What is the end game of civil rights? In a perfect world, civil rights would mean that the ways in which we define ourselves, through gender, sexuality, religious beliefs or lack thereof, or any other labels we choose or are chosen for us, would not matter. They would not matter when it comes to employment, where we choose to live, which organizations to join, running for office, or purchasing goods and services. The ideal endgame for civil rights would be the labels themselves becoming meaningless, unnecessary to apply because how a person identifies is no more significant than the color of their eyes. But, identity politics has instead made the labels more significant. People are required to identify, to belong to one group or another, and this ideological segregation has been an unfortunate side effect of the struggles for civil rights. The otherness of people has been reinforced alongside the strengthening of civil rights, turning the idea of equality into something like a finite resource, to be cut and divided among the differing groups. In acknowledging the differences between us, those differences become more stark than ever. Continue reading “Take Your Labels and Shove It”
Shitty Movie Sundays: Road House
Looking at the list of films I’ve reviewed for Shitty Movie Sundays, there are some real standouts. Most of the films on the list are of such substandard quality that I am genuinely concerned I am wasting precious time in my life that I will never get back when I watch them (Galaxy of Terror, I Spit on Your Grave, Theodore Rex, for example), while others, despite being bad movies, are entertaining. Spacehunter, Raise the Titanic, Reign of Fire, Commando, The Keep — all shitty movies, and all eminently watchable. When I think of my affinity for shitty movies, it is flicks like these that keep me searching for the next great dog.
I didn’t have to search for Road House. I have seen it many times. Anyone who had basic cable in the 1990s in the United States has seen Road House at least once. Ted Turner must like the movie, because it felt like TNT used to show it two or three times a month. I bet it’s second only to The Shawshank Redemption for TNT showings.
Road House is one of the best shitty movies ever made, and it has a legitimate argument for being the best shitty movie of all time. A rundown of the plot will show the ingredients director Rowdy Herrington was working with. Continue reading “Shitty Movie Sundays: Road House”
Oval Office Thunderdome: Bringing the Crazy Might Work
I’ve written a couple of times before about how delegate math in the Republican presidential nominating process makes it harder for a right wing candidate to win the nomination than a candidate who is perceived as moderate. For example, on Super Tuesday in 2008, John McCain locked up the nomination. Much of that was due to victories in New York and California, which awarded him 250 delegates. Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee’s total haul from five victories that day was about 150 delegates. The lesson was that, as a Republican, ignoring New York, California, and other states that reliably vote Democratic in the general election can be sound strategy in the fall, but ignoring these states in the primaries will cost a candidate the nomination. But, this theory largely relies on scheduling. What would happen if the GOP primaries in Democratic-leaning states were pushed to later in the schedule? Next year, we will all find out. Continue reading “Oval Office Thunderdome: Bringing the Crazy Might Work”
Shameless Self-Promotion
What’s the point of having a website if you can’t use it to sell your shit? With that in mind, I hereby announce that my second book, The Blasted Lands, is now available in the Kindle store for $3.99 in the U.S., and adjusted in other markets.
The Blasted Lands is a follow-up to last year’s Impact Winter, a sci-fi novel where the earth has been enshrouded in ejecta from a meteorite impact in northern Canada. This latest novel is a standalone tale, not a direct sequel to the first, but it does take place in the same area of central Pennsylvania, and features some of the same characters.
In writing this book and the one before, I did my best to imagine what would happen to the land and the people after a significant impact. What would the seismic effects be? How much damage would the air blast do? And what about the most lasting effect; the dust flung into the stratosphere, blocking out all light from the sun for an extended period? There are no good answers as to what would befall civilization were an event like this to take place.
In this novel, some time has passed since the impact, and dusky light has managed to penetrate the shroud, giving the land an eerie countenance. Edward Gray and his small group have weathered the worst of the collapse of society and government, and are now, like other survivors, preparing for the time when the sun will shine once more. They have claimed a small farm in rural Pennsylvania and have set about readying house and field. But, a land with no laws can snatch away plans and dreams without warning. Edward and his people learn that lesson, much to their hardship.
Check it out.
Oval Office Thunderdome: George Pataki Has a Shot
Former Governor of New York George Pataki has announced that he is running for the 2016 Republican nomination for president. He joins a pretty crowded field (the Wikipedia page on the GOP candidates is fascinating). His name recognition isn’t great, and it’s been nine years since he last held public office. At first glance, there isn’t a lot to separate Pataki from all the other candidates whose polling hovers in the low single digits. But there is one big thing. He’s not an arch conservative. He hasn’t spent the entire Obama administration blasting anything and everything the president has done, nor has he spent much time pandering to the nut job base of the Republican Party. He hasn’t pegged gay marriage to natural disasters, called the Constitution the word of God, or questioned whether or not the military is going to invade Texas. In short, he doesn’t have nearly as much baggage as someone like Ted Cruz or Mike Huckabee. Continue reading “Oval Office Thunderdome: George Pataki Has a Shot”
Oval Office Thunderdome: Ted Cruz Will Never Be President
The Republican Party has a problem. They have mastered the art of gerrymandering to the point that they can win the House every two years while receiving less total votes, by millions, than Democratic candidates. They have also been able to leverage the conservatism of less populous states to win control of the Senate, even though the Republican members of that body, over the course of the three election cycles that turn over the Senate, received less votes than their Democratic counterparts across the aisle, again by millions. But the story is different when it comes to presidential politics. Continue reading “Oval Office Thunderdome: Ted Cruz Will Never Be President”
The 2015 Shitty Movie Sunday Awards
I’ve written a lengthy column about what I thought was the best in film that I saw from this past year. Now it’s time for the worst — for the dark side of my cinematic experience to come forward. There won’t be as much structure here as in the Empty Balcony Awards. It doesn’t matter what year a film was released, or if I’ve even seen it within the last year. These are awards for film garbage. Continue reading “The 2015 Shitty Movie Sunday Awards”
The Third Annual Empty Balcony Awards for Movies I Saw From Last Year
I like a sense of inflated self-importance. It’s one of the reasons I maintain a website that has never managed to garner more than a few thousand hits in a month. (Except for that one time the site was hacked by someone in Russia and the increase in traffic crashed the servers. Sorry about that, Dreamhost.) Does anyone out there really care what I have to say, on any topic whatsoever? I’m sure there are a few people who do, here and there. But I’m only pretending that anything that appears in this space is more than just tiny words muttered into the vast information ether. I read somewhere, once, that we, here in the Information Age, are generating data at a per day rate that eclipses the accumulated data of the entirety of human history from before the internet. That’s a lot of noise, and no matter how relevant one’s contribution, that contribution still consists mostly of noise. Continue reading “The Third Annual Empty Balcony Awards for Movies I Saw From Last Year”
The Empty Balcony: Nightcrawler
Every serious actor has to do a film where they play a deranged freak — someone sociopathic or supremely bent who decides to interact with the people around them, much to those people’s distress. Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver, Christian Bale in American Psycho, Joaquin Phoenix in The Master, Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast, and many others, all played men who were malignancies to every person they met. Jake Gyllenhaal has come close before, but with Nightcrawler, last year’s film from writer/director Dan Gilroy, he has gone full creepy. Continue reading “The Empty Balcony: Nightcrawler”
We Are Irredeemably Stupid, Tin Foil Hat Edition
Former baseball great Chipper Jones has slipped into the outrage/persecution complex. His crime? He wrote something stupid on Twitter. This past Friday, Chipper wrote, referring to the Sandy Hook massacre, “So the FBI comes out and confirms that Sandy Hook was a hoax! Where is the outrage? What else are we being lied to about? Waco? JFK? Pfff...” The internet was quick to respond, and Chipper had to return to Twitter to type up an apology. A supplicant come on bended knee, Chipper had roused the fury of the internet irate, and offered his due penance. He shouldn’t worry. The attention span for matters like this, especially involving retired athletes who are normally far away from the public eye, is short. He could have gotten away with doing nothing, but that would have meant staying offline for a week or so. Who wants to do that? Continue reading “We Are Irredeemably Stupid, Tin Foil Hat Edition”