Hunger

I want to go have dinner but the freshmen I'm living with are singing along with and dancing to a boy band cover of Nickelback's "How You Remind Me" and I don't want to get involved.

Spreading the Gospel of Basil

Yesterday I put up a post about Toni Basil and how awesome she was. It has come to my attention in the past 24 hours that there is even more to Basil's awesomeness than evidenced by her videos alone. To save you the trouble of going to Wikipedia, I've done the hard work for you.

A list of other gifts from Toni's elvish heart:

• She choreographed the "Once in a Lifetime" video by the Talking Heads and showed David Byrne footage of epilepsy sufferers for inspiration

• She choreographed and directed the (admittedly kind of silly) video for the amazing "Cross-eyed and Painless." In so doing, she also invented the moonwalk before Michael Jackson!

• She choreographed David Bowie's Diamond Dogs tour.

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• She choreographed the Monkees' insane movie, Head, cowritten by Jack Nicholson, as well as other sweet movies like American Graffiti and Muppets from Space.
  

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• She appeared as one of the prostitutes who flips out in the acid trip scene from Easy Rider (she's the one with black hair), as well as a movie called Mother, Jugs and Speed with Bill Cosby and Raquel Welsh (Mother and Jugs, respectively) and the aforementioned Rockula alongside Thomas Dolby(!), among others. She was also on an episode of Baywatch Nights as a fortune teller.
  

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Ok, I actually thought that list was going to be longer, but that's still nothing to sneeze at. Plus she's six years older than my mom. Whoah!

On a related side note, did you know that in the '90s the Talking Heads reformed without David Byrne as The Heads and released an album called No Talking, Just Head? And it sucked? My goodness.

Toni Basil Wishes You a Happy Post-Thanksgiving

I said before that if I was living in any cartoon universe I'd like it to be that of Betty Boop. Well, if I could visit any music video universe I think it would be fun to visit that of Toni Basil. The only thing is that I know I couldn't hack it. They're wildly energetic; everything's moving all the time. Toni lives in a void surrounded by theater props and her multi-racial troupe of dancers. So cool!
Until tonight I only knew about "Mickey," her super-hit. I didn't know that, like the Obama family, Toni Basil was a pixie made out of pure joy.
My favorite videos:

You Got a Problem:
A Devo cover. Holy fucking shit.



Shopping From A-Z:
Dig how they call out all the groceries ("F: fish!") and for "X" they just yell "Nothing!"



Be Stiff:
Another Devo cover. Imagine if this was your band at prom. You wouldn't know what to do. Plus they'd out-dance you and you'd just stop trying.



The Night:
In 1990 Toni Basil was in a movie called Rockula about... well I don't know. The whole movie's on youtube, but I don't think I can bring myself to watch it.
This scene not only looks like it was awkwardly shoehorned into the flick, but it features: a guy in chainmail licking his lips and scratching with a victrola; Toni doing a really awkward rap; the actors trying to act with nothing to do; a golden piano. Oh, and the song's awesome.



Extra credit - videos not embedded here to save space:
Street Beat: I don't know what to say about this. It's over the top.
Street Life: Not to be confused with "Street Beat."

Happy Thanksgiving!

Obama Pixiefish Wishes You a Happy Pre-Thanksgiving

Hey, tomorrow's Thanksgiving! I'll be spending it with some Americans that I met. They like to cook and I like to eat so, basically, I'm set. This will be the second Thanksgiving dinner I've bummed this year as two other Americans cooked me a budget feast on Saturday. We had microwave chicken, potatoes, gravy, canned cranberry sauce, apple crisp and instant stuffing. Yum!

Wanna feel warm and fuzzy? Check out these pictures of Thanksgivings past Slate put up.



While I was on Slate I had to take a look at the political cartoons featured. Favorites include this one of the religious right, who apparently have changed their name tag post-election from "the voice of real America" to "prophets misunderstood in their homeland."



And this delightfully strange depiction of the Obama family in fish/pixie form:

Multi-National Mediocrity (co-starring Robin Williams)

Now, when I talk about pop culture differences between Ireland and the US I usually find myself neatly picking out the worst, most glaring aspects of Irish pop culture (the ones most visible to me) and juxtaposing them with my favorite aspects of US culture (likewise). But that mindset overlooks perhaps the ugliest sides of both, which, to my mind, are products of seething banality. Both in the US and here I'm shocked by the terrible, terrible mediocrity that is embraced nationwide.
I hear myself getting on my high horse again, which is never fun to read. I don't mean to sound like some Chuck Klosterman-like arbiter of holier-than-thou taste.
But I do know what I like and what annoys me:

I've bitched before about how passable, Nashville blandoids The Kings of Leon are treated like rock gods here. Am I crazy? I mean I know it's not terrible, but it's not that amazing is it? Doesn't it sound like the Rock 'n' Roll Generator is set on "Default?"
That said, "Sex On Fire" is kind of fun.



I've been trying to find an analogous mediocre American band that also made it big here. I knew there must be sweet, sweet examples of middle-of-the-road history repeating itself. Imagine my happiness when someone told me that the Fun Lovin' Criminals were huge in Ireland for years and are even still touring. Don't remember them? Yeah you do:



Of course, when the Northern Irish aren't runnin' around robbin' banks all whacked off of Scooby Snacks they're watching X-Factor, which, like American Idol is complete shit. Unlike American Idol, though, everyone tunes in weekly, from old grandpas to 8-year-old girls. And Northern Ireland even has it's own horse in the race, the living Cupie Doll that is Eoghan Quigg:






Speaking of that awful Snow Patrol song, they played that at halftime during the Northern Ireland football match I went to. There's a lot of support for local artists.

But could anything drop my spirits and lift my ire like the fact that universal boil Jeff Dunham has wormed his way into the hearts of people in both the US and the UK? I turned away from the US, embarrassed that Jeff Dunham's Christmas special was the most-watched program in Comedy Central history, only to find that Northern Ireland has embraced his hacky, broadly-racial ventriloquist act, too. It's this kind of humor that makes me even miss the out-and-out, inarguable atrociousness of someone like Carlos Mencia. It's the type of thing I'm almost sure my dad's side of the family undoubtedly thinks is great (other things they like: the movie August Rush, Josh Grobin, church)
Why, world, why? Why do the freshmen I live with quote Achmed the Dead Terrorist to me?
I dare you to watch all 11 minutes of this clip - the most popular youtube clip in my hall at the moment - without clawing your eyes out so you can get to your brain to switch it off:



Oh, but it's not all question-setup/answer-punchline with a dead terrorist puppet; there are plenty of other too-bland-to-be-offensive stereotype puppets on display.
Like Sweet Daddy D! The lisping, jiving, black pimp!



Look at that lily-white crowd laugh! But Jeff didn't forget about them. What about hillbilly Bubba J? He likes - get this - watching Nascar and drinking beer! Haha! I relate to that!



And who could forget Jose Jalapeno. He's a sleepy Mexican pepper... on a steek! Watch purple abomination Peanut tell him what we're all thinking - your accent is funny! "What the hell is feeling "cchhhappy?" You fucking freak!



US and Ireland: this is your culture. You have the power to kill it; you have the power to make it stronger.


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Speaking of August Rush, I had to go imdb to remember it's name. While there I looked at the movies that Robin Williams currently has in production. Listen to these plot synopses and tell me that you can't already picture the movies in your head/ have maybe already seen them:

• The Krazees - "Unable to deal with his daughter reaching puberty, a psychologist (Williams) has to get a handle on his emotions, which have come to life as different characters."
• Old Dogs - "Two friends and business partners find their lives turned upside down when strange circumstances lead to them being placed in the care of 7-year-old twins."
• World's Greatest Dad - "A comedy about a man who learns that the things you want most may not be the things that make you happy, and that being lonely is not necessarily the same as being alone."

Hey, I have a script: unable to deal with the pressures of making a few good movies in the '90s, Robin Williams handles his emotions by becoming a giant self-parody.
That, or Hook 2.

Neat Things

I can't make a coherent post right now, but I wanted to share some of the artists whose work I've been looking at over the past couple of days. Neato:

Josh Keyes



Laurie Lipton



Martin Wittfooth
Martin Wittfooth going through the process of doing a painting.



Espira

Coldplay makes you gay, Chaucer makes you stupid

So I'd agreed to go out with my friend and do whatever she wanted to do last night, but upon finding out it meant being 5th-wheel at a gay club I opted out. Her and the three guys she went with came back and told me that it was too "underground" and "grimy" and basically ended up saying that it looked like the product of an actual subculture and not a place that was trying to look like the product of a subculture. I think I'd much rather find myself in a place that caters to an actual subculture than one that caters with the idea of a subculture to bourgeois people intent on "slumming it." But maybe that's an elitist, "slumming it" attitude to take itself.
Either way, I would've been pretty out of place, though a girl basically told me the other day that I was gay because I told her I liked Coldplay. That's cool; I'm secure enough in my heterosexuality to rep Rush of Blood to the Head 4 lif - Lord knows I listen to gayer music. But you'll never find me repping X&Y. That record's for pussies.

I was going to watch Play Time and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul this weekend but, even after downloading the supposedly all-region VLC Media Player I still can't watch Region 2 DVDs. It's weird because it let me watch Pasolini's Arabian Nights the other week, which you can't get on DVD in America. Why? Maybe because a guy shoots a girl's vagina with a penis-arrow. Or, more likely, because it's long and draggy, the acting's bad and it looks like it was dubbed into Italian by a 5th-grader.



I don't mind the dragginess and all that because over-all, I really love how Pasolini adapts classic texts in a way that is true to the gritty, unsanitised realism of the time they were written. He finds romanticism in the actual grime and dirt of the era, which is really refreshing to me. It feels truer to the stories. He also purely seems to be interested in the stories from the classics that deal with sex, which can be fun when it's done right (The Decameron), disturbing when it's done right (Salo) or just kind of boring (Arabian Nights). Apparently his Canterbury Tales adaptation is nothing to write home about, either, but, after I finish reading it I'm going to rent it (on VHS in the States, unfortunately).
Even if the rest is boring, this scene from Hell is pretty promisingly bonkers:




Thank you, Pierre Paulo Pasolini, Now I've seen it ALL! Wah wah. Ba dum dum.

For similar entertainment of a more painful nature, a bunch of high school English classes put up video adaptations of noted slag "The Wife of Bath's Tale." They're all bizarre, but I'm not going to post them here because I know almost no one else cares. If you're a video masochist like me, though, and you want to see exactly what's wrong with the youth of the nation you might enjoy:

• The version shot in night-vision where a guy tells the young filmmakers that women in the ghetto most desire crack (1:50)
  
• The vulgar Southern students version feat. flying Bush and Kerry heads, armored basebal caps, general misogyny
• The version with a kid beating a girl with a baseball bat for calling him a "silly goose" to "When a Man Loves a Woman."
• The version with a "Hey Ya" dance scene. PS - please go to 1:48 to see mom make an appearance; it's the best part. I'm serious, you won't regret it.
• The version where a girl on a broomstick rapes another girl and literally tears up her "V-card." Also a girl says she desires a man that will let her fart in bed without judging her. Go to 4:35 to see marital discord at it's most harrowing.
  
• Or might I interest you a boy raping a dog in a wig that talks like Betty Boop.

It really just keeps going and going. It's funny how simultaneously amusing and depressing this kind of thing is.
You know what's more depressing? The fact that I have 350 pages of The Way We Live Now to read by Tuesday morning and I spent over half and hour watching films by high school kids. My priorities are all messed up.

Grainy '80s Sci-Fi TV-Movies in our Classrooms

So I'm really excited about the re/reading of all these middle school novels on the horizon. Does anyone want to do a middle school book club with me, come January? Sally, you said you'd be down. We can raid the young-adult section of our local libraries without shame.

All this talk about middle school had me thinking of other media memories inflicted on me. I spent a little while trying to find this film that we watched in my seventh grade English class. I know we also watched Schindler's List during the Holocaust unit (if your parents signed the note saying it was ok) and the TV-movie adaptation of the awesome Lathe of Heaven, which was significantly less awesome:




Lathe of Heaven is on youtube (in all 15 parts), too, but I'm not going to try and inflict that on anybody.

Anyways, after a little research I found the short film I was trying to remember, All Summer in a Day. Like Lathe it's grainy late-'70s/early-'80s sci-fi, it's kind of a bummer and it's firmly entrenched in my memory. It's all about these kids who live on a planet where it rains all day every day except very special times when the sun comes out for, like, two minutes. Did anyone else watch this?

Fun fact: this movie accurately portrays what living in Portland is like.
Fun fact #2: recently the kid who plays little bitch-ass William in this played "Loudmouth guy" in the movie Just a Little Harmless Sex opposite international film star Rachel Hunter.
Here it is in it's entirety:

An Art Journey From Good to Worse

You know when you're searching for one thing on the internet and it just leads down a rabbit hole of weird and interesting discovery? This happens to me sometimes and I end up with about 20 windows open with pages of things I want to know more about.
The other day I saw a painting by Franz von Stuck that reminded me of Edvard Munch's Madonna and I wanted to know more about him.



This led me to looking up pictures of paintings by von Stuck and a bunch of other artists listed on the Wikipedia page for Symbolism, most of whom, I'm guessing, people who actually took art history or painting classes probably know about. To be brief and not list all the ones I thought were super-cool I'll just say that I enjoyed almost all the art that I ended up looking at. Since I know fuckall about visual art I'm not even sure how legitimate Symbolism is as a term to classify a type of painting (I mean, the Wikipedia page is big and all, but symbolism is kind of a broad term, isn't it?) so I've just decided that it means paintings with things I like in them like snakes eating horses, whimsical boats and leapord people.

In looking into the work of Félicien Rops, one of the few painters I'd heard of in the list, on google image search I ran across the work of Stu Mead. I discovered that Mr. Mead is a very controversial artist, mainly because he's an open pedophile and all of his work basically sexualizes little girls (as a quick spin on his Myspace page will demonstrate). The controversy drummed up by his paintings and the long conversation about objectification in art it invites is kind of beside the point, I think. The overall effect of looking at his paintings, to me, was that of looking at somebody's homemade pornography, meaning that my feelings of revulsion were quickly overwhelmed with feelings of boredom. Just because it plays with taboos and you put it on a canvas doesn't mean it's any more interesting than some lonely guy's hand-drawn Futurama porn. (On a side note, there was a kid on my pre-season soccer trip in junior year of high school who got caught looking at Futurama porn on the internet. That's called tragi-comedy).

Anyways, apparently there's a book called Apocalypse Culture II that contains an article about Stu Mead and other artists who are controversial. The article (which, always being curious about controversy in art, I found on the internet) is written with a tone that I've come to be familiar with in reading about things of this nature in books of this nature. It's the reverential, sanctimonious tone of someone who came to a freakshow, decided to stay there and has lost sight of the reasons it was billed as a freakshow in the first place. The taboo becomes normal when you make it your sole focus. The rest of the world just doesn't get Stu Mead and I don't get why - isn't it cool how controversial this is? asks the writer, a self described "musician (Boy from Brazil), transformist, eroticist and a self-taught art aficionado." Ugh, ugh and ugh. Oh man, you're into Nazis too? Wild! Who could've guessed??

Speaking of which, the article lead to a couple of other artists, notably Blalla Hallmann, who apparently hates the US, the Vatican, Nazis and consumer greed, yet he is obsessed with making paintings about them. It all begins to stink of something deranged and hypocritical pretty soon. But I'll let the eroticist and self-taught art aficionado tell it:

"Blalla despised the Art world, whose stars, Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke and Josef Beuys were seen as brown-nosing valets to the rich. Remarking that every paintings these guys were selling was money he wasn’t making, Blalla believed that the aforementioned artists were stealing from him."

I wonder why the American art world isn't lining up to throw money at paintings accusing them of being greedy, Nazi bastards from someone who bills himself as "the ambassador of hate?" And I wonder why this criticism is coming from someone who sounds like a greedy, misanthropic bastard himself? The questions just pile up.



All that said, I actually thought Hallmann's paintings were pretty cool. His schtick worked for me, partly because I think his composition and style are neat. He sounds like a paranoid lunatic and thoroughly unpleasant person who, like Stu Mead, has found that he can pay bills just by selling his obsessions to a small niche of the public that like having their buttons pushed.

All this leads to a collective of artists that call themselves Unpop, whom I spent more time looking into than they deserve. The other artist mentioned in the article above was a woman called Beth Love, whose paintings I think are pretty interesting, if undeniably disturbing.



Unfortunately, she and the rest of Unpop seem like pretty foul people. While I like her work, all the other art on display was terrible in thought and execution. More importantly, the whole thing reeks of that kid from Ghost World - you know, the one who thinks he's hot, dangerous shit because he has a zine that focuses on serial killers and Nazis and torture and freaks and yadda yadda (he also publishes pornographic art by a pedophile who creates computer images of little girls because he can't have the real thing. Hmmm...). Unpop is all about offensive jokes under the guise of art and, like the loner in your art class with a trench coat, they're rebelling against you so they're impervious to criticism. They don't care what you think, neuter! You just can't handle Unpop!



It all pisses me off because I do fall for real artists who take the risks that the Unpop people think they're taking. The problem is that there's a thin tightrope between the Scylla of self-rightous, self-aware envelope-pushing and the Charybdis of pure, stupid exploitation. What most of Unpop doesn't realize (and would have you believe that they don't care) is that shitty paintings of golliwogs and screenprints of Joseph Goebbels are useless to the world at large. Offending the public in and of itself is not art (or at least not good art) because after the initial shock and revulsion there's nothing really to think about. It's more offensive because bandying about racist or misogynistic imagery just to get a reaction gives artists who can incorporate those images into something thoughtful and meaningful a bad name. It makes it harder to defend artists who aren't afraid to push boundaries as not just exploitation. Why even give Kara Walker a second look?
And, really, what is uglier than a group of aging white males from privileged backgrounds making rape and race jokes to each other, especially with the sanctimonious idea that they are seeing the world in it's true colors and everyone else is just too diluted or dumb to agree. Man, it makes me angry!

What's the antidote? What happens when we take paintings that deal with hot-button issues off the table? The answer may surprise you:

Though most girls call it "vagina" and my mom calls it "Virginia"

As you may know my family's going through some tough times right now. To cheer my mom up I sent her a bunch of youtube videos that regularly make me laugh. I sent nice(/creepy?) things like talking dogs and the dancing walrus to keep things clean and mom-like. With a little trepidation I put a link to Strong Kids, Safe Kids at the end. Sometimes I underestimate my mom and I forget that she gave birth to me, mixing her and my dad's senses of humor into my genes. "What does it say about me that I laughed the most at that one?" she asked me. "What does it mean that I laughed the most at that one?" I asked myself. My mom has a sick sense of humor.

Holy moly, I have so much to weblog about, but not the time nor energy.
Why? Because I've been hanging out with Margery Kempe all night, learning about how much Jesus loves her over the course of 400 pages (answer: thiiiiiiis much!).
Though I know it's not true, I like to imagine that this prematurely balding mongoloid on the cover of my copy of The Book of Margery Kempe is, in fact, the author. I think it's actually the stained glass window from the church where she worshipped by crying all over the place, St. Mongoloid's.




Reading this thick-ass, Jesus-packed non-starter of an autobiography along with Ancient and Victorian English has spurred me onto a new quest for my non-FWT.
It all started with all this hullabaloo and bullahooha about the new Twilight movie. Since my job this summer teaching little girls who are reading this presumably bullshit book I've been patting my back because I'm now a certified bonafide grown-up who doesn't go for that kid's stuff anymore. Yet... today there was a New York Times article yesterday about how fucking huge this phenomenon apparently is with the just-menstruating set. The Grey Lady said that girls are getting so excited that, before meeting the film's hunky, pubescent star outside of Hot Topics nationwide they're scratching their necks so they'll bleed for him. What?! In my day you didn't bleed for any books (except Island of Blue Dolphins, which demanded a child sacrifice).

How good must this book be to inspire young girls to cut themselves nationwide? (counterpoint: Linkin Park also has this effect). It must at least be titillating to some, weird girl-hormone. Or maybe... woman hormone? That's right, moms love Twilight too.

So, spurred on, as I said, by thick, boring, Jesus-y, Medieval lit and: a) a deepseated love of young-adult literature (having been a young-adult myself once) and b) a deepseated love for horror trash (see: the fact that I'm watching True Blood religiously every week even though it's kind of bad) - spurred on by these factors I think when the term ends and I go home to write my final papers for the term and relax/putter around the house I'm going to read at least the first book in the Twilight series and see what all the young girls/awful American tourists are cutting themselves about.

This also makes me want to revisit those other young-adult classics from the pit of middle school, as well as catch up on ones that I never got around to reading. It could be really fun! Plus, they take, like, a day to read now that I am taller/have better skin/don't think Garfield is funny. My freshman FWT I reread The Giver for my job at the Oregon Children's Theater and it was bomb! A list of the top of my head:

• Lord of the Flies - started rereading it a few years ago, scared the shit out of me
• Island of Blue Dolphins - never read it
• Flowers of Algernon - never read it
• To Kill a Mockingbird - read it twice. It's rad.
  
• Shabanu - I remember my whole class hating this book. I also remember descriptions of growing breasts (likened to apples and camel-droppings - gross), listening to your nomadic parents have sex in the tent next to you (gross) and camels cumming all over the ground (sexy. just kidding, gross). There was a storyline, too, but I can't remember it.
• Red Badge of Courage - never read it. The OCT was working on a production of it my freshman year as well as a rap musical. I bet that went well.
• Hatchet - fucking baller
• A Day No Pigs Would Die - read it. Don't remember anything.
• Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry - ditto
• The Cay - maybe read it... I think?
• Secret Garden - fucking baller (in a feminine way)
• Holes - pretty good. Ruined by Shia Lebouf.
• Animal Farm - sweet
• Yearling - sweet

What am I missing?? That's a pretty good list, if I do say so myself. What should I read this winter? Hatchet's definitely calling out to me. Wasn't there a sequel, too? Bowie Knife or something? (bad joke, but seriously) What else? And remember... ANYONE CAN COMMENT!
Please love me. I'm gonna put that reminder in bold until you do. In bold.

Breaking News/Grandford

Hey guess what dudes and dudettes,
I didn't know I could do this, but I fixed my blog so now

ANYONE CAN COMMENT

regardless of race, creed, gender or whether they have Blogger or not. Even old people can do it! All you have to do is click "anonymous" and you can sign your name at the bottom if you wish, unless your name is Anonymous, in which case you're taken care of.
Don't hesitate to leave me your comments! Love me like a CPR dummy! (sorry that's gross, don't comment about that)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Things my 98-year-old grandpa has bought in the last year:

• A tooth-whitening kit after seeing it work for my aunt. My grandpa has approximately half of his teeth left. He signed on for $90-per-month deliveries of this stuff and promptly forgot he ordered it.
• A home electrolysis kit to stop hair from growing on your face. He told my grandma that he had been shaving for too many years and he was tired of it. Apparently it only partially worked and now hair just grows in patches. My aunt had to talk him into shaving again because he looked crazy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My DVDs of these BBC/Masterpiece Theater still haven't come. They've been caught up in customs and I may not get them for months. Fortunately, Cranford is on youtube in it's entirety. Unfortunately, I've discovered this a little late for my class tomorrow morning. I'm soaking up as much as I can, but it's 5 hours in total and it's already midnight, so... Whatever happens, I'm definitely not catching up with True Blood tonight.

The nice thing is that Cranford is actually pretty good (if you have five hours to kill I recommend it). After watching the execrable adaptation of Jane Eyre and enough of the adaptation of Great Expectations to know that it's execrable this is a pleasant surprise (for free!). And Dame Judi Dench is in effect, rocking a bonnet like it's 1846.
The best part about it is that it's actually true to the tone of it's source material - a Victorian novel about change in a small town - and actually improves on the scant story of the book by fleshing it out. Of course, improving on Bronte and Dickens is pretty tough, while improving on Gaskill is not so daunting - her writing is looser than the former and the loss of her authorial voice doesn't hobble the story like it does the others.
The other adaptations really labored under the duel purposes of staying true to their classic source material - knowing that straying too far would anger purists - and trying to make their adaptations stand out as new, culturally relevent adaptations standing out among the dozens of others; the fact that the books are so well-known and loved is a complete burdon on them. This leads them to wobble about, drolly hitting the expected notes, yet with an irritating attitude and need to prove that they're "not your father's Great Expectations/Jane Eyre." It reminds me of the less gifted son of a brilliant father trying to prove himself in his shadow - clinging to it sometimes and distancing from it at others (call it Sean Lennon Syndrome). The dirty-sexification of Victorian novels with the aim of filling pocketbooks - or worse, with the idea that because Charlotte Bronte couldn't write frankly about sex she really intended to and that by imposing it her true aim is fulfilled - it just makes dull, bad movies.



Except, of course, Alfonso Cuaron's Great Expectations starring Ethan Hawke, Gwenyth Paltrow and Robert De Niro. Get this: Pip's name is now Finnian Bell and Mrs. Havisham's is Mrs. Dinsmoor; Pip's not a lawyer he's a famous painter and Joe's not a blacksmith he's a shrimp fisherman! - how can you say this is not an improvement? It's so dirty-sexy!



Anyways, to sum up,Cranford the book is charming and Cranford the mini-series is pretty good and my grandpa's funny.

Exciting Movie News

Well, it's been a shitty week to top all shitty weeks. In the least shitty bit of news among the shit, I went to go see "Heaven's Gates, Hell's Flames" today but couldn't find the church and ended up walking around for 3 hours. The plus side of that will be toned legs. Or sore legs. I'm gonna try again tomorrow but if I don't make it I'll have missed my chance!

Anyways, at least the movie stars are aligning. I found out today that Danny Boyle's new film, Slumdog Millionare stars the kid who played Anwar on the awesome Skins! Even though the trailer doesn't give me reason to hope that it will be Trainspotting + 28 Days Later + Skins, it's apparently a very good film in it's own right. That said, will someone please make a film about sexy British teens shooting heroin and fighting zombies? Please?


In stranger news, the new Todd Solondz movie reportedly features both Paris Hilton and Paul Reubens! Charlotte Rampling's in there, too. What happens when a famous socialite, Pee Wee Herman and the Nazi-loving dancer from The Night Porter get together in a Todd Solondz movie? I can't wait to find out! We already know what happens when Philip Seymour Hoffman enters the Solondzoverse:

Brick Casey Taught Me the Confidence of Abstinence

Everyone who watches enough viral videos has seen that clever French contraception PSA where the dad is trying to do his grocery shopping and the kid is being a brat. Don't have unwanted children, har har. In between doing my homework (I'm back reading The Way We Live Now and it feels so good!), when most of my blogging takes place, I started thinking about how many awesome pro-abstinance commercials there must be available on youtube. I found professional videos (sweet), non-professional youth-group videos (sweeter) and music videos (ultrasweet):


If you're like me then you assumed that the note being passed is about the teacher. This point of view makes this PSA much more enjoyable.


What is TRUTH? Can we really trust it? You really can't trust anyone about anything! You're living in a two-dimensional city of lies! Oh, except trust my disembodied voice about this no-sex thing... that's true.



But what does acclaimed CDBaby artist Brick Casey have to say? This music video has the answer.
Best part: "If he really cared he would go to church and pray wit' ya/ all he do is talk a lot and play wit' ya (BLAH BLAH BLAH)"



Yo, straight outta Guyana, SolidYouth is here for your feature edification! It's like a group of four Sean Paul's and they are all Christian. SolidYouth's suggestion for an alternative to sexual actvity: A walk at the zoo.



Whoah, nothing gets your attention like a record scratch! The (only?) three members of this youth group seem to be suggesting that there is something wrong with politely asking before sharing an STD with a loved one. Honestly, I have to give this kid some points for class - though personally I would have written a little poem.



The user that posted this ad says it speaks for itself. I beg to differ. Could this commercial be more elliptical? I suppose it doesn't matter, as all other thoughts go out the window after the disconcerting close-up of the dude grabbing his boner.



The scary thing - the baby's father is a shadow puppet.



No words can describe the shitty awesomeness or the awesome shittiness of this video.



This clubhouse full of 12-year-olds picking up 12-year-olds is a regular Gomorrah.
"What are you about to do?"
"Oh, I'm 'bout to... you know! Come on now!"
"No man, that's not cool."
Oh ok, problem solved. Now just materialize on a couch and tell me all about it.



The real crown jewel that I found is this slow-as-molasses computer game nightmare masquerading as a lazy attempt at a school project. Lemme break it down for you to save you 4 and a half minutes and try and explain what I think is happening here:
Geddy Lee enters a French maid/Little Bo Peep's future mansion in hopes of "a smooch." Luckily she rebuffs him with an "Eww!" and hits him with a rubber chicken(??). "Get lost you scumm!"
Geddy promptly apologizes for offending her and they sit in armchairs staring at the walls. After an unbearably long pause he tells Bo Peep, "I feel something between us." This must be the so-called confidence of abstinence where the video gets it's title, and apparently it's not creepy at all.
Cut to Geddy and Peep standing in a vortex waving, saying "the confidence of abstinence." Fin.

According to 15-year-old auteur, Jakeh89, one of the main themes in this video is playing with the viewer's expectations by presenting pro-abstinence images with "pro-sex music" (read. 50 Cent fucking non-stop). I'm pretty sure he thought if he stuck that on here he could swing a C and survive until gym class.

Bitching Post: Americans vs. Natural Beauty

Went to the Giant's Causeway today and dealt with terrible, terrible, terrible Americans on the bus. I had already complained about the people in my study abroad group, but little did I know that some of the kids who are studying the Republic would be 10x worse. They came up en masse this weekend to go on a catered trip around NI and I tagged along with some of the people in my group. It was awful. Things that I was subjected to listening to on the bus:

• The worst game of "Would You Rather" ever. Sample questions: would you rather fuck your mom or be fucked by your dad? Would you rather get AIDs or (something equally offensive and unclever).
• The fact that most of these college-age Americans don't know what "secession" means nor do they know who Robert E. Lee was ("Was he a poet?").
• Insensitive stupid shit about Northern Ireland like "There's no old buildings 'cause they've all been bombed." They also split their group into two teams for some drinking game they have planned for later, naming themselves the IRA and the Loyalists.
• Speaking of that drinking game, they talked about it for at least five fucking hours. How can you talk about a future drinking game for that long? Why? Are you trying to impress somebody? What is there to say? "You just gotta chug it, playa."
• "That's what she said."
• A long joke about the different connotations of the phrase "eating out."
• The fact that they are all simultaneously reading books in the Twilight series (you know, the one about vampires that the 7th-graders I taught this summer read?).
• "Tonight I'm gonna get as stoned as a witch in Salem." "Weren't they burned at the stake?" "Oh, then I'm gonna get blazed." (...kinda clever comeback)
• A couple making out and dry-humping in the seat in front of me.

Despite the awesome natural beauty of the Causeway (pictures later), this trip was just a cherry on top of a delightfully shitty reading week sundae. I really forget how specialized and marginalized they people that I really enjoy spending time with are in the whole scope of people my age. I also forget how awkward I am in general around people I don't know. Things to cheer me up:

First of all, courtesy of the Miami Sun Sentinel via the AV Club: a list of the worst football rap music videos of all time. A taste - you'll think you won't want to watch all five minutes of this, but I defy you not to:



Robots! Presented in the most casually snarky, British way possible:



Also, I got three movies from the library - Ran, Bande a part, and An American Werewolf in London (which I, ironically, have never seen).

Also, I'm going to eat chicken dinosaurs for dinner. Nothing can stop me from having fun!

Get off your cellph, that cow's talking!

Today while I was scouring the Prelinger archives for some old films to watch I ran into an ad for a Northern Irish horror movie called Shrooms. It's about American students (like me!) who go to Northern Ireland (like me!) to get high in the woods (not yet).
Seeing as how it looked like B-level, straight-to-DVD horror I was pretty sure that someone would have loaded it onto Megavideo and I was right. Unfortunately this isn't B-level fun horror like Basketcase, nor F-level fun horror like Plan 9 From Outer Space. Rather, this is D-level terrible horror by an Irish sub-Eli Roth (who himself is strictly sub-par) that is so mind-numbingly, skull-scrapingly awful it makes you want to throw a petrol bomb. The dialogue bears no semblance to how real people speak, coming from three identical bimbos, a backwards-hat-wearing thug with roid-rage (named Bluto!), a muscley Jay from Jay and Silent Bob and an Irish guy who's obviously actually English.



Oh, also some drooling, livestock-screwing locals in the vein of Texas Chainsaw Massacre and every other movie that ripped it off. One of them confesses that, unlike his brother, he never fucked pigs. "My only weakness now would be for a bullcalf tied to a gate. Lovely tongue on a bullcalf - like... sandpaper." That's the authentic Irish flavor I've been trying to communicate in this blog. My other favorite moments:

British guy: One rule - no mobile phones.
Roid-rager: But I'm lost without my cellph!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Roid-rager: (on finding a strange girl in an abandoned car in the middle of the woods while wandering in his underwear) Lemme in lemme in lemme in!
(she rolls down the window)
Roid-rager: (pulls his dick out) Look what I got for you baby? Yeah, you like that.
(she obviously gives him a blowjob)
Roid-rager: Oh yeah! Yeah, babygirl. So soft. Oh!
(Oh no! It wasn't a girl at all, but an ancient druid! It pulls his dick off)

The choicest dialogue comes from the girls. Writer, Pearse Elliot must have never heard real human females talk, because judging by Shrooms their only conversations are about is sex and tampons, plus these true-to-life exchanges:

Bimbo 1: (on being charged with voyeurism) What, you think we wanted a peak at your hairy 'stache?
Bimbo 2: You know what, bitch, at least my tits are real!
Bimbo 1: Oh you wanna play like that, Chewbacca? 'Cause I will rip that hair right off you!
Bimbo 2: Fuck you.
Bimbo 1: Eat me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bimbo 2: (on a hike in the woods) I wish I'd brought adequate footwear.
Bimbo 1: Yeah, well maybe if you took better care of yourself your boyfriend wouldn't have to check me out every five minutes.
(catfight)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Bimbo 1: I'm so sick of this - our bickering, the mood swings, our stupid fights when you go on the steroids, and your pimply ass... and most of all your perverted behavior.
Roid-rager: You know you're not so hot yourself.
Bimbo 1: What?
Roid-rager: You fart in your sleep
Bimbo 1: No I don't! (farts)

Slather that class on top of a bunch of quick cuts, fish-eye-lens and "am I scaring you yet?" wannabe-Ring cheap-shots and you have Shrooms! Not only is this film unrelentingly stupid, but it's never scary (watch out for those druids!). Maybe now is a good time to mention that this film was nominated for two Irish Film and Television Awards, including Best Film. Really, Ireland? Really? This?

Perhaps the scene that put it in the running is the following exchange where Roid-rager, sulkily pondering his pimply ass downs some shrooms, vomits on his own face, follows a mysterious naked girl into the woods and discovers a talking cow that sounds like the movie trailer voice-over guy. To get the full effect of this scene you have to imagine dissonant strings in the background, a cool, blue color palette and a cow speaking with the most sinister, gravely voice imaginable:

Roid-rager: Holy shit. Huh huh huh. Hello?
Cow: Well well well...
Roid-rager: Haha, you can talk.
Cow: That's cuz you're out of your mind.
Roids: You see a girl?
Cow: She went that-a way.
Roids: Thanks.
Cow: Wouldn't do that if I were you!
Roids: Why not?
Cow: You know you're fucked.
Roids: EEEEe, yes I know.
Cow: I mean.... dead fucked.
Roids: What, you're just a fuckin' cow.
Cow: A fuckin' cow... that can fuckin' talk.
Roids: I gotta go.
Cow: Yeah... bye bye.
Roids: (vomits)

Does Northern Ireland just hand out awards to every Tom, Dick and Paddy who figures out how to make a cow talk? Or is this movie actually a sly commentary on American students?
Whatever it is, I thought I'd turn it off pretty quick, but this movie sucked so hard that it sucked me in. I really wanted to see if it had bottomed out early or if there was deeper to go. Does that make Shrooms a success? Maybe...
Let me ruin the ending for you and you can decide. As she's being carted away in the ambulance after the ordeal is over, protagonist, Bimbo 3, realizes that all along the killer was, in fact HER! Why?
Because the whole time she was tripping...

...ON SHROOMS!

Paul Broun Says What We're All Too Sane To

Imagine my surprise and delight upon finding a CNN story today titled "Congressman sorry for likening Obama to Hitler." I often post CNN headlines in this blog that make me laugh by being unintentionally silly, but these stories usually have a context within the article that negates or explains the accidental humorousness they give off at a glance. Not so here! This article is pure jingoistic crazy from bottom to top. Like how Tina Fey only had to repeat Sarah Palin's own words for them to be self-satirical, this story does all the work for us. Observe:

(CNN) — Republican Paul Broun is sorry for calling President-elect Barack Obama a 'Marxist' and comparing him to Adolph Hitler, the Georgia Congressman said Tuesday.

“I regret putting it that way,” he told WGAC radio in Augusta, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. “I apologize to anyone who has taken offense at that.”

In an interview with the Associated Press earlier this week, Broun admitted to calling the future commander-in-chief a 'Marxist' at a recent Rotary club meeting, and said Obama has expressed support for policies similar to those of Hitler.

"It may sound a bit crazy and off base, but the thing is, he's the one who proposed this national security force," Broun told the AP. "I'm just trying to bring attention to the fact that we may– may not, I hope not — but we may have a problem with that type of philosophy of radical socialism or Marxism."

Broun was specifically referring to a July speech by Obama, where the then-Democratic presidential nominee said he supports a civilian force helping the military when it comes to national security: "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded [as the military]," Obama said in the speech that was largely a call to national service.

Responding to those comments, Broun told the AP Monday: "That's exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it's exactly what the Soviet Union did. When he's proposing to have a national security force that's answering to him, that is as strong as the U.S. military, he's showing me signs of being Marxist."

"We can't be lulled into complacency," Broun added. "You have to remember that Adolf Hitler was elected in a democratic Germany. I'm not comparing him to Adolf Hitler. What I'm saying is there is the potential."

The Obama transition office did not respond to Broun's comments, and in his interview Tuesday to WGAC, the first term congressman said, “The point I tried to make is that he is extremely liberal, he has promoted a lot of socialistic ideas, and it just makes me concerned."

"Look, I guess it may sound a little crazy and off-base, but all I'm saying is Barack Obama is Satan. I mean... he reminds me of Satan. Wait, was that offensive? I'm not comparing him to Satan, I'm just saying he has potential to be Satan."
Forget it, I can't even make fun of it, it's too crazy in and of itself. Luckily for Paul Broun, it's impossible to stay mad at this face:

Hey Dave, what's going on? Nothing.

There's still not much to update about.
I have a cough that won't go away. Apparently it's classified as a "tickly cough," as opposed to a "chest cough." This means that instead of cough drops or something I'm taking Veno's tickly coughs solution, which is a mix of honey, lemon and menthol (and magic). It's pretty foul.

This is my week off, or "reading week," and I had originally planned to go somewhere, but now I think I'm actually going to read. I have four days off every week to take a day trip or something and this is pretty nice just catching up. I finally finished Great Suckspectations and now I need to finish the last story in Cranford before delving into The Way We Live Now again. Oh, and my other two classes.

That's about it. What will make this blog update more riviting than it already is? How about videos.


It's hard to debate Keith Olbermann's annoyingness, but here he pretty much hits the nail on the head. Unfortunately, anyone he's actually preaching to probably changed the channel pretty quick.




And hey, this is pretty neat:

Norwegian Thrill Explosion

CNN Headlines of the day:
Winner of World's Ugliest Dog contest dies
Message to Mormons: Stop baptizing dead Jews
Ted Turner: 'I'm not chased by demons.'
Are you rude? Maybe you should think again

Last night, when not racing through Great Expectations, I was watching some sweet music videos from Norwegian electronic duo Röyksopp. Ch-ch-ch-check it out (in order of favoritude):












Awww, poor Leno

A Love Letter to... 1994: Pt. 3

This is my final self-indulgent post about why 1994 was an awesome year for albums. Why? I have a bunch of reading that I don't want to do. I always feel super-self-indulgent when I write long things about the albums, so I'm just gonna give 'em a quick introduction and post some videos I like. Besides, I'm watching these videos anyway, so I might as well put them in a blog post. Feel free to not comment and I'll see you when I write about 1995!

1994 was the year Green Day broke through with Dookie. It was kinda popular.



The Smashing Pumpkins, having released Siamese Dream in 1993 released Pisces Iscariot as a follow-up - a collection of stuff that they'd done post-Gish that didn't make the next album. I like it more than Siamese Dream, actually, as I think the Pumpkins are sometimes at their best when they're not taking themselves so damn seriously and allow themselves to play a bit (and cover Stevie Nicks).



Speaking of acid, how about the Lords of Acid? I got their best album, Voodoo-U, when I was 17 and highly susceptible to Coop's drawings of naked, lesbian devils on the cover, plus Ruth McArdle singing about sex, rough sex, sex with young boys, smoking weed while having sex and more. I have several pet electronica/dance bands and they're all really sleazy. Partially, I think this is because could you take an electronica group with lyrics about, say, politics seriously in any way? And if you're going to sing about something over grinding technotronic beats you might as well go the whole way and sing about sex. That is, for better or worse (17-year-old Dave says better), all Lords of Acid sing about. In high school this is pretty much what I imagined a Lords of Acid concert would be like:



The Toadies have released three albums over two decades and the two I have are amazing. Most folks only know them because of "Possum Kingdom," but their 1994 album Rubberneck is great from start to finish. It doesn't deserve its place in the bargain bins. I can't embed any videos here thanks to Universal Music Group, but if you watch any videos I'm posting watch this one.



Ween put out their first album that sounded like an album in '94 with Chocolate and Cheese, cementing their title as They Might Be Giants for stoners.



Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon got together in '94 to release an album that hasn't really found a place in history like most of the other albums I'm mentioning (except for Compulsion, which no one cares about but me). Their album Prairie Home Invasion is fucking amazing, though, fusing Jello's punk fire with Mojo's folk/country sensibility. I gave a copy to my dad thinking he'd like it. He didn't. It opens with the 9-minute-plus "Buy My Snake Oil" and goes on to cover protest songs by Pete Seeger and more.



Like Green Day, Nine Inch Nails released the seminal album they can never escape from in 1994, too, with The Downward Spiral. Mostly known for "Closer" and, much later, for "Hurt" it's hard for me to think about anything bad about this album. Pretty Hate Machine and The Fragile are great, but they're not as polished or coherent as this bad boy. (Let's not talk about With Teeth or Year Zero, at all...) Plus it was recorded in the house that Sharon Tate was murdered in by the Manson family! Speaking of which...



Trent Reznor also produced the debut album, Portrait of an American Family, by a young, scrawny prodigee named Marilyn Manson and his band the Spooky Kids in '94. Regardless of Manson's rise and co-option of the national media to become a spooky boogie man followed by his transformation to weird to irrelevant to boring, I will never stop defending this album. Like the Pumpkins, Manson is great when he's not taking himself seriously - something you never really see post-Portrait. I miss the nerdy goon pushing buttons by imitating Willy Wonka and writing songs about killer cars and lovable cyclops. Plus his videos had kittens and roller rinks in them! Amazing.



For the grown-ups, Tom Petty released Wildflowers. What can I say about this album? It's flawless.



Young up-and-comer Jeff Buckley also released his only proper album, Grace, before tragically dying. Man oh man, what could have come after this? You know the album's good because it alone carries Jeff Buckley's reputation of amazing songsmith.



And lastly, Tori Amos released my favorite of her albums, Under the Pink, featuring songs about masturbation, atheism and more. Oh, and a song about wanting to kill a waitress - perhaps a response to Live's bizarre song pleading for a friend to leave a tip? I like to think so.
Did you know this song's about female circumcision? Now you do.




Here's my final list of why I think 1994 was fucking awesome. I hope I changed someone's mind or affirmed someone's opinion. I know that in the act of listing these I proved to myself why I love the mid-'90s, which was pretty nice, and that's the only thing that matters, right?

Jar of Flies - Alice in Chains
Mellow Gold/One Foot in the Grave/Stereopathetic Soul Manure - Beck
Parklife - Blur
Anarchy - Chumbawamba
Comforter - Compulsion
Dookie - Green Day
Live Through This - Hole
Grace - Jeff Buckley
Prairie Home Invasion - Jello Biafra/Mojo Nixon
Orange - Jon Spencer Blues Explosion
Throwing Copper - Live
Voodoo-U - Lords of Acid
Portrait of an American Family - Marilyn Manson
The Downward Spiral - Nine Inch Nails
Ungplugged in NY - Nirvana
Vitalogy - Pearl Jam
Pisces Iscariot - the Smashing Pumpkins
Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star - Sonic Youth
Ruby Vroom - Soul Coughing
Superunknown - Soundgarden
Purple - Stone Temple Pilots
John Henry - They Might Be Giants
Rubberneck - Toadies
Wildflowers - Tom Petty
Under the Pink - Tori Amos
Chocolate and Cheese - Ween

Shock and Sadness in Video Form

There's nothing exciting going on in my life right now, but the world is full of exciting things. Among them:

CNN inexplicably posting the whole audio of the Jonestown Massacre. It's like near an hour long, so unless you're in for about 48 minutes of bummer you can skip it.



Miriam Makeba passing away. :-(


For an even better video click here.


Also, Chris Russell has notified me that Barack Obama is actually not American/Kenyan, he is in fact Irish.

French Miaou

So I went to Dublin this weekend and now I'm back. While I was there I went to the Museum of Modern Art and saw a display of some of the films by Russian/French animator Ladislas Starevich's, which I didn't know existed. The awesome ones I saw there aren't on the internet, but here's a taste for everyone else who likes puppets.


This is from his first feature-length. It's a musical number sung by a fox to a lioness. I don't know what else is going on. Rachel?




For this one turn the sound off because I'm pretty sure the music accompaniment is not right or synced up. You'd be better off just turning on your own poignant music and enjoying this nice little short. It's also about royal lions and it's very sad.

A New Era

I have to go to Dublin tomorrow with my study abroad group, which will be fun for the photo opportunities at least. Can you believe that I've been blogging every day for the past month or so? What a pathetic achievement! Also, four people commented on my last entry, which is almost a record. This truly is a new era.

I watched Hard Candy today. I'd put that movie off for a while, but it had always been on my radar. I generally enjoy any button-pushing movie that can walk a line between arty-pretension and exploitation without falling either way, but I'm not sure if this movie succeeded. It sure started out creepy enough. It's like, as the cat-and-mouse game goes on and more things come to light, it goes from being a great movie down a couple notches to pretty good. But it's hard to beat the two performances. Noted non-uggo Ellen Page was amazing, and she was only 15-years-old (imdb tells me). She's the same age as me! What the hell am I doing with my life? The stench of perpetual failure never comes off!

In other news, I finally got the new BFP today. I was so happy because I had assumed it'd been "lost in the mail." Maybe it sounds like a) I think that my college newspaper staff should/do care what I think and b) I'm scared of people I don't know bringing my dick-sucking to light if I say that this edition is one of the best I can remember, but it honestly is. Having an election to write about probably helped. Since my last post was a snarkfest and there's so much hope in the air, let's look at what went right. If you don't go to Bennington and you're reading this then bail out now; it won't make enough sense to be worth your time, and your time is very valuable:

Imagine my shock to find Senator Apple-Potatohead himself leering at me from the front page as if paper-McCain had frozen in time upon hearing the news that his real-life twin had just got his ass handed to him. I guess not enough people followed the first part of Geoff Pigman's plea to "choose experience," opting instead for the latter bit, "choose judgement."
Meanwhile Brian Morrice, official Obama Student Representative, takes some time to remind the laymen who haven't worked closely with the President-elect that there were lower-level races to be won as well and provides a handy little guide to them, which is nice to see.

The politics continued throughout, but, oh my God, it's like all my BFP wishes came true: they were all unique opinion pieces and not dry reporting! I was happy to see:

• Sarah Palin's full name (Sarah Louise Heath Palin McLoserstien)
• Chris Matthews' earnestness compared to Ralph Wiggum
• That the young Panzariellos were brought up to call Bill Clinton "the monster." Honestly, if you think back on most of our recent presidents as "the monsters" and put yourself in a child's shoes it doesn't take much imagination-stretching to make them seem pretty scary looking (except Obama, who is dreamy). Incidentally, it's always best to put on the shoes of children when thinking about politics. (Just ask Dennis Kucinich! Zingggg!!!!kill me)
  
• The headline "Late-breaking newts" made me extremely happy.
  

In even better news, Zimmer's angry screed against dining hall problems is back, in more succinct form. I agree with every statement in it except for the bit about vegans eating meat - Michael, just because Kilpat wishes it lived in a barbecue grease trap instead of a house doesn't mean the rest of us do. Will change come to the Dining Hall? Er... doubtful.

Also, Baking With Faith is now hand-drawn and adorable, featuring a cartoon Amanda Vorce and the personification of Baking. Question: why does Baking have to wear a mask? What has she done previously in life that she needs to hide her identity? My guess is that she sold her soul to the Devil to ascend from life as a verb to that of a person. Amanda, for her part, must've sold her soul for that sweet harmonica that plays itself.

Two complaints:

• Big Guy/Little Guy has taken over the paper, spreading over four pages like a virus. I think the lot of the Guys is a sad one: perpetually floating in space, talking in elliptical conversations with no endings. Now that politics has entered the scene the conversations are going to become more and more insufferable. I guess there's not much to do while waiting for the rest of your head to materialize.
• Where's Dr. Randy's column? Is Geoff Pigman the new Dr. Randy?? Is Geoff Pigman a liscenced gynocologist???? The women of Bennington deserve answers!
  

Heaven's Snoogle-Fleejer, Hell's Ying Yang

Big news in America last night: Sasha and Malia Obama are getting a puppy! Only time will tell if Obama follows in John Adams' footsteps and names his dog Satan. I was looking at the wikipedia article about presidential pets - totally fascinating.

My favorite: Jimmy Carter's cat, Misty Malarky Ying Yang, seen here with his daughter, Amy.



Also, did you know that in 1995 Jimmy and Amy Carter collaborated on a childrens' book together called The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejer? Now you do.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In other exciting news, walking home from class yesterday some old men from a fundamentalist church handed me two exciting documents! The first was everyone's favorite family newspaper, End Times, which, apparently, proves Richard Dawkins wrong about the theory of evolution. You see, in 2005 Dawkins said in a lecture that he believes everything in the universe is the product of Darwinian natural selection, but he technically can't prove it. Why? For starters I'm going to guess that cataloging everything that ever existed in the universe and proving it's origin is a bit ambitious, but what do I know?
The End Times contrasts this with a letter that Dawkins sent to his daughter on her tenth birthday.
(I'm going to give that a second to sink in)


In the letter Dawkins tells his ten-year-old daughter:

"Next time somebody tells you something that sounds important, think to yourself: 'Is this the kind of thing people probably know because of evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that people only believe because of tradition, authority or revelation?' And next time somebody tells you that something is true, why not say to them: 'What kind of evidence is there for that?"

Ah-ha! Caught in your own snare, Dawkins! (On a side note, that's a pretty heady message for a ten-year-old, isn't it?)

The other wonderful pamphlet I was handed was an invitation to see the Christian theatrical guilt-o-rama Heaven's Gates, Hell's Flames next Sunday. If you haven't heard of it before, HGHF is basically a live Chick tract where people die in the middle of overwrought sin scenarios (gay drug abortions! prostitute Eucharist smashings! I actually don't know the particulars 'cuz I haven't seen it) and proceed to St. Peter's to be judged accordingly. I'll let this youtube clip do the rest of the talking. Either way, I'm totally psyched about going. Now I just need to find an Irish friend who appreciates irony. "Right on, baby! I hear this is Snake territory!"



"Joey you can't die! I didn't tell you about Jesus!" Here's a full trailer for more sweet, sweet madness.

Tuning-Peg Carrot vs. Lumpy Sack: Election Megapost in Three Parts

Hey did you know you can leave me comments on my blog just using your AIM screen name? You don't even need a blog! There's no excuse not to love me!



In other news, did you hear? There's apparently an election today. Some black fella is running against a greased-up baby. Or is it the lovechild of an apple-head doll and Mr. Potatohead?



+



=




?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Speaking of elevated political discourse...

When I was young my parents subscribed to Newsweek. When it came I always turned to the page that had three political cartoons on it. I read them because I liked cartoons not because I cared about politics or really understood them all the time. That I understood them at all is really a testament to the nature of political cartoons, not intelligence on my part; even an 8-year-old gets the basic message of, say, a man crushed under a thousand lb. weight labeled "taxes."

Political cartoons are often unfunny, unclever metaphors scrawled by some grumpy, old, sectarian fuck who only goes outside his house to drop off his latest ravings at a publication. Despite (or because of) this, I really enjoy them. At their best they are funny and at their worst they are much funnier.

To catch up on the latest political cartoons I usually head over to Slate Magazine's website, where they're compiled in a little unwieldy ghetto of a page by subject. You can troll through the issues, scoffing at the bad cartoons from the far right, feeling vindicated by the also-bad cartoons from the far left and scratching your head at the cartoons from other countries.

Some of my latest favorites:




This representation of Palin is just mind-blowingly bad. Jesus Christ, Gary Markstein, have you ever seen the woman? You didn't even get the hair right!



Speaking of bizarre Palin drawings, what happened to her face in this Irish cartoon? She's like some malevolent ape. Which might explain the bone in her hair.



Heinous.



By contrast, this guy makes most political cartoonists look like Michelangelo. He's turned these three recognizable men into bizarre simplifications of themselves. Barack Obama is a carrot with tuning pegs for ears. John McCain is a lumpy sack. George Bush is a... butterfly on a stick? Or, like, an angel for the top of a Christmas tree without a head...? Or...?



This one is not only unfunny, but it also telegraphs pretty clearly that Joel Pett is some kind of self-loathing racist who thinks that his inner conflict is common within the reading public. It really says nothing about politics but volumes about it's artist. Sad volumes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But maybe the most baffling to me are the Obama-alarmist cartoons. I understand disagreeing with the man, but surely he can't be as scary as these cartoons make him out... or is he?


Subtle.


He's really malevolent when you take his head off.


I like how, here, McCain looks like Joe Everyman while Obama is like the Nightmare King of Black Supremacy.


"Hey, I'm Gary Varvel! I can do caricatures! Available for birthday parties and street fairs! What, you don't want to leaf through my portfolio?? What about just one cartoon?"


In case you missed it, Obama is Stalin, the devil is a liberal and Batman is George Bush.


Just like Obama, always playing the race card.


Obama's not just Stalin, he's also Dr. Moreau.



It just goes on and on doesn't it? Don't forget to vote!