Dave Sim, creator and writer of the cult comic Cerebus, despite going completely around the bend in recent years, once wrote something very sensible. “Never fall in love with a bar.” This is good advice. Hang around one place long enough, and that bar a person has come to spend so much time in will do the unthinkable. It will change. Favorite staff will leave, choosing to get on with their lives rather than spend their nights feeding the regulars drinks. (Who can blame them? Spending too much time in a bar is bad for a person’s health. Working in one is just no way to live.) The owner will get it in his head to remodel this or that, making everything clean, polished, and prefab. Maybe they will even install windows in the front where there were none before (A truly seismic shift. Depending on how one feels, this is akin either to a facelift, or a horribly disfiguring car accident.). The point is, to a person in love with a bar, any small change can feel like a betrayal. Months or years have been spent acclimating to a bar’s very specific atmosphere. It becomes the reason to go to that particular spot, and when it changes, the process has to begin again. Eventually, change accumulates to the point where a person has been abandoned by their bar, and they have to seek out someplace new. Continue reading “How to Kill a Bar”
October Horrorshow, Retroactive: Prince of Darkness
Victor Wong will kick your ass with a chopstick and a can of Shasta.
This is attempt number five. The fifth time I’ve begun a review of John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness. Hopefully, I’ll be able to finish this effort. Suppose I start with a declarative statement, then justify it with an argument? Sounds like a plan. Continue reading “October Horrorshow, Retroactive: Prince of Darkness”
Chlorine Stings the Eyes
The pool at the Tallmadge YWCA was divided into three sections when the kids from the summer day camp had their afternoon swims. The shallow end, the middle, and the deep end. There were about thirty of us, maybe more, six and seven year olds all the way up to fourteen year olds — teenagers who walked among us like gods. All morning long we were packed into a room at the top of a bleak set of stairs and locked in, doing who knows what. I don’t remember. Board games. Activities. But every afternoon, if we weren’t off somewhere on a field trip, it was down to the pool, after lunch had been given an appropriate time to settle, of course. Continue reading “Chlorine Stings the Eyes”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Starship Troopers 3: Marauder
I’ve never met a movie I wouldn’t watch. That must be the reason I looked at this dog there in the iTunes store, staring really, wondering, was I really going to do it? Was I really going to spend $2.99 of my hard-earned cash to rent Starship Troopers 3? I wish I could write that watching my hand move the mouse and click on the ‘rent’ button was like an out of body experience, one over which I had no control. But really, I just said to myself, “Aw, fuck it. Why not?”
The first Starship Troopers seemed to have a mission to try and be everything to everyone. Big budget blockbuster, b-movie extraordinaire, sci-fi/horror bloodfest, social/political commentary, etc. It excelled as a movie, it stunk as a film. The bad acting could melt glass, the hot bodies could fire sagging libidos. It was a ridiculous film, and I have no clue how I feel about it. The first sequel was an Alien rip-off that just wanted to cash in on a name. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Starship Troopers 3: Marauder”
Meritocracy, Anyone? – Part 2
If ever there were a more comical sideshow in American politics currently than the plight of Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, I can’t think of it. The economy is continuing its downward spiral, Congress has effectively checked itself out until the new year, and South Asia is reasserting itself as the most dangerous part of the world, much to the consternation of American foreign policy. Yet the ineptness and strangely frank and upfront attempts at corruption displayed by Governor Blagojevich have pushed all that bleakness aside. Continue reading “Meritocracy, Anyone? – Part 2”
The Empty Balcony: Jarhead & Generation Kill
Marines can be grossly immature. In point of fact, that’s a generalization which can be made about members of all the four services, but especially Marines. A young grunt’s slang and mannerisms are by design repugnant, frequently homophobic or faux homoerotic, and sometimes racist. The young Marine is the very personification of testosterone run wild, machismo fueled by hormones thrown all out of whack by age, temperament, and environment. The young can be crazed and inelegant all on their own, but military training hones these traits to a fine edge, a bizarre side effect of turning what was a boy into a highly efficient killing machine. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: Jarhead & Generation Kill”
Meritocracy, Anyone?
New York State Governor David Paterson has an interesting problem. The state’s junior senator, Hillary Clinton, will soon be leaving her post to take up duties as the next Secretary of State, and the burden of choosing someone to finish her term has fallen on Mr. Paterson. To put it politely, politics in New York State is disgusting. It is dysfunctional, frequently corrupt, and mostly inept. It usually serves to unapologetically further the ambitions of individuals over their constituents, and there is little reason to believe, despite Governor Paterson’s good reputation, that the selection of the state’s next Senator will be any different. Continue reading “Meritocracy, Anyone?”
Oval Office Thunderdome: The Maps
Months and months went by and we all saw the maps. Generally shaded in five or six colors, shades of red, blue, and yellow or grey with new names, new notations and definitions. Strong Obama blue, weak Obama blue, strong McCain red, weak McCain pink and tossup yellow or undecided grey. New additions to the Crayola 64? Not likely, but someday soon may see Democratic blue and Republican red in crayon boxes throughout America’s elementary schools, simplifications of two colors that have become so associated with American political ideology and identity that the shift may be permanent. Continue reading “Oval Office Thunderdome: The Maps”
Oval Office Thunderdome: Things Come Together
New York City exploded when Barack Obama was called as the victor Tuesday night. Harlem, Fort Greene, Park Slope, Williamsburg, Times Square, all these places and more, filled with people celebrating Obama’s win. These images are from Union Square approximately half an hour after Obama delivered his victory speech. The sounds of whooping and cheering could be heard for blocks, reverberating off the concrete and glass of the surrounding buildings. New York wasn’t alone. A quick search on flickr turned up more than 20,000 photographs uploaded since Wednesday morning of gatherings all over the country, from Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, etc. This was a deeply moving sight to behold, an expulsion of eight years of frustration and anger in a single, affirming moment. It was as if even Americans had doubts about our nation’s ability to achieve greatness, to rise above. The celebration was raucous because we proved ourselves wrong, and have begun healing the damage done by the Bush presidency.
Oval Office Thunderdome: Missile Test Predicts!
Prediction is a science. Just ask any physicist. The functioning of the universe operates within well-established rules of probability. The margins are slim, but real. For example, there is a slight chance, 1 in 1 trillion trillion trillion, that when placing your hand on a wall, it will pass right through. This isn’t magic — it’s physics. Missile Test takes politics every bit as seriously as science. As such, Missle Test has spent painstaking minutes theorizing, experimenting, and rigorously analyzing all the factors that will decide this election. These are not just predictions, but will be proven as immutable fact after election day. There is no margin of error on this page. We deal with realities. Continue reading “Oval Office Thunderdome: Missile Test Predicts!”