I Can't Type

There are a couple of things that have been bugging me for a while, and I wanted to explore them fully and rationally. I wanted an essay for each, because I believe they are topics that should be discussed fully, with all sides presented so that you, the reader, can make an informed opinion and perhaps dig even deeper than I did. That’s what I wanted, but I can’t do it. I can’t write long essays because both of my forearms are covered with poison ivy blisters. So since I can’t comfortably type, you’re going to have to read my unedited and possibly poorly thought out arguments. If I have to be miserable, so do you.


Immigration Wall

This picture comes from the desert in Arizona and it should disturb you for a lot of reasons.  Having said that, I want to continue by saying I have friends on both sides of the immigration issue, and each offers a strong opinion about their take on it. I’m not going to try to rationalize each argument, although I’d like to say that any talk of racism when discussing illegal immigration is moot. There is no race of illegal aliens, so that’s been taken out of the equation. And because I have poison ivy and vodka, I’m going to tell you what I think about the whole mess as quickly as possible.

I’m having a party. It may not be the best party in the world, and I do have some rules, but all the attendees seem to like it, and that’s what matters. The first rule is that everyone on the planet has a standing invitation. Show it and you’re in. All I want is an RSVP. Tell me you’re coming and I’ll make sure the rope opens for you. However, if you show up uninvited, you are implicitly saying that you’re not going to follow the first rule, so I have no choice but to assume you’re not going to follow any of them, and that means you have to leave now. See how simple that is?

God Hates Fakes

On May 22 of this year, just a couple days ago, an F5 tornado plowed through Joplin, MO. By all accounts as of this writing, at least 125 people are dead or missing. Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church plans on picketing there Sunday with this message: “Thank God for 125 dead in Joplin.” The group will be holding signs claiming that they’re glad those people died; they died because God is punishing America for allowing homosexuals to live freely. I have a big problem with this.

There are people who defend Phelps’ group saying they have a right to free speech, no matter how offensive their message, and they’re right. For just a tiny bit of background, Phelps’ “church” is a small family based cabal of lawyers and paralegals whose sole mission is to bait grieving families in their most desperate hour into behaving like any rational person would. They travel across the country to brazenly mock the deaths of strangers’ loved ones, hoping for a physical confrontation so they can seek redress by suing the “attackers” as well as the state and federal governments for failing to protect their right to free speech. I believe in my heart that anyone can say anything they want without fear of being taken away by the government. I really do. But, here’s how it works at my party: You can stand up and say anything you want, but if you willfully act like a dick for the sole purpose of being a dick, you shouldn’t be surprised when you get smacked for being a dick. You are not owed anything. It’s real simple.

I could have posted pictures of my disgusting, zombie-like arms, but I didn’t. I did, however, post one depicting the root of my problem.  (Snerk!)  One thing about this is that although I’m right-handed, I seem to be unable to brush my teeth in a fluid motion using that arm. It wasn’t until now that I realized I had always used my left hand for tooth brushing. As I do it, in my present condition, I absurdly think of a monkey randomly poking a stick into a termite mound. It’s weird.

Cinemadness

When it comes to food, it’s not my place to say what’s good or bad; I can only tell you if I like it or not. I’m sure somewhere there is a glowing review for fried rats (IF they are cornfield rats, according to a Cambodian friend), but a professional food critic raving about them holds little sway over me. And just as it is with food, opinions about movies are just too subjective for me to put any stock in them at all. Movies with talking animals have a huge audience, but they just creep me out. Except for TV’s “Mr. Ed.” That was awesome.

I’m not a movie critic. The fact that professional movie (or any) critics exist and get paid for their opinions is a mystery to me. In many instances, they hate the movies I love, and I hate the ones they like. “Real life” movies can be interesting and pertinent; but come on. If I can tell in the first ten minutes of a film what’s going to happen, I had better be so engrossed by the entire experience of writing and acting and sets and costumes and shots that I care about the character who can’t see what’s coming. I should want to scream at the screen. If I’m not anxious to see what comes next, it’s not working.

Escapism is the true power of filmdom. ANYTHING can happen in a movie, and, in my non-paid opinion, should. Indeed, in my little world, there are only three elements that can save almost any film from being an utter waste of time. Those three things are, in no special order, tits, fangs and blood. Now, I hope I didn’t lose you there. As I said, I’m not a critic, but all three of those elements combined in the same film always makes for something I can watch, no matter how stupid the story is, or how badly it’s acted. Am I a cretin? Perhaps, but I just went to a real theater and paid to watch a big budget movie with actors I like for the first time in I don’t know how long, and I was sorely, sorely disappointed.

I went to see “Priest”, a movie about vampires that have fangs and are horrible monsters that’s based on a story from a comic (or “graphic novel”, if you prefer). The trailers I’d seen actually made me want to go to the movies, and that rarely happens. I like the acting of the title character, Paul Bettany, and Christopher Plummer is, well, you know, Christopher Plummer, so I thought why not? As I said, I’m not a movie critic, but this movie was a train wreck (snort). My beef is that it could have been so much better. The storyline was just awful. I did a little peek around about the story it’s based on, and it shouldn’t have surprised me to learn that the plot of the movie had nothing to do with the original premise, save for the title. It was akin to making a movie that has Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein monster playing Sidney Poitier’s role in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”, and titling it “Frankenstein”, because that’s what it was based on. Oh, and nobody notices that he’s a monster. Ridiculous, right?

Anyway, ten minutes into the movie, I knew what was going to happen, and the only reason I stuck around was to see the fangs and blood (no tits). This movie could have been so much better. So from my soapbox I’d like to say that the people in charge of making mainstream movies must think that the movie going audience is a gaggle of fools. Formulaic drivel is uninteresting and it frightens me to think that Hollywood continues to churn out this celluloid ichor (medical definition) because that’s what the public continues to pay for. Good stories are good stories and mainstream movie makers seem to have forgotten that. My three personal element preferences for a good movie aside, it seems to me that since movie makers like to call themselves artists, I would suggest that they stay true to what I believe an artist’s motivation should be: to create for creation’s sake, not for profit. If you tell a good story the right way, and tell it because it’s a good story, profit will follow, although most of the time, you’re dead before anyone realizes how great you are.

And so you know I’m not a total misogynistic ass, I would really like to see “The King’s Speech”, and not because it won a bunch of Hollywood self-congratulatory awards. There will be no tits fangs or blood, but I want to see it because George VI was the last king of England, and a stutterer in a tumultuous time, and I’d like to see how that went.