Last Sunday in Miami, having dodged potential catastrophe from a tropical storm quickly growing into a hurricane, MTV staged some kind of ridiculous awards ceremony. This is not a review. This is an attempt to understand. I don't know why I turned it on or why I kept watching but I do know it has continued to haunt me in the days since. I think I am writing this for closure, really. It is an exorcism.
THE MTV VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS 2005, or VMAs as they want you to call them, are not really an awards show. As far as I could tell, there weren't many awards and the ones they had didn't mean anything. The show is a spectacle, a sort of exaggerated opera putting on display everything that is so wrong with the corporate entertainment culture today. I think I seen parts of this show before and it's always been pretty ridiculous but this one went the extra ten miles.
The first hint was the pre-show coverage, where they one-upped the standard awards show red carpet fashion critique by having the stars drive up in their own customized exotic sports cars, which they would park on a turntable that would spin around so you could see all the angles. The only thing more ridiculous than this is the realization that somebody probaly had to pack the cars on a truck and drive them from Los Angeles to Miami during a hurricane so Ludacris or somebody could get in and drive it 50 feet for the cameras. Before MTV was content to go around and find kids driving beaters and "pimp their ride" as a fairy godmother act of charity. Now they want to make it clear that whether it's delivered by Xzibit or not, you're gonna have to get one of these cars eventually. Get rich or die tryin, says Fifty Cents on his album and movie.
The host for this show was "Diddy," a former music executive producer who used to be called Puffy and then Puff Daddy and then P Diddy and recently went on the Today Show (america's number one hip hop show?) to announce the new one. You gotta wonder about guys like this because I mean, alot of people pick up nicknames here and there, but they don't have to make an announcement. As far as I know, this guy doesn't even do music or anything anymore, he just goes around making announcements.
Anyway "Diddy" rose out from the bowels of the earth on a platform, and instead of tell jokes or something, what he did was stand in a frozen "I am awesome" pose. All around the huge, circular stage, spouts of water shot up what looked like a hundred feet in the air and blowtorches sprayed out flames. There was probaly fans blowin too, I'm not sure, but most of the elements were represented, anyway. Cirque du Soleil type acrobats lowered down from the sky on ropes and did tricks. There were flashes and smoke machines and sexy dancers and a guy I know named Ethan described it best when he said to me, "You know, I've been reading alot about the fall of the Roman Empire, and--"
Disco music played, and "Diddy" kept announcing his name over and over and saying that "anything can happen" tonight. Anything. Mr. T could ride in here on a giraffe and start throwing water balloons at everybody. Chris Rock could drop in on a parachute and become the real host. Kurt Loder could emerge from the crowd with a megaphone and announce that the show has been cancelled and everyone has to go home. Anything can happen.
It turned out what he meant was he would take off his fancy jeweled watch, the type only worn by rappers and cartoon characters like the guy from Monopoly, and "spontaneously" give it to a guy in the audience. After a commercial break Diddy had the watch again and he said, "I want to apologize to my man, the security thought I wasn't serious, but I want you to keep this," and gave it to the guy again. Of course, the security would not have understood if he had taken care of this during the commercial break, they would only go along if it was done on camera again. Anything can happen.
It's true, anything did happen, anything that could be done in under two minutes. MC Hammer and his dancers appeared suddenly to perform less than one song. Snoop Dogg introduced some poor sap up and coming comedian who had to do about two minutes of jokes. Of course he completely bombed, because what the fuck are you doing coming out doing miniaturized standup at an awards show? Paris Hilton and Little Bow Wow introduced one of the very few awards that were given out, but first they compared the jewelry they were wearing and talked about how many karats each item was. If you think the world sucks now, wait until we have a generation of adults who grew up idolizing Paris Hilton and Donald Trump, watching tv shows about tricked out cars and rapper's mansions. The weird thing is, it turns out the '80s could've been worse.
One of the more elaborate segments was a tribute to the late Notorious BIG. I've seen BIGGIE AND TUPAC but I didn't know much about it so I got one of my contacts to comment:
I guess it's good he's still doing tributes to Biggie years later. But replacing the original beats with an orchestra didn't work. Vern, I think you would appreciate the second song they did, "Warning." It's like a pulp crime story about being woken up at 5:36 in the morning by a phone call from a friend at the barbershop who overheard some guys talking about robbing Biggie. Biggie raps both sides of the conversation, for this tribute Snoop Dogg played the friend. That was exciting to see, but then they cut it off halfway through the song. Anyway, I don't think the orchestra was really playing. It sounded like keyboards, like that Guns 'n Roses video.
Speaking of playing more than one character, I think the craziest thing in this whole fuckin mess was the performance by R. Kelly. If you don't know who he is, he is the guy who sings the song on "Space Jam," also he videotaped himself peeing in an underaged girl's mouth. But he loves Jesus though. Anyway I was asking earlier if anybody could explain to me his series of "Trapped In the Closet" videos. It's this weird soap opera thing about him, his girlfriend and two gay guys all in a room yelling at each other. He sings all their lines, which do not rhyme or flow well, while the actors move their mouths as if they're talking. And he keeps waving a gun around.
For this he did what I think was the thrilling conclusion to the saga, not sure. On a sparse theatrical type set, he stood by himself and lip synched some parts of the song. Other parts he did not bother to lip synch. He was playing all the characters, or trying to, so sometimes he would put his hand on his hip in a feminine manner or make his wrist limp to remind you that he is supposed to be a gay guy. I can't follow the thing at all but he keeps singing about "Rufus said this, Carl said that, I said this, Lisa said something else," etc.
I guess you had to be there, but this was pretty much the most amazing thing I've seen in a long time. This guy, already famous for peeing in little girls, just had a complete breakdown live on stage. It was like Caligula without the bestiality. Guy has gone completely insane, but he's famous so they let him do what he wants. He must know what he's doing, he was on the Space Jam soundtrack.
I wonder,
maybe he really DOES believe he can fly?
At one point, an award was given for "breakthrough video." It went to the "Gorillaz" cartoon video which apparently is a good video. This was the only award where it occurred to me maybe they were choosing it based on the cinematical quality of the video. Another award had gone to a guy Kanye West, who unless I misunderstood said in his speech that he had made two videos for the particular song. He did not ask which video won the award, though. Because who gives a shit.
The show was 3 1/2 hours long, but I swear they couldn't have given out more than 6 or 7 awards. You want to get mentally pummeled, try watching a show that is designed for people with short attention spans, but is also 3 and a half hours long. There were a handful of performers that were allowed the courtesy of performing one complete song. The last performer was Kelly Clarkson, who won her music career as a prize on a popular game show. "Diddy" introduced it by saying, "What you are about to see is incredible," which turned out to mean that they spray her with a hose while she sings. I did not think it was so incredible as a performance but I guess I would have to give credit to the electricians who figured out how to do that without killing everybody.
There was also Fifty Cents, a real masculine dude who loves jewelry as much as Liberace did. He got mad at some other rapper called "Fat Joe" and started announcing that "Fat Joe" was a pussy and then whatever else he said got bleeped out. It's amazing that these guys can go through so many hard struggles on their way to fame (as we are told in their bios and movies) but come out with the mentality of a little kid. Fat Joe called me names I hate Fat Joe Fat Joe is fat and he is a pussy and I hate him. I guess it's not as bad as that time when Eminem almost got in a fight with a puppet.
Anyway I think this guy is sort of symbolic of the whole thing because think about it this way: even the gangsters have been co-opted. I'm sure if I sat and listened to this guy's immense body of two or three albums, that there would be more to him than you get from his appearances on MTV. But that's still the image he is putting out there and I am a poet so it smells like a metaphor to me. So bear with me.
I am obviously not an expert on this type of music, but let me tell you. I don't like country music at all, but sometimes you hear Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson or the Coal Miner's Daughter lady or somebody like that and you have to say yeah, yeah, I think I get it. This is good stuff. The album "Straight Outta Compton" by N.W.A. is one of those. These angry kids with jheri curls and Raiders jackets, talking about stupid shit but painting such a picture of their time and place. Their status symbol is a pair of Air Jordans or something, they don't have the luxury of talking about a $50,000 car. And they drink malt liquor, not Cristal. They mention that alot. Back then, their music was not played on the radio. If they were on the cover of a magazine, it was Newsweek talking about you better lock up your children. White people were just finding out about this shit, and the FBI sent them a threatening letter because of their song "Fuck Tha Police."
You listen to that song, and if you don't agree with them about Fucking tha Police, you'll at least understand why they feel that way. But maybe it was harder for white people to understand then because Rodney King hadn't happened yet. Anyway what I'm saying is, these guys really were rebels, they really did challenge the status quo, they really did hold a mirror up to the world and bring attention to its harsh realities. And they created music of lasting importance. These days, on MTV anyway, the anti-heroes aren't that much different from Paris Hilton. All they care about is get rich or die tryin. Their music is about jewelry and cars. They are not angry at the world, I'm not sure they even are aware that there is a world around them. The FBI won't be tapping their telephone because they tell you to care about the same things the Man or the Matrix wants you to care about. Instead of giving voice to the frustrations of poor people, they fill poor people's heads with unattainable, stupid dreams.
What the fuck kind of a retard wants to die trying to get a fuckin necklace. You look stupid with that thing on anyway. You really want to drive a car like that? You fuckin know you're gonna scrape the side on a pole in a parking garage or something. And you'll spend your days nervous somebody's gonna steal it unless it's locked in a secret underground compound. You'll get pulled over all the time and if you still think you look cool in it think again. You oughta be self conscious because everybody's looking at you thinking your an asshole or you're overcompensating for a tiny penis.
There was exactly one shocking moment in this whole freak show, and it was when the band "Green Day" was accepting one of the awards. One of the dudes in the band said something about it being dedicated to the soldiers and hoping they come home safe. It was a weird feeling, like they had just punched Diddy's party real hard in the gut and knocked the wind out of it, or maybe they just shut off the water. At this point even I was thinking, "Oh shit, that's right, there's a war in Iraq." It never even occurred to me as a possibility that somebody might mention the war or the president or anything that has any real meaning to anybody.
You know what would be an interesting art installation? Picture this awards show projected onto the side of a bombed out building in Iraq. The piece is called "Why do they hate us?" The winners for "Diddy's Fashion Challenge" are being announced while over 1,000 muslim pilgrims are trampled to death because they heard there was a suicide bomber.
In fact this week we could do it in New Orleans and call it "Why do we hate us?" I can't watch the news when they're covering these disasters, but from what I've read it sounds like Escape From New York out there. Or Land of the Dead. They're talking about "bands of roving gunmen," people shooting at the helicopters that are trying to help them. All these people holed up in the Superdome, living in piss and shit, dead bodies laying around. The air conditioning doesn't work, all the toilets are backed up, there was a fire in the garbage chute, and nobody believes the buses are coming to evacuate them. Everybody's lost their homes, their relatives, they can't go back to the city for months, they have to have their children guard them while they sleep. People are sick and they're gonna die because there's little food, no electricity or clean water or anywhere to take them. And some of the hospitals had to close up after their supply shipments got hijacked. Police have been told to stop rescuing people so they can chase after the bandits breaking into houses to steal TVs. Meanwhile, people that just need food are stranded, starving, dying, begging for help, and nobody is coming for them. If that happened here, that would be me. I don't have a car either. Get water or die tryin.
I read about one guy yesterday that tried to climb over the fence at the Superdome and run away. He had lost his whole family and was desperate to get away from this hellhole. Alot of people believe, or at least like to say, that the sports teams who play there have bad luck because it's built over a cemetery. And now this. The soldiers had to grab the guy and take him to where he could see the water. There was nowhere to go. So he just started to bawl. He had no choice but to go back into the stadium, where many people have died (one a suicide) and people have been raped, including a child.
Anything can happen.
Geez I'm sorry you guys, I wish we could help. But the National Guard is in Iraq, and the hurricane and flood funds got diverted to Iraq, and we turned down your request to shore up the city a while back, because the government is broke because of tax breaks and wars. But I mean, how were we supposed to know we'd need money to help people? Can't George Clooney and all those guys take care of that kind of shit? We got terra to kill. And I mean you know how it is. Que se ra se ra. Shit happens. Snakes on a plane. Get over it.
I know some people will be hesitant to bring politics into such a disaster. Obviously politicians can't be expected to stop a hurricane. But I think now more than ever it makes me sick just thinking about that motherfucker in the White House and what he has done for our country. If this doesn't show you the massive negligence and ineptitude of this government, then you are blind. Blatantly lining the pockets of the rich, endangering us by tormenting people across the world, meanwhile starving our infrastructure so when there's a disaster, nobody can do shit, thousands die and people either live like animals or turn into animals. My motto for the Bush years: Thanks alot, asshole.
So what did we do? Were we fiddling while Rome was burning? Well no, it wasn't a real fiddle, it was keyboards. And R. Kelly was lip synching. Turns out one of the gay guys, Rufus I think, he went back to his wife at the end. And the guy in the audience got to keep Diddy's watch. Water sprayin everywhere. It was incredible. Thanks for the great party, Diddy.
--VERN
UPDATE: I just read that "Diddy", along with fellow rapper/mogul Jay-Z, donated $1 million to the Red Cross along with Sean John and Roc-a-wear clothing for people who need it... so I have to give Mr. Diddy credit for that. Hopefully he will only have to give the check once and not twice like his jeweled watch.
On Friday when the indictments fell down on Irve "Scooter" Libby Jr. for obstruction and perjury, the democrat line of the day was "it's a sad day for America." There has been a tremendous blow to the dignity of the White House, a stain not on a blue dress but on the presidency itself, etc.
I'm afraid I gotta disagree. It's not a sad day. The sad day was when the leak happened in the first place. We all knew it happened and we all knew it happened in the context of much bigger crimes. Back then, we were happy to hear about an investigation, but did anybody believe it would lead to anything? Did anybody think it really meant anything when John Ashcroft, after noodling around for a little while, announced that he was recusing himself? Don't you remember all the stories we read about how this was gonna be a whitewash, like so many other investigations? Did you ever believe that somebody as high up as Scooter Libby would even be criticized in the media, let alone indicted?
How many people do you know who think Bush should be impeached, but that it's not worth even trying since republicans control both houses and would never go after a president from their own party? I don't think I'm the only one who doesn't expect any of these bastards to ever be held accountable for their actions. That's why Friday was a happy day for me. This represents a tiny smidgeon of faith in accountability. A little pinprick of light at the end of the tunnel.
Of course, I still cancelled my plans for an Indictment Day cake, patriotic fireworks dislay, champagne toast and Ewok style celebration. 'Cause all those leaks got my hopes up too high - I thought Rove was going down and now it's not clear if that will happen. The only thing that's more of a bummer than Karl Rove going on as usual is the realization that Dr. Thompson isn't here to write about this whole mess. I bet he would've written a good one.
Flipping the channels around right after Fitzgerald's press conference, I already saw Sean Hannity complaining that since the charges so far are for perjury and obstruction, not for the leak, "there was no crime until there was an investigation." Yeah right motherfucker, like you don't go to sleep every night mumbling to yourself about Bill Clinton lying under oath. Let me draw a diagram for you here, asswipe. Clinton lied about getting a blowjob from Monica Lewinsky because he DID get a blowjob from Monica Lewinsky, and he didn't want people to know. So shit, I wonder why Scooter would've been lying about leaking the name of a CIA operative? It's hard to really figure, it's all so confusing.
But Scooter has reason to be optimistic. Orville Babcock, the last sitting White House aide to be indicted back in 1875 was actually acquitted after his boss, Ulysses S. Grant, testified on his behalf. Babcock was Grant's secretary, accused of conspiring with whiskey distillers to defraud the government of taxes and funnel them into the Republican party for Grant's re-election campaign. Scooter could be acquitted too if George Bush, Dick Cheney or - equally likely - Ulysses S. Grant is willing to testify on his behalf. One sad postscript though: Babcock may have been a free man but he still drowned 9 years later in Florida. So stay on land after this one, Scooter.
(By the way, the reason I keep referring to Scooter by his wacky nickname instead of his last name is not to be informal or buddy-buddy, but because I think it's funny to imagine this all happening to that yellow nerdy guy from the Muppets.)
A better reason for him to be optimistic: there's no fuckin way there's gonna be a trial. Because trial would mean more media coverage of the lies that went into starting the Iraq war. I'm not sure but I got a weird feeling like maybe they don't want that.
Tucker Carlson of all people made the most insightful point of the TV coverage I watched after Fitzgerald's press conference. He said that the crime Scooter "allegedly" committed is an incredibly dumb crime. How could he repeatedly tell FBI agents and a grand jury under oath that he learned about Plame from Russert, knowing full well that Russert will say otherwise and that Judy Miller, Matt Cooper, other unnamed witnesses, White House records, and his own notes will prove that he had discussed the topic many times already? These are the lies of either
a) a really fuckin bad liar. This option I guess is kind of plausible considering how incompetent this administration is at other things. But I figure lying would be their bread and butter. They wouldn't fuck up lying this bad.
b) someone who wants to be caught. Not in the serial killer sense, but in the sense of a fall guy.
I'm going with b. I think a decision was made that Scooter was expendable compared to Karl Rove. And Karl Rove went in and made some kind of deal to put everything on Scooter. On MSNBC Chris Matthews kept saying that Scooter was showing his loyalty to the administration but that they were gonna have to show some kind of loyalty to him to make sure he wouldn't rat on them.
Well, duh. He knows what the administration will give him: a pardon. He'll cop a deal for less than the maximum sentence, and then he'll get pardoned in 2008, maybe earlier. Obviously this has occurred to other people but I'm surprised that people are talking about it like it's an "if." What do you mean, if? Can you imagine Bush coming out of office and not giving pardons to every scumbag crook that put him there? Everybody does it. Clinton did it to some of his buddies. Bush part 1 did it to all the Iran-Contra crooks, so that they could go on to be in the Bush part 2 administration or to be correspondents on Fox. And even if it wasn't standard president procedure, it is obviously the m.o. for this president and his era of personal responsibility. Think about how many people helped him out in 2000 that went on to be nominated for the supreme court.
Speaking of which, I got no doubt that on Monday - before anybody on TV has a chance to mention the name "Scooter" - Bush will give us a special Halloween treat: a scary far right nominee. I've seen people saying he's in a tight spot here but I don't think it's as tight as they say. I think he has only one choice: a scary right wing nominee. If he chooses somebody just to the right of moderate, he faces the wrath of his base again. They've been supporting him for 5 years on the wink wink agreement that he shares their values, and now he's got 3 years left to deliver on the promise.
If he chooses anybody ranging from someone who openly opposes Roe vs. Wade to David Duke, the worst he faces is a filibuster. That's good news for him, it's back to party unity and that horse shit about "everybody deserves an up or down vote except Harriet Miers but that was different though I can explain." It's back to comfortable ground. And they can maybe change the rules to get rid of the filibuster or if not at least fill the airwaves with debate about that. Always better than Iraq.
I'm not happy with these democrats right now. Maybe the "I'll just be over here if you need me" method they used for Harriet Miers worked as strategy, but it's not honest. Harriet Miers was clearly unqualified. Yes, it was the possibility that she might not be against abortion that sunk her. But the right wing were correct that she was unqualified. Instead of being happy that everyone in the world can agree on Miers being a ridiculous choice, a bunch of the democrats are pretending to be disappointed, not because the next choice will be even worse, but because she was a good choice! I don't know if this is the general stance of the party but it's what all of the democrats I saw on TV were trying to pull.
And since they're doing that kind of bullshit it's no surprise that they're afraid to question what Bush's part in "Plamegate" or "Scooterpalooza" is. Remember how Bush said nobody wanted to get to the bottom of this more than him? And he was doing an investigation and would fire anybody if they were a leaker? Well geez, looks like he was investigating real fuckin hard there. Him and O.J. You'd think it would've gone, "Hey Karl, remember when you and Scooter called those reporters about Valerie Plame? I didn't imagine that, did I?" "No, of course not." "Okay." And then he could've just fired them then and saved a bunch of time and money, and those grand jurors wouldn't have had to take so much time off of work and it would just be better for the economy. But that didn't happen. Somehow Scooter and Karl managed to slip by Bush's internal investigation undetected. Oh well, cest la vie. Nobody will ever mention it again anyway so who cares.
When the new nominee comes tomorrow maybe it'll make us forget about Scooter, who made us forget about the 2000th dead soldier, which made us forget about Harriet Miers, which made us forget about Hurricane Katrina. But I just can't help but mention that e-mail that got spread around last week, the one from Michael "doing a heck of a job" Brown's press secretary right in the thick of things. If you missed it, FEMA's one guy on the ground in New Orleans was staying at the Superdome, emailing Brown directly from his Blackberry to tell him how critical the situation was. He didn't get a response, but did get a forward from Brownie's press secretary saying "Also, it is very important that time is allowed for Mr. Brown to eat dinner... He needs much more that 20 or 30 minutes. We now have traffic to encounter to get to and from a location of his choise, followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc."
At first I thought well, his press secretary is an idiot. But then I realized wait a minute, WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS GUY DOING EATING AT A RESTAURANT ON THAT DAY? Has he ever heard of Cliff Bars? Or maybe his press secretary could go to the Taco Bell drive through. I mean for fuck's sake, this is the guy in charge of emergency management. I'm sure there are people who work at grocery stores who miss their lunch break because the store gets busy.
It seems like it would be hard to even find a guy that fuckin soul-less and oblivious if you were looking specifically for those qualities. They must've had to scour through every horse association in the world to find the exact worst guy for the position. Way to confirm, Bush. You're doing a heck of a job there.
Well, I know it's Halloween and all but let's drop politics. Instead I'll make a list of my most anticipated movies right now. It's not that great or anything I just want to end on an optimistic note.
SYRIANA is the one with George Clooney as a CIA agent, based on an actual agent's memoir. The trailer looks real gritty and the whole thing somehow seems to be about dependence on foreign oil. So I guess if there's car chases it'll be in SUVs.
THE ICE HARVEST is probaly not gonna be that great but it's Billy Bob Thornton in a diamond heist that goes wrong and that's kind of what I'm into.
THE MATADOR has Pierce Brosnan (he was in some of the James Bond pictures) playing a wacky hitman. But it looks better than most of the wacky hitman movies. Who knows.
LOOKING FOR COMEDY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD is Albert Brooks' movie where he plays himself, and the US state department sends him to India and Pakistan to study what makes muslims laugh. I never really followed him outside of OUT OF SIGHT but this sounds like a good idea for a movie.
KILLSHOT is based on the Elmore Leonard book and it has Thomas Jane in it. Shit, I'd go watch that even if it was directed by the guy who did SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE. Which it is.
THE INSIDE MAN is Spike Lee doing a bank robbery/hostage drama. Denzel is the cop and Clive Owen is the thief. I think it is physically impossible for Spike Lee to make a tight, fast paced movie at this point. But I know he can make a gritty and intense one.
SNOOP DOGG'S HOOD OF HORROR is a horror anthology but instead of the Crypt Keeper the host is Snoop Dogg. You remember him from BONES, he was the one who played Bones. Not sure if this is straight to video or not.
FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS is Clint Eastwood's movie about Iwo Jima, but also on the same day he's releasing a separate movie about the battle from the Japanese perspective. Thank you Clint.
SHADOWS ON THE SUN. Speaking of Japan... Steven Seagal has at least 3 movies in the can already but of his upcoming onslaught, the weirdest one will have to be the one where he plays "a burned-out former intelligence officer who runs a medical clinic in Japan just after WWII."
THE HARD CORPS is most promising of all because it stars Jean-Claude Van Damme and Wesley Snipes, and is called THE HARD CORPS.
and that's all.
thanks,
VERN
APPENDIX: VERN TELL'S IT LIKE IT IS PREDICTION CHECKLIST
[ ] "There's no fuckin way there's gonna be a trial [for Scooter Libby]"
[ ] He'll cop a deal
[ ] Bush will pardon him
[ ] He'll become a millionaire working at Halliburton (not in the column, but you fuckin know it)
[x] Bush will nominate far right judge at the crack of dawn on Monday, October 31st
[x] Republicans will say this asshole deserves "an up or down vote" even though they didn't think so with Harriet Miers
"Let's give Judge Alito a fair up or down vote, not left or right," said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota. -October 31st
[x] "THE ICE HARVEST is probaly not gonna be that great" NOTE: not that it's that bad, but it's not that great
CLIMBING A LADDER TO THE MOON
Procrastinating on my important scholarly duties last night, I happened to flip by C-SPAN and discovered a somewhat spirited debate in the House on the subject of withdrawing the troops from Iraq. A long line of republican veterans came out to list silly, illogical reasons why ending the war would hurt the feelings of the troops. They kept aiming their arguments at Murta, the 37 year marine veteran democrat hawk who has recently turned against the war and drawn up a plan for a six month withdrawal. I missed the part where a republican rookie read a letter calling Murta a coward and got shouted down, but I still got the distinct impression that British parliamenterians were sending our congress some tips. I mean this was rowdy.
But all this talk about Murta and the screen was telling me it was a republican resolution that was being debated. I couldn't figure out what the hell was going on.
The resolution was "non-binding" and only stated that the House felt the troop deployment should be "terminated immediately." Sounded kind of pointless but I was surprised it was actually being debated, even if only 2 democrats and 1 republican ended up voting for it.
But then I went onto this here internet device and read about the resolution and only then did I understand the sinister truth. If you haven't heard, the republican leadership submitted a purposely stupid resolution to withdraw the troops, ahead of Murta's more carefully planned one, just so they could shoot it down.
The hypocrisy is pretty staggering if you sat through any of these sanctimonious speeches equating "trying to end this war" with "calling the troops grandma skinning babyfuckers." More than one of these guys brought up the old RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART 2 reinterpretation of Vietnam where we would've for sure won if those stinkin bureaucrats just gave us a couple more weeks to sew it up and where the morale was ruined not by the aimlessness of the war itself but by hearing that people in Congress were discussing ending it. The guys making this argument are Vietnam vets so okay, their arguments sound ludicrous, but let's give it to them. They would know better than I would. But they lose credibility when they are claiming to be OUTRAGED that the congress is talking about this matter that will undoubtedly crush the fragile hearts of America's finest. Okay, then talk to your fuckin republican leadership who submitted this resolution for the very reason that they thought it would make the democrats look "anti-military" if they talked about ending the war.
Also, if talk of withdrawal is gonna be so god damn hurtful to the boys overseas, you might want to explain this to General George Casey, "the top U.S. commander in Iraq," since he apparently already submitted a plan for withdrawal to Rumsfeld.
Bush of course did his part in Vietnam from some campaign office stateside. For this battle, he threw in a couple good words from his remote location in South Korea. In one of his famous bullshit speeches to troops he said of the Iraq mess, "We will never accept anything less than complete victory." Yeah, well you're gonna have a long, painful life of denial and lack of acceptance then, shithead. You already fucked this ten miles beyond "complete victory." If you even have a definition of "sort of victory" I would be interested to hear it, but I'm guessing it's not something you could put into words. You'll just know it when you see it.
That's the biggest hole I kept noticing in these pro-war republican speeches. They would always mention "victory" or "winning" with the only alternative being what they call "cut and run." But of course, none of these guys gave any hint of how in fuck's name we are gonna be able to achieve something that could reasonably be called winning. Yeah, maybe when we finally put an end to this gawdawful disaster we will be a bunch of losers. But if we wait an extra ten years to do it we will be bigger losers. If they were so concerned about saving face maybe they should've thought of that before starting a difficult (maybe even unwinnable) war and then ignoring the advice of the people whose job it is to do those sorts of things. I guess hindsight is 20/20, but you probably should make careful contingency plans before starting a war instead of just figuring everything will work itself out.
It's like if a guy decided to build a ladder to the moon. He can't just keep climbing and refuse to come down. Eventually he has to realize that you can't build a ladder to the fucking moon. No matter how much you stay the course and refuse to lose and remain steadfast you're gonna eventually fall off the ladder and break your ass. And the sooner you decide to turn around the sooner your ass will heal.
One republican from Texas - I didn't catch his name but he was kind of like a lovable old blowhard uncle telling war stories - he talked about how if we leave Iraq, our enemies will take advantage of our weaknesses. Well, no offense old boy, but have you been getting the newspaper these last couple years? Our weakness is that we are too stupid and stubborn and careless to take our troops out of harm's way. We leave them out there hoping they will attract Progress like flowers attract bees. But mostly they're attracting car bombs. Man, it's not just a coincidence that they're there at the same time as the bombings.
Which Iraqis are they protecting by being there? The ones who are bomb proof? And when you say "fight them over there so we don't have to fight them here," doesn't that sort of contradict this idea about how we're making a better country for our freedom loving purple fingered Iraqi friends? We're setting bear traps in their living rooms with our troops as the bait. Sorry Iraqis, you're gonna have to live with terrorists for a while. It won't be forever though. Just until we win.
But how are we gonna know when this winning occurs? Can these people really picture a day when a democratically elected government is solidly in place, with their own non-abusive troops capable of keeping them in power, and on this day the Islamic terrorists from other countries will decide to stop attacking, and the Iraqi suicide bombers will finally feel (despite no planned withdrawal) that the Americans are no longer occupiers and decide to give life another chance, and the Sunnis and Shiites and Kurds and everyone else will decide to get along, and everyone will chip in to fix the electrical grid and the sewage and the oil pipelines, and then all the little children will pull the flowers and candy out of the attic and sweep away the bomblets and depleted uranium shavings and white phosphorous so they can come to the streets and finally give our boys that parade they were promised, just as Dick Cheney (wearing a full gimp outfit) leads Saddam Hussein out on a leash to hand Bush the 1st Place Victory Trophy and a "Freedom Is On the Move" lapel pin?
Because maybe I'm a pessimist but I'm pretty sure that shit could never, ever happen, ESPECIALLY after these idiots fucked up the planning and execution of this mess six ways to Sunday, every Sunday for the past 3 years. I mean come on. Talk about "progress" all you want. And I'll even agree, phoney as they are, it is genuinely good at least in a symbolic way that they have voted on a couple things now. And I'm sure many Iraqis are really hoping to turn this into a real life democracy and not just a made for American television one. And I hope they can do it.
But you know what, it seemed this way at the time and in retrospect it seems more sure than ever: Abu Ghraib was the end of this war. It was the Mission Unaccomplished banner on the deck of the USS We Fuckin Blew It. You know, Michael Jackson was found innocent but people are never gonna stop calling him a child molester. And O.J.'s not gonna ever live down being O.J. And I know you're not supposed to draw this parallel, but the Nazis never could've cleaned up their image if they had tried. All I'm saying is that it's a little naive to assume the Muslim world is gonna warm up to us after seeing those photos. If you were an Iraqi and there were American soldiers patrolling your neighborhood, do you think you would associate them more with this "good news the media never reports," or with the Abu Ghraib naked butt pyramid?
And of course that brings me to another big topic of our time, the good ol' American torture issue. Bush infamously said "We don't torture." I would argue that this is not him blatantly lying or being completely detached from reality. I think this is another case of thinking that he can just change a definition in order to make what he says true. Does a blowjob count as cheating? Does sticking an electrode up a guy's ass count as torture?
They've tried to make up different names for their unique brand of American torture. They call it "torture lite" and even "enhanced interrogation" and I would submit "doggy fun time." But they know deep in the spot where their hearts would be that it's torture, otherwise Darth Cheney wouldn't have gone and tried to get loopholes put into John McCain's anti-torture legislation.
Isn't it kind of ironic for these guys who always smear people who disagree with them as "unamerican" and "anti-american" to be defending fucking torture? I mean come on, it doesn't get much more clean cut than that. If you like to torture people, there are many S&M clubs in your community that you can get involved in. If it MUST be non-consenting for you to get hard, well... TOUGH LUCK, PERVERT. THIS IS AMERICA. But there are many other countries in the world you could go to that would be more in line with your values.
You may think that it's unfair to write these people off as perverts, just because they jack off to pictures of prisoners on leashes being attacked by dogs. Well I would argue that "it gets me off" is actually a better pro-torture argument than the other ones that are floating around.
While the Bush people are publicly claiming to be against torture (wink wink, nudge nudge, wink again, pinch on the ass, psssst, did you get the wink guys, you did?, you did. okay good, just making sure, I wasn't sure if you got the wink or not), they have some of their more daring buddies out there trying to publicly advocate for it. There's basically one argument and it's so god damn retarded it makes me feel like I need to help feed it its lunch. I've seen it spread from pundits on talk shows to the public and I've heard a couple people calling in to talk shows thinking they made this one up themselves. Like an urban legend or that "aristocrats" joke there are different variations on it but it always involves a hypothetical scenario along these lines:
"Yeah, but what if a bomb is about to be detonated in the middle of New York, and Bruce Willis's million dollar bounty has resulted in the capture of the one guy who can tell us where it's going to go off, and there are only 24 hours to stop it, but NO MATTER HOW NICELY WE ASK this motherfucker refuses to talk, and we know for sure that the only way we can get him to tell us is by taking naked pictures of him and sticking fluorescent tubes up his butt?"
Well first of all, anybody who brings up this ridiculous bullshit should not be allowed to be on TV anymore. Because this shit is too ludicrous to pass either as political analysis OR as an hour long suspense drama on Fox. But I'm gonna be nice. Even though you're fucking idiots. Just let me make these two points:
1. If this type of thing ever happens, man, don't sweat it. Yes, torture is illegal. But I'm pretty sure that after your torturing savvy saves New York from a dirty bomb attack the military tribunal might go pretty lenient on you. In fact, I promise that I will rally behind the torturer who saved New York and demand the charges be dropped. I would even approve of a "it doesn't count as torture if the torture saves New York from a dirty bomb in a 24 type scenario" clause.
2. THIS TYPE OF THING WILL NEVER HAPPEN. Even in the bad Jean-Claude Van Damme movie that you apparently live in this wouldn't work. Because the terrorist wouldn't give up the information under torture. Or if he did, he would just give the wrong information, like in real life. Or he would give information that would lead to a trap EVEN MORE SINISTER than the dirty bomb, but luckily Van Damme would figure it out in time and would disobey a direct order and do some awesome kicks and the splits and save the day. Which is great but he would've saved the day sooner if he hadn't wasted his time sexually molesting prisoners.
Traditionally, my VERN TELL'S IT LIKE IT IS columns are an endless angry spew of the thoughts stomping through my skull, and then suddenly they peter out anti-climactically. This is no exception. Thanks for listening.
--VERN
p.s. some corrections and updates from the last column:
Turns out THE ICE HARVEST is not about a diamond heist, it's actually a suitcase of cash. Sorry for being too poetic with a literal title.
THE HARD CORPS starring Van Damme and Wesley Snipes is a no-go. Snipes was apparently never really involved and from the half-assed way the producer cleared this up my guess is that they intentionally released that incorrect information so that somebody would actually have heard of the movie before it came out, which is unusual for DTV. Anyway it's just Van Damme now, so I'll probaly have to sit this one out.
Good news though: Snipes may be starring in Mario Van Peebles' next movie HARD LUCK, along with Cybill Shepard of BRUCE WILLIS'S MOONLIGHTING fame. Van Peebles is a fellow king of the DTV market but since this is his followup to BADAAASSSSS! I'm thinking it might go theatrical. Let's just hope it's not another false alarm.
Richard Pryor. God damn. I don't know why a guy like me always has to eulogize somebody I never met, but it always bums me out when the world loses a genius like Richard Pryor. So I gotta write something about my favorite Richard Pryor works and it helps me to cope and I apologize if you end up suckered into reading the damn thing.
Now, you know I'm not the hugest fan of comedy and laughing and what not, at least not the standup variety. But the one and only comedy god to me, the greatest of all time no doubt about it, was Richard Pryor. If you happened to read my review of the standup movie JESUS IS MAGIC last week you remember the list I made of the greatest standup movies of all time:
1. RICHARD PRYOR LIVE IN CONCERT
2. RICHARD PRYOR LIVE IN CONCERT
3. RICHARD PRYOR LIVE ON THE SUNSET STRIP
end of list.
In the talkback for that review one guy strongly disagreed with the list, he felt that LIVE IN CONCERT was the whole top five, not just top two. And he could definitely make a good argument for that I think.
Now, it would take more of a comedy expert than me to try to explain what made Richard so god damn funny, and it would be kind of pointless. Because instead of reading about it why aren't you just watching the man on dvd or vhs motion picture at home, seeing it for yourself.
But I'll try a little bit. First of all I think alot of people could relate to Richard or at least sense that he was the real deal. Because he's not one of those comedians that portrays himself as smarter and better than everybody else. He was an underdog. He fucked up alot and he turned it into material. For a while he tried to be like Bill Cosby, because that's who was popular. But then he realized he wasn't Bill Cosby. He grew up in a whorehouse. He was around crime and drugs. He eventually realized that if he was himself, if he talked about the people around him in the language that he spoke off stage, then people cared.
But that's not the whole thing, that would be simplifying things to just say he was great because he was "keepin it real" or whatever today's technology would call it. The subject matter was important but the guy was a god damn genius in the execution. One thing I noticed was the way Richard told stories and became all the characters in the stories. And when I say characters I am including not just human people but also animals, inanimate objects, bodily organs, abstract concepts. This is a man who could play the part of his own heart attack.
My favorite story on LIVE IN CONCERT is about the time Richard decided to get some monkeys as pets. Which is the type of thing Richard Pryor sometimes would do in those days. In the story he plays the part of himself, he plays the part of two monkeys in a tree in the backyard and most hilariously he plays a neighbor's dog. Now when I say that he plays a dog that's not funny, but he gives this dog a personality. It's a dog in a joke and it has more personality than alot of actual living human beings.
LIVE IN CONCERT is the first standup movie he released, but there is one that was filmed earlier called LIVE AND SMOKIN'. That was in 1971, an awkward puberty type period in his career where he had just changed from Bill Cosby wannabe to Richard fuckin Pryor. So it's good stuff for the fans but don't watch it first. It's before he really got everything down. This was only a year after the show in Vegas where he realized he didn't like what he was doing, said, "What the fuck am I doing here?" and just walked off stage in the middle of the show.
Anyway skip that one for now and go to 1985's LIVE ON THE SUNSET STRIP, which is pretty god damn great. If somebody was gonna say that this is actually the greatest standup movie of all time and not LIVE IN CONCERT, I would not necessarily need to fight them. The biggest difference with LIVE IN CONCERT is that by this time he's the fucking Michael Elvis Aaron Jordan Jackson rock star king of the comedy world. The opening of the movie is amazing because you see him wearing this red suit strutting in from the back of the theater to the stage and it's like the Beatles are coming through handing out 100 dollar bills. You want to learn how to be a cool motherfucker, study that opening every day for a year and maybe you will capture some small part of the magic. (Let me know if it works.)
Anyway the stories in SUNSET STRIP are more celebrity oriented because they come from his life and most of them come from his recent life since he's become one of the most famous people in the world. So he talks about things he never could've done before, including going to Africa. And that's a great story and shows how he's changing and becoming more enlightened at this point. But the highlight of the movie, no doubt about it, is towards the end when he talks about maybe the thing he's most famous for now, catching himself on fire while freebasing in 1980. I mean you can't get anymore rock bottom than running down the street naked and on fire, and Richard tells this story and makes it hilarious and moving at the same time. He talks about his addiction and he plays himself, Jim Brown and a crack pipe. It makes you laugh and it grabs your heart by the balls, if a heart had balls. This is great comedy, deep comedy. Fuck that "you ever notice how" bullshit. Richard god damn Pryor.
You ever notice how I'm talking about his standup movies and not BUSTIN' LOOSE or some shit? Well he's funny in his movies but he's not Richard Pryor funny. Most of those movies were sellout movies and he admitted it openly. He didn't do SUPERMAN 3 because of his deep respect for the mythos of Kal El and the new American mythology and what not, he did it to buy coke. In fact, I haven't seen any of these non-standup comedies that really capture what is great about Richard. If you know of one that's great, let me know.
I'll tell you though, he did have a great dramatic role or two. I don't think I've seen LADY SINGS THE BLUES which got him alot of acclaim, but I can definitely vouch for Paul Schrader's BLUE COLLAR, about Detroit auto factory workers. There he's teamed up with Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto, and apparently the three of them despised each other. But I couldn't tell in the movie, I thought they had good chemistry. This is a great role for Richard. Part of his storytelling style is acting, so it's no surprise to me that he can pull off the dramatic shit. He gets to be funny a little bit but his part is pretty intense and ultimately tragic.
Of course I'm a fan of THE MACK and he's good in there too but be warned that he is a secondary role. You watch THE MACK for Max Julien and you get a side order of Richard Pryor.
There's another Richard Pryor drama that is not really a great movie but if you're as interested in the man as I am it is a must-see. The movie is JOJO DANCER, YOUR LIFE IS CALLING which is written and directed by Richard. Don't get scared, this is not a movie about some obscure style of dancing you never heard of (I admit it, I thought that for years). "Jojo Dancer" is not a type of dancer but the name of the guy Richard plays in the movie, a famous comedian who grew up in a brothel in Peoria, who has problems with drugs and women and shoots his car and many other things that happened to Richard Pryor.
The story begins with Jojo suffering a freebase accident coincidentally just like the one Richard Pryor had already experienced in real life. He is in the hospital burn ward all bandaged up and he has this IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE type deal where he goes back over his life up to that point. If you watch the two standup movies I recommend and then get obsessed, I suggest reading PRYOR CONVICTIONS, Richard's autobiography, and then watching this.
Obviously now we'll get that new biography movie they've been trying to do for years. At one point it was gonna star Damon Wayans. I don't know if that would work. More recently it sounded like a done deal, Variety said it was gonna be Mike Epps, the guy that plays Ice Cube's cousin Day-Day in the FRIDAY sequels. That I can almost see, almost. Apparently Richard and his wife chose Epps so I bet they'll stick with him. The director is supposed to be Walter Hill, who knew Richard Pryor because he directed BREWSTER'S MILLIONS. Obviously it's been a long time since HARD TIMES and THE WARRIORS, but I'm rooting for him to get it together for an important movie like this.
I'm not sure if the movie is supposed to be based on PRYOR CONVICTIONS or not. But since Richard was helping out I'd guess yes. Apparently somebody named Caleb Kane is writing, but the only listing on IMDB for a Caleb Kane is the guy who does the voice for the Trix bunny rabbit. Not sure how that will work out.
I've been trying to write a review of WALK THE LINE so I've been thinking about this biopic business. Somehow all the great icons of entertainment can have their lives boiled down to the same shit. Mainly, they're always gonna have marital infidelity and they're gonna have drug addiction and since those things are both dramatic and important to how somebody's life turns out, you see the same shit over and over again every time you watch a biography movie. I guess at least Richard was more spectacular than most on both these counts. Johnny Cash never caught himself on fire or killed his car in a domestic dispute. Richard's story also has the popular debilitating disease angle. I doubt they'll cut it off earlier like they did with Ali because his MS is the tragic irony of his life. He conquered the drug problem and turned it into material, but the MS left him unable to stand and barely able to speak. So he didn't get much of a chance to turn it into comedy. It's also important because he became completely dependent on his wife, who he'd treated so horribly.
But the movie will start out in Grandma's brothel, it'll have the mafia, it'll have racism, it'll hopefully have his trip to Africa. It could be an epic. If not, at least we have JOJO DANCER, where it's the real guy. Try to do that, Mike Epps. Try to actually be Richard Pryor. You can't do it. Only Richard knew how to do that.
I wonder why it is that alot of these biopics start out with the cooperation of the subject and then the poor bastard dies? It happened with Ray Charles, it happened with Johnny Cash. Domino Harvey died while they were finishing up the movie supposedly inspired by her life. Brandon Lee died when they were about to release the movie about his dad, and there's scenes in the movie where Bruce is trying to defend Brandon from a demon curse. Well, that's different I guess. Anyway I guess when you're old and sick, you want to leave a legacy, you want to tell your story while you still can, so some people give it a shot. And maybe knowing the wheels are set in motion is part of what helps them to let go.
By the way, Skander, if that movie about me has to wait a few years, don't worry about it. No hurry.
It's been a hard couple years I think, we've been losing alot of our icons. We lost Johnny Cash, we lost Dr. Thompson, now we lost Richard Pryor. I'm not gonna list who we still got because I don't want to jinx it. You know what, I'm gonna go into a little bit of that Seinfeld observational shit here because this is what happens to me when somebody great dies. Not only do I have to write about them, I have to have like a little private ceremony for them, listen to their music or watch their movies or something. But I run into problems.
Ah shit, Nina Simone died? Damn, I love Nina Simone. Such a great singer and such a powerful human being, a civil rights icon. She even left the US and lived in Paris because she thought there was still too much racism. Nina didn't take any shit. You know what I want to listen to right now is that song 'Mississippi God Damn,' that's a good one. Do I have that on CD? Do I have any Nina Simone on CD? No I don't. That's okay, I'll just have to go over to the record store and--
Ah, shit. I can't go to the store the day Nina Simone died and buy her CD. I'll look like an asshole. It's like I only found out about Nina because she died. Or I never appreciated her until now that she's dead. Like I forgot about her and now I gotta pretend like I care. Ah shit...
So I end up ordering it on Amazon.
(Nina Simone's getting a biopic too, by the way.)
Same thing with Richard. I've rented his standup movies so many times but do I OWN them? No. Do I have his old records? No. That box set they got? Of course not, I'm not made of money. No ceremony for me. I'm fucked. So this column will have to do for now, Richard. At least I didn't accuse you of being Deep Throat like in my eulogy for poor Hunter Thompson. I would've if that Mark Felt thing hadn't come out. But you blew it. Shoulda died earlier if you wanted to be Deep Throat. Sorry.
So without the Deep Throat option that leaves me with the obvious cliche: my man's gone on to the great stage in the sky. He's opening for that one band everybody talks about where they got Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Miles Davis and I believe John Lennon quit due to angelic creative difference type shit so they brought in Ol' Dirty Bastard as the frontman. (I don't know about those Heavenly super groups. Sure, it's a great roster, but do they really gel?) Usually I wouldn't want to even bring up that corny bullshit but it's a comforting thought in Richard's case. It would be great if he got a chance to stand on a stage and tell the story of his later years. I don't know if he'd make the wheelchair into a character or not, but he'd come up with something good.
Anyway I'd like to thank God for giving us these legends in the first place and helping them to shine, but come on dude you're really bumming us out with all this dying and shit. Amen.
--VERN
JANUARY 1st, 2006
Happy new year everybody. Couldn't be worse than the last one as far as my country is concerned. I hope.
Last year my resolution was what I called A COMMITMENT TO EXCELLENCE, and I guess I'm not the one to judge this but from my viewpoint I think it worked out pretty good. What I tried to do was just remember that you poor bastards out there are wasting your time reading some of this stuff so I should try to make it good. If I wrote a review and I wasn't sure it was very interesting I wouldn't post it right away so I could come back to it later and try to make it better. I'm sure I still put some duds up there but probaly alot less than I did prior to my Commitment.
This year though I'm not gonna renew the commitment. What I'm gonna do instead is called STRIVING FOR EXCELLENCE. See, if you have a commitment to excellence, what the fuck is that, anyway? All you do is say you're commited. It's like saying the flag salute every morning, that doesn't mean you're gonna go out there and stand up for the values you just pledged allegiance to, it just means you're there in spirit or something. The difference between striving and commitment is the difference between trying to impress your new girlfriend and laying around reading the newspaper while your wife does the dishes. You still love her, I hope, but you're just not striving.
That's the difference. When you're dedicated to STRIVING FOR EXCELLENCE you actually gotta put some elbow grease into it, by definition. If you just sit on your ass and/or laurels, you are not striving. My goal is to just be striving left and right, striving up and down, striving all over the place. I'm still gonna have gaps where you won't see a review for a little while, but hopefully you will know that it is not because I am procrastinating or some shit. You will know I am out there somewhere striving.
Think of it this way. All last year, I wanted to have a fancy logo on my sight that said "A Commitment to Excellence." It would be shiny gold cursive type letters, real elegant looking and what not. But I never got around to making a logo. You know why? Because I didn't have to strive. I just had to be committed enough to think of the idea, but I didn't have to strive to achieve it. You see, when Striving For Excellence, the mere achievement of excellence is not enough. You gotta have excellence and you gotta strive to get it. You gotta have both, every time. If you are the type of individual who excellence comes easy to, too bad. You still have to strive or you're not living up to your resolution. You still gotta find some other more challenging level of excellence that requires striving.
Already today I did a whole bunch of striving. As you may have noticed, I am not a computer scientist of any kind. My web skills are primitive at best. So for a long time now my reviews page, the one that links to every review I've ever written, has been fucked up sixty-two ways to Easter Sunday. On my program here it looked fairly normal but then you look at it online and the fonts are all fucked up, some of the titles are randomly giant and alot of them are too small to even read. Also some of the links were to a file on the desktop of my old computer, which most of you probaly do not have access to.
I always wanted to fix this but I didn't know how. So what I did now, by striving, was finally figure out what the problem was and learn how to straighten it out and put in the effort required to get it done. It required looking at code and finding little tags I don't understand and what not. I now have a new respect for you computer programmers. And by "new respect" I mean "you people are fucking insane wanting to do that all day."
So at least when I look at it now it's all straightened out and readable. So please read my old reviews, there's some good ones in there in my opinion.
Also, one thing I'm striving to do is make the world a better place and help people to get along. And I decided that one small way I can contribute to a better society is through my work at The Ain't It Cool News. What I have decided to do is to Adopt a Talkbacker. I chose a guy named Goatzinger who responded to some guy's top ten list by saying that he was a "moron" because they had differing opinions about a particular scene in WAR OF THE WORLDS.
I started by staging an intervention and declaring myself his sponsor. It's sort of like an online version of the Big Brother program. I plan to keep an eye on Goatzinger whenever I see him in the talkbacks, and I will just try to look out for him, let him know that I have his back, but also let him know when he is out of line telling people they are stupid for liking a movie that was not mighty enough for his powerful tastes. But most of all I just hope to be a positive role model for him. Hopefully I too can live up to being a positive individual and lead by example. And I encourage everyone who frequents that kind of dangerous internet territory to pick some asshole to take under their wing and mentor. Each one teach one and all that.
Darth Vader came through in the end, if I remember right, or Lord of the Rings or one of those guys. So I don't see why Goatzinger can't be redeemed. And if he can then so can others. But probaly not all of them because some of those people are god damn lunatics. But I am not a coward. I'm gonna try. I'm gonna strive.
Anyway I'll leave it at that for tonight but I promise I will STRIVE to write another column soon, probaly about the domestic spying shenanigans but let's be honest, if I wait a couple days there could be something else. They could find slaves working in a secret underwater chamber below a pond behind Cheney's house or it will turn out the CIA is torturing children in a secret prison on the moon or who knows what. Whatever it is it will be fucked up and I will be there to comment.
thanks friends,
--VERN
SEATTLE IS #2!
What is it about the Super Bowl that can drive men to madness? Look, I'm not really a sports guy, and especially not a football guy. By football I mean the American kind with the bigass helmets and giant shoulder pads to make everybody look like monsters, not the European kind where there's less pads and people bite each other on the balls and shit. In this american type of football the whole season is leading up to the big day, zero hour, Men's Christmas. The Super Bowl. See, I'm a man and I can prove it, but the fact is I don't always watch the Super Bowl. I really don't give a shit about football. That's just how the Lord made me.
But a couple weeks ago the Seattle Seahawks were in their first playoffs in more than twenty years. Early afternoon the day of the last playoff game I was still waking up when I looked out the window and I saw a dude walk past my apartment with full head-to-toe Seahawks gear and a giant Seahawks flag over his shoulder. I almost spit out my non-alcoholic beverage because you don't usually see that in this town. We're used to our teams losing and those types of extremists usually have to be shipped in from the suburbs. I mean yeah the Mariners had a good season a couple years ago, the Sonics had a championship back before you were born and the Storm got the title recently. (That doesn't count to these type of dudes because men don't paint their bodies and set things on fire to celebrate women's accomplishments. Maybe some day.) And the Seahawks have usually been the worst of all our teams. But there they were winning their first playoffs since 1984 which means they get their first Super Bowl since God made Adam, Eve and Steve.
As they won their game I looked out the same window where I saw the maniac with the flag and this time I could see fireworks launching off the top of Corporate Product Placement Field on the other side of the city. I went downtown to watch MATCH POINT (oh jesus, I'm sounding less and less masculine every paragraph) and everywhere you went people would come up to you and yell GO HAWKS! or high five you, or a car would drive past with the driver not watching the road but instead sticking his head out the window like a dog howling at the moon. I didn't see any flames or rolling cars but there were firecrackers echoing from the hills and even after the movie there were carloads of dudes driving around yelling GO HAWKS at you, still circling the city high as a fuckin kite off the game that ended three or four hours ago.
The truth is I can't relate to any of these dudes and probaly couldn't even hold a conversation with them for more than five minutes on any topic other than porn. But as the game got closer I started to realize something kind of weird... I kind of did give a shit. I really wanted Seattle to win. Call it civic pride, call it vanity, call it a lust for glory, I don't know but I don't think I was the only one falling into this madness. Because it wasn't just grocery stores and car dealerships and gas stations with the banners and painted windows and inspirational readerboard messages. It was the little one screen Landmark theater where they're showing BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN. It was the hipster independent record store that closed early on game day so their shaggy haired employees could watch. I don't want to sound like a "fair weather fan" so let me be clear. I still don't care about football. There are better accomplishments than being the best at carrying a ball through ten thousand pounds of angry muscle and plastic. But I still wanted them to win.
Because I don't like football but what I do like is Seattle, and I wouldn't be against us getting some fuckin credit over here every once in a while. Guess what bitches, we gave you Kurt Cobain. We also gave you Quincy Jones. Remember in the movie RAY, when Ray Charles was hanging out with Larenz-Tate-as-Quincy and the guy who plays Leprechaun? Where the fuck do you think that was? I'll give you a hint: not Pittsburgh. Same thing with Loretta Lynn, we had her out in the boonies somewhere I think, when there used to be honky tonks. But that was a long time ago so after a little rest we decided to give the world Jimi Hendrix. He tried to leave us for London but we still ended up with his body and his guitars. Sorry Jimi. We also got Bruce and Brandon Lee, right next to each other at Volunteer Park. Not too shabby. And let's not forget the WTO riots. You know those Orwellian "freedom of speech zones" they use anywhere there's a protest now? Everybody thinks that's an invention of the Bush regime, but it's not. The first time I ever heard of it was WTO the day Bill Clinton came into town. Clinton did it, to shut us up. Okay so that's a negative contribution to society, you don't want to go around bragging about that one but it just goes to show we're some rowdy motherfuckers over here in Seattle. Bolt down your cars and board up your Starbucks windows if you hear the opening notes of "Electric Ladyland" off in the distance.
But the sad fact of the matter is that's not enough for the world. Starting musical revolutions and throwing the corporate bigwigs out on their asses is nothing compared to having a #1 professional men's sports team. In fact it's not just us, it's this whole side of the country I feel is not taken seriously. Even with Hollywood and Disneyland over on our coast, so much of the media centers around New York and the east coast, like it's the capital of the god damn world. It pissed me off when the Mariners had a record 116 wins in a season and the national commentators still talked about them like they were a total joke. And it pissed me off even more when they were right, at least about them not getting to the World Series.
But you know what really got me thinking about this was not sports, it was a script. My buddy Skander Halim (PRETTY PERSUASION now available on DVD) who optioned me for Hollywood and what not, he wrote a funny script called VERN TELLS IT LIKE IT IS (good title) that has jack shit to do with my life but it took place in Seattle. He's from Canada or somewhere like that, so he's probaly a pretty good sample of how Seattle is viewed from the outside. And he's got alot of good clever and observant humor in this script but when he's introducing Seattle he's got a joke about how everybody's drinking coffee. And he kind of acted like the very idea of crime in Seattle was funny. I tried to explain to him look, I know it's not New York or Detroit or something but Seattle is an actual city. There are lowlifes just like anywhere else. There are homeless teens and junkies and prostitutes and the whole deal. You ever seen that documentary STREETWISE? It's not just the Space Needle surrounded by espresso bars. But I don't think Skander was buying it. He thinks we're a bunch of pussies sipping mocha whatevercinnos.
I thought about that and I realized... If only our football team was number one. That would straighten this shit out I bet.
Next thing I know it's a Sunday afternoon, I should be finishing my chapters on BELLY OF THE BEAST and CLEMENTINE but instead I'm sitting there watching the fuckin Super Bowl. I know there's the whole thing about Super Bowl ads, I'm supposed to get excited about the movie ads. But all it is is trailers that are way too short. Yeah I'm excited about the pirates movie and the Mission Impossible but I already seen Tom Cruise get blown up and fly into the side of the car, I'm not gonna get too worked up about seeing it again on a smaller screen. And you know me man, advertising gets my blood boiling. I mean what kind of an asshole does it take to get Kermit the Frog to sell out and shill for cars? Come on man it's Kermit the Frog. Fucking Kermie, man. Is nothing sacred? So our society is going down the fucking john. Doesn't mean you gotta get puppets involved.
Same thing with Dr. Seuss. I don't know where he's buried but I bet there were some disturbing vibrations somewhere when Harrison Ford read "Oh the Places You'll Go" but with an alternate ending where you're successful because everybody sees you on TV in the Super Bowl.
And then Seattle lost. They started out good, hung in there for a while and then blew it, which is a Seattle sports tradition. I enjoyed watching them but I think I put my finger on one of the things I don't like about football. I think my favorite sport to watch, other than International Tough Man Competition, would have to be basketball. Not only does basketball have more opportunity for style and showmanship than most sports, it's fast paced. It goes back and forth so fast. You don't have to go through a complicated process to build towards getting points on the board, so there's more potential for one team to turn things around. In baseball you got home runs, but there's gonna be less of that now that they gotta cut down on steroids. In football you can run 75 yards for a touchdown like that one guy did, but that doesn't happen every day. Most of the time you gotta work your way toward it, it takes for fucking ever.
Now you could argue that that's the beauty of it, all that strategy, all that patience. Like chess, but with big musclemen grunting and banging their heads together. Okay, I'll buy into that. So let's take the slowpokes in baseball and football and contrast them. In baseball we got Ichiro, and he's cool because when he makes a play that seems almost supernatural, like catching a longball and throwing it right to home plate or climbing all the way up a wall and catching a would-be homerun, he brushes it off like it ain't no thang. He blows your mind and he acts like he doesn't even care, which makes it seem twice as amazing. In football, they make one good play, it doesn't even have to be all that impressive, they gotta dance around. They yell and put their fists in the air and pound the ground or spike the ball and shit like that.
Now I'm not saying it's wrong to celebrate your achievements but I realized that this is why I can't get that excited about football players. Because any other place in life, the Ichiro approach is gonna make you cool and the football approach is gonna make you look like a jackass. I mean think about Clint Eastwood, he plays it cool. Does he yell and punch things and spin around to show you how big and tough he is? No, he talks quiet and foils a bank robbery while finishing his hot dog. That's the whole thing, you gotta be tough and then you gotta contrast it by not acting like a big fuckin neanderthal. That's why Tough Man Competition is my favorite, you see a guy with arms the size of telephone poles carrying a jukebox on his back for 25 feet and then they interview him and he seems like the sweetest, most humble dude you ever met.
Anyway despite my philosophizing the game was pretty good. At least they didn't get their asses handed to them until the fourth quarter. They kept hope alive until near the end. And even the commentators were uncharacteristically respectful of the team. At half time they were already losing but John Madden and friends were talking about how lucky Pittsburgh was to be in the lead and how they need to "settle down" or they're gonna lose. And they agreed with me on all the bad calls: the Seattle touchdown that didn't count because of an iffy holding call, the Pittsburgh touchdown that did count even though you could see from multiple angles of replay that the ball didn't make it to the line. Every commercial break showed the Steelers holding the trophy, and the refs seemed to want to make this prophecy come true. If those calls had been made on the west coast it wouldn't have been pretty. There would've been some free speech zones set up pretty quick. Hell, with better refs we (and by we I mean the football team that I only gave a shit about today) would've won this thing. In keeping with Seattle's democratic roots, I guess.
And now life goes on and we thank the Lord that winning isn't everything and football is stupid and we really don't care at all about the stupid Super Bowl. Or at least we don't care all that much. Usually. The saddest part is realizing that that time between the fireworks and realizing you lost the Super Bowl only happens once. Next time it won't be as exciting. Next time instead of driving around like fuckin maniacs yelling greetings to total strangers we stay calm and we say, "This time we'll do better." You only get one first time. You gotta save it for somebody special.
Somebody like Bruce Lee. Hey Pittsburgh, you got somebody better than Bruce Lee? I don't think so. You don't even have Bruce Li. You have George Romero, and for that we respect you. But we're #1 in Bruce Lee. Fuck all y'all.
Anyway thanks for reading this column, next time I'll do better.
--VERN
So Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face with a shotgun. Big fuckin deal. I know it sounds like some cold blooded badass shit for a guy to do but keep in mind it was AN ACCIDENT. So it doesn't make him tough. Being clumsy is nothing to brag about.
I know this is last week's scandal but I want to spend a couple paragraphs on it because you can't help but draw parallels between Cheney's flurry of buckshot and every other colossal mess these morons have created. Have you heard the details of the hunting setup at this place? They were hunting domesticated, flightless, penned in quail. And even still, they had to DRIVE UP to the place where the domesticated, flightless, penned in quail are. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Actually not even that. It's like driving up to a barrel full of fish that can't swim and shooting them. That's not hunting, real hunters don't do that kind of shit. It's just animal cruelty. What I'm saying is this is classic Bush administration: set out to do something that is morally wrong, then do such a bad fuckin job of it that it turns out way worse than anyone could've imagined it would.
As you know I have personally flipped off Dick Cheney from less than ten feet away, so I've looked into the eyes of the abyss. I know the type of individual we are dealing with here. We are talking a HARD TARGET type of individual. I have no doubt in my mind that Dick Cheney would like to let loose some homeless vets or hurricane refugees on his private compound and go hunting for the Most Dangerous Game. Fortunately this is a rare case where the guy realizes the limits of his capabilities. He would not be able to hunt Ice-T or Jean-Claude Van Damme, because he can't shoot for shit. I am positive - though I don't want to test this out because it would be too dangerous - that any child, even a child without fingers, could be handed a gun and would get closer to hitting the quail than this bald bastard did. If it was ethical to do, this would be scientifically proven.
I mean think about it. He shot his millionaire lawyer buddy in the face. You know how hard it would be to do that? Imagine this. There is a domesticated, flightless quail in a pen on the ground. Then there is the millionaire lawyer in the neon orange hunting vest. By all accounts, the guy was standing on his feet, not on his head. That would mean his face would be five or six feet off the ground. No quail is gonna be anywhere near that area, quail are short, they are not at human height. All you can figure is that fucker was holding the shotgun backwards.
Either that or there's more to this story than has been revealed. There must be a reason why Cheney and friends wouldn't talk to the cops until the next day. And all the clues we need were in the State of the Union address. That's right, I'm talking about animal-human hybrids. Cheney's friend is a werequail. He looked like a quail. That's much more plausible than the idea that somebody could actually miss one of the things. You'd have to be completely incompetent to do something like that. But if it just looked like a regular quail you would hit it. Then 18 hours later it wakes up naked in human form with buckshot in its face, shoulder and heart and they notify the police and the press immediately.
Okay so I still think it's hilarious that my personal flip off buddy Dick Cheney shot a guy in the face. I mean, that's fucked up. But just because it's funny doesn't mean we need to make a big issue out of it. There are many worse crimes for a vice president than being the very worst marksman in the entire history of projectiles, and in fact this guy has committed all of them at least three times. But there is one aspect of this thing that really disgusts me. They made the guy apologize! I don't know if you saw this but the guy does a press conference, he's still got buckshot in his face (they say it won't ever come out), he just had a heart attack a couple days ago, and he says:
"My family and I are deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have had to go through this week."
That's the real cold blooded shit right there. I know this guy is friends with Cheney and Karl Rove and wants to keep the franchise going. But for god's sake man, the fucker just SHOT YOU IN THE FACE. There is buckshot permanently embedded in your face, and we can all see it. Some of it got in your heart, you could've died. You could still die.
Mary Jo Buttafuoco, when her husband's teenage lover shot her in the head, did not come out and apologize to Amy Fisher and her family. Ronald Reagan and James Brady didn't apologize to whatsisdick after they got shot. I've never seen Tupac or Fifty Cents apologize to the people who shot them, and the guy with the chunk missing from his ear didn't apologize to Mike Tyson. You know why? Because nobody, especially no millionaire republican, is that forgiving. You cannot convince me there wasn't either a threat or an offer to this guy in order to get that out of him. I predict Secretary of Defense Mark Whittington. Whatever it was though, that shows you the kind of heartless reptile men we're dealing with here. The type of people who would shoot a guy in the face and then force him to go apologize on TV.
During the week when Cheney Shoots a Guy in the Face was the top story, republican pundits kept saying it was time to start discussing the real issues. And I thought believe me motherfucker, you don't want to start discussing the real issues. Because I agree, we need to get back to this illegal spying business. This is a big a fucking deal.
In case you missed this one, the government spies on you. AT&T and other companies said yeah guys, no problem, just plug in and check out any phone calls or emails you need to. According to Bush, in one of his familiar whiny-petulant-defensive speeches, "if Al Qaeda is calling your house, we want to know why." Also, if other people are calling your house, they want to have a listen. According to the whistleblowers who revealed the existence of this problem, they were casting a "wide net" and thousands of people have been listened to. And separate reports have the FBI upset because they were buried in such an avalanche of eavesdropping that they didn't know what to do with it all. In other words, the program is both abusive and ineffective, the two trademarks of the Bush administration.
Of course, the administration wants to shut down talk of this, they don't want to have a legitimate debate about it. Even the many republicans who are upset about it want to just take care of it and sweep it under the rug before the mid-terms, so they're actually proposing changing the law to make it legal. Pretty diabolical. Because yes, it's a problem that the administration thinks they're above the law. But if we made it legal to spy without a warrant, that would also be a problem. They don't want to have a public debate about any of the issues this raises, they just want to come to a quickie compromise and get the news talking about missing white ladies or Jessica Simpson or somebody.
But honestly, I don't think there's much to debate. This is wrong, this is not what America is about, we don't do that shit, case closed. The only thing you can really argue is IF we would be safer if we did that in some other country. But not here since this is fucking America, we don't give up our liberty just because one or two morons in the audience on that live show they have on Fox mistakenly believe it will make us safer.
There are some motherfuckers out there, and they know who they are. They are guys who may possibly have giant flags flying off the backs of their trucks, or more likely little shiny flags pinned to their suit lapels. Some of these motherfuckers like to point alot of fingers and call alot of names that involve anti-american this and unpatriotic that and etc.
They can talk the talk and they can have the world's largest selection of yellow ribbon magnets but if the fuckers don't even know what America IS then they should probaly tone down the red white and blue shit a little. Okay so you have the three colors of the flag memorized but there are some other basics you gotta remember too. First of all, the constitution. Second of all, the constitution. Extra credit: Ben Franklin.
I mean when Milli Vanilli were up there talking about how great they were and it turned out they were lip synching and didn't even sing on their own album, they got their grammy taken away from them and one of them jumped out a window. And I'm afraid there are some individuals out there who are in the same situation. These are people who use 'FREEDOM' and 'DEMOCRACY' in sentences more than they use 'the' and 'is,' and now all the sudden it turns out THEY DON'T EVEN FUCKING BELIEVE IN FREEDOM AND DEMOCRACY.
If you believe that it's okay for the government to tap your phone line without a warrant, you don't believe in America. It's that simple. I mean what do you think is the BASIC PREMISE of this fuckin place anyway? If you don't give a shit about the most basic American values then 1) please give all your flags to somebody who deserves them and 2) stop trying to change what America is about. It's not like you didn't know what you were getting into when you lived here. Ben Franklin has not been kept secret from you. The constitution is widely available, you could've checked what it said. I'm not gonna tell you to move to Russia, because that would be unamerican. But you don't go into a vegan sandwich shop and ask for ribs, and you don't go to America and ask to be spied on by the government.
Can you believe there are people willing to stand up and say, "I don't care if they're listening in on my phone calls and reading my emails, because I'm not doing anything wrong"? You might as well wear a t-shirt that says, "I'm with stupid" and has the "with" part and the arrow crossed out. You're missing the point. You'd make a good citizen in a dystopian sci-fi story.
The only way they can justify that kind of pathetic Big Brother suckling is to turn it into a simplistic this-or-that choice, like it's either a. police state or b. get blown up. But you know what, that's not what America is. You can't choose to abandon everything America is about because you're scared. I'm not saying that's for pussies, although it is. But I'm saying that it just doesn't make any god damn sense. If freedom puts us in danger, that sucks. Because we're keepin the freedom. That's just the way we do it around her.
So now that we've settled that issue, let's agree that it doesn't even have a thing to do with what's going on here with this domestic spying. Okay, so they've made a plausible alibi here by establishing that this administration could fuck up anything from nation building to disaster relief to shooting flightless domesticated penned-in quail to-- well, I was gonna say putting on pants but how about the less hypothetical swallowing a fucking pretzel. Despite the long track record of fucking up every imaginable detail I still find it hard to believe that they just FORGOT to ask for warrants hundreds of times.
In case you haven't heard, all they had to was go to a secret FISA court AFTER they've already done the spying, and ask a very lenient judge to approve it. This has been going on since the '70s and apparently something like 6 have been turned downed in that time. The fact that that's all they have to do to spy on you is actually kind of scary if you ask me, but they couldn't even be bothered to do that. They did like those odds.
So it doesn't take a genius to notice there's something they're not telling us here. Obviously, if they're not asking for Absolute Guaranteed and Legally Required Court Approval, that means they're spying on someone that no way in hell they're gonna get a warrant for. Which, it sounds like, would be pretty fucking tough. There has been some pretty convincing speculation on who they're actually spying on:
1. JOURNALISTS. This one kind of makes sense because there are some journalists that have interviewed actual terrorists. If they were spying on them to try to find out their sources, that would probaly be the closest thing to a legitimate reason. And still illegal. This theory picked up steam when whatsername on CNN asked the writer who broke this story if he had any information that Christiane Amanpour had been spied on. There hasn't ever been an explanation for why she asked that and CNN even removed it from the transcript. Hmmmm.
2. POLITICIANS. Shit man wouldn't it be beautiful to watch Scott McLellan answer questions about tapping John Kerry's phone during the campaign? Maybe this is wishful thinking, but it just seems like what these people would do. After all, they did bug UN Council members and try to blackmail other countries into approving the Iraq invasion. It seems kind of crazy that modern republicans would do the exact thing that brought Nixon down, but remember, ignoring the lessons of history is one of their favorite hobbies.
3. THE ANTHRAX KILLER. Just kidding. I don't think they're looking for that guy anymore. Kind of interesting that he also went after journalists and democrat politicians. Hmmm. Oh well, I guess we will never know or think about it again so really who cares other than the people who lost family members and friends, etc.
4. PRETTY MUCH EVERYBODY. Actually, I don't know if I've seen anybody speculate this, but it's my theory. They couldn't go to FISA and say "give us a warrant for everybody." To understand this idea you gotta go back to that quaint year of 2002, when I and others were shitting our pants over Iran-Contra felon John Pointdexter and his Total Information Awareness program, the creepy program with the all-seeing-eye logo that was gonna compile a huge database on all american citizens and use algorhithms to figure out which ones of us to send to Gitmo. Well Congress got upset, forced Pointdexter to resign and cut off the funding for the program. The End. Or was it? Earlier this month at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Iran-Contra scumbag/current intelligence czar John Negroponte was asked whether Total Information Awarness was continuing in a different form, and instead of saying "No" he answered with a less comforting "I don't know." Later, the former head of the NSA was asked the same question and said, "I'd like to answer in closed session." Uh oh.
The National Journal has an article on this now. Apparently when the funding got cut off they didn't take that to mean "stop doing this creepy shit you fuckin sickos" but instead to mean "please find funding elsewhere and change the code name." Now instead of the terrifying "TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS" it has the more enigmatic name "BASKETBALL." Seriously. According to the article, none of their sources would comment on whether Bush's eavesdropping program was related to Basketball, but both are always described as "an early-warning system." If you read what some of the whistleblowers were talking about, they talk about scanning through everyone's phone calls with software that recognizes certain threatening words. That kind of thing seems like it would go hand-in-hand with this all seeing basketball business.
But how can you defend our liberty when every time you turn around there's something else to be pissed off about? One day they're spying, the next day they're shooting a guy in the face and then the day after that they let the UAE buy the company that runs our ports and don't even tell congress. Or Bush. So there's already a new scandal of the week. I won't pretend to have a deep understanding of this port security issue but it seems to me like it's the same old shit with FEMA and everything else. They only care about hooking up their rich buddies and corporations and the safety and well being of Americans is an afterthought, if it's a thought at all. Which it isn't.
I personally am not comfortable with a state run corporation from the United Arab Emerates running our ports, and it's not comforting to know that many of our ports are already run by other countries. But the issue is bigger than that. These fuckin things have been sitting there wide open regardless of who's running them. It is flat out ridiculous that this administration hasn't done much of anything to increase safety there. As somebody who lives on a coast, this seems pretty important to me. We can spend billions upon billions to start a horrible civil war in Iraq but we can't throw a couple bucks at protecting ourselves at our own front door.
By "protecting us" by the way, I should probaly reiterate that I do not mean listening in on our phone calls and reading our emails. You know who you are. Stop spying and mind your own business, assholes.
--VERN
