Steve Likes to Curse

Two great songs, one great land

2009-07-04T22:42:18Z

Americans are responsible for some of the greatest music ever produced by human minds and hands. We’re also a feverishly patriotic people. It’s a shame how seldom those two intersect. There’s been some good patriotic music made over the last two-hundred thirty-three years, but most of it unfortunately falls into the same category as Lee Greenwood’s insufferable “God Bless the U.S.A.,” or Neil Diamond’s maudlin and overwrought “Coming to America.” I still dig Sousa, though not as much as I did when I was going through my super-nationalist period as a child during the first Gulf War. And I like our national anthem fine, though my two favorite recordings of it are both instrumental-only (guess — the first one’s easy).

So far as popular music goes, there have only been two truly great patriotic songs to my mind. Each was performed most famously by a legendary singer and musician, and each comes from a great American musical tradition — one from folk, the other from the blues. And they’re both about the same subject, approached from opposite directions. The songs are “This Land is Your Land,” written and popularized by Woody Guthrie, and “This Land is Nobody’s Land,” by John Lee Hooker.

(Ashley will be shocked that I have left out Ray Charles’s immortal rendition of “America the Beautiful,” given how enthusiastically, heedlessly, shamelessly I sing along whenever I play it. It’s definitely a lot more fun to sing than “The Star-Spangled Banner,” but it’s a smidge too close to a hymn — and in more ways than just form — for my taste. The Ray Charles version is an example of a great artist making something brilliant and timeless out of lesser source material. That recording, that performance definitely deserves to be mentioned as one of the great patriotic American songs, but the song itself isn’t inherently great. So there. Did that sound enough like some defensive bullshit I just pulled out of my ass?)

Guthrie’s song is great because it does what most other patriotic songs do — celebrate the size and natural beauty of the land belonging to the United States — and also because it does what few others even attempt — it claims ownership of that land for everyone. Check out that famous refrain that closes every verse: “This land was made for you and me.” It’s all-inclusive. He’s not singing “This land, America, is made for you and me, Americans.” He’s singing “this land is made for you and me,” whoever we are. He’s obviously talking about the United States, since he mentions California, New York, the Redwood Forest and the “Gulf Stream waters” of the Atlantic Ocean by name in the first verse. But that’s just where he’s singing from. He could be singing to anybody — native, immigrant, male, female, black, white, whatever. No matter who you are, no matter where you come from, this land with its golden valleys and waving wheat fields and diamond deserts can be your land. That frames the appeal of America directly and poetically, and puts it beyond petty politics. Nevermind all the self-serving bullshit about the “eternal principles” upon which we were founded, or how this is “the greatest country God ever gave man.” Guthrie boils the American dream down to its essence: whoever you are, this can be your country. It’s an ideal we don’t always live up to, but it’s still a great ideal.

The other song many of you may be less familiar with. It was released on John Lee Hooker’s first volume of The Real Folk Blues series from Chess Records. It makes the same point as “This Land is Your Land,” but in a much darker, sadder, more cynical way. Where Guthrie’s song is a jubilant sing-along that claims the wide space of America for everyone who wants it, Hooker’s declares that it can’t actually belong to anybody. “This land is no one’s land,” he sings over the measured noodling of his electric guitar. It’s not a denial of private property rights (that’s actually in Guthrie’s song, in a seldom sung verse). It’s something much deeper. To Hooker all claims of ownership over the land are meaningless because, ultimately, there’s only one thing we’re all going to need it for: “This land is your buryin’ ground.” It’s darker, more pessimistic, like a mirror-image of Guthrie’s song. But Hooker goes on to state outright the question that Guthrie only implies: “Why are we fighting over this land?” Whether it belongs to all of us or to none of us, it’s an excellent question. Woody Guthrie reportedly wrote “This Land is Your Land” because he was sick of hearing Kate Smith sing “God Bless America” on the radio during World War II. When John Lee Hooker released “This Land is Nobody’s Land” in 1966, race riots were breaking out in cities across the country, and the militant black power movement was gaining steam. Put lines like “God made this land / Everybody equal / Why are they fighting over their buryin’ ground?” in that context, and you’ve got not just a great song about America, but one of the most powerful and penetrating sociopolitical statements of the century.

Both songs bring to mind the famous words of a letter to President Franklin Pierce, popularly attributed to Chief Seattle of the Duwamish and Suquamish Indians of Puget Sound, but more likely made up long after the fact by Dr. Henry Smith, who claimed to merely have translated the chief’s original words. Regardless of who wrote them, they’re worth remembering:

How can you buy or sell the sky — the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. Yet we do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. . . . Every part of this earth is sacred to my people.

So should it be to all of us. This land, our home, was here long before there was a United States, long before there were any governments, long before the human species or any of its ancestors walked the earth. It will be here long after our country, our laws, our traditions, our artifacts, and every other trace of us has been washed away. And eventually, in the immensity of time, it will disappear as well. Then it won’t matter who the land belonged to.

Now, here in our brief moment in the sun, we should take a moment in between the hot dogs and the fireworks to appreciate the home we’re so fortunate to have, the beautiful land that belongs to all of us, and none of us, that is here for us to share. We should enjoy it, and respect it, and rejoice for it, while we — and it — are still here.

Sarah Palin now out of more than just her mind

2009-07-04T01:03:49Z

Today Sarah Palin announced that she will be resigning as Governor of Alaska effective July 26. This apparently comes as a surprise to just about everyone, including some of her most trusted advisors. The closest Palin got to a coherent explanation is that she has already decided not to seek reelection in 2010 and, in her own words, “Many just accept that lame duck status, and they hit that road. They draw a paycheck. They kind of milk it. And I’m not going to put Alaskans through that.”

Stated more directly: She’s a big fat quitter.

She tries to put a noble face on it with the whole “I’m not going to put Alaskans through that,” but the truth is she’s bailing out. So she’s decided not to seek another term. Fair enough. Great, actually. What about her present term? The one she was elected to by the people of Alaska? The one she’s only completed half of? Feh! Doesn’t matter. Why taunt the electorate with a full term when they know already they won’t be given the rare privilege of voting for you next time? It’d be cruel, really.

This is so stupid and bizarre that it almost surpasses all the other stupid, bizarre shit Palin’s done since winking and smiling her way into national politics nearly a year ago. If our federal and state governments operated the way they ought to, with citizen legislators and executives serving their terms and then returning to their private lives instead of entrenched career politicians sticking around for decades at a time, elected officials opting against seeking reelection would be the rule rather than the rarest of exceptions. Following Sarah Palin’s line of thought (I cannot call it “logic”), all those one-term public servants would just as well skip town halfway through rather than finish out there terms. Otherwise they’re just milking it, just drawing a paycheck. Nevermind their constitutionally mandated duties as elected members of the government.

Hell, why limit it to those who decide not to seek reelection? What about those who have lost elections, or who are forced to leave office by term limits? What’s the point, for instance, of a two-term President of the United States hanging around Washington, D.C. for two extra months waiting for us to inaugurate the new guy? According to Sarah Palin, he’d be doing us all a favor if he just packed up and hit the bricks and let his V.P. run out the clock instead.

As odd as Palin’s abrupt abdication is, it’s not unprecedented. The first thing it reminded me of was the resignation three years ago of the mayor of my own dear Hagerstown. At least Palin is waiting until the end of the month before quitting. Our guy, Richard Trump, didn’t even have the class to give notice. He quit effective immediately. And not even in person — he left the city council a note:

As of February 1, 2006, I respectfully resign the position of Mayor. I respect your understanding in this manner and will be glade to cooperate with any matters.

There are no typos in there. That’s exactly how the Honorable Mayor of the City of Hagerstown Richard F. Trump wrote it. He shared Sarah Palin’s way with the language, obviously. Now they have something else in common.

Despite the fact that she’s a welcher, an embarrassment to her party and our whole national political culture, and an obvious head-case who’s been nothing but trouble from day one, I’m sure there are still factions within the Republican party who salivate at the prospect of a Palin 2012 presidential bid. They’ll play along while she continues to put a selfless, righteous spin on her decision to walk out on the people of her state. They’ll continue to apologize for her erratic behavior, her awkward, stilted speaking style, her evident lack of skill and qualifications. They’ll do this for god only knows what reasons — maybe because to the sex-starved evangelicals that constitute her base she still passes for an attractive woman, maybe because they saw how effective her race-baiting demagoguery was at stirring up the rubes during campaign rallies last year, maybe because they honestly believe someone as clumsy and inarticulate and just plain dumb as her could possibly stand a chance running against the incumbent president, who is possibly the most skilled politician we have ever seen.

Whatever the reason, if the Republicans value their place as a major political party, they should cheerfully wave Sarah Palin out the door on July 26, then lock it behind her and break off the key.

Shit. I can dream, can’t I?

The Recommendation to Discharge Dan Choi is Disappointing, But Not Surprising

2009-07-02T19:36:12Z

(As of yesterday, I am now a contributor to the excellent blog The Gay-Atheist. The founder, Alex, assures me the fact that I am neither gay nor an atheist [though give me a couple of days on that second one] will not be held against me. Anyway, here is my first lengthy contribution, published at The Gay-Atheist a few minutes ago.)

On Tuesday a military commission in Syracuse, New York recommended the discharge of Lt. Dan Choi from the New York Army National Guard. Choi is a 2003 graduate of West Point, a combat veteran who commanded troops in the present conflict in Iraq, and a translator fluent in Arabic. This spring the Army notified Lt. Choi that he was being discharged for violating the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which allows gay men and women to serve their country as long as they keep their sexuality a secret. Lt. Choi publicly admitted his homosexuality on The Rachel Maddow Show.

“It’s an immoral code that goes against every single thing we were ever taught at West Point with our honor code,” Choi has said about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He points out precisely what makes the policy so twisted: not merely that it is plainly discriminatory (straight men and women in the armed forces face no discipline of any kind for making their sexual orientations known), but that it requires gay Americans to lie, or at the very least maintain a conspicuous silence, about their personal lives.

Still, no matter how disappointing it is to see the military dismiss from its ranks as capable and dedicated a soldier as Dan Choi, it shouldn’t be a surprise. The military’s ban on the openly gay is well known and unambiguous, and Lt. Choi clearly violated it. Under the law, there was no other decision the commission which assembled on Tuesday to hear Choi’s challenge could have made. Change was never going to begin there. To end the bigoted and nonsensical ban on openly gay servicemen and –women, we must change the policy itself. And to change that policy, we must change the law.

We have a better shot at changing the law and ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the next few years than we have since the policy was instituted during the early days of the Clinton administration. Since the unfortunate passing this past November of Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California, there have been many encouraging signs. The legislatures of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine all legalized same-sex marriage — Vermont’s over the veto of its governor. In April the Council of the District of Columbia voted to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states, opening the door for eventual full legalization. A few days before that, thanks to a ruling of the state supreme court, same-sex marriage was legalized in Iowa, of all places. (And it has little legal relevance for us, but hey — did I read that they just decriminalized homosexuality in India? I did!) Never in my lifetime has the iron been this hot. The time for long overdue legal reform is now. But before soldiers like Dan Choi can freely and openly wear the uniform of our country in the armed forces, more than the law must be changed.

Last week I had an interesting exchange with Rick Rottman of Bent Corner, a fellow resident of the Hagerstown, MD area, and for my money one of the best bloggers anywhere. Rick, a veteran of the United States Air Force, told me in a comment on something I’d written that, prior to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the faintest rumor of a soldier’s homosexuality would be investigated to the ends of the Earth, even to the point of tracking down friends, family and co-workers for questioning. A few days later an anonymous commenter on the same article wrote, “a change in law does not equal a change in culture.”

I was never in the military, but judging by conversations I’ve had over the years with others who have served, I imagine Rick and my anonymous commenter paint a pretty accurate picture. The U.S. military has been an overtly homophobic organization for the entirety of its history. No other legal behavior will get you kicked out of the Army faster than being openly gay. The official justification for banning homosexuality has always been that it would be damaging to discipline and “unit cohesion,” yet since 1993 a total of over 13,000 soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen and Coast Guard personnel have been discharged for violating the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Am I missing something? Are so many needless dismissals from the ranks not detrimental to discipline and cohesion?

The military’s refusal to allow openly gay members is based on an archaic view of homosexuality, warped by bigotry and based in hysteria rather than rationality. Gay men are still thought to be cowardly and physically weak, and both gay men and lesbians are presumed to be sexual predators with no self control, liable to attempt to seduce any member of their own sex. Ironically, it’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” itself that has exploded these old prejudices; thanks to the present policy, we know there are gays serving ably and honorably (albeit secretly) in our armed forces, proving they are just as capable of maintaining the physical and mental discipline so prized by the military. Hell, I could even argue that they’ve demonstrated superior discipline, since I imagine keeping one’s sexual orientation a secret from one’s comrades and commanders to be no easy feat.

Reforming the bigoted culture of the military may be challenging, and might take awhile, but there’s no other choice. The same arguments advanced for barring gays from the military were used sixty years ago to justify racial segregation in the ranks. They were faulty then, and they’re faulty now. And who knows? Maybe rehabilitating that military culture won’t be as hard as we think. Lt. Choi seems relatively optimistic. “My subordinates know I’m gay,” he told Rachel Maddow. “They don't care. They are professional.”

Easy or difficult, this is a change that has to be made — not just for a gay American like Dan Choi, who loves the Army and wants nothing more than to continue his exemplary career, but for all of us. Free societies must not relegate whole categories of innocent human beings to second-class citizenship, and cannot allow bigotry to be inscribed in their laws or practiced in their institutions. Until we guarantee to our gay fellow Americans the same rights and privileges afforded heterosexuals, our big talk about being a just and freedom-loving nation drawing strength from our diversity will remain nothing more than a lot of hollow chest-thumping.

What Really Happened to Michael Jackson

2009-07-01T21:02:38Z

By now we have all read the news reports and heard the rumors — painkiller abuse, supervision by an irresponsible doctor, begged-for sleeping pills to alleviate chronic insomnia — but the question still remains: What really happened to Michael Jackson? Not surprisingly, none of these rumors and speculations are anywhere close to the truth. So now, for the first time anywhere, prepare to see the truth about the strange death of the King of Pop. Here, my friends, is what really happened to Michael Jackson.

Can your heart stand the terror?!

The Most Important Pro Wrestler Who Ever Lived; or Adventures in Oxymoron Coining

2009-06-30T21:05:19Z

As most of you know, and as my patient sweetheart has long lamented, I’m a fan of pro wrestling. Ask some of your average fans who was the most important pro wrestler ever and you’ll likely wind up with a toss-up between Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan. A few of the kids might throw in a nomination for Steve Austin or The Rock, and a real old timer might suggest Gorgeous George or Lou Thesz, depending on his taste. But if you ask me (and for the sake of expediency I’m assuming you did), there was someone who was way more important than all of those guys, a man who was not only the greatest box office star of his era, but also a key figure in completing the transition of professional wrestling from legitimate sport to the staged, theatrical product we see today. His parents named him Robert Friedrich, but he was best known as Ed “Strangler” Lewis. He was born in the little Wisconsin town of Nekoosa on this date in 1891.

He started wrestling at age 14, taking his ring name from Evan “Strangler” Lewis. That first Strangler was a Wisconsin boy too, born in the even tinier town of Ridgeway in 1860, and the first widely recognized American Heavyweight Champion. That title ceased to exist two years after young Ed began his career, after it was unified with the World Heavyweight Title by Frank Gotch. Back at the turn of the 20^th century pro wrestling was still more sport than show business. Wrestlers would occasionally agree to lose matches ahead of time, and opponents cooperating with each other to make a more entertaining match certainly wasn’t unheard of, but the truly successful wrestlers were all genuine tough guys, and most of the headliners considered working a match (“work” being the vernacular for a match where the outcome is predetermined) beneath them. When Frank Gotch defeated George Hackenschmidt for the World Title in 1908 the bout lasted two hours and ended when Hackenschmidt, fearing Gotch was about to break his leg, surrendered.

In 1914 Ed Lewis hired former wrestler Billy Sandow as his manager. It proved a successful partnership, with Lewis winning the first of his five (or seven, depending how you count) World Heavyweight Championships in 1920. Around this time Lewis and Sandow brought former carnival wrestler Toots Mondt aboard as a trainer and sparring partner. Mondt saw the dwindling attendance at wrestling events and devised a solution, something to stoke the public’s waning interest in the sport. Together, Mondt, Sandow and Lewis developed what Mondt called “Slam-Bang Western Style Wrestling.” Matches now took place in boxing-style rings, had time limits, and included outlandish moves like body slams, suplexes and judo throws, and whips into the ropes instead of the more realistic mat-based style that had dominated pro wrestling since the mid-19^th century.

Lewis, Sandow and Mondt went into business for themselves, booking their own shows rather than working for local promoters. They developed the concept of an undercard, advertising a lineup of several matches capped by a main event instead of a single high-profile bout. Most importantly, they made worked matches the standard rather than the exception. Any concerns the wrestlers may have had about intentionally losing a fight were alleviated by the gate receipts slam-bang wrestling was soon able to generate. Vince McMahon likes people to believe he and Hulk Hogan were the guys who took pro wrestling out of bars and bingo halls and brought it to stadiums and sports arenas, but he’s off by about fifty years. The team of Lewis, Sandow and Mondt — famously dubbed the Gold-Dust Trio — were able to run slam-bang shows in large venues almost immediately. Ed Lewis wrestled at Madison Square Garden and in front of 30,000 people at Wrigley Field twenty years before Hogan was born.

The trio soon had a large stable of wrestlers contracted to appear at their shows, forming what was essentially the first major pro wrestling promotion, the predecessor of the NWA, the WWF, and every other wrestling company you’ve ever heard of. Anticipating that fans would eventually tire of seeing the same man hold the World Title indefinitely, Lewis would from time to time lose his belt to a deserving contender, only to win it back after several months. Instead of booking opponents to face each other once, whole series of matches were promoted, resulting in the first programmed feuds.

The Strangler’s great rival was big Nebraskan Joe Stecher, called “The Scissors King” for his feared leg scissors submission hold. Lewis defeated Stecher for his first World Championship in 1920. Stecher regained the title five years later, defeating former Gold-Dust contractor Stanislaus Zbyszko, who had double-crossed the Trio’s chosen champion and left to work for Stecher. What happened next ensured that pro wrestling’s transformation from legit competitive sport to staged theatrical exhibition would be a permanent one. Lewis and Stecher sincerely disliked each other. But instead of settling their issues with a shoot in the ring, they agreed to work together in promoting their hotly anticipated rematch.

Stecher defended his World Heavyweight Championship in a best-two-of-three-falls match against Lewis at the Coliseum in St. Louis, Missouri, on February 21, 1928. After wrestling for two hours and fifteen minutes, the Scissors King did the job he’d been paid to do, submitting to an arm scissors to give Lewis the third and deciding fall, and the title. It was the most important, profitable match in the history of pro wrestling to that point. For a modern equivalent, imagine Hulk Hogan agreeing to put Ric Flair over clean in a World title match in, say, 1987. It cemented Lewis as wrestling’s top draw and greatest champion, while Stecher spent the remainder of his career putting over young up-and-comers before suffering a nervous breakdown and spending the last thirty years of his life institutionalized. Thus was the stage set for what we know today as professional wrestling.

Ed Lewis continued wrestling for almost twenty years after his rematch with Stecher, losing and regaining his World Title, making new stars all along the way. The Gold-Dust Trio dissolved later in 1928. Sandow continued working as a manager, and Mondt went on to co-found the World Wide Wrestling Federation with Vince McMahon Sr. In 1947, out of shape and nearly blind, Lewis retired as an active wrestler. He eventually went to work for the newly formed National Wrestling Alliance, appearing at ringside as the manager of Lou Thesz, whom he’d helped to train in the early ‘30s. Eventually his eyesight deserted him entirely, and he was forced to rely on his friends and family for his care. He died in 1966, 75 years old and penniless, proof that tragic stories are not a recent phenomenon in his business. Judging by the sad end of its founding father, tragedy is encoded in professional wrestling’s DNA.

Patrick Swayze leapfrogged yet again

2009-06-29T16:48:42Z

The June 2009 celebrity purge continues. To a death list that already included Michael Jackson, David Carradine, Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon and Koko Taylor, add the name of deafening direct marketing pitchman Billy Mays, who died yesterday at his home in Odessa, Florida. The day before he had been a passenger on U.S. Airways flight 1241, which experienced a rough landing when one of its landing gear tires blew out. Mays told a reporter he’d been it in the head by objects falling from the overhead storage compartments, but felt fine. “I’ve got a hard head,” he said. He was 50 years old.

For a professional shill, Mays was relatively likable. Once I got accustomed to his “just shout everything” pitch style, I found him entertaining. But his death shouldn’t be important to those who didn’t know him personally; unlike Michael Jackson, who was an important figure in popular culture, Mays wasn’t much more than an amusing meme. I’m not so interested in Mays himself as I am in the number of famous people who have met mostly untimely ends this month. June 2009 has been a bloodbath, man.

Besides the five I mentioned above and Mays, June has also seen the death of Japanese wrestling legend Mitsuharu Misawa, actress/singer Gale Storm, popular fantasy author David Eddings, and Huey Long, who was briefly a member of the pioneering black vocal group The Ink Spots who in the 1930s and ‘40s laid the foundations for R&B and rock ‘n roll. They say these things happen in threes — what multiple of three are we on?

I have another, more chilling question: With two days left in this celeb-unfriendly month, who’s next? Who will be the next to fall to the cold scythe of June 2009? All the obvious choices have to go out the window, because I know none of you motherfuckers had Michael Jackson or Billy Mays in your office death pool.

After careful thought, I’ll take Dana Carvey. He’s had heart troubles in the past, and he’s right in that sweet spot between fame and obscurity. If there’s time for another one, I’ll go for Kurt Angle, since pro wrestlers are always a good bet and Jake Roberts is the too-obvious pick.

Critic Chris Morris on Michael Jackson: Hollow Man

2009-06-28T15:24:51Z

For a last look back at the sad and remarkable life of Michael Jackson, here’s a different perspective from music critic Chris Morris, who posted his thoughts to Facebook the night of Jackson’s death. Rather than fawning over Jackson’s skill as a performer, Morris looks back at his legendary performance at Motown 25 to illustrate a crucial aspect of his persona, and of his lonely off-stage life as well:

More than three minutes into the number, Jackson uncorks for the first time what became known as the Moonwalk – that strange backwards heel-and-toe dance move that made it appear as if the singer was momentarily, magically gliding on air. The first time you saw it – and I remember watching it that night – you exclaimed, “What the fuck was that?” The audience screamed in astonishment. But, looking at it today, it seems more mechanical than otherworldly. Jackson wows the crowd, but there isn’t an instant of spontaneity in his entire performance. Every leg kick, spin, and outré terpsichorean innovation was calculated to astonish.

It was always easier for me to be boggled by the immensity of Michael Jackson’s stardom than it was to be thrilled by his music. Even as an 11-year-old, when he burst onto the scene with the exuberant, perfectly tooled Motown single “I Want You Back,” he sported a style that had a curious wind-up quality to it. He even then seemed to me a perfect pop creation, a human bangle devoid of an emotional core. Everything that followed it – the Jackson 5 hits, and then solo material like “Ben,” “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” “Rock With You,” and then “Billie Jean” and the rest from Thriller and its sequels – was lustrous on its surface, empty at its heart.

. . . What are we left with? Some records that were so big in their day that they will never be surpassed in these diminished times, and the story of a celebrity’s fall from grace (now robbed of a triumphal final act) as precipitous as any ever witnessed in our tabloid epoch. Was this fall a tragic one? No. The King of Pop was no Lear. You will forgive me, I hope, if I seek more substance in my tragic figures. Michael Jackson was a figure more worthy of T.S. Eliot than of Shakespeare.

That final paragraph reminds me of something Ashley said to me last week. I forget the context, but one day while we were driving from Smithsburg to Sharpsburg she turned to me and said, “People forget that ‘tragic’ doesn’t just mean ‘sad.’” Chris Morris agrees with her, especially when it comes to Michael Jackson.

News of the Day: Michael Jackson Edition

2009-06-28T04:02:10Z

Experts fear bloody succession following death of King of Pop

Just two days after the shocking death of Michael, King of Pop, experts are already predicting a bloody war of succession as several factions vie to fill the power vacuum he leaves behind.

Mere hours after the king was pronounced dead, his brother Jermaine spoke to reporters and a throng of anxious peasants to confirm that heir apparent Prince Michael Joseph Jackson Jr. would succeed to the throne as King Michael II upon reaching the age of majority. “Until Prince Michael is old enough to be formally crowned, I will rule as regent in his name,” Jermaine declared to the crowd that had gathered outside the royal palace, adding “the King of Pop is dead. Long live the King of Pop!”

The late ruler, born Michael Joseph Jackson, declared himself King of Pop in 1988 after conquering the realms of R&B, Soul, Rock and Music Video. He was considered the most powerful and influential monarch since the death of Elvis, King of Rock and Roll, in 1977.

Longtime observers of the kingdom expect several factions to challenge the claim of Prince Michael, particularly in light of the news of Jermaine’s regency. One such challenge has surfaced already in the form of Justin Timberlake, the former N’Sync member who has patterned his solo career after the deceased king. “The king’s brother says he will rule until the dauphin is ready to take the throne,” Timberlake told a crowd of supporters in Los Angeles. “But I say the king is dead! And his scion’s claim to the throne died with him!”

Then, shouting over chants of “King Justin! King Justin!”, Timberlake continued, “My friends! My people! Together, we will show them who want to be startin’ somethin’!”

Timberlake will likely be joined in his challenge of the Jackson dynasty by several others, including, experts predict, Eminem, Britney Spears, and the Cyrus/Jonas Coalition.

E! to air reenactments of Jackson 911 call

Cable network E! announced plans today to air a staged reenactment of the 911 call made after pop superstar Michael Jackson was discovered unconscious and unresponsive at his home on June 25. Jackson was later pronounced dead. The audio recording of the call was released to the media the next day.

E! made headlines and garnered impressive ratings with a series of reenactments of the singer’s 2005 trial on charges of child sexual abuse. The network has already confirmed that Edward Moss, who portrayed Jackson in the trial reenactments, will be returning for the 911 call recreation.

Though E! declined to comment on any possible projects beyond the 911 reenactment, Moss confirmed that he has been retained to star in a reenactment of the Jackson autopsy, assuming ratings for the 911 call recreation are high enough to warrant production.

Support Lt. Dan Choi and help to end the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy

2009-06-26T22:51:09Z

A few moments ago I did something very important, and hopefully a few moments from now you’ll have done it, too. A little over a month ago I posted an episode of my ongoing political satire series The Fatcats Club entitled “Ask and Tell,” which dealt with the pending discharge from our armed forces of West Point graduate and trained Arabic linguist Lt. Daniel Choi. The lieutenant, who is openly gay, and whose skills are more valuable than ever owing to the ongoing operations against Islamic terrorism, is being dismissed for violating the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

I just signed a petition in support of Lt. Choi, who’s going to court this Tuesday to challenge his discharge from the Army National Guard. Over 45,000 others have signed this petition in the last few hours, and I think it would be great for at least a few members of my tiny blogging audience to add their names to it, as well.

Firing a soldier as capable and dedicated to the service of his country as Lt. Choi should only be done for a good reason. Bigotry is not a good reason. The prohibition of gay men and women serving proudly and openly in the military is contrary to the values of a free society and debasing to our common humanity, and it must end now, starting with the reinstatement Daniel Choi, who by all accounts has been a splendid soldier.

Please sign the petition in support of Lt. Daniel Choi, right now. Tell the United States military to keep Lt. Choi and end the despicable “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

Michael Jackson: 1958 - 2009

2009-06-26T18:15:07Z

Michael Jackson was the most famous human being in the world. There are few people born in the last forty years who don’t know his name. He sold more records and more concert tickets than any other musician, and wherever he went — from multi-million dollar shopping sprees to his highly publicized court appearances — he was mobbed by screaming, adoring fans, some of whom burst into ecstatic tears at the sight of him. Yet as I read over the many obituaries and remembrances of him today, I find the most common description of the man is “lonely.”

He began performing as a child, and first achieved fame in the late 1960s as a member of the Jackson 5 with his brothers Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon. A decade later he transitioned to a solo career that would make him the most popular and celebrated entertainer in the world, but right through to the end he never seemed to grow up. In 1988 he bought himself a 2,700 acre ranch in southern California, and named it Neverland. In a globally televised interview in 2003 he innocently admitted to sleeping with underage houseguests, denying all charges of sexual abuse and insisting “It’s the most loving thing in the world to share your bed.” Not the response of a mature man accused of molesting children, it seems to me.

The last twenty years of his very public life seemed more focused on scandals and eccentricities than his music. Rather than hearing new songs, we heard about his plastic surgeries (which he strangely always denied having, despite the obvious evidence to the contrary), his supposed affinities for chimpanzees and oxygen chambers, his reclusiveness, and his reportedly bizarre relationships with women and other people’s children. He eventually married and divorced, twice, and had three kids of his own. In the last few months, beset by financial troubles, Michael seemed ready to finally get back to the music, announcing a 50-date concert series in London which he dubbed “This Is it.” Despite the relatively poor sales and negative reviews that had greeted his recent studio output, the This Is It shows sold out almost immediately; in the wake of Jackson’s death, promoters will be forced to refund tens of millions of dollars worth of ticket revenue.

Despite numerous accusations, Jackson was never convicted of sexually abusing children. Most of his other eccentricities were just that — harmless quirks, oddities that shouldn’t overshadow the man’s many artistic accomplishments. It would be easy to say that he wasn’t that important. He wasn’t a scientist or an explorer, he wasn’t a soldier or a statesman or a civil rights activist. His troubled life off-stage demonstrates that he was a not a man to be idolized. And yet he was possessed of such an immense talent that it would be difficult not to admire him as a performer.

He was the greatest star in the relatively brief history of music video, and author of much of that form’s most entertaining and important work. Like Muddy Waters, Little Richard and Sam Cooke before him, he helped bring the music of African-Americans to a wide multiracial audience, influencing popular music for generations to come. And like Cooke, his name now goes with those of Robert Johnson, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and Kurt Cobain on the list of musicians dead before their time.

I can’t think of a better way to remember him than to watch and hear him doing what he did best. Embedded below are some of his most noteworthy videos and performances. We’ve all seen Thriller about a thousand times, I’m sure, so first up are the music videos to three of my personal favorite Michael Jackson songs: “Smooth Criminal”, “Dirty Diana”, and “The Way You Make Me Feel”.

Then to finish up, Michael’s legendary performance of “Billie Jean” at Motown 25, and a retrospective set to my favorite Jackson 5 song, “I’ll Be There.”

You can read a proper remembrance of Michael Jackson here courtesy of Rolling Stone.

UPDATE (3:44 P.M.): And then there is this, from the invaluable Roger Ebert.

Riffing on Mail Call

2009-06-25T18:49:22Z

What do I do when there’s nothing I feel like writing about? I mock the opinions of my fellow citizens and the rag newspaper that disseminates them with another installment of my award winning^* series, Riffing on Mail Call!

(^*Last year it won the coveted Cursey Award for Best Blog Series Written in Response to a Stupid Feature in the Herald-Mail. That was a crowded category, as you might imagine. And just because I never publicized it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.^†)

(^†Although in this case it didn’t.)

These comments were culled from the June 24 edition of Mail Call, published by Hagerstown’s paper of record, the Old Gray Lady with progressive nonfluent aphasia, the Herald-Mail.

“The Saturday paper: I read about the 10-year-old girl that died of cancer, got her last wish. She wanted to see the Disney movie Up. But what I can’t believe is it was put on page 12, A12, and the front page, they put ‘School system gets $9.4 million in stimulus funds.’” - Clear Spring

You’re right, a child getting to see a movie is far more important to the people of Washington County than the millions of dollars in new funding doled out to their schools. This is actually a rare instance where the Herald-Mail did something right. The story about the girl seeing Up before she died belonged on page A12 — and that’s assuming it deserved to be in the newspaper at all. It’s a human interest story. It’s sweet, it’s sad, it’s nice the girl got her last wish. But it’s not news. Ashley and I joke all the time that one day we’ll pick up a copy of the Herald-Mail and the front page story will be some useless Marlo Barnhart write-up about the pastor of a local church, and then buried in one of the back pages will be a story bearing the headline “Six Dead in Bloody Prison Riot, Eleven Confirmed Escaped and At-Large in Hagerstown Area.”

It’s really not that far-fetched.

“Just remember that Obama and the White House Mafia ‘own’ the mainstream media, and through it, can feed you all the ‘blabber blast’ and ‘sweet talk’ they want. It’s not necessarily anything close to the truth, it’s just what they want to sell you to get you to do what they need to their own agendas. Remember this if you watch ABC’s ‘Obama infomercial’ this Wednesday.” – Hagerstown

What I’d like to “know” is who “typed” those “quotation” “marks” around “own” and “blabber blast” and “sweet talk,” and so forth. Don’t most people call their comments in? Isn’t that why the feature is titled Mail Call? Was the talk-radio drone who called this in just so affected that the intern who typed it up felt compelled to add the quotes in order to accurately transcribe the call? I’d also like to know what this (I’m going out on a limb here) fella’s idea of the truth is, and where he goes to get it. Does he get it from Sean Hannity? Because I listen to Hannity almost every day. Two days ago I heard him accuse Barack Obama of being too much of an ideologue. Sean Hannity. That’s either an appalling lack of self-awareness or shameless dishonesty. Either way, it’s not what I’m looking for in someone I turn to for “the truth.”

“I find it rather interesting, people complaining about the upkeep of the golf course, especially since the taxpayers are subsidizing it. I have another question. Why? And why do we subsidize the airport? If it’s not making money, sell it. Sell both of them. And also, why is HCC called Hagerstown Community College, when it’s not even in the city?” – Hagerstown

“And another thing, why can’t we kill a few of those ducks in City Park for table meat? They’re just taking up space swimming around in there, and do you know how hard it is to find good duck around here? And why do we call it the ‘Post Office’ instead of the ‘Mail Office’? And why won’t the nurse tell me what the purple pill is?”

If it was in the city, they’d call it Hagerstown City College. Durr.

“Just watching TV, about all the unrest in Iran, and how much CNN is - how much coverage they’re providing for it. Why didn’t they do the same thing when George Bush was in office and suppressed the people so that they couldn’t march in protest?” – Halfway

Did I miss protestors being shot dead in the street during the Bush administration? I hate to take up for George, but I’m pretty sure he vetoed it every time Cheney suggested executing a few of the peasants to maintain order. George W. Bush was a horribly inept president, an embarrassment to us and the rest of the world, but comparing him to the murdering thugs who run Iran only kills the credibility of whatever argument you’re trying to make.

“I’m calling concerning the write-up in Monday, June 22, paper, about the senior citizen center at the junior college. I think that should be looked into very, very, very much, because I agree with the write-up. There’s gonna be too much traffic, and it should be looked into. I have two senior citizens that’ll be going to the center, and I don’t like it at all. Please print this. Everybody needs to be heard.” – Hagerstown

You have two senior citizens? How are they? Because I’ve been thinking about getting one for around the house here, just to liven the place up. Are they good with pets? And what about cleanliness? If they’re just gonna shuffle around dropping used Kleenex everywhere, I’m not getting one.

This last one isn’t from Mail Call, but from a story in yesterday’s Herald-Mail about Hager Hall, a local convention center, being fined by the liquor board for a male revue that danced there on April 25.

Inspectors for the liquor board testified at a hearing last week that some of the male dancers led women in the audience onto the stage. Inspectors also said women stuffed dollar bills in the dancers’ clothing.

One dancer stood behind a customer on stage and simulated having sex with her, inspectors said.

. . . Joe Rouse, an attorney who co-owns the Hager Hall building and is part of the business, said he didn’t think the actions violated a state law prohibiting bare buttocks or breasts within 6 feet of patrons at an establishment where alcohol is served.

But Robert L. Everhart, the liquor board’s chairman, stressed a provision banning “acts or simulated acts of sexual intercourse” if an establishment has a liquor license.

So bare buttocks and breasts are allowed within six feet of patrons at establishments where alcohol isn’t served? In that case, next time the male revue comes through they should book the Golden Corral instead.

Now That’s Quality Cheese, No. 2: MacGyver

2009-06-24T21:46:54Z

Browse the history of that oft-maligned medium of television and you’ll find more than a few diamonds in the dung-heap. I Love Lucy, All in the Family, Homicide, NYPD Blue, and The Twilight Zone are just a few that come to mind. You’ll find a wheelbarrow’s worth of shit, too — your Full House, your Homeboys From Outer Space to cite two examples. Then there are the shows that fall in the middle, the shows we love in spite of (or maybe because of) their awfulness, the charmingly goofy, the affably preposterous, the so-bad-they’re-good — now that’s quality cheese!

No. 2: MacGyver (1985-1992)

Oh gentle-souled adventurer, duct-tape Dionysius, inventor of the ingeniously improbable, let me sing your praises.

I know there have been many, many, many shows on television that have been superior to MacGyver. There have been shows that have worked far better as serious drama, provided us with much smarter and more insightful comedy, and been more accomplished in every artistic and technical category you could ever name. But almost none have been more likable. MacGyver is one of the dumbest, most absurd, poorly plotted, worst acted shows in the history of its medium. Yet, taken on its own terms, it’s also one of the most fun. If you can’t have a good time watching this show, it’s time to pull the stick outta your ass.

For one thing, find me a more likable hero than the man himself. MacGyver is as good-hearted, socially conscious, and charming a fellow as you’re ever likely to meet. Sure, he can be a little preachy when you get him on the subject of the environment, or firearms, or narcotics (by the way, what’s everyone’s problem with crack? is it really that bad?), but what’s having to sit through a little sanctimony from the guy every now and again when you know that any second now he’s gonna whip out that pocket knife and turn that mechanical pencil, that rusty nail, and the elastic from that guy’s underwear into a projectile capable of knocking a stolen Soviet missile out of the fucking sky?

Everybody remembers MacGyver for the inventions, and there are good reasons for that. There were a lot of them, and the more outrageously implausible they were, the better. The early episodes are so packed with improvised escapes and all kinds of homemade explosives that the writers must have burned themselves out. From the second season forward, Mac averaged one or two inventions per episode, usually saving them for the climax — like a David Banner hulk-out or KITT using his turbo-boost. A lot of those were good, like the latex glove smoke-bomb or the hot air balloon he made from a couple of parachutes and some shit he found lying around some old barracks in East Germany, but if you’re into the inventions you can’t beat that first year. That season you saw MacGyver bust out of a locked freezer with a light bulb and an ice cube, build a thermite torch from a bicycle, and make a hang-glider from the wings of a crashed satellite and a few pieces of duct tape.

Why did a satellite that had spent the last fifteen years in Earth orbit have plastic wings? That’s not the attitude you want to have.

Once they had to start rationing the inventions, the creators of the show had to come up with something else to keep people watching. So they did two things. First, they introduced more recurring characters, most notably MacGyver’s boss Pete Thornton, and his old chum Jack Dalton. Pete was supposedly the guy in charge, but it’s pretty clear most of the time who wears the pants in that relationship. More than making us laugh at what an ineffectual bitch he was, Pete proved invaluable to the show as someone to whom MacGyver could explain what the hell he was doing with that paperclip and length of shoelace without resorting to a voiceover. And let’s not forget that the bald, chubby, 50-something Pete, thanks to his skilled stunt double, was a virtually unstoppable fighting machine when the circumstances called for it. And Jack Dalton, Mac’s old college pal who dreamed of starting his own personal airline, was played by Bruce McGill, who makes everything he’s in better by his mere presence. I remember when the show was still on the air how I always looked forward to the Dalton episodes. Guaranteed good times.

The second thing the writers did to fill up time when MacGyver wasn’t inventing shit was to give the show a social conscience. It was a crude, grasping, ham-fisted social conscience that dispensed daring, hard-hitting morals like “dumping radioactive sludge in streams is bad” and “we must be ever mindful not to over-fish our precious oceans.” And let’s not forget MacGyver’s principled opposition to guns.

The series was a creation of the 80s. It was the decade of the Very Special Episode, and MacGyver contributed more than its share. There were episodes that crusaded against the evils of drugs, environmental depredations, alcoholism, and that’s not all. Who can forget the first Murdoc episode, a sobering admonition not to drive a semi with a lit stick of dynamite in your hand? Or the fearless tales revealing the dangers of voodoo? Or the many episodes that demonstrated the perils of hanging out with Teri Hatcher? I doubt there have been any two shows that between them have saved as many lives or opened as many eyes as MacGyver has all by itself.

Okay, maybe The Commish. Maybe.

As I’ve mentioned a few times in previous articles, the most fun part of MacGyver was how wide open its premise was. MacGyver wasn’t exactly a government agent, he wasn’t exactly a scientist, he wasn’t exactly an adventurer. He was all of those to a degree, and he was everything else the writers of the show needed him to be. The show was so flexible, you could’ve written an episode about just about anything. My buddy Varjak loves to cite the example of the show where MacGyver stops at a filling station to gas up his jeep, a pregnant woman runs up and says, “Help, my husband is trying to kill me,” and off they go to spend the next hour hiding from her murderous baby-daddy in an abandoned warehouse. There’s your episode. You couldn’t get that sort of variety from Newhart, by crikey.

(I’ve got nothing against Newhart. It was a fine show. I’m just saying.)

Ultimately, beyond the crazy inventions and the clumsy good intentions, the key to MacGyver is MacGyver, played by Richard Dean Anderson. Ain’t he just the sorta guy you’d love to hang out with? It’s probably short notice, but fuck it — I think I’ll invite him to an Independence Day barbecue. Not the world’s best actor, but a man who clearly knows his strengths and plays to them. Get this show on DVD or catch the next rerun. Watch how loose and unassuming he is, how he doesn’t worry about making MacGyver seem like a tough guy. I love the way he shakes his hand in pain after punching a bad guy, or how he throws up his arms and whimpers “Don’t hit!” when he thinks someone’s about to take a swing at him, or how he plays his exasperation in his scenes with Dalton or Penny Parker. He makes MacGyver such a likable guy that I’m even willing to overlook his NHL fandom, ordinarily an unforgivable character defect, even though it leads to scenes in several episodes of actual hockey play.

For an otherwise rational Star Trek fan, exasperated by all those zealous nerds so obsessed with technicalities and explaining away continuity errors, a show like MacGyver is a godsend. Just try constructing a coherent canon for this show. Christ, Mac’s had so many former loves of his life meet tragic ends that he’d have to be in his late 50s as the first season starts just to fit them all in. Not to mention the number of best friends the guy has, nearly all of whom he never mentions until they show up for a single episode and then disappear forever; and the fascinating phenomenon of Mac always appearing to be his current age in flashbacks, no matter how far in the past the scene supposedly occurs.

(Well, not really. But I always thought it would have been great if they’d just used Richard Dean Anderson in the flashbacks to MacGyver’s childhood. Have all his chums played by pre-adolescent actors, and MacGyver still looking like a man in his mid-30s.)

Somehow MacGyver managed to hang on for a seven-year run, plus a couple of TV movies. All seven seasons are now available on DVD, so there’s really no excuse for not getting to know this awesomely enjoyable show. If you’ve never seen MacGyver, you’re missing out. It’s ridiculous, it’s silly, it’s ludicrous — but in a good way. It’s everything you need for quality cheese.

Right-wing blowhards and Iranian theocrats have more in common than they realize

2009-06-23T18:50:01Z

In his column this week for Slate.com, Christopher Hitchens describes the paranoia that warps the perspectives of the radical Mullahs who rule Iran, and who have spent most of the last two weeks insisting that the recent landslide reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, which sent hundreds of thousands of protestors into the streets of Tehran, was on the up-and-up.

Hitchens writes

There is nothing at all that any Western country can do to avoid the charge of intervening in Iran’s internal affairs. The deep belief that everything — especially anything in English — is already and by definition an intervention is part of the very identity and ideology of the theocracy.

After generations of British imperialism, says Hitchens, the ayatollahs and much of the Iranian public are apt to blame any misfortune that befalls their nation on a vast Anglo conspiracy. It’s chilling to think that the government of Iran, with its army and, perhaps soon, its nuclear arsenal, is controlled by the Persian equivalent of the 9/11 Truth Movement. But that’s not the only parallel that jumped out at me from Hitchens’s article.

It also immediately brought to mind the criticism of President Obama’s response to the Iranian protests by the likes of Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and Mark Levin — all three richly deserving of immortalization on the face of Asshole Mount Rushmore. “What happened to the spirit of Ronald Reagan?” Levin demanded shrilly on his show last night. “What happened to ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall’?” Hannity’s anti-Obama diatribes, because he never says anything someone else hasn’t said already, have sounded much the same.

Conservative mouthpieces like Hannity, Levin, Beck, not to mention the Supreme Leader himself, Rush Limbaugh (who’s been on vacation for this) are generally critical of Obama, so their reaction to his handling of the Iran situation doesn’t surprise me. What struck me about the above Hitchens quote, though, was that phrase “by definition.” Does anyone honestly believe that conservative talk radio would be showering the president with praise and glowing comparisons to Reagan’s Berlin Wall speech had Obama been more openly supportive of the would-be reformers in Iran? Would any of them even offer the president a grudging pat on the back in that case? I don’t think so.

I’m not saying that serious, considered, rational criticism of Barack Obama is impossible or inappropriate on this issue (Hitchens manages it very well elsewhere in his article); I’m saying that the criticisms of Obama’s careful handling of the Iran situation from right-wing water-boys like Hannity and Levin aren’t based on honest, rational consideration. No matter what Obama’s reaction had been, he’d be taking shit for it from this lot. It’s become a pillar of their ideology. They oppose him on principle. They oppose him by definition.

Hannity likes to describe the liberal-leaning media and the president himself as suffering from “Bush derangement syndrome,” reflexively blaming our current economic and international troubles on the inept presidency of George W. Bush. But aren’t he and his colleagues in the field of conservative punditry just as infected by Obama derangement syndrome? From their wild overreaction to Obama’s measured attitude toward Iran, I’d say their affliction is a lot more serious.

“Most Heartbreaking TV Episodes” list has a few glaring omissions

2009-06-22T20:32:49Z

There’s a list up at Pajiba from over the weekend of the ten most heartbreaking television episodes of the last twenty years. It’s not a bad one — the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where her mom dies, in particular, is a good catch. But there are two rather obvious misses, episodes that no list of great sad TV should be without. One is from awhile ago now, so I might be able to forgive it, but the other is just from last year.

The more recent one is “Wilson’s Heart,” last season’s finale of House. Former fellowship candidate and current girlfriend of House’s best friend, Dr. Wilson, is suffering from grave injuries apparently sustained during a bus accident in which House was also involved. House, being House, is certain that he detected a crucial symptom of Amber’s before the accident, but just can’t remember. Most of the episode is taken up with his investigation, using various methods, including a form of electro-convulsive therapy, to try and jog his memory. House solves the mystery and realizes Amber is doomed. Her kidneys, damaged in the crash, are unable to filter out a toxic ingredient in the flue medication she had been taking; she will certainly die. I have to hand it to the writers of this episode, not just for crafting such an emotionally wrenching hour, but for contriving such a great death for Amber, having her not only die in Wilson’s arms, but requiring Wilson to reach out and shut off the heart bypass machine, effectively killing her when she decided it was time to go. Goddamn, this was a superb and devastating little bit of TV, one of the best episodes of one of the best series on television. Why it didn’t make the list, I have no idea. Unforgivable.

Now the one from a little while ago, though its exclusion is still inexcusable: “Hearts and Souls,” the final episode of NYPD Blue for Jimmy Smits, from 1998. Smits had joined the show as Detective Bobby Simone five years earlier following the departure of David Caruso, and quickly became the strongest member of a remarkable ensemble that also included the great Dennis Franz. When he left the series, the writers gave Simone a much more memorable send-off than they had given Caruso’s Detective John Kelly, who had retired in the face of corruption charges at the start of the second season. At the start of season 6, Simone, who had just gotten married to fellow detective Diane Russell, developed an infection that quickly necessitated a heart transplant. His condition worsens steadily throughout the first four episodes of the season, bringing us to “Hearts and Souls.” The other cops in the unit work their own cases, but it’s all clearly beside the point. Near the end, his fellow detectives take their turns standing by his bed, and then, with his wife by his side and a vision/hallucination of his dreamed-of but never-born son in his head, Bobby dies as the screen fades slowly to white. It’s a brilliant, artful piece of work, and so beautifully sad. It’s comforting, too, but not in a cheap “he’s in a better place” sort of way. This was NYPD Blue, and TV, at the top of its form.

And hey, shit, while I’m naming great, sad NYPD Blue episodes, why not “A Death in the Family,” the third-season episode where Sipowicz’s son is murdered? That was a heartbreaker, too. Why wasn’t that on the fucking list?

What do you guys think? Have I missed any others?

As long as I’m shitting on Bill O’Reilly

2009-06-21T16:54:44Z

There’s a saying that dates back to the infancy of our species. It goes something like this: “You can’t shit on Bill O’Reilly too much.”

I know that’s always been my philosophy. And since I cited a great piece by Roger Ebert taking a swipe at O’Reilly yesterday, I figured today I’d quote this piece by Joan Walsh, writing about her appearance on The O’Reilly Factor last week.

Check out Walsh’s assessment of her conversation with Bill:

If I’m sorry I did the show — and I’m not yet sure I am — it’s only because of one thing: He used me to try Dr. Tiller again, postmortem. He brought out uncorroborated stories he claimed he’d never shown before: a 13-year-old girl (I couldn't see her or verify her story) who claimed Tiller killed her baby and had her deliver it in a toilet. He featured psychiatrists who from a distance challenged Tiller’s findings that women were in danger if they delivered late-term babies. He continued his “profiteering” charges, claiming that Tiller charged $6,000 per abortion; I said, “Bill, you’ve always said it was $5,000, so that’s interesting! And I know he did some for less and pro-bono.” I think that’s when he cut me off and denied that, but I’m not sure. But, jeez, it did get worse. He also accused me of calling him “a vile accomplice” to Scott Roeder, and I jumped in, “I called you vile, but I never called you an accomplice.” . . .

I told him that he was within his rights to think late-term abortion should be illegal, and that he should work to make it so. But right now it’s legal. I compared his position to that of gun opponents. We can legally, under various circumstances, own guns. But some gun opponents would like most guns, especially handguns, to be illegal. What if those folks started a crusade against gun dealers, maybe picking out one in particular, saying he had “blood on his hands,” “he should be stopped,” all the O'Reilly Tiller quotes?

Sadly, Bill cut me off and derided that comparison as stupid[.]

The point of inviting Joan Walsh onto the show in first place, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, wasn’t to argue the case against late-term abortion, or examine in an intelligent and honest way various factors that may have contributed to the murder of George Tiller. It was to slap her around on national television for trying to make O’Reilly look bad. He’s not a working-class hero, he’s not looking out for you; he’s a thug.

Ebert nails O’Reilly

2009-06-21T03:26:54Z

Roger Ebert, writer of the best blog there is, hits it right on the money with his article this week about Bill O’Reilly. Rather than subject you to my clumsy paraphrasing of a vastly superior writer, allow me to favor you with a block quote:

O’Reilly represents a worrisome attention shift in the minds of Americans. More and more of us are not interested in substance. The nation has cut back on reading. Most eighth graders can’t read a newspaper. A sizable percentage of the population doesn’t watch television news at all. They want entertainment, or “news” that is entertainment. Many of us grew up in the world where most people read a daily paper and watched network and local newscasts. “All news” radio stations and TV channels were undreamed-of. News was a destination, not a generic commodity. Journalists, the good ones anyway, had ethical standards.

In those days, if you quoted The New York Times, you were bringing an authority to the table. Now O’Reilly — O’Reilly! — advises viewers to cancel their subscriptions to a paper most of them may not have ever seen. In those days, if the wire services reported something, it probably happened. Today the wire services remain indispensable, but waste resources in producing celebrity info-nuggets that belong in trash magazines. Advertisers now seek readers they once thought of as shoplifters. If nuclear war breaks out, the average citizen of a Western democracy will be better informed about Britney Spears than the causes of their death.

Ebert has O’Reilly’s number here, and puts his finger on precisely what it is that is so offensive about him. It’s not O’Reilly’s politics, which on the whole are actually a lot milder than the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. It’s his methods, his bullying, his childish insistence on his own importance that make him such a clown.

A few paragraphs above where I pulled the quote from, Ebert creates the perfect analogy to describe O’Reilly: the only difference between O’Reilly and Jerry Springer is that Springer is honest about what he does, while O’Reilly “insists he is dealing only with the truth.”

Even with that crucial difference, I might feel a bit insulted by the comparison, were I Jerry Springer.

Was yesterday the start of another trip to the moon?

2009-06-19T19:20:31Z

Believe it or not, a month from tomorrow will make forty years since the first manned Moon landing. And yesterday NASA launched the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, the first mission in the Lunar Precursor Robotic Program, a series of unmanned probes that will map the surface of the Moon and hopefully pave the way for a second manned lunar exploration program. The LRO is the first spacecraft of any kind sent to the Moon by NASA since the Lunar Prospector in 1998. Humans have not visited the Moon since December 1972.

But hey, why look back in anger? There is a song that advises against doing precisely that, is there not? No! Ahead! Ahead, I say, to the future — the future filled with thrilling manned exploration of our solar system, and people living on the Moon and all that happy horseshit.

And if we must look back, let us look back not in anger, but in awe. And, just to be more confusing than necessary, why not look back so far that we actually see people looking ahead to the moon landings we were just looking back on?

You following me? What I really mean is, let us watch the classic 1902 Georges Méliès film Le Voyage dans la lune — A Trip to the Moon:

Today at the Rotten Library I learned . . .

2009-06-18T21:22:33Z

Today at the Rotten Library I learned . . .

. . . Eagle Scouts don’t always make good role models.

God bless the Rotten Library on days when I can’t come up with shit to write about. And what an interesting little article this is about the Eagle Scouts. Sure, I’ve always been suspect of the squeaky-clean “All-American boy” image — a suspicion confirmed by the presidential candidacy last year of 1970s game show host/animatronic mannequin Mitt Romney — but even I was a little surprised by how many Eagle Scouts went on to become notorious homicidal maniacs.

Charles Whitman? Really? Is that where he learned to shoot so well, I wonder.

I get some degree of smug satisfaction from seeing professional bigot Fred Phelps on the list, too. What is it about learning how to light a camp fire or put up a tent that turns people into such pricks?

Hell, it runs in my own family. Sort of. No one in my family was ever an Eagle Scout so far as I know, but my Dad was a Boy Scout as a child, and Pap was the scout master of his . . . I don’t know, troop, or whatever the fuck they call the little groups of Boy Scouts. Pap once told me about a time when he took his troop to stay overnight in cabins around a lake in a state park which I have completely forgotten the name of. Before they left for their trip, the mother of one of the scouts hipped Pap to the fact that her son was a sleepwalker. Pap, being a clever man but also a responsible one, didn’t want the little bastard to get up in the middle of the night and wander out into the lake.

So he did what any caring adult in charge of a group of vulnerable children would have done. He waited until everyone was asleep in their bunks, then took a length of rope and tied the sleepwalker’s ankle to the post of his bed. Later on that night, Pap was awoken by a dull thud followed by a good bit of crying. He got up and sure enough there was the sleepwalker on the floor, one foot tethered to his bed, bawling his eyes out, with no idea what the hell had just happened to him.

The kid’s mother wasn’t too happy with Pap after that, but he took it all in stride. “Would she have been happier if I let the little bastard wander out into the lake and drown?” he asked me.

I suppose she would not have been.

A new digital camera is just one more reason to bother the cat

2009-06-17T21:34:37Z

This past Saturday Ashley went out and bought herself a spiffy new digital camera. Since then she and I have busied ourselves doing what any other attractive young couple in our position would be doing:

Taking picture after picture of our cat. Below you will find one of the fruits of that exercise.

The Fatcats Club: “Organized Outrage”

2009-06-16T18:38:35Z

The Fatcats Club:

“Organized Outrage”

They gathered a few minutes ago in their favorite spot, the place in New York they always go when they’re all in town. They got together to eat and to drink, of course, but also to celebrate, and to strategize. Most of them were there already — Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Ann Coulter, Michael Reagan, Glenn Beck. A few still hadn’t shown up, but those who had were in a lovely mood, all beaming smiles and laughter.

“What’s keeping Rush?” Michael asked, turning around and eyeing the entrance.

“He’ll be along,” Sean said. “Where’s Liddy?”

“I couldn’t get a hold of him this morning,” Ann said. “I think he’s off on one of those stupid motorcycle rides he does.”

“Good god, does he still do those?” Glenn asked with rather more incredulity than the moment required. “What is he now, like a hundred and ten?”

“He’s up there, but he can still go with the best of them,” Ann said. “You’d be surprised. You think he must be out of gas at his age, but trust me . . .” An odd, sly sort of smile crossed her face. She remembered herself and glanced quickly around the table. “Nevermind.” She cleared her throat and took a long drink of wine.

“Anyway,” said Mark, placing his hand on his glass, “I don’t think we need to wait on Rush to get here in order to address the business at hand. So, with that in mind, here’s to victory!”

Mark and everyone else lifted their glasses. “To victory!” they all said, and drank deep.

“I knew Letterman would cave sooner or later, that spineless lib, that so-called ‘comedian,’” Sean said.

“Their side always does,” Michael said. “They have no principles, unlike my father, President Ronald Reagan.”

“If he had any principles he wouldn’t have told such a hideously offensive joke to begin with,” Ann said. “Imagine, making fun of someone’s child like that! I mean, shouldn’t some things just be off-limits?”

“I wonder how these so-called ‘comedians’ would feel if someone made fun of them. Or their children,” Sean said.

“Yeah,” said Glenn, “I wonder what Letterman would do if I just walked up to him and nailed him with some cutting witty remark about his kid! Like, ‘Hey, Letterman! You had your son out of wedlock!’”

They all laughed.

“‘Oh and, ah, by the way, Mr. Letterman, that is one poorly tailored suit you’re wearing!’” said Mark, drawing a fresh round of yucks for himself.

“‘Yeah, Mr. Letterman,’” Glenn said, “‘where’d you get it — Nordstrom?!”

Oh, how they all laughed.

Sean unfurled his napkin to dab up the wine that had shot from his nose after that last zinger from Glenn. “You’re the funniest guy on the planet, you know that? I mean, seriously, you are as funny if not funnier than Mark Lowry. No — no — Jeff Allen.”

“Wow!” said Glenn.

“You make Richard Pryor look like Richard Lewis, my friend,” Mark said.

“I don’t know who those people are, but it sounds like a compliment!” Glenn said.

“You’re the conservative Dane Cook,” Ann said.

Glenn smiled and shrugged and held up his hands. “I guess that’s why I’m the hottest success story in the news-talk format!”

They nearly died from laughter at that one.

A hulking figure in a dark hat and overcoat pulled out the chair between Michael and Glenn and sat down. He pulled off the hat and shrugged the coat onto the back of his chair, revealing himself to be Rush Limbaugh. “Hello everyone. I apologize for my fashionable lateness,” he said, smoothing back his hair. “I didn’t miss the appetizer, did I?”

“No,” Sean said, “we told the waiter to w—”

“To wait on you!” Glenn ejaculated, laughing giddily for a few seconds afterwards.

“Good,” said Rush when everyone else’s laughter had abated. “I didn’t miss it, then.”

“We were just discussing the great victory won by our movement last night,” Mark said. “I bet all the rest of those so-called late night ‘comedians’ will think twice before they mess with Sarah Palin again.”

“They’ll be sure to leave Sarah alone once they know that if they make anymore rude, mean jokes about her, we’ll all rise up like those people in Tehran!” Michael said. “Right, buddy?” he said, squeezing Rush’s shoulder.

Rush shrugged him off. “Yes, well the people of Tehran have one advantage that we conservatives do not,” Rush said.

“What’s that?” Sean asked.

“They have Hillary Clinton on their side.”

“Yeah,” said Glenn, “I’m sure they all appreciated hearing her read her statement of support in that nails-on-a-blackboard voice of hers. ‘Let the will of the Iranian people be heard! . . . Oh, and take out the garbage!’”

“Just think, that dying-owl screech was the last sound poor Vince Foster ever heard,” Ann said. “Besides the gun-shot, I mean.”

“No wonder Chelsea hasn’t gotten married yet,” Sean said.

“Yeah,” Mark said with a wink, “no wonder.” He elbowed Sean, who slapped him away.

“Get outta here!”

The waiter finally appeared. “I’m guessing you’ll all want some more wine, but now that Mr. Limbaugh has arrived, can I interest you in any appetizers?”

“None for me,” said Sean.

“None for me,” said Glenn.

“None for me, I’m fat enough already,” said Ann.

“I’ll take an order of crab fries, if you please,” Mark said.

“Give me a single order of the crab dip, please,” Rush said.

“Actually, just make that a large order of the crab dip,” Michael said. He scooted over a few inches and placed his hand on Rush’s arm. “We’ll share.”

The waiter scribbled on his pad and returned to the kitchen. Rush yanked his arm away from Michael. “You’re paying for that crab dip,” he said.

“Fine, fine.”

“I don’t feel right about us meeting here anymore, anyway,” Rush said, folding his arms in front of him on the table. “Not since I’ve subtracted myself from New York in protest of its draconian tax code.”

“Maybe we could start meeting somewhere else,” Sean said, “like Florida or Texas.”

“Or California,” Michael said. “Flying all the way over here every time we have lunch is killing me. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to afford it.”

Rush glanced at Michael from the corner of his eye. “Let’s keep it on the east coast,” he said.

“Say, Rush, have you lost weight?” Glenn asked.

“I have,” Rush said with a proud smile, smoothing his hands down the front of his shirt. “Four pounds since last Christmas.”

“Congratulations,” Sean said. “And you do it all without exercising?”

“Completely,” Rush said. “I never exercise. I have a sprawling estate with acres and acres of oceanfront property, and I have never once taken a walk on the beach.”

“Good for you, my friend,” Mark said.

“Absolutely,” Michael said, eyeing Rush up and down. “You haven’t looked this good since my father, Ronald Reagan, was president.”

“Anyway,” Rush said, shifting in his chair to face the rest of the table. “My friends, we’ve won the first round against Letterman, but I say the time has now come to initiate round two. Sure, Letterman’s apologized for his joke. But why should we let it die there? Why should we rest before we manage to get Letterman drummed off the air completely?!”

“But what could we do?” Sean asked.

“Well, Sarah did say she wouldn’t want to trust her daughter in the same room as Letterman,” Ann said. “What if she was on to something?”

“You mean . . . frame Letterman for a child sex crime?” Glenn asked.

Sean shrugged. “It’s been done before. Look how the media framed the entire Catholic Church a few years back.”

“We could rally the troops just like we did over the joke,” Mark said. “Between the six of us, we’d have fifty million people all stirred up demanding Letterman’s head!”

“And that’s just the first step,” Rush said, smiling. “Once he’s off the air, we can push for a criminal prosecution.”

“Oh, that’s great!” said Glenn.

“If convicted on a charge like that, why, he might spend the rest of his life in prison,” Mark said.

“Yeah, and maybe we could rig some kind of katric ark to catch his soul and imprison him for eternity!” Glenn said.

“That’d show those other so-called ‘comedians,’ like Wanda Sykes and Stephen Colbert,” Sean said.

“And Jon Leibowitz!” said Mark.

The waiter arrived with the appetizers. Glenn stopped him before he left the table and pointed at Mark’s plate. “Excuse me, but why aren’t these called ‘crab fried’? I mean, ‘crab fries’ . . . isn’t that, like, present tense?!”

And how they laughed! Oh, how they all laughed.

Hitchens on the Iranian election: “Don’t call it an election.”

2009-06-15T18:36:51Z

For insight into the recent election and resultant ongoing strife in Iran, I turn again to the indispensable Christopher Hitchens. He’s just way smarter than I am. And, unlike most of us, he actually knows people in Iran who can give him a sense of what’s really going on over there.

From this week’s edition of his Fighting Words column at Slate.com:

For a flavor of the political atmosphere in Tehran, Iran, last week, I quote from a young Iranian comrade who furnishes me with regular updates:

I went to the last major Ahmadinejad rally and got the whiff of what I imagine fascism to have been all about. Lots of splotchy boys who can’t get a date are given guns and told they’re special.

Comforting at least to know that the Iranian fascists are just as much feeble-minded losers as ours here in the U.S., ain’t it?

The re-election of religious zealot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the President of Iran is sad news, but no one outside of the country could possibly be surprised by it, could they? As Hitchens reminds us, Iran is nowhere near a democracy. Iranian elections are presided over by a Guardian Council, a cabal of unelected clerics and lawyers that gets to decide which candidates are allowed to run for office and which are not. These totalitarian measures are necessary for the Muslim zealots who control Iran to retain their power because, as Hitchens also reminds us, they are clearly on the wrong side of history:

The obvious evidence of fixing, fraud, and force to one side, there is another reason to doubt that an illiterate fundamentalist like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad could have increased even a state-sponsored plebiscite-type majority. Everywhere else in the Muslim world, in every election in the last two years, the tendency has been the other way. In Morocco in 2007, the much-ballyhooed Justice and Development Party wound up with 14 percent of the vote. In Malaysia and Indonesia, the predictions of increased market share for the pro-Sharia parties were likewise falsified. In Iraq this last January, the local elections penalized the clerical parties that had been making life a misery in cities like Basra. In neighboring Kuwait last month, the Islamist forces did poorly, and four women—including the striking figure of Rola Dashti, who refuses to wear any headgear—were elected to the 50-member parliament. Most important of all, perhaps, Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah was convincingly and unexpectedly defeated last week in Lebanon after an open and vigorous election, the results of which were not challenged by any party. And, from all I hear, if the Palestinians were to vote again this year—as they were at one point supposed to do—it would be highly improbable that Hamas would emerge the victor.

Yet somehow a senile and fanatical religious clique that has failed even to condition the vote in a country like Lebanon, where it has proxy and surrogate parties under arms, is able to reward itself by increasing its “majority” in a festeringly bankrupt state where it controls the media and enjoys a monopoly of violence. I think we should deny it any official recognition of this consolation.

I’m with you, Hitchens. You tell ‘em.

Mitsuharu Misawa: 1962 – 2009 (Updated 6/16)

2009-06-14T15:03:15Z

Mitsuharu Misawa may have been the greatest professional wrestler living anywhere on the planet. His name wasn’t widely known in the U.S. except among the most dedicated wrestling fans, but in Japan he was one of the industry’s top stars for twenty-five years. From 1984 to 1990 he wrestled under a mask as Tiger Mask II, the successor to the legendary original Tiger Mask, Satoru Sayama. Transitioning from a junior heavyweight to the main event heavyweight division after unmasking, Misawa went on to dominate All-Japan, one of the two dominant Japanese promotions, for the next decade. His matches with sometime tag partners Toshiaki Kawada, Kenta Kobashi and Jun Akiyama are celebrated by wrestling fans all over the world as some of the greatest ever. In 2000, after five reigns as All-Japan’s Triple Crown Champion, Misawa left to found his own company, taking nearly the entire roster along with him. Of All-Japan’s native stars only Kawada and the aging Masanobu Fuchi stayed behind. Everyone else followed Misawa to his aptly named Pro Wrestling NOAH.

Misawa died in the ring last night in the main event of a NOAH show at the Green Arena in Hiroshima. Working a tag match with Go Shiozaki against Akitoshi Saito and Bison Smith, Misawa took a bump on his upper back and neck following a backdrop suplex from Saito. He lost consciousness. The match was stopped and CPR was performed in the ring, but Misawa was pronounced dead at the hospital shortly thereafter. Cause of death is speculated to be a heart attack, though there’s been no official announcement that I’ve seen.

Update (6/16): Wrestling Observe/Figure Four Online is reporting the cause of death was a spinal cord injury resulting from the suplex, not a heart attack as earlier speculated.

The backdrop suplex is a horrific looking move, with the wrestler receiving the move being dropped backwards onto his head, but it is a staple of puroresu, as pro wrestling is called in Japan. Wrestlers are trained to take the move safely and forbidden to take the bump in an actual match until they have demonstrated a mastery of it. When was the last time you saw a Japanese wrestler with a skinny neck?

Misawa is not the first wrestler to die in the ring. Last month marked the tenth anniversary of the death of Owen Hart, who fell from the top of the Kemper Arena in St. Louis as the result of a botched entrance stunt during a WWF pay-per-view event. Before that, Plum Mariko, a star in Japanese Women’s Pro Wrestling, died following a Ligerbomb in 1997, also in Hiroshima. In 1993 Oro, a 21 year-old Luchadore, died in Mexico City following a botched sell of a clothesline. The case most similar to Misawa’s own death is that of Gary Albright, who died in the ring in 2000. Albright, himself a former champion in All-Japan who had once challenged Misawa for the Triple Crown, was working a World Xtreme Wrestling show in Hazleton, Pennsylvania. His opponent executed an Ace Crusher (also called a Diamond Cutter, an RKO, a whole slew of other things), and Albright fell unconscious. The match was quickly ended and Albright was rushed from the ring and pronounced dead. Cause of death was determined to be a heart attack.

Still, none of these others had reached the level of stardom of Misawa. Owen Hart is the best known to us in the United States, but at the time of his death he was working a midcard comedy gimmick. Misawa was the greatest wrestling star in Japan. Imagine if Steve Austin or Triple H had died while working a match. You’d hear about it for days, whether you gave a shit about wrestling or not.

I haven’t seen many Misawa matches, though I’ve been fortunate enough to see a few. Eight years ago I shelled out some money to a tape trader for a ten-volume set of the Best of Japan for the year 2000, and there were several Misawa matches included. These were from the earliest NOAH shows, and featured Misawa taking on his great opponents Kenta Kobashi and Jun Akiyama. They’re some of the best matches I’ve ever seen. Wrestling in Japan is given a much more serious, sports-like presentation than in the U.S. It’s still flamboyant and silly and circus-like in its way, but when the top stars step into the ring against each other, it’s all business. Matches are stiff and hard-fought, with hard strikes and brutal throws. It’s combat theater, and Misawa was its greatest gladiator. The ailing Japanese pro wrestling business will certainly miss him.

Read a proper news story on Misawa’s death here, courtesy of The Sun.

For shame, Seventh-day Adventists from 120 years ago, for shame

2009-06-14T05:14:16Z

The Hagerstown area is home to lots of interesting places. In Boonsboro there’s the original Washington Monument, erected by hand atop South Mountain by the people of the town to honor the father of our country. Within walking distance from where Ashley and I live in Sharpsburg in Antietam Battlefield, site of the bloodiest single day in American history. And in Oak Ridge, just off the interstate on the other side of Prime Outlets is Review and Herald Publishing, the literary arm of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

I have kind of a soft spot for the Adventists. They seem relatively reasonable and ecumenical to me. I’m hostile to all religions. I think they and the pretended gods they were supposedly created to glorify have served our species very poorly on balance, so I tend to evaluated them on a sliding scale relative to each other. The doctrines of the Seventh-day Adventists don’t make a hell of a lot of sense to me, but compared to those of, say, the Southern Baptists, they’re a bunch of fucking Voltaires.

That’s why I was a little disappointed to read the little book published by Review and Herald that was mailed to Ashley’s library this week. It’s titled The Great Controversy, and is a reprint of a book written by Ellen G. White in 1888, though her name is almost impossible to find in it. Why should the Adventists want to keep the people they evangelize from seeing the author’s name? Is it because the author is widely viewed as a mentally ill, plagiarizing, racist eccentric outside of the church she helped to found? I think it might be.

The book is viciously anti-Roman-Catholic. White never misses a chance to rhetorically fellate Martin Luther, nor one to whack the Pope in the nuts with a wiffleball bat (again, rhetorically). There are passages where she openly longs for the bloody partisanship of the Reformation and the Inquisition. But the Catholics aren’t the only fellow monotheists who get shat upon. The author takes a swipe or two at the Jews, too. And really, isn’t it about time somebody did?

The Jews had forged their own fetters [by their rejection of Jesus]; they had filled for themselves the cup of vengeance. In the utter destruction that befell them as a nation, and in all the woes that followed them in their dispersion, they were but reaping the harvest which their own hands had sown.

They had it coming, in other words.

Reading that passage reminded me of the episode of It Is Written, the Adventist TV broadcast, that I saw last week. I watched It Is Written a lot as a teenager, since it always seemed to be on whenever I woke up on Sunday morning. Back then it was hosted by Mark Finley, a genial man with a pained, plastic smile whose discomfort in front of the camera was palpable. He’s since been replaced. But just my luck, the episode I happened to turn on while flipping through the channels last week had Finley making a special return to help his successor tackle one of the big questions religion is supposed to answer for us: If God is good, why is there evil in the world?

Their answers were a little underwhelming, the sort of weak semantic apologetics that Christians invariably bust out to try and reconcile this irreconcilable conflict between the claims of their faith and objective reality (evil isn’t God’s fault, it’s a result of free will, God’s no happier about it than you are, yada yada yada). But one thing they said caught my attention. Finley and the new guy both agreed that God might sometimes use a tragedy to try and draw one of his wayward children back into his loving embrace. “For instance,” Finley said, “a man who has fallen away from God might have a child die of cancer — not caused by God, but allowed by God — in the hope that he would turn back to God in his hour of greatest need.”

Well, as long as God is only allowing children to die of cancer to teach their parents a lesson. If he were actually causing the cancer, why that would be a whole ‘nother kettle of fish, now wouldn’t it?

If anyone can explain to me why any God who would do such a thing isn’t hideous and immoral and not to be trusted, let alone worshiped, I’d love to hear it.

Oddly enough, in the very same batch of mail from which Ashley got that copy of The Great Controversy, there was a little book called The Six Ways of Atheism: New Logical Disproofs of the Existence of God by Geoffrey Berg. It’s an interesting read. When he says “logical disproofs” he means that shit. For instance, take my favorite of the six arguments he puts forward, the “God Has No Explanatory Value” argument:

1. God if he exists must be the ultimate being and provide the answer to all our ultimate questions — otherwise he is not really God.

2. Yet even supposing as a hypothesis that God exists the questions that God was supposed to finally answer still remain (though in some cases God is substituted in the question for the Universe).

3. Therefore hypothesizing God’s existence is not only unnecessarily adding an extra stage to such problems and has no explanatory value.

4. Therefore according to Logic (Occam’s Razor Law — “that entities are not to be multiplied beyond necessity) we should not postulate God’s existence and there is no adequate reason to suppose that God exists.

5. Therefore we should suppose that God does not exist.

The guy ain’t exactly Richard Dawkins, is he? I doubt it will convince many Christians to throw down their Bibles, but still a tidy bit of business.

Lazy Bastard Friday: “Crude Italian Stereotypes That Trigger Warm Childhood Remembrances” Edition

2009-06-12T17:33:12Z

I had played Super Mario Bros. on my Commodore 64 before I ever played it on a Nintendo Entertainment System. That game, I found out years later, was actually an altered version of a game called Great Giana Sisters which had been written for the C-64 in a deliberate attempt to cash in on the Mario craze. By the time I got my NES, the hotly anticipated Super Nintendo console was about to be released. I never got one of those. I was happy with my regular old Nintendo. I was never very good, but I had a Game Genie which I shamelessly used, and that helped. I had all the classic games — Kung Fu, the Double Dragon series, a few of the Castlevanias. I had all the Batman games, even though only Batman: Return of the Joker was really what you would call a great game.

And I had Mario. Like I said, I was never much of a gamer, but to this day I still think Super Mario Bros. 3 is the best video game I have ever played. Certainly it’s the most fun. The other two NES Mario games bring back great memories, too. Shit, the original Super Mario Bros. came packaged with the console! You could not avoid it; you had to play it. And what a great game it was.

Yesterday I read Nathan Rabin’s My Year of Flops entry on the misbegotten Super Mario Bros. film from 1993, and since then I’ve been swept up in a wave of warm nostalgia for those simpler days, when I would sit in the cool, unfinished basement of my childhood home, on a smelly old couch, and play Nintendo on an old TV from the 1970’s that had once belonged to my grandparents. I can still recall that smell, a mix of stale basement, crumbling insulation, and baby powder, which we used when we shot pool on the old pool table — the one we had before Pap converted that room into my bedroom when I was 15; the one with the orange felt. The walls were plain wood panelling, the tile ceiling was falling to pieces, and the floor was bare brown concrete wherever there wasn’t a rug.

It was a wonderful place to grow up. And now that I’m grown-up, it’s a place completely lost to me. But I can remember a tiny, ultimately insignificant but nonetheless comforting part of it by going back and playing those old Mario games again. Since I don’t happen to have my NES with me at this moment, I have found a few next-best-things. These are flash-based Mario games you can play online. There are hundreds of these, some very different from the original games, but the few I have embedded here are pretty good. This first one is my favorite. I found it at Mariogame.info, which has lots more if you are interested. It looks and feels like one of those remakes Nintendo has been putting out for the newer systems, like Super Mario Deluxe, with music from the original games, including Super Mario Bros. 2, which was always a dear favorite of mine, so that’s appreciated. Check out Super Mario Flash:

Then there is this one, the similarly titled Super Flash Mario Bros. from Mariobrothersonline.net. This one feels more like a port of one of the Super Nintendo games, and is also a hell of a lot of fun.

At the above website, they also have several other Mario games playable online, as well as three versions you can download and play whenever the hell you want. Mario Forever looks good to me. We should be so lucky. Enjoy.

Three birthday blurbs in lieu of something else

2009-06-11T17:48:37Z

Since I don’t feel like writing about politics or this or that nerdy pursuit today, and since I’m too lazy to work on the comics for my forthcoming Now That’s Quality Cheese entry on MacGyver, I thought I’d take a gander at the Wikipedia page for today and see what jumped out at me. Turns out there were some interesting people born on this date in history. Here’s a little about three of them.

Today would have been the 121^st birthday of Bartolomeo Vanzetti. He was born this date in 1888, in Villafalletto, Cuneo, Italy. Most of us know his name because we dimly remember hearing it in high school, always preceded by “Sacco and”. Both men came to the United States in 1908. In April 1920 they allegedly murdered two men during a robbery in Braintree, Massachusetts. In 1927 they were both executed for the crime. Today, over eighty years since their execution, whether or not Sacco and Vanzetti actually committed the crimes for which they were executed is almost beside the point. They were not only immigrants, they were members of a group of militant anarchists who had committed several acts of terrorism and advocated violence as a legitimate means of resisting an unjust government. The juries for their two trials were highly prejudiced, their lawyers apparently weren’t that great, and as a result we still have no idea whether Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty or not. Books have been written arguing both sides. One thing we do know: guilty or innocent, the justice system failed Sacco and Vanzetti. Their executions sparked worldwide protests, and fifty years later Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis officially apologized, for all the good that did.

Today is the 50^th birthday of former pro wrestler Magnum T.A., real name Terry Allen. Before a car accident ended his career in 1986, he was on his way to being a pretty big deal. He made his name working for Jim Crockett Promotions, the most nationally visible territory of the NWA in the 1980s, the home territory of Ric Flair and the Four Horsemen, Dusty Rhodes, Nikita Koloff, the Road Warriors, the Midnight Express, you get the idea. Besides being a decent wrestler, he was also good buddies with Dusty Rhodes, who booked the territory. Were it not for the car accident, Magnum would have been one of the brightest stars in the 1980s wrestling boom. As it happened, he still had a pretty great career. His feuds with Nikita Koloff and Ric Flair are well regarded today, and his “I Quit” steel cage match with Tully Blanchard at Starrcade ‘85 is as brutal a bloodbath as you’d ever want to watch. It ends with Magnum busting apart a wooden chair and spiking one of the broken legs into Tully’s bleeding forehead, while Tully shrieks in agony at the top of his lungs. Pretty sadistic, and enough to make even the most jaded CZW mark turn his head.

Finally, today’s also the 50^th birthday of Hugh Laurie, the best actor on television. Why he has not been buried in Emmys for his lead role in House these last five years I do not know. Before starring as Dr. House, he was writing and acting in British comedy alongside such luminaries as Rowan Atkinson, Robbie Coltrane, and his old buddy from Cambridge, Stephen Fry. And, as all of us who saw his episode of Inside the Actors Studio know, he plays a mean piano and ain’t such a bad singer, either. And he was this close (you should see my fingers, they’re, like, almost touching) to playing Perry White in Superman Returns. He had to bow out because of his shooting schedule on House, which is too bad, ‘cause he’d make an awesome Mr. White (though Frank Langella did just fine, thank you very much). Is there anything about Hugh Laurie not to like? Yes; he’s a motorcycle enthusiast. But shit, nobody’s perfect.

There were also two deaths on this date that caught my attention. The first is John Wayne, one of the great stars in the history of cinema (and generally underrated as an actor, I think), who died thirty years ago today. Roger Ebert wrote a nice remembrance of the Duke a few days ago on his blog. You should give it a read.

The second is DeForest Kelley, the best actor in the cast of the original Star Trek. He died ten years ago today. Before landing the role of Dr. Leonard McCoy, Kelley worked steadily on TV and in the movies, including as an Earp brother in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral. Of the members of the original Trek cast, he seems to have been the most beloved by his colleagues. I think he would have liked Karl Urban’s take on Dr. McCoy in this year’s Star Trek film. Urban’s performance was the most obvious homage to his predecessor, and so deft that at times it was like having DeForest Kelley with us again. No wonder I liked the movie so much.