Pretty-Off: Japanese Dude Edition

To show that my objectification of men knows no racial, ehtnic, or national boundaries, I am going to go ahead and hold the next pretty-off today, hot on the heels of the first pretty-off. Don't ask me why these pretty-offs are categorized by ehtnicity - they just are. The closest thing I have to an answer is that there are a lot of pretty dudes out there and you have to categorize them somehow. Maybe when we've had all the pretty-offs, we can have a battle royale of the races. Kind of like Survivor did that one season. Or kind of like the battle of the sexes in tennis, except everybody is a dude and they are all way, way prettier than Billie Jean King. I'm thinking maybe of an ugly-fof too, but I'm so sure that Andrew Lloyd Weber would win that there is really very little point. Let me know if you want to nominate someone. And let me know if you disagree with the winners I choose of the various pretty-offs, or if I left someone very, very pretty out of the competition.

Let me just point out that this is a PRETTY-off, not a handsome-off. So don't be thinking that Allen Iverson is my favorite black dude to look at, because he isn't. I dig him, but I dig Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje (Simon Adebesi from Oz) more (even though I hear he's a total pill in real life),
or that the winner of the Japanese dude pretty-off is my favorite Japanese dude - he's not; Takashi Sorimachi is.
At the end of the day, I prefer handsome to pretty (see my Alain Delon vs. Jean-Paul Belmondo post). Don't mean I don't like me some pretty, though. So, without further ado, I present for your consideration the following assorted wagashi (delicious Japanese confections):



That's soccer star Hidetoshi Nakata (top), baseball player Kazuo Matsui (center), and baseball player Ichiro Suzuki (bottom). If you've been reading this blog, you know who the winner is. Ichiro!!! Take your sash, please, Ichiro, and I expect to see it on you on opening day next spring. I don't care if it fucks with your pitching arm. The only reason I am even watching baseball at all is to perv out over you and the other hot guys (which is, like, 3 dudes tops - baseball players are an apocalyptically ugly bunch. Yuck, I shudder just thinking about fat disgusting frat boys like Roger Clemens and pock-marked hicks like Randy Johnson. Why did I just think about them? Now I have to think about Tom Glavine for approximately 17 straight hours to wash the folds of my brain clear of those two horrible, horrible, horrible men.)

Pretty-Off: Black Dude Edition

I don't know why I'm thinking about this shit right now. I'm supposed to be getting ready to go out and am currently wearing underwear, a sweat-smelling Little Miss Bad t-shirt, glasses, no maekup, and more grease on my hair than Gale and Evelle apply in the gas station bathroom right after they break out of prison in Raising Arizona. Only mine is natural! So in the name of procrastination, I was flipping through my newly arrived issue of Entertainment Weekly (an excellent publication, by the way - they have way better writing and more cred than I ever expected. I guess I was just too creeped out by how socially inept Dalton Ross always seemed when he did his little segments on New York 1) and saw this photo of Chris Brown (top photo). You may remember him as the guy who showed Brit how it's done at the VMAs. I have pretty much given up trying to keep up with youth culture, but I do know who Chris Brown is. Sort of. Anyway, I found myself thinking,"He's pretty, but is he as pretty as Chingy?" For those of you who don't know, Chingy (bottom photo) is a hip hop semi-star who basically parlayed Nelly's St. Louis accent into an entire career. He did do one fucking great jam though - "Holidae Inn", with Snoop and Ludacris. It's about hotel parties, which I fucking love and am constantly trying to throw, to little avail (although I did have three in a row at K & Ms wedding, when I wisely booked the giant suite), and Ludacris has a great line where he says "make your mammary glands jiggle." But at the end of the day, the main thing about Chingy (thingy about Chingy?) is that he is exceedingy pretty. He's one of those people who you have to see moving around to truly appreciate, so if you give a fuck, and I'm betting my cats that you don't, I suggest you head to You Tube. I had pretty much declared Chingy the victor, but then I remembered the fairest of them all: Allen Iverson (center). Not many people seem to appreciate the beauty of Allen's face, and it's a shame. Yeah, he is a great b-baller, and yeah, he's a fucking thug with awesome tattoos, but he spends more time and money on his hair than Naomi Campbell, I guarantee it, and his face is just as pretty. Prettier, actually! So we have a winner. I am sending him a sash that says "Mr. Pretty Black Dude." It'll take a few days to reach him, but watch for him to be wearing it when the Nuggets take on the Knicks next Tuesday, or shortly thereafter. I hope it doesn't fuck up his game.

Oh My God Oh My God Oh My God

Okay, I can barely contain my excitement. It is literally like trying to stuff a sleeping bag back into its carrying case (or an umbrella, your choice). I have been quietly freaking out for several months now at the prospect of the adaptaion of "No Country for Old Men", the newest Coeh brothers movie. I knew it was comng, but I had no idea it was coming NEXT WEEKEND!!!!! While I am embarassed to admit that I have neither read this nor any other Cormac McCarthy novel (which I plan to do immediately - I want to read this before the movie comes out), I have seen every single Coen brothers film at least once. Yes, even The Ladykillers, god help me (I think I have written before about how a major fuck-up only further endears those I love to me because it makes me feel better about myself - e.g. I could kiss Martin Amis for writing Night Train). I would estimate that I have seen Raising Arizona well over 100 times. I often get that Barton Fink feeling. My entire vocabulary is littered with Coen-isms. I will never "be right back" - no, I will always "be back directly." Nine times out of ten, when Orangello meows to me, I say "Ju said it mah, don fuck wid da jesus." I have not called a white russian a white russian for some time now. I often implore Bunches to look into his heart. Food is not good, but "pretty darn good." And so on.

The fact that Javier Bardem is starring in this new film only quintuples my excitment. I love, love, love him and think he is not only one of the handsomest men to ever draw breath, but also one of the greatest actors to ever grace the screen. I find it difficult to think of "Before Night Falls" without sobbing uncontrollably.

The sense that he conveys of a free spirit embarking on life with wild-eyed enthusiasm, drinking up experience and just truly living, and the sense of that free spirit being crushed by the man, the way the life and color and expression and joie de vivre drains from his face by the end of the film... it is so fucking heartbreaking that I actually think it made me cry harder than Jack Twist in Brokeback (am I alone in thinking Jake Gyllenhaal really nailed that shit? God he was just so sweet and optimistic and then so horribly, horribly crushed, and the fact that you don't see it, and it's kind of vague..oh man...). Javier made me forgive Julian Schnabel for both Basquiat (Julian, you WISH you looked like Gary Oldman, and, hate to say it, David Bowie's Warhol is a distant third to Crispin Glover's [#2] and Jared Harris's [#1], and please somebody fold Claire Forlani into a paper airplane and throw her into the caves at Tora Bora, post haste!! I can't believe John Favreau called her skanky irritating ass that many times and was actually bummed that she dissed him. Score, I say!) and those fucking broken dishes paintings. Javier was straight-up ROBBED of the Oscar for that role. ROBBED, I tell you! Yeah, Gladiator whupped major ass and made me actually want to sit on Russell Crowe's short obnoxious Australian wanker lap for a minute, but Oscar-worthy? Over BARDEM? NO! His NOSE deserves a fucking Oscar, for god's sake. Best Performance by a Nose in a Real Life Role.

I am not a violent person, but Javier's rugby nose has made me contemplate on more than one occasion hitting Bunches in the face with a shovel in an attempt to recreate it (and he has a nice broken nose already). Growing up, my parents had this really cool black horse's head sculpture that looked really fancy and heavy but was in fact really light like those fake rocks they would stack up all around Adam Curry/Ricky Rachtman on the Headbanger's Ball set. I was always fascinated by the beautiful lines of that horse's face - it didn't look like a real horse, but more like a horse as painted on a Greek vase (a krater or an amphora or whatever - yeah I took Art History 101, so what?). Javier Bardem looks exactly like that horse. I used to sit and run my hand along its smooth flat black nose, sometimes with my eyes closed. If I ever meet Javier, I will ask him if I can do the same thing to him. And I will now resist the urge to talk about running my hand aong other parts of him with my eyes closed. Fuck, I mentioned it!!! Sorry, but me gusta, Me really, really gusta.

In closing, here's hoping that a) No Country for Old Men is the return to form for the Coen brothers that people are saying it is, b) Javier wins an Oscar this time, like people are saying he will, and c) I make it to next weekend without spontaneously combusting out of sheer excitement as I am thinking I might.

Separated at Birth: Nicholas Rowe (aka Young Sherlock Holmes) and Pete Townshend (aka Ivor the Engine Driver)

As promised. And, for the record, I think life imitated art a little TOO much when it comes to Ivor the Engine driver. Little Girl Guide, stop all your crying, here comes Pete Townshend to download a bunch of kiddie porn and then say it was just for research. Duh, Pete - the excuse is that it's art. Preferably Victorian art. You need to get with Paul Rubens and Jeffrey Jones, stat. Also for the record, A Quick One While He's Away is in my top 10 favorite songs of all time. Me and Bunches sing it when we drive and we have that shit down pat. I always get to be Entwhistle and when I sing "You are forgiven", Bunches sings "You are a gibbon." (a gibbon...a gibbon...a gibbon...sorry, I am singing it now). Finally, for the record, there is an alarmingly small number of pictures of Nicholas Rowe out there, so that little one is the best I could do. If I were him, I would be pissed. And not just about the career death and the nose!!!

On the Lighter Side...

Remember back in the day Mad magazine had a section called "On the Lighter Side" with little cartoons about the lighter side of everyday life? I remeber I had two Mad magazines as a kid that I inherited from god knows where or whom, but I loved them so much and read them until Alfred E. Newman's face wore off and the fold-in fell to pieces. I haven't read Mad in years so I don't know if they still do this, but back then the feature of each issue was a movie spoof. The two I had were "The Empire Strikes Out" and "Young Sureschlock Holmes." Oh man, did they play up the schnozz on whoever the fuck that was in Young Sherlock Holmes. Come to think of it, was that Pete Townsend?? Do I feel a separated at birth coming on? Hell yes I do. Stay tuned. Anyway, "On the Lighter Side" had stuff like two dudes talking and making fun of older people: "Yeah, my parents don't know if Fleetwood Mac is a Cadillac shaped like a hamburgr or a hamburger shaped like a Cadillac." Zing! Take that, oldsters! You are way less cool than that hip young Chritine McVie and Lindsey Buckingham! Eat it, man!!! And then there was Spy vs. Spy.

I have a feeling I would appreciate that a lot more today, kind of like Doonesebury and Bloom County (I will never get Mary Worth, sorry...I mean, what the fuck was that shit doing in my funny pages? That shit ain't funny! I'll take Family fucking Circle over that preachy bitch! Damn!)
Anyway, my point is, it gets pretty heated here at Zeitgeisty. R2 and I generally fluctuate between psychotic ranting and St. Teresa of Avila-esque ecstatic adoration. (that's me listening to The Stooges, or R2 listening to Kucinich). So, in the tradition of my main Jew Alfred E. Newman, I am re-introducing On the Lighter Side as a category. Only fun, light subkect matter need apply. On the Lighter Side is all about taking a calm, relaxed view on shit. Even crazy shit that makes you feel like acting like the Tasmanian Devil, or Bill O'Reilly, or whatever. Case in point: I had a real day of it at work yesterday. I was running around like Carl Lewis all fucking day and got great feedback from some clients and nothing but grief from one of my assorted various bosses (I work for a regular Whitman's Sampler of freaky attorneys). Partway through the day I realized who I felt like and changed my desktop background image accordingly to this:
Now, you tell me, does it GET any lighter than Cannonball Run (1 or 2)?? I think not. And Dom DeLuise and I share a birthday (fuck you, Peter DeLuise. I don't care when your birthday is, nor do I care where you have been all these years).

I feel a Cannonball Run post coming on. A curse on this internet fatwa at my job. No, a fatwa on this fatwa!!!

We're Living With Dog Poo (So What?)

As you may have noticed, I have been psychologically dormat for some time now (hence no posts), but I am back and better than ever, and what better way to show it than with one of my favorite past-times, righteous and strident confrontation? I know most people fear public speaking and many fear confrontation. I, on the other hand, could gladly get up on a stage and indignantly yell at wrongdoers for at least two hours every day. In fact, I may well start doing that. Does Atlanta have a Speaker's Corner? Perhaps I will just make myself a sandwich board in the style of one of those old-fashioned "The End is Nigh" dudes and walk around in traffic like a fireman collecting change in his upside down helmet. Difference being, my sign will read "Most of you totally fucking SUCK. Would you like to know why?"

Anyway, the title of this post is to be sung to the tune of the Stooges' "Dog Food." And yes, this involves that old chestnut, dog owners who do not pick up their dog's poo. Sadly, Bunch & I have a neighbor who falls under this category. Even more sadly, the most popular doggy-do-ing area in our neighborhood happens to be right next to our house. As I am not only always up for confrontation but often actively seeking it, and dog poo is a major pet peeve of mine, I began spying on the neighborhood dog people promptly upon moving into our pad. It's very difficult to officially confirm that dog poo has been left - you have to actually see the poo coming out of the butt and the owner walking away from it. This is easier than it sounds. The culprits generally stand a little ways away, so I can se the dog crouching but can't confirm that the number of the ablution being performed (1 or 2). (aside - girl dogs should start peeing like boy dogs - this would solve all the problems) I can run over real fast to check, but it's important to me that I not look like a psycho (too late, I'm sure), so I kind of saunter over after they have started to walk away, and then it's tough to say that the poo I find definiftely came from that dog. I like for my indigantion to me unimpeachable, so I err on the side of sitting quietly, peeping through my blinds like a poo-obsessed cobra (with blinds), waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.

Last night all of the poo stars aligned and I struck. Ha! I yelled after the offending neighbor, asking her if she meant to leave the poo, and she said yes!!!! Let me repeat, !!!!!!! She instantly became horribly agressive, shouting over me as I expelained to her that not only was it disgusting, but she was also breaking the law. She flat out refused to pick up, depsite my telling her that it was no different than me pulling my pants down and pooing on her doorstep (which she failed to register as an actual threat, not merley an analogy). It took ever fiber of my being not to take the poo and leave it on her dooretsp, but I took the high road. I the poo away, and then I sat right down and wrote myself a letter, as the song goes. Here is the letter, slightly edited to protect my top-secret identity from the one person I don't know who occasionally read this blog:

Re: Violation of Cobb County Ordinance § 10-138(b) (the “Ordinance”)

Dear Ms. [ASSWIPE]:

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is [RUSS] and I am your neighbor at [101 CANDYLAND LANE]. We spoke yesterday, October 31, 2007, at 6:50 p.m. regarding your refusal to properly dispose of feces left by your dogs in the public area immediately adjacent to my property. I am writing to inform you that you are in violation of the above-referenced Ordinance regarding the proper disposal of animal feces and to repeat my reasonable and legal request that you comply with this Ordinance immediately.

I would like you to understand that I in no way wish to be un-neighborly or cause any discord or strife among the residents of [SUBURBAN DYSTOPIA]. Quite to the contrary, I feel that it is you who is being un-neighborly and creating an unpleasant atmosphere. Not only are you putting the health of your fellow residents and their pets at risk, your nasty attitude when I politely approached you regarding this issue is a disgrace to the spirit of a condominium community such as [SUBURBAN DYSTOPIA]. Your fellow residents strive to coexist harmoniously and we all – yourself included – pay monthly dues of Two-Hundred Forty Dollars ($240.00) to maintain as pleasant an environment as possible, a fee that includes landscaping which you are in effect vandalizing. The fact that your defense when approached regarding the violation of the Ordinance was that you have lived here for twenty-five (25) years and never picked up after your dogs is shameful, disgusting, and laughable.

Furthermore, you claim that other dog-owning residents do not pick up after their dogs. I can assure you, Ms. [ASSWIPE], that this is not the case. I take this issue very seriously and, although I can obviously neither speak for every resident nor account for the feces of every dog on every occasion, I can attest that, in the course of my observation, you are the sole resident in violation of the Ordinance.

Although I find it highly implausible that you truly think it is acceptable to leave dog feces in public areas which all residents share and pay to maintain, I will give you the benefit of the doubt. Hence, I have enclosed the Ordinance for your edification (please see Exhibit A). Furthermore, I am treating you with the neighborly respect that you refuse your fellow residents in that I am refraining from lodging a formal complaint at this time. By copy of this letter to the both the [SUBURBAN DYSTOPIA] Condominium Association, Inc. and the Solicitor General (the Cobb County official responsible for prosecuting ordinance violations), I am simply establishing a public record of our dispute.

Please be aware that, in addition to continuing your violation of the Ordinance, it would be highly inadvisable for you to engage in any sort of further un-neighborly behavior, such as retaliation. I do not wish to imply that you would contemplate such action, but I must say that your aggressive and hysterical reaction to my simple request that you help keep our neighborhood healthy, safe, and clean warrants this mention. We have all heard horror stories of simple neighborhood disputes becoming something much more serious due to the overreaction of the parties involved. My request to you is legal, reasonable, and politely stated, and your only proper response is to cease your violation of the Ordinance.

Ms. [ASSWIPE], I thank you for your time in reading this and expect a positive resolution to this issue. If I witness you violating the Ordinance again, I will have no choice but to lodge a formal complaint with both the housing association and the authorities.

GOVERN YOUR ACTIONS ACCORDINGLY.

Sincerely,

[RUSS]

Exhibit A

COBB COUNTY ORDINANCE § 10-138(b)

a) Animal owners must keep their yard, property, porches, balconies, decks, etc. reasonably free of animal feces. Animal waste will be removed in a timely manner by placing said material in a closed or sealed container and thereafter disposing of it in the animal owner’s trash receptacle, sanitary disposal unit, or other closed or sealed refuse container.

(b) Persons who permit their animals to defecate on public or private property other than their own property are required to immediately pick up the feces, bag the feces, and properly dispose of the feces. Animal waste shall be removed by placing said matter in a closed or sealed container and thereafter disposing of it in the animal owner’s or public trash receptacle, sanitary disposal unit or other closed or sealed refuse container.

(c) Any person found in violation of subsection (a) or (b) of this section shall be in violation of this chapter, subject to the following exceptions:

1. Persons using guide dogs or assistance dogs are exempt from removing feces;
2. Hunting dogs being used in a legal hunt with permission of the property owner; or
3. Law enforcement officers working police trained dogs.

[END OF LETTER]

Sometimes I am really glad I work at a law firm. It teaches you how to write very polite yet threatening letter. In closing, people, pick up your dog poo. This isn't fucking Paris.

From the mouths of freaks

Oh god! This is too good! I'm sitting in my work cubby trying my damndest to squelch the squeals welling up inside! Manna from heaven, I tell you!

Kucinich, MacLaine, alien encounters. People, you couldn't make this stuff up! Check out the Plain Dealer's "Shirley MacLaine claims Kucinich had UFO encounter" below.

Incidentally, I grew up in an era where my first taste of Shirley MacLaine came via Terms of Endearment (and other way worse late-career movies) and her bizarre-o memoirs, like Out on a Limb, that detail dalliances with aliens and (human) sexual partners. But then a few years ago, I watched The Apartment and was blown away. Hard to believe, but Shirl used to be extremely adorable, charming, and not at all scary. The Trouble with Harry and Irma La Douce are both fun too, but you must check out The Apartment. Jack Lemmon is fantastic too. I do not exaggerate when I say that it is one of the best American movies ever made and I'll fist fight anyone who disagrees.

Poor Den Den. People are having enough trouble accepting his short stature and vegan politics! This is simply more fodder for poking fun, I suppose.


Shirley MacLaine claims Kucinich had UFO encounter
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Mark Naymik
Plain Dealer Politics Writer

Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich has claimed to have seen a UFO, according to Shirley MacLaine in her new book, "Sage-Ing While Age-Ing."

Kucinich "had a close sighting over my home in Graham, Washington, when I lived there," the actress, a close Kucinich friend, wrote. "Dennis found his encounter extremely moving. The smell of roses drew him out to my balcony where, when he looked up, he saw a gigantic triangular craft, silent, and observing him.

"It hovered, soundless, for 10 minutes or so, and sped away with a speed he couldn't comprehend. He said he felt a connection in his heart and heard directions in his mind."

Kucinich's campaign and congressional representatives did not return calls and e-mail asking whether the Cleveland Democrat, now in his sixth congressional term, in fact saw a UFO or if there was some other explanation for MacLaine's recollection.

MacLaine is a well-known believer of UFOs and reincarnation. And she has been close to Kucinich for decades. MacLaine is the godmother of Kucinich's daughter and attended Kucinich's 2005 Cleveland wedding to third wife, Elizabeth, who's often campaigning by his side.

MacLaine also recommended in the 1980s that Kucinich visit New Mexico spiritual adviser Chris Griscom, whom MacLaine featured in her then-best-selling book, "Dancing in the Light," describing how Griscom helped her communicate with trees. Kucinich has insisted that Griscom was not his spiritual adviser but a "teacher and a very good friend."

MacLaine, who shares Kucinich's opposition to using weapons in space, doesn't shed any more light in her book on Kucinich's close encounter, including when it happened. Her book goes on sale next month.

Ghetto rumor mill

Actual quote I heard while walking home today, uttered by a girl who looked to be 14:

"I don't know why they said we sent Blender [?] over to knife that n*****. They're just making shit up."

Ouch.

Luv ya, Sweet Jesus!

Story in yesterday's New York Post

CHOCOLATE JESUS REBORN
October 17, 2007 -- Chocolate Jesus is resurrected.

"My Sweet Lord," a nude anatomically correct milk chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ that infuriated Catholics before its April unveiling was canceled, returns Oct. 27 to a Chelsea art gallery, its creator said yesterday. This time, artist Cosimo Cavallaro said he expects no problems.

"There is nothing offensive about this," Cavallaro said of his 6-foot confection.

The Catholic League, which led the charge against the earlier exhibit, because of its timing -a day after Palm Sunday - and location - in a Manhattan gallery visible to passersby - won't protest this time.

"This is much less an in-your-face assault on Christians, and it's not happening during Holy Week," said Kiera McCaffrey, the league's director of communications.

What the Hell is That?

This past Saturday, the entire Russ clan went to commune with various fleabitten farm animals at the Smith Plantation's Fall Farm Day. This momentous occasion occurs once a year, when Roswell's premiere antebellum tourist attraction, The Archibald Smith Plantation Home, flings open the doors to its old-timey toolsheds and meticulously replicated slave quarters and invites Roswellians of all ages to spend some much-needed quality time with goats, chickens, sheep, mules and llamas. Well, the llamas may have been alpacas or vicunas - I really couldn't tell you the difference. They also have old-timey activities, like panning gold, and old-timey demonstrations, like a 1,000 year old blacksmith making lawn decorations.

I will avoid the obvious question of why a family ranging in age from 32-82, with nary a small child in sight, would make a special trip to an event otherwise patronized almost entirely by people under 3 feet in height and their chaperones. I will avoid pointing out that not a single parent had Purelle or wet wipes or whatever with them, which would be unheard of at the Propsect Park Zoo's annual farm day, Brooklyn's equivalent event. I will avoid going into detail about how I'm no germ freak, but my heart is squarely with paranoid Brooklyn parents on this issue. To paraphrase Bob Geldof, that place was tick with mixamatosis and anthrax, not to mention fleas, ticks and god knows what else (oh, the Bob Geldof thing is this: Russ Sr and Mrs. Russ Sr. were at a party in Bermuda once upon a time, and Bob Geldof was there, and some fellow reveller suggested he get in the hot tub, and he said, "Are you kidding me? That things tick with AIDS.").

No, I will not be going into any further detail on any of the above because I have a far, far greater vignette from our visit to the Smith Plantation. Let's just say my llama vs. vicuna vs. alpaca confusion was not the only zoological mystery of the day. My story involves this fellow:

I saw this thing from far away and thought it was a Maltese crossed with a chicken and then killed and made into the type of bedroom slipper sold at Frederick's of Hollywood. Shockingly, it wasn't. I was also reminded of the old SNL sketch where Steve Martin and Bill Murray are bumpkin tourists and all you see is them scrutinizing something from the something's perspective and they keep saying "What the hell is that?" over and over again. At some point one of them says "Kids, get your lips off that thing." It well could have been the above-pictured creature (or "critter", as we saw in these parts). Who knows. However, no one in the Russ clan is dumb enough to not figure out that this thing was some kind of fancy chicken. It was chicken-sized, chicken-shaped, and pecked like a chicken.

Not so for the redneck who appraoched my mother and asked her - wait for it - "What the hell is that?" My mother answered that she thought it was some kind of chicken. The redneck paused, sucked his teeth dismissively, and said "No ma'am, I reckon that there is a baby ostich."

I know I make a lot of typos but please note that he really did say ostich.

For the record, it's called a silkie bantam, it is indeed a fancy chicken, and for anyone who is interested, there is an alarming amount of litertaure out there by and for fancy chicken fanciers.

Some Cool Arubuian Shit

Here are some of the more random and unusal photos we took in Aruba. First of all, I have always really liked those hand-drawn baber shop signs that you really don't see much in America. I love them because they tell you even less about the haircutting skills of the barbers within than the incredibly out of date 80's-style photos that cover the exterior of most American hair places. There were a lot of these drawn or painted haircuts in Aruba.


We really liked the Dutch bar food. On the left, bitterballen, which are croquetes filled with a meat ragu. On the right, pork sate. And, of course, fries. I have been known to slam Holland for it's shitty munchy food, but obviously, in my stoned haze, I was looking in the wrong places. I think I was scarred by an early Amsterdam experience in which my best buddy Floris and I got really baked (duh) and bought a big carton of chocolate milk at Schipol airport, only to dicoever, as we shook the open container over our open mouths to no avail that we had ourchased a carton of CHOCOLATE PUDDING. Dutch people were laughing at us. It sucked!

We went into some really old and cool caves in which I saw more bats - and bigger bats - than I have ever seen in my life. They were amazing. We shone our light up into the top of the cave and literally hundreds, maybe even thousands, of bats came out in every direction and never even brished against us, which would have been kind of cool, actually.

Finally, this was my favorite random thing in Aruba. We were driving around literally in the middle of fucking nowhere, and we saw this thing:

A Pink-Letter Day!!!

Today is a good day. A fine day. A wonderful day! Not only is the weather beautiful, not only did I have a Dunkin' Donuts Croissant Sandwich for breakfast (does Burger King have exclusive usage rights for the wonderful word "croissanwich"?), not only is it Sunday and hence there is no work and, in my heathenish case, no church - no, there is more. Ariel Pink is coming to Atlanta!!! November 20!!! I EXCITE!! There are about 10 bands/musicians whom I regularly google to see if they are coming here (they include Of Montreal - WHO ARE ALSO PLAYING HERE THIS NOVEMBER - and the Black Lips - WHO ARE ALSO PLAYING HERE THIS NOVEMBER!! - and Welsh rappers Goldie Lookin' Chain, who I doubt I will ever see again, which sucks, even though some chav in head to toe pink burberry plaid slipped me a mickey the last time I saw them, and also The Upper Crust, who dress like they are in the court at Versailles but sound like Bon Scott-era AC/DC - okay, I have to do a photo of them due to their extreme awesomeness)

(and you lucky fuckers in NYC can see them on October 23, apparently. i hate you all.)
ANYWAY! Yes so Ariel Pink will be here at The Earl on November 20 and I can't recall the last time I was this excited for a show. He will be at the Bowery Ballroom on November 12 if you in NYC feel like seeing him. He's playing with Cass McCombs, whom I know little about but like so far. He sounds way more conventional than Areil from what I can tell.
And ha ha The Earl is about 1/8 the size of Bowery Ballroom, so thumbs up for Atlanta on this one.

Has R2B2 Submitted to the Rolling Stones??

Well??? R2, I am dying here. It's been almost two months since I sent you The Greatest CD Ever Burned By Mankind. So???? Still hate the Stones? Please bear in mind that answering that question in the affirmative will result in me programming my Caller Tunes so that you hear Honky-Tonk Woman instead of a ring whenever you call me. And in me doing a Mick Jagger chicken dance right next to you on the sidewalk when I next come to NYC. And recruiting someone (Sparky?) to throw in a couple of the Bowie/Jagger moves from their Dancing in the Streets video.

Sabbath!

The most odious part of my job (well, one of the most odious) is entering in attorneys' time. It depresses the shit out of me because they have terrible handwriting, the task is neverending - there is a new timesheet to enter every fucking day, and the whole exercise is a constant reminder of my meagre salary and social status as a lowly, lowly worm.

Having just returned from vacation, I have a giant pile of these annoying things to take care of, and the only thing worse than one day's worth of timesheets is more than one day's worth of timesheets (in this case I have a total of 16). Fortunately, I have discovered a way to make this horrible, mindless task slightly more palatable - Timesheet Music. I have found the perfect music for time entry - serious metal, thrash, and hardcore punk - and burned a couple of appropriate CDs for myself.

Which brings me to my point. Sabbath! Black Sabbath are so fucking awesome that it is actually quite ridiculous. I think Geezer Butler may be my favorite bassist of all time. One of them anyway (Russ Sr. is angrily saying something to his computer screen about Geddy Lee as he's reading this, I guarantee it). Plus, look how cool Geezer Butler is. I love this look. The whole Furry Freak movement is kind of bringing this look back, but only kind of. Devendra Banhart and Co. are hairy, sure, but in a much more 60's mountian man kind of way, not a 70s working class English proto-methhead kind of way. I can't put my finger on it, but somehow Lemmy and Geezer and all those guys just look cooler, harder, and way more like the kind of fuzzy Muppets you would want to get really drunk with. There is a reason why the only people in entertainment who had long hair and beards in the period from 1980 until now were all speed metal guys. Because of Sabbath!!!

We were not killed by Dutch frat boys!

That's right, we're back! Despite the hysterical overreactions and attempts at negative buzz marketing on behalf of team Holloway, Aruba is a wonderful, beautiful, safe and friendly place. We had a fantastic time, and the trip had many highlights. I have a lot of photos to go through and will post some highlights with accompnaying illustrations once I get my act together. As of now, I am back at work and hating it. Hating it!

The best thing about Aruba was the birds. I am a huge bird geek and I was in heaven. My favorite was the brown pelican, pictured above. I have seen these before but never really appreictaed just how cool they are. They are huge, and their feathers look like muppet fur when they are wet, and they dive all around you in the water for fish, and they are really, really good at it.

I also liked this guy - the bananaquit. There was one who came to the bar where we stayed every afternoon and drank the residue of the liquor that had gathered on the lips of the pour-tops on the bottles. The bartender said the bird never gets drunk, and his story checked out.

Finally, the bare-eyed pigeon is hilarious looking. Hilarious!!!

Kick me! (but please not with a bootie)

Sorry to Russ and sorry to readers for my sporadic appearances as of late. Things have been hectic, especially at work (and I don't need to remind you, work is the single best place from which to blog).

Of the many many things that have been burning me up, here are the ones foremost in my mind.

To all of you Wes Anderson fans, a hearty R2 thumbs down for the Darjeeling Limited. I don't mind a movie that's generally plotless but I dislike one that relies on one quirky episodic bit after another to add substance. And Adrian Brody! Can someone please snuff him out? I was sorely disappointed, and I count myself among the few who really liked the generally sucky Life Aquatic.

In your fucking face, Isiah Thomas!

Fall has begun, which in NYC which means having to acclimate ourselves to a whole new season's worth of unbearable fashion trends. The booties are killing me already and it hasn't even dipped below 70 degrees.

In the continuing story of the weirdness of my life in the 'hood, I found out that my neighbor in Apartment 4B is being sued. By Sears, if you can believe that. And how did I discover this? Because someone Scotch-taped the full subpoena, including damages being sought, to her mailbox. It's been there for the last 48 hours which means that I have to gently maneuver the pages aside when checking my mail lest I crush them. The best part of the story is that that Ms. Apartment 4B is no longer, replaced by a pair of no good skinny little hipsters (actually the boy is skinny and his fag hag roomie is chunky—my favorite hipster combo) who are apparently too scared to move the pages or don't check their mail very often. Another choice tidbit about Ms. 4B. When I first moved in and had to borrow a can opener, we had a five minute conversation during which time she was wearing nothing but a bath towel (though I think she might have had a second one on her head). I bet that towel was from Sears!

Aruba, Jamaica, Ooh I Wanna Take Ya...

I'm going to Aruba! Tomorrow! I will be gone until next Wednesday!! If I can post from there, I will, but needless to say it is not my first priority. My first priorty involves cream of coconut and a blender. My second priority is avoiding the clothing-optional beach, since in my experience, the people who opt to take their clothes off are the people who should not opt in such a manner. My third priority is bird watching, and in true nerd fashion I have printed out color photos of the birds I most hope to see (the troupial! the bananaquit!the ruby-topaz hummingbird!). Bunches, in true mick fashion, has printed out the address of a mick bar.

In honor of this momentous occasion, my first real vacation in years and years and years, plus my first family vacation with my (incredibly generous and awesome) parents and (incredibly excited and soon to be tipsy and sunburned) husband, above is a picture of my all-time favorite Aruban, the tantalizingly scandalous Euro-frat boy Joran Van der Sloot, with slightly less tantalizingly scandalous Arubans Satish and Deepak Kalpoe.

Cottaging Confusion

I heard this commentary opinion piece by Scott Simon on Weeekend Edition this past Saturday. Scott talks about the Larry Craig scandal and how he does not care for the schadenfreude that episodes such as this elicit from those who like to see right wing, gay bashing hypocrites exposed. In Scott's opinion, the exposure of these guys comes at a great cost in that it condones police setting out to entrap "deviants" who are engaging in legal sexual behavior, albeit behind closed doors, leading to the ruining of lives, marriages and reputations. To him, this is a great waste of police resources, not to mention prurient and anachronistic.

I like Scott and tend to agree with him, but I don't know how I feel about this one. I agree that the police have no business in people's consensual sex lives and that they have far greater fish to fry, but I am also absolutely one of those who rejoices in the outing of assholes like Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, and the scores of upper crusty British Lords who have been caught with their fishnets down on Clapham Common throughout the years. Despite recent "advances" - the shift from "do ask, do tell" to "don't ask, don't tell", the fact that Carson Kressley is one of America's most trusted celebrity endorsers, the now-proven lack of total career destruction that results from coming out - homophopia is still incredibly rife. I certainly encounter more casual homophobia than racism. Whether this is because homophobia is truly more prevalent or because people tend to think it's acceptable to be homophobic more than they think it is to be racist is beside the point - in fact, the fact that so many people think it is okay to express homophobic views kind of underscores my point, which is that gays and lesbians have a responsibility to come out, and the more people who are out - voluntarily or not - the better. If people knew that even half of those who are LGBT are LGBT, people's ideas about what gay is and what it means would soon start to shift - for the better. Being in the closet is no different than passing, and we all know how people feel about passing nowadays - just look at the posthumous attention Anatole Broyard is getting.

When the film Brokeback Mountain came out, Daniel Mendelsohn wrote a truly remarkable piece in The New York Review of Books that I feel says a lot about the status of homosexuality and contemporary American society's comfort level with it. Mendelsohn was appalled at what he saw as a serious rift between everything the original novella and the film adaptation stood for and the way that the film was being marketed. The novella is very specifically about gay themes, as is the film (duh), but the marketing of the film focused heavily on the "universal" nature of a story of true love unrealized and the sorrow that results when one is not true to one's self - or more exactly, when society does not allow one to be true to one's self. Mendelsohn's point was that the torment that results from living in the closet is very different from that experienced by other star-crossed lovers - sure, biracial couples face abuse, little rich girls daddies squash their daughters dalliances with the boy from the wrong side of the tracks, and religion gets in the way of true love on a regular basis. But all of these situations, horrible as they are, Mendelsohn says, result in the sufferer hating society and the people around them. It is only those in the closet who hate themselves. I wish the article was still live so I could link to it.

My point is, the closet sucks, and only contributes to the warped view of homosexuality in our society. It is precisely because of people's shame that cottaging and other anonymous sexual encounters remain so prevalent in the gay community, yet I guarantee you that most Americans think that this prevalence is because gay men are oversexed deviants who will fuck anyone with neither discernment nor concern for public health. This plays into the notion that gay men are an active threat to the heterosexuality of all straight men and children. (Please note that you rarely hear this type of language applied to the millions of straight men who patronize prostitutes anonymously and secretly without the knowledge of their familes, friends, and co-workers, and without taking health precautions).

Don't even get me started on lesbians. The dueling stereotypes of hairless bisexual porn vixen and butch bull dyke trucker persist as strongly as ever - in fact, the former only gets stronger as it is fueled by the increasingly exponential explosion of pornography. Lesbian sex exists primarily as a gimmick for men's entertainmnet and stimulation.

So yes, Scott Simon, you have a point. Outing should not be the duty of the police. But it should be the duty of someone. The media shoulders a lot of the burden, but increasingly, LGBT activists, sick of bearing the brunt of the public's hatred while their would-be comrades cower in the closet, are speaking out. Out gay men played a role in the outing of both Craig and Haggard. As far as I'm concerned, these guys are right on. People in the public eye who are financially secure and can buy their own independence, privacy, and safety owe it to the legions who have to live their lives Brokeback-styl for fear of serious reprisal. As for people in the public eye who go so far as to rail against homosexuality while engaging in it themselves - well, they deserve everything they get. It's not like they can't just sign up for GayBeGone camp and be cured, after all.

PS The painting is by Paul Cadmus, who was gay and is creditd with being among the first in American culture to really try to bring gay sex practices out of the shadows. He exposed the hypocrisy of locker room and rest room gays as early as the 1930s.

The Kingdom (of Dirty, Dirty Ay-Rabs)

To be fair, I have not seen this film and should not be making assumptions about it. However, a) that is no fun, b) I have heard quite a bit about this film from trusted (aka lefty) news outlets, and c) I know enough about Hollywood movies to be able to predict the entire plot arc and sum up all the major characters in most standard Hollywood fare, including this drivel. I mean, seen one, seen 99% of them. And yes, I adore Chris Cooper and Jason Bateman, but that doesn't mean I need to watch either of them take a shit, which I suspect is basically what I would be doing if I saw this movie. Jamie Foxx I could cheerfully slap. Jennifer Garner I could cheerfully...zzzzz...sorry, I fell asleep for a second there. Where was I? Oh, of note: for some bizarre reason, Anne Deavere Smith is in this movie. What the fuck? Is this some kind of joke? The again, she was on The West Wing (never seen it, but thanks to IMDB, I know she was in it). I'm going to chalk this up to research. But it's kind of like Cornel West being in Norbit 2.

Anyway, as you all know I like to say Michael Haneke's name every five seconds or more often, if possible. Conveneintly for me, his genius ass is relevant to this discussion. There was an excellent article about him in the Times magazine last Sunday. (note: I just had a truly harrowing Bad Georgia moment when I saw that Haneke will be personally introducing a screening of Funny Games on October 15 at MoMA. This would never, ever happen here, and I am having one of those "why am I living here?" moments). He said some stuff in this article that seems especially apt in light of the latest entry in propganadistic, jingoistic genre of Ay-rab-bashin, foreign policy-advancing American cinema that is The Kingdom. Here goes:

“Political manipulation is rampant in the American media,” Haneke told me over lunch in downtown Manhattan last winter. “It’s present in the movies too, of course. It’s everywhere. I teach filmmaking in Vienna, and I like to show my students ‘Triumph of the Will,’ by Leni Riefenstahl, then something by Sergei Eisenstein — ‘Battleship Potemkin,’ for example — and then ‘Air Force One,’ the movie in which Harrison Ford plays the U.S. president. Each of these films has a distinct political agenda, but all make use of exactly the same techniques, all have a common goal — the total manipulation of the viewer. What’s terrible about the Harrison Ford film, though, especially terrible, is that it represents itself as simple entertainment. The audience doesn’t realize there’s a message hidden there.” Haneke sat back and shook his head gravely.

(then further on in the article)

Haneke has his own theory for the divergent routes taken by Hollywood and Europe, one in which, perhaps not surprisingly, the darker side of German and Austrian history plays a central role. “At the beginning of the 20th century,” he told me, “when film began in Europe, storytelling of the kind still popular in Hollywood was every bit as popular here. Then the Nazis came, and the intellectuals — a great number of whom were Jewish — were either murdered or managed to escape to America and elsewhere. There were no intellectuals anymore — most of them were dead. Those who escaped to America were able to continue the storytelling approach to film — really a 19th-century tradition — with a clear conscience, since it hadn’t been tainted by fascism. But in the German-speaking world, and in most of the rest of Europe, that type of straightforward storytelling, which the Nazis had made such good use of, came to be viewed with distrust. The danger hidden in storytelling became clear — how easy it was to manipulate the crowd. As a result, film, and especially literature, began to examine itself. Storytelling, with all the tricks and ruses it requires, became gradually suspect. This was not the case in Hollywood.” At this point, Haneke asked politely whether I was following him, and I told him that I was. “I’m glad,” he said, apparently with genuine relief. “For Americans, this can sometimes be hard to accept.”

I love this guy. I really, really love him.

Bad Georgia: A Message to Congressman Tom Price

Tom Price is my Congressman, and he has voted "No" on the new SCHIP bill. I wrote this letter to him this morning. If you live in Congressman Price's district, I encourage you to do the same.

Congressman Price:

I forward petitions to you almost daily regarding one issue or the other, but I believe this is the first time I have written a personal message. I cannot stress enough how disappointed I am in your No vote regarding SCHIP. I am in receipt of your letter explaining your position, and while I truly appreciate your efforts to communicate with your constituents and keep us informed, your words have only made me even more appalled at your vote.

Although I am sure you have many constituents whose lives and the lives of their children are made better by PeachCare, I wonder if you have ever had a personal relationship with someone who struggles to make ends meet and must choose between such basics of daily life as rent, food, and their child’s healthcare. I wonder if you or anyone close to you has ever sat up all night in an emergency room with a sick child. Given your vote on SCHIP, I doubt you have.

I would like to tell you the story of a very good friend of mine. Like you, I am a relatively privileged Caucasian with a strong educational background. I grew up with a wonderful, supportive family and was given every opportunity in life. I grew up in the 30067 zip code and did not know anyone from a disadvantaged background until I left home for university. I know work at an Atlanta law firm, where I have forged a strong friendship with a young African-American woman who is a single mother with two children who benefit greatly from PeachCare. This young woman grew up with every possible obstacle to success that you can imagine. Her family was very poor; she had no father; alcoholism, drug abuse, and disease were rife. She was the victim of childhood sexual, physical and psychological abuse. She is very, very intelligent and a high school graduate, but was unable to attend college due to cost. Despite these remarkable odds, she has done everything “right” her whole life, according to what our society expects of its citizens. Her children were born in wedlock to the same father; he left her just over 3 years ago and she has raised her children alone since then. She drives over an hour each way every day to come to work, where she has truly transformed the department she runs single-handedly for a salary of around $25,000 per year. Last year, she was diagnosed with a serious, incurable illness, yet she has an almost stellar attendance record and is one of the most beloved and respected members of our staff. She has been told by her doctor that she could claim disability and hence government medical benefits for herself and her children, but she is proud and a good mother and wants to set a good example to her children by working hard. She also provides moral and some financial support to extended family members struggling with addiction, autism and long-term unemployment. Her husband seldom makes any child support payments. With her salary, she can barely make ends meet each month and constantly has maxed-out credit cards. Without PeachCare, she would be unable to provide health care for her children.

This young woman could easily have been the poster child for the anti-welfare movement – the disadvantaged “loser” who falls prey to (or opts for, depending on your belief) childhood pregnancy, unemployment, addiction, and a life of crime. But she has worked very, very hard her entire life to embody the American dream that anyone can make something of themselves.

The thought that a person like this may soon have the added enormous stress of night-long emergency room visits thanks to you and your cronies disgusts me. You claim that this new SCHIP incarnation is the first step on a slippery scope to government-funded single-payer healthcare and invoke the specter of socialism. Given that your top contributor is a private healthcare company (Resurgens Orthopaedic) and your number five contributor an insurance company (AFLAC), I find this stance to be very disingenuous. I am also sickened that a person whose voting record shows a consistent lack of support for family planning, abortion rights, and reproductive health care measures would vote against children’s health care. Sir, you embody the cliché of a selfish, privileged man who wants to tell women when and how they can reproduce yet denies them any assistance in the raising of their children while bolstering the interest of a greedy, corrupt, and thoroughly broken private health care system that will, I am quite sure, be the downfall of our society if it is to continue along its current course. I also feel that, given your votes on issues regarding separation of church and state, that you have an agenda concerning reproductive freedom that is informed by ideas that our Constitution clearly states have no place in American politics.

I do not think I have ever agreed with a single vote you have cast, but have generally respected you for your efforts to explain your position and supported your right to your beliefs in this free society. On this occasion, however, I must say that, frankly, I am completely disgusted by you and truly ashamed to have you represent me in our nation’s government. I wish that you and your cronies could be made to live for just one month with the circumstances that my friend and millions like her must endure throughout their lives, as I am quite sure that this would quickly change your vote on SCHIP. As this is an impossibility, all I can do is let you know how I, your constituent, feel.

Sir, I respectfully ask you to please reconsider your position on this incredibly important issue. Thank you very much for taking the time to read these heartfelt words.

REALLY Bad Georgia: Let Me Just Say This Now

If Newt Gingrich runs for President and wins - which I hate to say I think he actually could, but then again I am negative about the '08 elections to the point of complete insanity and can no longer tell wehre being negative ends and not wanting to jinx it begins - I will, most likely, be writing this blog from jail (I bet the computer I will have access to there will be nicer than the one I have at work, and the IT people will probably be a lot smarter).

I have a particular hate for Newt Gingrich because he has been a part of my life longer than he has for most of you lucky stiffs. I grew up in what was, from 1990 on, Georgia's 6th District and Newt's undisputed kingdom of very rich, very loyal, very Republican, and very stupid idiots (yes, I said stupid idiots and I am aware that's redundant). Newt had been around a little before that but the 6th district hadn't been gerrymandered/DeLay'ed to his liking until '92.

Since it is probably no news at all to most people who read this (ie, R2B2, my parents, and the occasional Brazillian who tries to sell me a t-shirt - or at least, I think he/she is trying to sell me a t-shirt but my Portuguese is fair at best...okay, it's non-existent. Oh, wait, no it's not! Obrigado! Christiano Ronaldo! Mas que nada! Nem vem que nao tem!!) that Newt Gingrich really, really sucks, I will not harp on about it, but rather will attempt to entertain with a little story about growing up in the 6th district.

The year was 1992. I was a senior in high school. Newt Gingrich was running against a poor, doomed schlub of a lawyer called Tony Center (for a blast from the past, see this profile of the contest from the New York Times archive), who would wind up losing by a shockingly narrow margin - Newt took 57%; Center took 42% - at the time it was represented as a thorough trouncing, but it's actually kind of amazing given how red the district was and continues to be (current grade-A asswipe/Georgia Senator Johnny Isaakson was involved in local politics at this point and his equally unappealing son, Kevin, went to my high school).

Anyway, it was the week of the homecoming football game and, accordingly, Spirit Week, which meant that each day had a different theme, usually involving some kind of dressing-up, and always culminating in the cheerleaders dressing in football uniforms and the football players dressing in cheerleading uniforms. I remember one particularly Ogre-like fellow who wore a cheerleading skirt around each huge, fleshy thigh (note: I would, that following spring, do shots of Evan Williams with this guy in a hotel room in Panama City Beach. At the time, he was wearing swim trunks and had a Confederate flag tied around his neck like a cape, and Skynrd's "Simple Man" was playing. Oh, the irony-flooded memories! Spring Break '93!!). One of the themes was 80s day, when everyone got to come to school dressed all 80s (something most people just can't ever get enough of, as discussed here). Senior year was the year that most of us took US Government as our Social Studies class, and, as a part of our political education, Gingrich and Center held a debate at the school, with the entire senior class as their audience. It was awful. The 7-10 of us who identified as Democrats huddled together and fearfully, half-heartedly cheered poor Tony on as the remaining 590-ish students waved the Gingrich lawn signs they had yanked out of thier parents' yards that morning and whooped and hollered and drooled all over Newt. A contingent of very slutty girls went mental and screamed "baby killer!!" at Tony Center when the subject of baby killing - I mean, abortion - came up (again, irony, as I'm quite sure some of these girls were pregnant shortly thereafter and either had or could have used abortions. Irony was big at George Walton High School).

The best part about the whole affair (you mean none of that was the best part?!)was that the Atlanta news media was, naturally, on hand to document this and interview the student body (sans brain). Unfortunately, none of the news outlets bothered to explain that it was 80s day, so there we all were (well, not me), on the evening news, looking like we were in some kind of time warp, with dudes with pink sweaters tied around their necks, gummy bracelets galore, huge bangs, etc.

Walton High School had only been on the news two other times that I knew of prior to this. One time was when a Cambodian immigrant was found to have TB (Maddox Jolie! You scamp!) and we all had to be tested and all the popular girls pretended to be really traumatized by the little pricky test thing and screamed and fake-passed out and shit and one really big guy actually did pass out, and my test came up red and I was going to have to go to the CD fucking C but then it turned out it was all a big mistake; I don't recall why. The other time was a year or two before I started school there, when someone let a greased pig go on the football field during the homecoming game and our campus cop, a very disturbed Appalaichain-type Vietnam vet with what seemed to be a serious case of PTSD, was humiliated by falling flat on his face while trying to apprehend said slippery pig, and proceeded to take out his gun and shoot it in front of about 2,000 people, many of them children and fans of Charlotte's Web. He had a his gun taken away and, thereafter, had to stab, suffocate, garotte, strangle, or beat to death all greased pigs released onto the football field.

The school has been on the news since then but I'll save those bedtime stories for another time. In summation, if Newt Gingrich is a dick, and he made my school look out of style to the entire metro area.

A Cool Twist on a Horrible Cliche

As previously ranted about, I despise unnecessary remakes of movies, and am essentially of the opinion that every remake is unnecessary, with few exceptions. What I hate the most about remakes (aside from the fact that they assume we are all dolts who can't watch stuff in black and white or read subtitles, and aside from the fact that the remake phenomeon is indicative of Hollywood's unwillingness/inability to make anything original other than a morning turd) is that they strip away the original intention of the director and assume that story is everything to a movie. They also seriously alter the original film by replacing actors who are relativley unknown, either by virtue of being foreign or by virtue of being from another era, with stars as familar to us as our own families. Okay, yes, granted, we can of course "know" these old/foreign actors, but the distance of geography or time adds something to a movie, making it easier to truly appreciate the stuff we don't appreciate when we watch a Hollywood blockbuster. As fine of an actor as some big Hollywood star may be (and I can't think of many I think are even particularly good), it is very difficult to tell because we know too much about them and their personas become inseparable from the role they are supposed to be playing. That's why it's called a "star vehicle." And it seems to be in the very nature of the remake that it routinely feature exactly these type of stars. I guess the kind of lazy-ass who wants to remake a movie is the kind of lazy-ass who doesn't want to think too much about casting, just making money.

So imagine my happy surprise today as I discovered that one of my favorite directors, Michael Haneke (previously glorified here), is remaking his own foreign language masterpiece, Funny Games, for an English-language audience. Oh man, this movie is so awesome, and so brutal, and probably wouldn't get remade by an American studio anyway because the brutality of it is so cerebral. It's about a home invasion in which two overprivileged little fuckers take a nice, normal family hostage at their vacation home and (spolier alert!) psychologically and physically torture them before killing all of them. Turns out they did the same with the neighbors, too. The conciet is not altogether unfamiliar, but what makes the movie so great is that Haneke isn't simply entertaining us by showing us a scary story - he's actually torturing the audience too. This is the most common thing you will hear about Haneke and it is spot-on, particularly in the case of Funny Games. It lulls you along with what should be really scary, harrowing fare but which is merely entertaining as you have seen something resembling it a hundred times before in horror movies and thrillers. Then, Haneke pulls the rug out from under you and makes you, the viewer, a part of the action. The killers start manipulating the actual film istelf, not just the story line, and even talk to the audience. All of a sudden you are chillingly aware of how numbed you have become to the horrific. How it's just popcorn to you, and it shouldn't be. It doesn't hurt that it's also a great movie, well acted and fantastically written and paced.

So yes, I am okay with this remake. The cast makes me more than okay with it. Tim Roth (where has he been? i have definitely missed him) plays the patriarch. Naomi Watts plays the matriarch. I didn't think much of her until I saw Mulholland Drive. She does fear and desperation better than most, I think, and she kind of looks like a real person. My favorite piece of casting, though, is Michael Pitt as the far more clever and sadistic of the two killers, the undisupted leader who often seems to be torturing his sidekick as much as his victims, and Brady Corbet as the slow, picked-on sidekick. I really like both of these young actors. Michael Pitt did the heartless privileged youth thing to perfection in Bully (another must-see - the best Larry Clark movie, if you ask me), and Brady Corbet did the easily-led loser sidekick to the ammoral sexy guy equally well in Mysterious Skin (another out of control awesome movie, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is amazing in it...love him...).

Bring it on, Haneke! I would of course rather that you make another amazing original movie, but whatever. This I can live with.

KKK expose

It's been a while since we've dissected a little known fact here on Zeitgeist-y and I've got a live one to lay down on you today.

Here's a common misconception about the KKK. Though it's recognized today as the largest white power (saying white supremacist is so un-PC, isn't it?) group in the United States, the group actually began as a small nineteenth century company of craftsmen and potters who operated under the name of Kountry Kousin Krafts. (Try saying that three times in a row and you'll understand why they decided to go with the abbreviation!) For many happy and productive years the KKK produced ceramic figurines of ghosts, silver crosses, and watch fobs until one very deranged member of the family overpowered the gentle and soft-spoken artisans and took things in a very unexpected direction.

You can still see the tradition of fine craftsmanship and attention to detail at work at Ozark Crafts, whose ecommerce page links directly from the KKK's site.

OK, in all seriousness, I have to share with you some Klan speak I found posted on good old Wikipedia.

First off, if you suspect you're in mixed company, you can say "AYAK" ("Are you a Klansman?!). The other person will either respond "AKIA" ("A Klansman I Am!) or else run off in horror.

And check out some of these terms created William Simmons, the man credited with reviving the Klan in 1915. I have nothing to say about the monster, except to wonder if he might have been a space alien?
* Klabee: treasurers
* Kleagle: recruiter
* Klecktoken: initiation fee
* Kligrapp: secretary
* Klonvocation: gathering
* Kloran: ritual book
* Kloreroe: delegate
* Kludd: chaplain

He Speaks So Well!!!

I encounter racism (well, I guess "witness" would be a better word than "encounter" - I "encounter" sexism and the occasional dollop of anti-semitism) much less than one might think I would, living in Atlanta. It's definitely there, but hardly more than in NYC, and definitely WAAAAAY less than in England. Most of the stuff that makes me squirm down here is directed at the Latino population, aka "the Mexicans."

There have, however, been one or two doozies, and naturally they occured where I (sadly) spend most of my time, the workplace. A few months ago, the receptionist buzed my desk to tell me a courier was there for me. I went up to the front desk, baffled as I was not expecting a courier, to find a tall, attractive black guy in his early 40s, wearing what was clearly business attire, complete with a motherfucking bluetooth wireless "hi, I'm on Star Trek and when I take this thing off I look like I had a skin graft because of the mark it leaves" earpiece-thingy. Um, yeah, he was a client. The receptionist knew she fucked up and at least had the decency and common sense to turn all kinds of beetroot color and get flustered and try to explain how she thought he was a courier because he had a file - hello, it's a law firm, show me a person who comes in here without some kind of file, fool.

So that was relatively mortifying. I also bore witness to an elevator conversation between an unknown older white dude and a business-clad younger black dude (you mean there is more than one!). They were chit chatting, small talk (strangers speak to each other in public here), and suddenly the white dude asks the black dude what he's doing in the building, does he work here, perhaps in maintenance? Yeah, jackass, he's taking out the trash in his Dockers and tassle loafers. That briefcase? That's where he puts the trash. Duh!! Everyone knows "The Mexicans" take out the trash!!

Fast forward to today. I witnessed the signing of a prenuptial agreement between a young black couple. They were both very attractive, so after we finished I went to rib my (black) co-worker who had declined to serve as the second witness, telling him how he missed out because the girl was cute. So then the attorney who did the prenup comes by and butts in and informs us that the guy is a doctor, a surgeon even, and he's so well spoken! At this point, I returned to my desk to put my head in my hands. I waited until the coast was clear and went back and asked my co-worker if he knew the guy was black the second the attorney described him as "well-spoken." Said co-worker proceeded to bend over double in hysterical, knowing laughter. Appalled glee and high fives were exchanged, in addition to extensive quoting of Chris Rock. I love Chris Rock. Following is the quote we referenced:

"Whenever Colin Powell is on the news, white people give him the same compliments: 'How do you feel about Colin Powell?', 'He speaks so well! He's so well spoken. I mean he really speaks so well!' Like that's a compliment, sh*t. 'He speaks so well' is not a compliment, okay? 'He speaks so well' is some sh*t you say about retarded people that can talk. What do you mean he speaks so well? He's a fuc*ing educated man! How the fu*k you expect him to sound, you dirty motherfuc*er? 'He speaks so well.' What are you talking about? What voice were you expecting to come out of his mouth? 'Imma drop me a bomb today', 'I be Pwez o dent!'.""

Bottom line, this is funny but scary. This dude had NO CLUE what a faux pas he made when he said what he said. And this is an educated Jew from New York. I feel like telling him that what he said is akin to saying "That Mr. Cohen! So nice! And so free with his money!"

A Little Bit of Dubai in Atlanta

I received a press release yesterday regarding winter activities in Atlanta. This little nugget caught my eye:

"Hotlanta will officially cool off on Nov. 10 with the grand opening of Snow Mountain, featuring 10 tubing runs and spots to create snowmen, snow angels and snowballs. Open every weekend through Jan. 27, the attraction’s state-of-the-art snow-making magic guarantees you more than 200 tons of fresh snow daily. And, with a moving sidewalk to lead you up the 400-foot tubing hill, you’ll want to go again and again." (my emphasis)

Hee hee. This reminds me of the indoor skiing they have in Dubai. I'm sure the only real difference here will be that people will have rat tails, peach tattoos, and Jesus t-shirts instead of Prada shoes, huge diamonds, and hijabs. The moving sidewalk is a hilarious testament to the laziness of the average Georgian. Yeah, when I picture that moving sidewalk loaded up with fat snowy hicks, I do want to go again and again - go pee in my pants laughing!

Obviously, I will be there with bells on. Stay tuned for photos of said snowy hicks.