So the Iraq War Is Over, Right?

Richard Engel was there as the 4th Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division (the 4/2 from here on out), poured through the border from Iraq into Kuwait last week. He’d been in and out of Iraq since before the invasion in 2003, and it was fitting that such a public face of the reporting of the war be present as the last combat troops left their theater of operations. The war made his career, and deservedly so. Engel was doing his best to add the proper amount of gravity to what the viewer was seeing on the screen, with ample backup from anchors and retired generals back in the MSNBC studios. The moment of those troops leaving should have been a profound one, but was, per usual, overplayed by the talking heads in the studio. Even Engel was not immune, there on the ground, bearing witness to what could not have been anything less than a true anchor point in his life. He was improvising on the fly, flailing in his attempts to convey to the viewer that what was playing out on screen did indeed have import. But really, it didn’t mean a damn thing. It, like everything else of real consequence in current events, got between the media machine’s efforts to make all stories equally sensational, and a public immune to the gesticulations of an apoplectic, even epileptic, tactic. Continue reading “So the Iraq War Is Over, Right?”

Hot, Boiling, Searing, Sizzling, Sultry, Blistering, Steamy, Torrid, and Sickening

This month has been miserable in the city. Ever since the July 4th weekend, the east coast has been drifting in and out of sultry weather, never feeling more than a few hours respite from the swampy climate. In New York City, the average temperature for the month has been 5 degrees above normal. The humidity has been disgusting, the sun has been scorching, and subway platforms have literally felt like standing in front of an open oven. Continue reading “Hot, Boiling, Searing, Sizzling, Sultry, Blistering, Steamy, Torrid, and Sickening”

October Horrorshow, Summer Edition: Halloween (2007) & Halloween II (2009)

Cruelty is a hallmark of Rob Zombie’s films. His antagonists revel in the infliction of pain, and Zombie revels in putting it on film. As a filmmaker, Zombie has embraced the current trend in horror films of making murder graphic and disturbing, bringing it visually closer to the real thing. This is no feather in his cap, nor is it a daring attempt to hold a mirror up to the violent society in which we live. There is no depth or complexity, no higher meaning that is being pursued, no redeeming quality that makes it worth the time and effort it takes to sit through one of his films. Continue reading “October Horrorshow, Summer Edition: Halloween (2007) & Halloween II (2009)”

The Empty Balcony: Red Dawn (1984)

The year 1984 was an unforgettable year in geopolitics, and not for the reasons George Orwell thought. Overseas, the Soviet Union was dealing with a wheat harvest from the previous year that matched lows not seen since the 1920s. Even the scorched earth of western Russia during the Nazi invasion saw more plenty. Things were worse in Poland, a situation the Soviets took advantage of after food riots began and the Soviets occupied the country as peacekeepers. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: Red Dawn (1984)”

“Well, Looks Like Yer Gonna Need a Complete Overhaul.”

Site version #004 launched today. Movable Type on the backend, along with much input from tcc and stg54 on the new skin. My neighbors must think I’m the most unpleasant sonofabitch on the face of the planet. I’ve been working from home now for almost three years, and often the silence of my apartment is bookended by occasional profane explosions directed at a perfectly fine piece of code that just refuses to work. Such is my life as a web developer. Code is among the most elegant and evil of humankind’s inventions, a series of devices designed to enlighten and to obfuscate. Any rookie programmer, no matter the language, has the same experience when they first begin, the horrifying realization that code operates on its own logic, just different enough from what a lifetime of experience with ethnic and national languages has taught us, that the very way a person thinks has to accommodate itself to the demands of the code. In the end, even after becoming comfortable with a new way of thinking, problems usually turn out to be simple syntax error. For those of you unfamiliar with programming, imagine you were stone drunk and had to write a ten page paper due in the morning, and every time you made a typo, your word processing program would call you an idiot and refuse to work. But you’ve got tunnel vision, you can’t see what the error is. Then, in order to get something, anything, done, you search on the web for someone who has written a paper on the same subject as you, and blatantly plagiarize them. And that’s okay! Don’t worry, though. You’ll get better, or you won’t be able to find any work. Welcome to the world of website development. Continue reading ““Well, Looks Like Yer Gonna Need a Complete Overhaul.””

October Horrorshow, Spring Edition: Class of Nuke ‘Em High

Class of Nuke Em HighWhat a shitty movie. From Troma Entertainment, a production company well-versed in churning out b-movie fare (most famously the Toxic Avenger series of films and its spinoffs), Class of Nuke ‘Em High is self-aware schlock. From the opening scene to the end, the filmmakers never miss a chance to remind the viewer that what they are watching is not meant to be taken seriously. But the way they choose to draw attention to this fact, with overwrought characters and performances, only serves to make the film feel forced. It revels in cheapness, and this would be a good thing, if only they weren’t trying so hard. At every step of the film, Troma seeks to establish its brand, reveling in its ineptness at putting together something that is watchable.

The film has a strong beginning. After an opening shot purposefully evocative of Troma’s production logo, the scene shifts to the fictional town of Tromaville, New Jersey, where an accident at a nuclear power plant has leaked radioactive goo into the high school next door. A hapless student is exposed to the contaminant when he drinks from a water fountain before class, and his transformation from stereotypical 80s film nerd to smoking corpse is hilarious. But in that scene is a first glimpse of the film’s downfall. Most of the ensemble cast is present, and all exist, like the poor victim, as caricatures of the diverse collection of jocks, losers, horndogs, and punks that populate the banal visions of high school typical of so many films from the 50s to today. The problem is, there isn’t a straight man among the bunch to balance things out. Continue reading “October Horrorshow, Spring Edition: Class of Nuke ‘Em High”

Cocksuckers Ball: The Assassin of the Senate

“If you compared it to the alternative, it looks good. If you compare it to the possibilities, it looks sad.” So said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island upon emerging from a closed-door meeting of Democratic Senate leadership on Monday evening, as it became clear that even the compromise plan of allowing Medicare buy-ins by persons aged 55-64 (the replacement for the public option) would not be enough to get healthcare reform to 60 votes. Continue reading “Cocksuckers Ball: The Assassin of the Senate”

Once More Into the Breach

First off, I have to address past opinions expressed on these pages. I was against the Iraq surge. Back in an article from December of 2006, I wrote, in reaction to the report of the Iraq Study Group, which advocated withdrawal from Iraq, that the report “...does not advocate defeat, rather, it recognizes that defeat has already happened. Any attempt to pretend otherwise does nothing but extend our folly.” Continue reading “Once More Into the Breach”