit, I’m down with smellovision. I want to know what it smells like in there. Unless it smells like cave bears.

If somebody finds an even older cave, or remnants of Atlantis, if they find Al Capone’s other more often used vault, or it turns out there’s a secret porn room in one of the pyramids, or if they land on Mars, I vote Herzog gets first dibs on 3D documentation. We owe it to future generations, and to prehistoric man.

Alot of people didn’t until 2004 when the great local label Light in the Attic Records released Wheedle’s Groove, a compilation of songs by forgotten Seattle groups from 1965-1975, many of them with corny names like Black On White Affair, Robbie Hill’s Family Affair or Cold, Bold & Together. A cratedigging DJ named Mr. Supreme had discovered a few funk 45s with Seattle addresses on them, did some research and learned that a whole scene of talented musicians had thrived in Seattle’s Central District in the ’60s and ’70s, only to be forgotten because they never quite hit outside of our isolated encampment here. This documentary extends their story into a visual medium.

It’s mostly an interview movie. There’s a tiny bit of vintage footage, and plenty of old photos and hand drawn flyers to spruce things up visually. Mr. Supreme tells his story of driving to addresses he found on dusty record labels and publicity stills, finding nothing but bushes or knocking on doors of people who had no idea what he was talking about, eventually meeting people who knew people out of pure coincidence (the lady at the post office who randomly strikes up a conversation about the funk band her boyfriend was in).

Grammy Award winner and guy-I-once-saw-leaving-a-Thai-restaurant Sir-Mix-a-lot narrates and also is interviewed in the role of guy-from-Seattle-people-know-about-besides-”grunge”-bands. They also keep showing musicians from white rock groups: a guy from Soundgarden, a guy from Mudhoney, a guy with a beard and a large scarf. These little parts kind of annoyed me because they imply some kind of importance to these people vouching for the quality of the music being discussed. The movie doesn’t make it seem like they know jack shit about soul music and doesn’t seem to draw very strong parallels between the two scenes, so it’s not clear why I’m supposed to care what they have to say about it.

But don’t worry, most of the interviews are with the musicians from the compilation. We see them in their normal houses, their UW t-shirts, sitting on their couches or in restaurant booths, talking about the old days, what the different clubs were like, what they dreamed about accomplishing, who they met. They talk about the Black Panthers and trying to put messages in their music, about not being able to get the gigs the white musicians got. They show a funny picture of an all white band called “Push” that got to play all the good gigs – man, I wish they dug those guys up for an interview!

Eventually they all figured out that Jimi and Quincy had to leave Seattle to make it big, so they tried that too. But of course nobody really pulled it off. Quincy Jones is actually interviewed too and some of the people talk about meeting him and almost getting a deal or something, but of course he doesn’t remember them. Turns out his brother ran a black radio station here that was very influential, though.

Of course the movie’s got kind of a sadness to it, because you know they’d rather be on camera talking about their long music careers than about the one that got away. And alot of us can relate to this feeling. I’m not a musician but I know what it’s like to juggle what you really want to be doing with punching a clock, your dreams of what you want to accomplish seeming less achievable every day older you get. But also you start to appreciate what you have and the reality that most people don’t get a bunch of money for having fun so you gotta do it for yourself. It bummed me out to hear one musician saying “It wasn’t my dream to be a teacher” and not following that up with “but I never could’ve imagined how fulfilling this would be” or something like that.

But also you can’t feel too sorry for them. They had fun while it lasted. I bet they can tell some stories the other guys in the teacher’s lounge couldn’t. They have this impressive thing in their past that some of the young people want to hear about. Or at least DJ Mr. Supreme. Good for them.

It’s kind of funny, they show these old photos and then cut to the people now, it shows you how badly we white people age. The black people and the Chinese guy look good, and you think “Yeah, he looks like a funk guy,” but the white people look like old grandpas. One exception is Kenny G, the epitome of smooth jazz horrors and a member of Cold Bold & Together. He actually seems really nice and humble. And there’s a funny scene about the rest of the band debating over whether him supposedly playing like Grover Washington Jr. made it okay to have a white guy in the band.

I enjoyed this movie because the subject is interesting to me. But it doesn’t have that lucky spark that makes a great documentary, which I think usually comes from having interesting people on camera. I mean these people are interesting, but they’re not the kind of fascinating people you would want to watch even if they were talking about something else. One possible exception is this guy Kearney Barton, who it turns out is a legendary Seattle sound engineer. Light in the Attic brings the Wheedle’s Groove musicians to Barton’s house to record a new album. His house is filled with chaotic piles of boxes and recordings and the motherlode of vintage recording equipment, including a soundboard with hundreds of wires coming out of it like the aftermath of a noodle factory explosion. Barton doesn’t say much on camera, but seeing his house makes me think an interesting movie could be made just about that guy.

I feel like alot of the stuff isn’t explained very well, for example Mr. Supreme keeps mentioning “Golden Oldies” but I don’t know if people outside of Seattle will understand that he’s talking about a record store. But maybe they will. It also looked like they weren’t gonna explain where the hell the title comes from, but then there’s a scene during the credits that explains it pretty well. (”The Wheedle” was a children’s book character created to promote the Space Needle who used to be the mascot for the Supersonics before they switched to a sasquatch and before they left town. “Wheedle’s Groove” I guess was the name of a song a radio station used during their coverage of the ‘77-’78 NBA finals.)

If you watch the trailer below it shows a touching story of rebirth or something, and that’s there. One of the highlights for me is late in the game when Robbie Hill plays drums for the new recording they’re doing and holy shit, I didn’t expect him to be as good as he is. But to me the movie doesn’t go deep enough or have a strong enough story arc to be great. The interviews start to get repetitive at times, showing multiple musicians saying the same sort of thing in different words, and there’s not a whole lot of surprises. But it’s only 87 minutes so it’s not that big of a problem.

Some of the more interesting aspects of this story I wasn’t sure if the filmatists were being subtle or hadn’t noticed them. The racial component gives you some things to think about. The movie describes a racially segregated Seattle, with the vast majority of Seattle’s black population living in the Central District at that time (something that hasn’t changed that drastically I don’t think). This was definitely caused by racism, but the movie argues that it was a good place to live culturally and even for its view of the Puget Sound. Mix-a-lot compares it to Harlem. It seems like all these bands and clubs could not have risen outside of that culture, and these bands wouldn’t exist.

But in order to make their dreams come true and live off of doing the thing they loved they would’ve had to succeed outside of that neighborhood, and that wasn’t happening. The movie recognizes the irony of the nerdy white guy who had to fight to get into one of the bands being the only one to go on to huge success as a musician. Out of respect, though, it doesn’t mention that in order to do that he had to alchemically alter jazz into the whitest, least soulful style of music imaginable.

The record label that made this rediscovery and documentary possible is of course run by a young white guy, because honestly that’s the profile of most of the people that are into this type of music today. Why is that? And bringing in the white musicians from the ’90s raises some questions too. I honestly don’t know, do those guys still make a good living off their music, or are they starting to be in a position like the funk guys? The funk guys talk about “grunge” as if it’s something that’s still going on, that you can be nationally successful if you play that type of music, but I don’t think that’s been the case for a good 10-15 years. They probly got more money in the short run but I think most of those record deals fell apart pretty quick.

Whatever the situation is there is one good moment that justifies the inclusion of at least one of those musicians, when he discusses the gospel version of one of his songs recorded for the new album. That’s a good moment. I gotta get that Kearney Barton album, I guess.

Of course the movie made me dig out the first album to listen to again, unfortunately the disc was not inside the case. I’m gonna have to get DJ Mr. Supreme to do his detective thing and figure out where my CD is, or maybe somebody at the post office will tell me. It’s a good album though – like the scarf guy says in the movie it’s exciting not because it’s a forgotten chapter in Seattle music history, but because the music is actually good. There are definitely some corny lyrics on there about sisters and brothers getting together and what not, because alot of these guys were really into Sly and the Family Stone. In fact, Robbie Hill’s Family Affair does a song called “I Just Want To Be (Like Myself)” and I’m pretty sure they knew about Sly’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin).” But there’s some good shit on there, my favorites from what I remember being the great “Little Love Affair” by Patrinell Staten and The Overton Berry Trio doing “Hey Jude” live at Seattle’s Doubletree Inn where they must’ve been the bar band. The former is heavily featured in the movie, the latter discussed on a deleted scene but not played (I don’t blame them for not wanting to pay for the publishing).

Anyway, I’m glad they dug this stuff up, it’s interesting to a guy like me. I wouldn’t say I highly recommend this movie, but I regularly recommend it for people interested in funk and soul music or Seattle history, and if you’re into both like me obviously you got no choice but to see it.

APPENDIX: Alphabetical list of Seattle things I’m proud of, with optional notes (because I want you to know there are other things here besides Starbucks and Amazon).

Allen, Paul – he’s a Microsoft millionaire everybody hates, but I like that he produced TITUS, kept the Cinerama in business and built a ridiculous rock and sci-fi museum
The Cinerama – home of giant screen, chocolate popcorn and Blade’s costume
Cupcake Royale – people get snobby and try to say other lesser known cupcake joints are better. Might be true but I just had a 2-day old Red Velvet and that shit was still delicious stale.
Dick’s Burgers – I actually don’t go there, but I like how in the parking lot it just says “DICKS” with an arrow pointing in
Elliot Bay Bookstore
Elvis was here – he led a marching band past the Seattle Center fountain. It’s on film.
Gates, Bill – not for the computer shit but because he’s building this huge headquarters just for charity work, that’s pretty cool. It’s hard to hate some of our rich people we got here.
Hendrix, Jimi
Jones Soda – well, not anymore. They stopped making their excellent cola and I think they got sold to out of towners
Lee, Bruce – somebody build a fuckin statue, for Christ’s sake
McQ
Mighty-O Donuts – I guess these are vegan but you wouldn’t know it because they’re so soft and light
Molly Moon’s Ice Cream - I guess as long as I’m acknowledging donuts and cupcakes I should give it up for one of our ice cream geniuses. There are other good shops too such as Full Tilt.
Mystery Books – this is how I find out when a Charles Willeford book I don’t have has been reprinted, it shows up at Mystery Books, which is all mystery/suspense/crime type books
Rat City Roller Girls – geez, what does Reanimateher gotta do to get MVP?
Scarecrow Video - gigantic, independent, awesome and requested in the comments
Seattle Public Library, downtown branch - I bet you guys don’t have a library that looks like this. And I’m told they have both of my books
Seattle Storm
Top Pot Donuts – I’ve heard of fancy donuts in Portland and NYC, I’d love to try them but Top Pot excels at the fundamentals such as the old fashioned glazed
Watts, Reggie – I left him off because he moved to New York, but I’m claiming Jimi and Bruce so what the hell. By request, I’m adding him to the list!

I realize this list makes me sound like a fat guy eating cupcakes and donuts all day, this is not the case, it just happens we got some good bakers around here I guess. We are a sweet pastry town. Maybe that’s why McQ wanted to be a cop here.

Basically it’s the same plot as THE MECHANIC. Charles Bronson teaches Jan Michael Vincent how to be an assassin but then Jan Michael Vincent tries to kill him at the end.

It’s an interesting movie, but a simple one. I should’ve seen it without all the buildup. The dumb thing is I really wanted to see it before the hype anyway. I think I first learned about Banksy when he made his own version of Paris Hilton’s CD and “reverse shoplifted” it into Virgin Megastores so that people would accidentally buy it. When I read about that I looked him up and found pictures of his funny, clever, sometimes powerful stenciled street images that turned cement into trap doors or windows or Charles Manson standing on the side of the street hitchhiking. I watched that video of him smuggling his paintings into museums. I got  that book about him. I wondered how the hell he did it when I read about him sneaking (for a couple minutes) a hooded Guantanamo Bay prisoner dummy into the landscape of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disneyland. So I was excited that there was a movie about Banksy, or by him, or whatever this was.

It is a little bit about Banksy, and although he continues to hide his face and voice there are a few revealing moments. I like the part where he’s showing Thierry his studio and digs up a box of realistic currency he made up with Princess Di’s face on it. He explains that he was gonna throw it out windows but got scared when he realized he’d made a million pounds of counterfeit money.

And they show that whole Disneyland incident from the inside. Turns out it was kind of spur of the moment and it was inflatable. So that explains how he carried it in there.

As an aside I gotta say I kind of resent the movie’s implication that there’s something sinister about the security swooping in. Of course they have to figure out what’s going on and make sure everything’s safe. They don’t want it to turn out to be the beginning of some crazy plot, or for some inflatable dummy carrying dipshit to get his head chopped off by a rollercoaster. I’m glad they have security like that, ’cause if some maniac or terrorist tries to pull some shit to ruin Disneyland for the rest of us I want them to be taken care of by some serious black-ops of the Caribbean, not bumbling rent-a-cops. And also I don’t want nincompoops who climb over fences to get run over (which is the cause of the vast majority of deaths that have happened at Disneyland [not that those people are nincompoops, my thoughts and prayers go out to their families, etc.]).

So lay off Disneyland, and I will not budge on that. Even though Star Tours was the first thing I thought of when I heard the title of this movie.

Anyway, this is not a thorough documentary on Banksy or on street art in general. It’s also not the most in-depth documentary footage of Shepard Fairey (the “Obey Andre the Giant”/Obama “Hope” poster guy who introduces Thierry to Banksy) – I know I’ve seen one about him before, I thought maybe it was a segment in Doug Pray’s INFAMY, but the IMDb doesn’t agree with me.

Anyway, I’d like to see that movie, and the access that Guetta had to all these great artists during their clandestine night time runs makes you imagine a great one, but judging from the footage you see and the obvious lack of planning I believe them when they say there was no way to really use it. It wasn’t alot of talking or planning or even clear shots of the finished work, it was just him following these dudes sneaking around.

So what the movie is really about, and what’s most interesting about it, is this character, this goofy, upbeat Frenchman with the old timey sideburns. He’s kind of a hanger on who idolizes these guys, and doesn’t have alot of common sense so there’s a couple funny parts where Fairey has to tell him to turn off lights or stand in certain places and ask him if he understands why what he was doing was calling attention to them.

But as he does it more and more he actually does become knowledgeable enough to be a big help to them, to act as a lookout, bring artists to the best spots, connect them with collaborators and stuff like that.

The last act, where Thierry becomes “Mr. Brainwash,” is also pretty funny, illustrates Banksy-as-director’s point about art becoming a commodity and brings up questions about what is art, what is good art, is Banksy’s art that’s painted on a wall and gets scrubbed off more valuable to culture than this other guy’s art that’s hung in a gallery and sold for thousands of dollars (hint: yes). And it even questions Banksy’s own ideas because he thinks everybody should create art but then obviously resents the derivative and circusy way that his buddy ends up doing it.

Also it’s interesting because although alot of the Mr. Brainwash art (like the Andy Warhol redos) is really obvious and stupid, it does look like the whole spectacle of the show would’ve been pretty cool to go to, what with its TVs stacked into the shape of giant robots and grafitti everywhere and what not.

So I liked the movie but I gotta admit I didn’t love it. I think these points are more cute than profound. I guess to me the interesting part is the street, not the art – the way the movie promotes the value of putting art in public spaces, although it’s illegal. Because to me and the majority of humans an art gallery or especially a high priced art auction has no relevance in our lives. We will never see an auction unless you count the scene in MONEY TALKS where he tries to buy the expensive car that has drugs stashed in it. So although it might be interesting as an abstract idea we really only give between .25 and 1.2 shits about if some rich assholes get swindled and pay too much for some bad paintings or whatever. And we already saw WILD STYLE so we know that the grafitti artists got ruined when they started making a play for the legal art world (except for the late Rammellzee). It’s a good reminder but not a new revelation.

So if you’re somehow seeing this movie later than even me, I say dial down the expectations. I understand why this made everybody smile, but not why it made them do backflips. One guess is that many of them didn’t know about Banksy, so the shots of his art and little stories about the funny things he’s done were brand new to them, and obviously that’s gonna make it more exciting than to somebody that’s already enjoyed that stuff before.

But also there’s this idea that the movie is some kind of puzzle, that there are tricks and clues and things to figure out. Without really knowing the specifics I’ve been hearing all year about this movie being a hoax or having some kind of prankish aspect to it. And because of the things Banksy has done before that was easy to believe. But now that I’ve seen the movie and talked to some people about it I’m convinced that it’s a complete misunderstanding.

Part of it has to do with Banksy’s anonymity. He shows up with his face hidden so for some reason some people’s reflex is to think it’s some kind of guessing game, that you gotta figure out his identity. I first was confused by this when I read Harry’s review, where he said in the headline that Banksy was actually Guy Ritchie, and then in the review said:

“I’m kidding. I know GUY isn’t BANKSY – as I just got off the phone with a friend that has met BANKSY and while he told me Guy isn’t BANKSY he said that was a very smart guess… So I suppose it could be MATTHEW VAUGHN. Or anybody. That’s part of the fun of this Artist. The mystery.”

But I don’t think we should call in Poirot just yet. There isn’t much of a mystery. I feel that I can confidently state that Banksy is not some celebrity’s secret side project.

One time I was waiting for a bus in a quiet neighborhood after midnight. Usually you don’t see other people around there at night unless it’s some drunk that comes up and starts telling you his life story. This night I heard somebody behind me, I turned around and saw a tall young guy in a hoodie with a green bandana pulled up to his eyes. For a second I thought “oh shit, a fuckin bandit? This guy is gonna try to mug me?” But after we stared each other down he stepped into the alley and examined the tags on the wall.

I’m pretty sure that wasn’t Banksy, but like Banksy the guy works in the medium of vandalism. In his profession it’s not unusual or quirky to wear a mask, it’s just common sense. If you watch graffiti documentaries (including EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, incidentally) you’ll see that many of them wear bandanas or have their faces blurred, and almost none of them use their real names. One exception is Fairey, and in whatever that other movie I saw was you’ll see why that’s a mistake, because he gets arrested all the time even when not caught in the act. He’ll go to a town for a show and they’ll be waiting for him.

I don’t have the same problem, I really am a weirdo for being so reclusive, but I’ve had similar accusations over the years. People used to always say there was more than one person writing as Vern, which is what one of my buddies said about Banksy after watching this movie. And I remember when I wrote a really negative review of JAY AND SILENT BOB’S STRIKE BACK on The Ain’t It Cool News some guy in the talkbacks was convinced that I was Kevin Smith and he was making fun of other talkbackers for not getting the joke.

It’s not true, there’s no guessing game to play, like with Jack the Ripper. I’m just some dude, and I’m pretty sure the same is true of Banksy. It’s not a joke, he has a recorded history as a graffiti artist turned stenciler turned everything else. I never heard of Mr. Brainwash before, but the movie shows footage of him with well known street artists across many years, plenty of people vouch for his art really existing in L.A. well before the movie, the L.A. Weekly cover story shown in the movie really exists, and he’s still doing shows.

The movie seems real to me, and I so does this interview about it with Banksy and this one with his collaborators.

I take it at face value. There’s no joke to figure out here, fellas. It’s just a documentary. If it’s a mockumentary then it’s not a good one, because it’s only interesting if it’s real. The point is that the guy making the movie really did become a high selling hipster (I’m I using that correctly, kids?) artist. It’s meaningless if it’s a put on. And Banksy, experienced prankster that he is, would’ve come up with something way crazier and funnier if the movie was based around some kind of set up. What’s interesting about it is this strange character and the unlikely things that happen to him in real life. If it’s life it’s interesting, if it’s satire it’s fuckin weak.

So I feel exactly opposite of this review. If it’s a real documentary, which it is, then it’s pretty good. If it’s a mockumentary, which it’s not, then it’s kinda dumb.

But I feel kinda bad even bringing all that up because if there’s anything worth discussing about the movie it’s not this stupid argument based on a weird misconception and a bunch of people trying too hard to be in-the-know. So I want to end on a completely unrelated note. What should it be? Uh, how ’bout… it was cool to see Banksy actually cutting out his stencils. I mean, it’s just a dude with some paper and an exacto knife, cutting out shapes. I guess it figures that’s what it would be, huh?

Here’s one of my favorite Banksys:

I only wish there was a picture of that one being removed.

This episode opens in the SUV with Colonel Fortunato getting a phone call. “Is that the narc call we’ve been expecting?” Seagal asks/expositions. They go to back up narcotics in stopping a vehicle they suspect of transporting large quantities of the wicked substances. As they watch the stop go down Seagal observes, “That’s strange, man. They got two women in the vehicle.”

It gets stranger, Chief. As the dope dog sniffs around you notice they got a baby in the car too. “Just ain’t right” Seagal says. This theme goes back to the previous episode, Seagal’s indignation at people putting children at risk by having them around criminal activity.

It turns out it’s just weed, but it’s huge bricks with the weight already Sharpied on them. They use Fortunato’s phone to add it up and if the measurements are correct (which I bet they are, if you’re responsible enough to label each package I’m sure you’re gonna get it right) it’s just under 100 pounds.

There’s a young dude who takes responsibility for the whole thing. The girl is his sister and he claims she didn’t know the drugs were in the car. “I fucked up, man,” he says. But his admission doesn’t warm Seagal to him, he’s fuckin pissed that this guy got his sister and baby niece involved in a major crime. He actually tells him “I don’t give a fuck about you,” a rare abandonment of the I Need Time To Change principles.

At the end of the scene we found out that the sister was not charged, but their mother was, which I didn’t understand.

Back at Steven’s house we see him living an idealized New Orleans life, playing guitar on the porch, and the magic of editing (I think) implies that he’s looking out on a lake with an alligator in it. He tells Elle that he was invited to be grand marshal in the Krewe of Alla Mardis Gras parade. Don’t worry, it’s not one of those titties and Russian sex slaves kind of deals, this is the one in Jefferson Parish that’s for families and bead-haters. There’s a flashback to the first season children’s hospital episode as Seagal says he wants to bring some of the sick children to enjoy the parade with him. (They’re gonna be bummed when they find out which one it is, though.)

Friday night the Squad gets briefed for a “Narc Raid,” where once again we find a crying baby. There’s also a mom in the house who’s “very ill” and the daughter doesn’t want her to have a heart attack from all this commotion. The suspect is the man of the house, and the Squad lecture him about having all this weed around a baby. He says he locks it up, I guess believing that they’re worried his baby is gonna eat the weed or something. But they point out having that around could cause a break-in or something where the baby could get hurt. (I’d be more worried about Nic Cage’s BAD LIEUTENANT character busting in and shooting the baby.)

The dude says he has no choice, he has to sell weed because he lost his job and he has to support his family. Larry Dyess says, “You ain’t gettin no father of the year award for this, all right?”

Man, Larry gets all the best lines. That’s not as good as that one about the coconut, but it’s good. Seagal gets to lecture the guy though. He says “Well, if you got kids, what the fuck is wrong with you, man?” and “Get a new life, bro” and “To me it’s unconscionable.” Good word, could’ve been the episode title too. Or a movie where he plays the bad guy: STEVEN SEAGAL IS… UNCONSCIONABLE.

Besides addressing the children-in-danger theme this case is also notable for having a part where Seagal pulls out a big knife to flip over a bag of weed.

Their next call involves a “suspicious character slingin drugs in this area.” Seagal seems to kind of respect the operation around here, complimenting their “very, very good lookout system.” They find a bunch of young black men hanging around smoking in a parking lot and as they frisk and condescendingly question them one of the dudes says, “Steven Seagal, huh? When all this is over y’all don’t mind if I get his autograph, right?”

The sad thing about this scene is that it does turn out that these guys are totally innocent, and they’re completely blase about it. I mean, lately I been reading alot of people whine about having to get a pat down and (for god’s sake) having to briefly turn off their silly electronical doodads just for the mere right of being protected from terrorism and plane crashes when they fly on an airplane. Like, “This is America, I am white, and have never attended a rap concert before, how dare you give me a light pat down just because it is your job and responsibility to protect me and my fellow travellers!” Meanwhile here are some black youths not asking to be involved in air transport who have to get a much more invasive search and interrogation because they were in a parking lot. And they don’t seem offended at all.

But this leads to a historic LAWMAN moment, the first time when the starstruck individual demonstrates legitimate Seagalogical knowledge. Usually it’s “my auntie loves your movies!” or “my wife loves you!” or a sense that they sort of remember seeing his movies years ago. This guy not only starts listing which ones he owns, but he goes straight to the DTV Era. “I got BELLY OF THE BEAST, I got TICKER, uh, INTO THE SUN…”

Larry (only familiar with the Golden through Silver eras, I’ve noticed) says, “What about the classics? What about UNDER SIEGE?”

The guy says, “UNDER SIEGE, I got ABOVE THE LAW…”

“OUT FOR JUSTICE?”

“HARD TO KILL… I got alla that, man.”

Did you see that, though? He started with obscurities. One of the best and craziest of the DTV Era, then one of the shoddiest ones. And he ends with all the best of the filmography. He’s well-rounded.

There also turns out to be a mom with a young girl there, a toddler. She holds the girl up to see Seagal and says it’s the man from that movie EXIT WOUNDS. On one hand I’m kinda concerned if this little girl really is familiar with EXIT WOUNDS, on the other hand it’s only a movie. We know letting her watch Seagal have a blade fight with MJW is better than having her in the car during drug runs.

(And by the way if you’re thinking Seagal should do a TSA reality show in order to make the pat downs go over better with the public I’m sure they’ve considered it, but figured the autographs would cause too much flight delay)

Anyway, Seagal hugs the little EXIT WOUNDS fan, ’cause he loves the children. At the parade (which is not too heavily attended, looks like a typical small town parade) Seagal wears a big cowboy hat, and people in the crowd drink from plastic cups with his picture on them. Some guy in the crowd yells “I was arrested by Steve!” And the kids talk about Seagal and Elle being a cute couple.

Don’t you get it, man? The children are the innocents. Keep them away from the drugs, and in the parades and movie theaters.

* * *

Episode 2.8: “Under the Influence”

The final aired episode of Season 2 begins with Fortunato sneezing from a “nasty bug” that’s going around. But a case of the sniffles can’t keep him away from yet another narcotics briefing and raid. Finally we move away from the weed dealers and get to the hard drugs, a gal suspected of dealing coke out of her home.

At the briefing Seagal asks “How we gonna make entry?”

“We have the ram,” one officer says.

So you get to see a door get busted, but I guess they’re not fast enough. She apparently flushes her crack down the toilet. They figure that out because there’s a bunch of money floating in the toilet. She claims she dropped it. You know how that is.

Somebody has to pull all the money out as evidence, so you get to see how much it was. I don’t know if it’s the economy or what but it’s not as much as you might expect a crack dealer to have. There’s just one $100 bill, four twenties, one ten and two fives. (Not enough people use tens, by the way. I like tens, it’s a good denomination in my opinion.)

Despite her apparently lax business the lady is kinda lucky because all they find is some weed and one tiny crack rock. Coulda been much worse. Way to flush, lady.

I noticed the suspect was wearing a sweatshirt for a school called John McDonogh. I looked up the name and it turns out John McDonogh was an interesting figure in New Orleans history. He failed at a senate bid and at wooing some well known public figure lady, but he succeeded in business. Unfortunately he was a slave owner, and even though he did eventually free them he made them pay for it, so even then they had to keep working for years. On the other hand he did contribute to an organization that helped former slaves go to Liberia. I mean, maybe he did it for the wrong reasons, I don’t know. Most significantly for our purposes here he was very reclusive and miserly but when he died he willed his money to public schools for freed slaves and poor whites. And his family were pissed off like the family in GRAN TORINO. So there were 20 high schools in New Orleans named after him. Eventually they changed the names of most of them as part of a movement to stop having shit named after slave owners. But there are a couple left and I guess one of them must be real proud to have one of their alumni on the A&E Network claiming she accidentally dropped $200 in a toilet.

The next case involves a vacant lot that has caused numerous complaints of drug dealing and/or shady shit. I guess the guys were tired of being shown running around at their age so they brought a new team member named Marcus. He’s young and in shape so he hops a fence and a guy that sees him runs for it. When they all corner the suspect and pin him down he uses the ol’ “I ran because I didn’t know you were police” line. They’re annoyed by that so they end up being kind of degrading to him, they make him sit on a bucket.

To his credit though Seagal feels bad for the guy when they find out he’s had 12 felonies and 52 misdemeanors, making him a “big time code 6,” or habitual offender. “How you feelin? All right?” Seagal asks, and says he hopes they can get him help. (It looks bad at this point, though.)

To lighten the mood Seagal teases Lawrence about how he should’ve hopped the fence to come help.

Now poor Marcus is regretting going with the Squad because he picked up Fortunato’s nasty bug. Not only does he have to be sick but he has to have Seagal rub oils on his back to stimulate his lungs. I forget if it was Lawrence or Larry but somebody says “Put the witch doctor on him” and somebody else, “Here come the voodoo doctor, y’all.” Anyway Marcus claims it’s making him feel better after three and a half minutes of oiliness.

The next case is another sad one, some old dude in a straw hat driving drunk with no tire at all on the right rear wheel. He’s all confused about “Why my truck runnin so rough?” and can’t follow a pen for the field sobriety test because he’s got a glass eye. Seagal calls him “buddy” three times and one of his charges is for “improper equipment.”

The episode ends at the Accupuncture and Herbal Center, where Seagal helps choose some herbs to make into tea for the team to drink for soothing the effects of the nasty bug. There’s a dramatic musical buildup to Lawrence drinking his tea from a Hello Kitty cup. He doesn’t gag or anything, he’s fine, but afterwards they joke about having a bad reaction and having to go to an actual hospital.

This is an enjoyable episode, but sort of a poor choice for a series finale if that turns out to be what it is. (The A&E websight lists the swordsmanship episode “Blade Master” as the final episode numerically, which makes more sense although they aired it at the beginning of the season.)

* * *

SEASON 2 CONCLUSIONS

Season 2 of LAWMAN was enjoyable. It introduced a little more of Seagal’s home life and brought in his love of and skill with swords, which I always approve of. It put him in the action a little more, including numerous drug raids, and had more laughing and teasing between him and the other officers.

I can’t find any information about whether or not another season of LAWMAN is planned. He’s already filmed a new non-reality series and is still making movies, so it might be hard for him to get back to. On the other hand, he seems to enjoy it.

People often ask me if I’ll ever do an updated edition of my book Seagalogy. I don’t think it’s the time yet, but I do hope to do it some day down the line when Titan Books asks me to, or if that never happens then when the rights revert to me years from now. Whenever that is I don’t look forward to the challenge of figuring out how to cover his TV shows. I did a whole chapter on TICKER (where he’s not even the main character) so how much do I need for 8 hours of reality television?

More importantly, what am I gonna do with the Eras? He’s gonna keep doing direct-to-video movies for the foreseeable future, so should I just consider the DTV Era to go on forever?

Well, I have a new theory about that. Only time will tell if this pans out, but I think we’re in a new era that might be called the Experimental Era or the Dabbling Era or something like that. After an entire books-worth of movies built around a fairly consistent persona, in recent years Seagal has broken that pattern, he’s been messing around and trying new things. When the book ended he had just done URBAN JUSTICE and PISTOL WHIPPED, and I was convinced he was starting a comeback, at least quality-wise. Unfortunately since then I don’t think his movies have lived up to the promise of those two, and one of them (AGAINST THE DARK) is my current pick for his worst movie to date. So it doesn’t seem like his heart is in at as much as it was for a minute there.

But that’s just the DTV movies. On the other hand we have his really funny appearance in MACHETE, which was his first time on the big screen since HALF PAST DEAD in ‘02 and his first time ever playing a villain. We have his sudden reinvention as a supposed-real-life cop, turned into two seasons of reality television, something that’s completely new for him. Next we’ll have at least one season of TRUE JUSTICE, his first non-reality show, also something new for him, especially if he’s more of a team leader character than the central character, which is the impression I get from the trailer that’s online somewhere. These new projects where he mixes it up seem to be where he puts his energy and enthusiasm, so that’s why I think testing new flavors may end up being the defining quality of this stage in his career. But we’ll see.

In the near future I also hope to review BORN TO RAISE HELL, the new Seagal movie that’s available in Region 2. But before I do either of those things I think it’s important to fulfill previous obligations, so I will be reviewing the last four episodes of season 2 (and the series?) of STEVEN SEAGAL: LAWMAN. At the end of those I will introduce a new still-evolving theory about the current state of Seagalogy.Episode 2.5: “Gimme Shelter”

Despite the title the Rolling Stones do not appear on this episode, so don’t get your hopes up.

This episode’s first incident seems to be there just to show-off the high tech capabilities of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Department. It takes place in a “problematic area,” so problematic in fact that a police helicopter is on patrol there, to provide an eye in the sky and a first line of defense against air pirates or hot air balloon attacks. The Squad are called in to stop a white Mustang with stolen plates and a sticker that says “Whodat?”. A photo of the vehicle is sent to their Blackberries. On second thought, it might be product placement.

After stopping the vehicle and arguing with the driver and passenger it turns out to be a damn clerical error – the vehicle had been carjacked six months ago, but it was recovered on the same night, and never cleared out of the police database. It is not clear if it was the owner or carjacker who put the sticker on, which has something to do with the New Orleans Saints. Anyway, the driver and passenger are innocent of license plate theft, but still have to be taken in on “outstanding attachments,” which is not as much of a compliment as it sounds like.

Next they go after a driver who actually is guilty of three hit and runs in a row. Nothing too exciting happens except that Lawrence refers to the truck as a “she” and Seagal wears a leather trenchcoat with a backwards baseball cap.

The third traffic stop is more Seagalogically notable. Seagal and friends get really upset when they see a guy driving a pickup truck with a big rottweiler chained up in the back. They’re worried the dog could fall or jump out and get strangled. The driver seems pretty shocked to be surrounded by a bunch of really emotional cops, the most emotional of course being Seagal, saying “I don’t like the way you got that dog tied like that” and “I don’t like the way you got this, that’s not right. I’m a dog man, I got alot of dogs” and “Put your dog inside the thing, man.”

The driver seems really shocked and confused, I think maybe they’re treating his dog like more of a baby than necessary.  But once he realizes they’re serious he complies and apologizes. Seagal explains to the cameras, “We’re out here to try to protect everybody, even dogs.”

I felt a little sorry for the guy, because he obviously didn’t mean to harm the dog and seemed kind of hurt to be treated like an animal abuser, something he clearly doesn’t see himself as. But if he’s seen OUT FOR JUSTICE he knows he’s lucky. In that movie Seagal witnessed a fictional vehicle-related instance of dog abuse and at the end of the movie he saw the guy again, recognized him and kicked him in the balls. From the back, too, one of the rarest forms of ball kicking.

Anyway, the incident “really got” Seagal, inspiring him to take his wife to the “Humane Way” animal shelter, where 2 out of 3 dogs have to be put down. His wife cries and is embarrassed about it but Seagal tells her, “That’s what happens when you have a heart.”

Back on the beat, the Squad report to a break-in where a unit is already on the scene. A guy in a tank top is handcuffed outside his mother’s house, because “his mama put him out.” But she never did any paperwork to officially evict him (why would she?) and now he’s trying to get back in by throwing a coconut through the window. So there’s nothing really to do here except enjoy the absurdity of the situation. As Larry explains it, “He wasn’t formally evicted, so it’s still his residence. But he did throw a coconut through the back winda, turns out it’s his winda, and his coconut.”

Honestly I would like to see at least one Seagal cop movie that works this type of random oddness into the script, to really capture the surreal quality of police work that you don’t get in a standard action movie. And if his colleagues here aren’t in the movie they should at least be consultants.

At the end of the episode Seagal makes good on his promise to help the animal shelter by making an appearance at an “Adoption Event” and encouraging the people who show up to adopt some of these dogs so they don’t get put down. It’s funny, I went to that Thunderbox show, I know how dedicated some of his fans are, and I can honestly imagine a whole bunch of those people from that show adopting dogs just because Seagal encouraged them to. But I’m not sure how I feel about some of them owning pitbulls. It’s nice of him though.

Some of the people seem to be joking around with Seagal, saying things like “With your blessing we’d gladly adopt.” I don’t think they’re big Seagal fans or anything but I’m sure they understand that it’s pretty cool to have Seagal’s blessing for their dog ownership. That’s better than papers.

In the tradition of Seagal’s DTV era this scene has some obviously redubbed lines. But at least it’s his real voice.

At the end he concludes, “It was my honor to help the animals in this Parish.” (Yeah, tell that to the nutria.)

* * *

Episode 2.6: “On Dangerous Ground”

Wait a minute, that title is just a synonym for a Seagal movie title. That’s kind of lazy. They didn’t do “Difficult to Kill” or “Labelled For Death” or “This Day You Die.” And this one doesn’t take place in Alaska or deal with corrupt oil companies or anything cool like that. Oh well.

The episode begins with the Seagal Squad meeting with the narcotics team, who have a warrant for a crack dealer. During this scene there’s a shot of an officer playing with his wedding ring, which of course in an actual action movie would mean that he’s doing this to avenge the death of his wife (see HALF PAST DEAD), or it would be foreshadowing to show he’s gonna die in the raid and it’s tragic because he has a wife at home (TOP GUN). But on this show it has no specific narrative meaning, it’s just a moment. Don’t worry. Nobody dies. (SPOILER)

They decide that “Chief Seagal’s gonna be third,” and sure enough there’s Steven Seagal (that’s right, Steven Seagal, deputy sheriff) helping raid a guy’s house. They think the guy is trying to swallow his stash so they pepper spray him, and later they sit around with a pitcher of water helping wash it out of his eyes, like they’re his buddies.

I liked this skeptical exchange:

“I’ve been changing my life around, officer.”
“Yeah.”

Well, Seagal Sense says otherwise, when it detects drugs hidden in an oven mitt. It’s also not lost on Seagal that there are Batman dolls and shit laying around the house. He’s really offended that kids live in the same place where drugs are stored.

Seagal cares because he’s got kids of his own. Not necessarily with Batman dolls, but still. We visit “Steven’s House,” his wife Elle and son Kunzang, who Seagal calls “the light of my life.” Also he has a dog that it sounds like he’s calling “Midian.” Wonder if he’s a NIGHTBREED fan? Kunzang is only a baby but already wears shirts with dragons embroidered on the back. Seagal met his wife in Mongolia about 8 years ago when he was trying to find funding for that movie where he was gonna play Genghis Khan. They met because she was an interpreter for “a famous costume designer” and thought he was “very powerful and strong.”

Elle worries about her husband when he leaves. It reminds me of that documentary Eric Bana made, LOVE THE BEAST, where he wonders if it’s selfish for him to take part in dangerous car races when he has a family at home. This is kind of the same thing, because Seagal obviously has plenty of money from his movies and everything, and no matter what you think about his level of actual police work it’s gotta be more dangerous out there than is necessary in his life.

But anyway there’s a nice scene of him getting ready for work and she’s preparing fruit and protein bars for him and hugging him, like a kid going to school. “I just want him to catch bad guys and come home safe,” she says.

I try not to write about Seagal’s personal life, but I think at this point it’s time to address the issue of the (later dropped) lawsuit that interrupted this season. In April a former assistant of Seagal’s filed a million-plus-dollar lawsuit accusing Seagal of wrongful termination and sexual harassment. Oh, and, uh, keeping two Russian sex slaves in his house. Although no criminal charges were ever filed the Sheriff’s Department didn’t want to look like they were unethically protecting him from his accusers, so they asked A&E to stop filming the show. That’s why the first season had 14 episodes and this one only had 8.

I bring this up now because I couldn’t help but notice that Elle Seagal was never shown or mentioned in Season 1, but is central to multiple episodes of Season 2, portraying him more as a family man. I don’t think they shot any additional episodes after the filming was suspended, but I don’t know that for sure. So it’s legitimate to ask if this is a PR move to help rehabilitate Seagal’s image in the face of what I think were clearly ridiculous claims but that grabbed alot of headlines.

Well, in my opinion it’s most likely a coincidence. Even if more footage was shot after the lawsuit some of these Elle episodes had to have been filmed before. For example this one ends up revolving around Valentine’s Day and another around the Mardi Gras parade. So unless someone has evidence that these episodes were staged out of season I think it just so happens that Seagal was shooting more family-centric episodes at the time he was accused of sex trafficking.

Also, you can go back and look through the tapes but as far as I noticed there were no signs of Russian sex slaves in the house, or any nationality of sex slaves for that matter. The house appears 100% sex slave free.

Back on the beat there’s an incident involving suspicious persons with a gun in a car. They run into what might be a “heroin den” and there’s one of those POINT BREAK footchases through yards. Amazingly the camera catches the dude jumping out a window (ground level), but the guy manages to get away, and Larry falls and rolls. Not a somersault or anything, but pretty good. Unfortunately “We didn’t get the bad guys this time” and that’s just “the crazy nature of this job.” You know, sometimes the guy gets away, sometimes the guy legitimately owns the coconut, you never know what’s gonna happen.

Seagal wants to “get lucky” on Valentine’s Day, so he goes to a flower shop and buys a ridiculous amount of flowers for Elle. The older gals who work there are really excited about the whole thing. They all take a group photo with Chief Seagal and one of them says, “You made our day.” I don’t think they mean by supporting a local independent flower shop, although that helps, and I don’t think they’re confusing him with Clint Eastwood, I think they really had a good day in the presence of Seagal. If you ever buy flowers in Jefferson Parish look for that photo on the wall.

On patrol the Squad pulls over a speeding Monte Carlo. They see the driver reaching for something, he claims he was “reachin for my food.” That would be a stupid move. Anyway Seagal Sense locates a bag of weed hidden in a shoe. “It’s a shame, man, a damn shame,” Seagal says, although he’s seen worse.

But hey, he did what he was supposed to do, he came home from the dangerous ground, returned to the safe ground alive and watched his wife be happy about all the flowers that got delivered to her. “We raised our hand and took an oath,” he says, “and hope and pray every day that we all get to come home at night.” (Or day, in this case, but maybe he got off early for the holiday.)

This is not the definitive hyper-detailed PE documentary I’d have dreamed about if it had ever occurred to me there could be a documentary about them. I’m sorry guys, I would’ve dreamed about it, but I was too distracted waiting for that Hank Shocklee Making of It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back book that never came out. This doesn’t quench my thirst for that one, but it’s not one of these amateurish hip hop documentaries they got either. It’s an enjoyable retrospective with alot of good moments, good photography and editing. Maybe the fonts could be improved, but for the most part it seems professional.

It might be a decent PE intro to newcomers, but only if they’re old enough to care what Tom Morello, Henry Rollins, DMC and the Beastie Boys have to say about how brilliant Public Enemy are. But I’d say it’s more interesting for fans. Most of the footage is not talking heads, it’s following Chuck D, Flavor Flav and Professor Griff in 2007 at airports, radio interviews and backstage while travelling and playing various huge outdoor music festivals. They have them visiting London, which works well since they also use some footage shot there in ‘87 when they were there for their famous show that you hear sampled on It Takes a Nation. I think all that stuff is on another DVD I have, but it’s cool in this context jumping back to a youthful, menacing PE being treated like superstars, and since it was shot in black and white it looks like flashbacks.

(an aside to Abbey Road drivers: I know what you mean. I fucking hate tourists too. But do you have to honk at Public Enemy when they’re on that crosswalk? I would give a pass to Public Enemy, in my opinion.)

There’s some history, not too detailed. They talk a little bit about their start as radio DJs. DMC talks about being interview by them and being really nervous around the completely uknown Chuck D because he thought he was “so dope.” Some of the best bits are just little personal anecdotes like that: Rollins telling the story of desperately wanting to meet Chuck D when they played the same festival in the early ’90s, MCA from the Beastie Boys talking about looking down from a hotel window late at night and seeing Flav by the pool acting like Flav even though there was nobody around. And there are nice moments on camera too, like isn’t that Bono Chuck D is having a conversation with in the ‘87 footage? And I kinda verged on chills when they showed Ice Cube standing between Chuck and KRS-One, those guys smiling big while Cube talks about their respect for each other. Or what about when Spike Lee is leaving the stage with Chuck and Flav after an appearance at a Terence Blanchard concert or something, and Spike starts asking Chuck basketball questions?

There are holes in this story that happen to be the aspect of PE I’m most interested in: the music itself. I mean, not the lyrical content and all that, that stuff’s discussed of course. I mean those crazy sounds, those blaring horns and punch-you-in-the-gut beats. Don’t worry, it’s not one of those music docs with no rights to play any of the songs they’re talking about. I was nervous at the beginning, but then Rollins hums the opening sample of “Welcome To the Terrordome,” and then buddup buh-puh, buddup buh-puh, bap bah bahhhhhh…. we hear the actual sample and the face-burning nuclear sound assault of the song as modern day PE bombs a crowd with it. But sometime around the turn of the century Chuck started playing with a live band, and the camera crew here is following their ‘07 shows, so these are the versions of the songs you hear. It works well at the shows, but you can’t tell the full story of PE without healthy doses of the original Bomb Squad tracks.

This is probly partially an issue of paying for the publishing but not the recordings, and of who is willing to be interviewed, and of not wanting to go into details about their samples to avoid legal troubles. So I don’t blame the filmatists, I’m sure they tried. But the ultimate pipe dream PE doc would have to have Hank and Keith Shocklee talking about and demonstrating how they put those sounds together. Somebody’s gotta do that some day.

In a related issue, the movie is extremely light on Terminator X, since he retired in 1999. The movie spends about equal time (not much) on his replacement DJ Lord, and alot more time on the S1Ws (the onstage security/drill team in the berets and camouflage). I’m sure they tried to interview him, but even at the height of the group you’d rarely hear him speak or even see him take off his sunglasses. Like a mute Kool Moe Dee. So it’s not surprising. Still, somebody’s gotta interview him on his South Carolina ostrich farm. That would be incredible.

Despite those weaknesses I enjoyed this movie for its surprisingly candid, human moments. They don’t ever mention the Professor Griff anti-semitism scandal, but they do spend alot of time on a less written about topic: the how the fuck do you put up with Flavor Flav? issue. The highlight of the movie is a long montage of arguments, old and new, conflicts in getting Flav to show up somewhere or come out on stage at the right time or know his lyrics or know when to stop talking or stop playing songs from his terrible solo album. One part even has a camera set down on a table showing nothing, but the mic picks up Chuck just yelling at Flav about doing his job. Can you imagine being yelled at by Chuck D? The D is for Dangerous.

Time for an anecdote about a Public Enemy show. I’ve been to a few over the years, and one of the most memorable was at the Showbox here in Seattle, I’d guess around ‘06. I got there too early and there was a crazy vibe already when the place was nearly empty. The backup band was one of the openers, under the name The Fine Arts Militia. The singer/bassist Brian Hardgroove made some innocuous comment about (if I remember right) Jimmy Swaggart, and a drunk Native American lady in the front got so upset she threw a drink in his face. I mean, as far as drink tossing you gotta score this lady a 10, it was the entire contents of the glass bullseye in the face. As the security grabbed her Hardgroove wiped his face off, smiled, and asked them to stop. He calmly tried to talk to her, tried to win her over, to prove that these things can be worked out peacefully. She wasn’t making any sense though, and a little later she jumped on some other girl in the crowd and got tossed out anyway.

Much later in the evening the place is filled up. The music stops, lights go down, you can see bodies filing in from the backstage door to the right of the stage, climbing up. The Militia with their instruments again, the S1Ws marching, spinning clubs around, doing punches and shit. Flav and Griff are wandering around, DJ Lord playing the Farrakhan Minister Khalid Abdul Muhammad sample from “Night of the Living Baseheads”: Have you forgotten that once we were brought here we were robbed of our name, robbed of our language…

I’m looking around, not seeing Chuck. They must be gonna do some little intro thing before he comes out. And many of us by the way we act, we even lost our minds…

Suddenly…

“HERE IT IS – BAM! And you say GOD DAMN! This is the DOPE JAM!”

Chuck fucking jumps out from behind a speaker and launches into one of the greatest hip hop songs of all time. I did not see him or realize he was on stage until the moment he was leaping through the air shouting one of the great opening hip hop lyrics (not the greatest of all time, that would be “Thinking of a master plan / I got nothin but sweat inside my hand.”)

Somehow that memory makes that great song even greater.

There were alot of people there, and everybody was really into it, people of all races and types shouting out lyrics, pumping their fists, going crazy. Rebel Without a Pause, Bring the Noise, Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos, Shut ‘Em Down, all that shit. But they were saving a few. They got so many classics.

At some point Chuck and everybody left the stage to let Flav do a solo joint. He had his one album out around then, I think the single was called “Shake Your Booty,” so he did that song. Then he does another song. Then he does another song. The shit is terrible. We put up with him because he’s great in small doses. He backs up Chuck, he’s unpredictable, he makes you laugh, he provides lyrics for the old man in GHOST DOG. But in large doses he starts seeming like Jar Jar. In reality TV he has no Chuck to balance him out, he just makes you look down at your feet and be sad.

It became clear that he had more songs. At least half of the crowd left. By the time Chuck took back control the wind was completely out of the sails, and they hadn’t even done “Fight the Power” yet. Fuckin Flavor Flav, man. Somebody please throw a drink in that man’s face.

So you can imagine how hard it would be to have to work with Flav and travel with him. They say he’s gone through alot of handlers whose job it is to make sure he arrives at places on time. In the credits along with the band personnel they list “Flavor Flav Management,” which should probly read as similar to “spider wrangler” or something like that. It doesn’t mean the guy who hooks him up with gigs.

In this footage you can see Flav making Chuck uncomfortable, making him embarrassed. Talking some shit about Chuck’s breath or telling a crazy story from their youth. But as Flav gets deeper into it, more and more manic, you see Chuck’s expression change, you see him break and start laughing. Even Griff, who tends to bristle just talking about Flav, can end up laughing with him when he’s on a tear. Maybe he’ll shake his head like “I can’t believe this shit,” but he’ll be smiling.

It’s clear that despite everything they have had to put up with over the years these guys really care about each other. That’s what’s cool about this movie, because I didn’t expect that. I didn’t expect it to be sweet. Even the Terrordome can’t break the bonds of friendship.

I think most of the same characters from part 1 are still there on the J.A.C.K.A.S.S. team. This time their missions include sneaking up and punching each other, supergluing themselves to each other, having a guy fart through a blow gun to fire a dart at a balloon hanging from another guy’s ass, bouncing off a giant inflatable balloon and everybody shoots at you with paintballs, throwing a bunch of things in front of a jet engine, etc. There is still alot of putrid bodily fluid humor, mostly involving shitting. One of the camera guys (credited onscreen as “Lance Bangs, documentarian”) spontaneously starts puking about 4 or 5 times, so he is the most relatable character. I had to avert my eyes during the sweat-drinking scene, and a lady in the theater I believe left to go throw up. But she came back for more.

Do you remember when you were a young man, and there was another dude, and you ran up and punched him real hard in the gut, and he groaned in pain and then laughed at how bad it hurt? JACKASS is the cinematic adaptation of that groan and laugh combo. This type of humor, all revolving around butts, dicks, and horrible pain, is thought of as little boy humor. But even most little boys are not this obsessed with farting on each other. It’s a very specialized, powerful strain of juvenile humor that’s hilarious and a little uncomfortable to see these increasingly grown adults giggling about.

There are a few prank type deals (Johnny Knoxville disguised as old man asks a random dude to take a picture of him making out with his supposed granddaughter, a pretty spectacular one involving little people in a bar brawl, etc.) This guy Bam Margera is always tormenting his parents, so in this one he has a (fake) gorilla trash their hotel room right when they get there and the dad is trying to take a shit. It might seem like you’d have to be really gullible to fall for that, but you gotta realize that this movie has the Jackasses facing down a ram, a bull, a herd of buffalo, an attack dog, some scorpions, a swarm of Africanized bees and a pit of snakes, all real. So it’s not out of the realm of possibility that they would fuck up and set a gorilla loose in a hotel.

But I’m glad they don’t do too many of the pranks, because they usually make me feel sorry for the people that get pranked. It’s better when the Jackasses turn on each other. They deserve each other.

One thing I really appreciate is that even though this is about dudes crashing things, throwing things at each other’s dicks and purposely causing animals to attack them it’s mostly done with an artist’s eye. I don’t think the audience demands that. Steve-O bungying up and down inside a shit-filled port-a-potty and then puking all over himself would be enough. But the Jackasses have this sense of visual camp humor and style that they always throw in there. They stage the stunt on a living room set or tie some balloons nearby for color. They like to go around in their tighty whiteys, sometimes topped with a silly uniform, a pair of angel wings or cheetah ears. When Johnny Knoxville jumps a jet ski onto land in the Hollywood Hills he does it in a powder-blue ’70s style tuxedo and Evil Kneivel American flag helmet with the others standing by wearing togas. When he gets run over by a buffalo herd he wears rollerskates and a pink cardigan with the Jackass logo stitched in the front. And for some reason there’s a disco ball and some cheap mylar decorating the bullpen. They create little scenes, like when they stage a miniature restaurant so a guy dressed as a waiter can be blasted by an actual jet engine.

This artistic eye works great with the 3-D. There is piss, vomit and shit that finds itself floating out of the screen, but more often it’s beautiful slow motion constellations of flying debris or colorful paintballs or things like that. I guess they have cameras that can shoot 1000 frames a second or something, so they make the human body seem to have the consistency of a can of cranberry sauce when it slides out all in one piece. There’s a whole bunch of slow motion shots of rubbery faces vibrating from the impact of a fist, a foot or a flying object, most impressively a rubber dildo that has just had a long, wobbly journey above miniature model cities.

The end credits are a montage of old clips and childhood photos set to a sentimental pop punk song with the Jackasses themselves singing “Memories / make me want to go back there, back there” over and over again. It really shows how they’ve grown up together and turned their weird shenanigans into fame and fortune. And I’m glad they all make it to the end alive. They have a weird camaraderie where they do horrible things to each other but then hug and tell each other they love them. The fat guy Preston even does this to the pro-football player who field goals his face, it’s his way of saying “Yes, I have been rolling around in the grass screaming in anguish for a few minutes, but don’t feel bad for doing what we asked you to do.” Steve-O expresses something similar to Preston after he finishes puking from drinking his ass sweat.

So there’s this sense of brotherhood but still, man, you don’t want to be a member of this brotherhood. Not only do you have to do these stunts (”Why do I have to be Steve-O?” Steve-O asks before allowing a baseball to be hit into his crotch) but you must live in constant fear of ambush. It can be as simple as somebody running up and hitting you in the face, as cruel as setting you up to fall into a trap door and then dumping real snakes on your head when snakes are your worst fear, or as gimmicky as sneaking up and peeing on you with a miniature camera providing a dick’s-eye-view. (In 3-D!)

The Jackass lifestyle must be kind of like being a rock star who’s in constant fear of roadside bombings and drive-by shit-throwings. On one hand you don’t have to punch a clock, on the other hand it’s hard to brush that taste out of your mouth.

I’d like to think they could retire after this one, stop risking their life and limb and after several years of night terrors and what not they might eventually lose the constant paranoia about snake and/or fart attacks. But then again, this is what they do. This is their form of expression. If you are a Jackass how are you gonna float around in a pool and drink mai-tais for the rest of your life? You’re gonna start thinking maybe I should jump a motorcycle off the roof. How many alligators do I need? I’ll put the camera over there. Here, let me get my pants off and find a good hat to wear… I’m not sure you can escape this life. But I wish them luck.

If you make another one, Jackasses, make sure nobody dies. Half the fun is being awed by the insane recklessness exhibited by the Jackasses. But it wouldn’t be as funny without knowing everything’s gonna be okay.

Episode 2.3: “Crossfire”

As the episode opens Seagal explains that one of their duties is to protect the public from “bad guys” who drink and get rowdy. Once again the Seagal Squad report to the scene of a truck shot full of holes, this time owned by white people for once. Around the corner there’s another vehicle shot up, this one with two people inside, but they say they didn’t see anything. Seagal gently narrates that they have a “street code” that prevents them from telling the cops anything. There’s also a long shot of a stop sign, possibly a reference to the street code and smoke shop t-shirt phenomenon known as “stop snitching.”

But I got a better theory. I think the shooter wasn’t aiming for people at all, I think the vehicles were the targets. What I’m telling you is I think there’s a vehicle serial killer loose in Jefferson Parish. I’ve seen CARS, I’ve seen CHRISTINE, I’ve watched KNIGHT RIDER, I’ve read about Google Cars. I know how this shit works. You never expect it’s a car that’s doing it. That’s why it’s the perfect crime. And of course those dudes aren’t gonna say what they saw. Not only would they sound crazy, but the car might come back and run them over.

The next scene is yet another “somebody sees the cops and starts running” incident. After a short chase they catch the kid, who is 17 years old. When he says his age Seagal just starts laughing, he can’t believe this shit, but at least he restrains himself from preaching about how he was in Asia studying the martial arts at that age. After searching for “a needle in a haystack” Seagal finds a gun hidden inside a barbecue. Without touching it he states that it’s real and loaded.

I don’t know if the barbecue got him thinking about what he was gonna have for dinner or something but next is one of those Mister Rogers type scenes where he goes to talk to a friend, a master chef at a Japanese restaurant. Seagal says that New Orleans is “alot more cosmopolitan than people think” and has good restaurants like this. This is a good scene because he gets to speak Japanese more than he does in any of his movies. He tells the chef that he was “raised in Japan” but that his friends are local cops and he wants to mess with them by serving them good food that will “give them the heebie jeebies and the willie jillies.” You know how cops are always playing pranks. You’ve seen all the POLICE ADADEMYs.

In the first season reviews I had some complaints about how numbing it starts to get when you watch scene after scene of cops questioning young black men. In this episode they get lucky and get to switch it up. First they talk to some black kids who are just going to the gym to play basketball. “Good boys,” Seagal calls them. Then they get called to the scene of a historic shooting. Not historic in the way that, say, John Wilkes Booth shooting Abraham Lincoln was, but in the sense that this is the first ever episode of LAWMAN where a white guy shot another white guy.

This is some crazy shit, a fat old white dude shot in the chest by a guy with a long white beard and a 2-shot derringer. Turns out the victim’s grown daughter met the victim at the store and brought him home, but he was drunk and started smacking her around and calling her a bitch. When her dad tried to stop the guy he wasn’t getting anywhere, he got scared and had to shoot him. There’s a shot of a crucifix on the wall to represent the shooter’s morals and compassion. Instead of getting macho about justifiably defending his own daughter from an attack on his own property he just seems really sad and says “I hope I didn’t hurt him too bad.”

They let him go, no charges. But I think he should probly have a talk with his daughter about bringing home fat old drunks when she goes to the store. Just come home with the groceries next time, all right honey? The gun only fires two shots.

The episode ends with Seagal’s get together at the Horinoya Sushi Bar. Seagal gets a kick out of pressuring his cop buddies into following Japanese customs. They have to sit down on the floor to eat and they’re not flexible enough to do it easily. Everybody sort of goes with the program except Lawrence, who wants a fork instead of chopsticks and won’t eat most of the stuff. Of the live lobster he says, “I didn’t care for it much ’cause it was still moving.” Seagal pretends to be surprised and offended but does get most of them to eat what he claims is “sea urchin gonads.”

“I ate gonads!” Alex says.

Episode 2.4: “The Perfect Target”

On a Tuesday afternoon in traffic Seagal notices a guy waving a gun around inside a car. It turns out to be another all white incident: two nerdy white twentysomethings. The passenger was the one with the gun but the driver is the one who starts flipping out like he’s on something. His friend tries to calm him down by telling him that’s Steven Seagal. “I don’t care if it’s Steven Seagal or the fuckin mayor!” the driver yells. He keeps yelling that his career is ruined and they ruined his life and he should just jump off the bridge. Lawrence says “You’re actin a jackass up here.” Larry handcuffs the guy supposedly to prevent him from jumping off the bridge, but I think more likely because the guy’s being a dick.

Larry is really funny in this scene, explaining that if he was concerned about getting pulled over he shouldn’t have been driving a bright yellow car 95 miles an hour past a cop car while his friend waves a gun around. Because he crossed the bridge into NOPD territory they’re gonna hand them over to the other department, “And I only hope that they’re as patient and tolerant as we are,” an exasperated Larry deadpans.

Luckily the dude with the gun wasn’t trying to shoot anybody, he was just actin a jackass up there. But even reserve deputy sheriffs need to be ready to shoot, and Seagal says “shooting is a perishable skill,” so he brings the boys to the range with him while he practices for an upcoming test. From what they show the officers seem to do pretty well, while Seagal does great. One exercise involves shooting at a photo of a Bad Guy holding a hostage. Alex (or was it Larry? it’s not in my notes, sorry) hits the Bad Guy a couple times but also hits the hostage. “My investigation revealed she was in on it,” he says.

Friday at midnight the patrol is very uneventful and lonely until Seagal spots a vehicle behind some abandoned houses. Turns out to be a guy taking plywood from businesses that were shut down after Katrina, and he has a warrant on him for doing this before. Seagal says he feels sorry for him and wishes him luck finding a job, but feels he has to enforce this. He and John later talk about stopping looters on a case by case basis. If the guy was starving and stealing food they probly would’ve let him go. But come on dude, don’t steal plywood.

By the way, they arrested an Asian guy! Season 2 is all about diversity.

The final call of the day is for a guy that got shot in the leg, but the bullet’s not in him. “Fo sho in’n out” Seagal notes. The victim apparently doesn’t subscribe to the street code, because he’s perfectly willing to describe the guys that did it. But the Squad seem less interested in the shooter than in looking at all the bullet holes. Holy shit, they shot that many times and only hit the guy once? Shooting really is a perishable skill. I mean, it’s a good thing nobody was hurt too bad, but whatever happened to pride in a job well done? Does Seagal need to start taking some of these Bad Guys to the range for practice? “I guess they weren’t aiming,” he says.

Later Seagal does his test and unless the show is completely full of shit he did incredibly, with a rare 120 out of 120 score. I think it was Larry, maybe Alex that said “I’ve been a police officer for 17 years and never before have I seen anybody make a group like that.”

“My score wasn’t bad,” Seagal says with obviously fake humbleness, and autographs the target “to my buddy.” Hopefully that will be framed and on display so the Jefferson Parish street thugs and/or living cars can have something to aspire to.