It's FLUFFY TIME
Feb 3rd, 2012 @ 11:08 am
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All the latest news and trends in the exciting world of ham.
Dec 7th, 2011 @ 12:05 am
Jesus: All About the Benjamin$?
Today CNN ran an opinion piece by Tony Perkins, President of Family Research Council, in which he posited that Jesus Christ — aka the Son of God, aka He Who Died for Our Sins — was a fan of free market capitalism. He further posited that were he alive today, Jesus would be ideologically opposed to those dirty Occupy Wall Street hippies (despite an obvious similarity in appearance). The piece was free of sarcasm and post-modern irony. It was an earnest attempt — albeit one lacking any sort of cleverness or insight — to twist the words of Christianity’s namesake deity into meaning the exact opposite of what they meant when Jesus said them.
That Tony Perkins is a Christian is not up for debate: He, inarguably, is not. He does not practice the religion of Christianity, in that he does not adhere to its tenets. Which would be perfectly fine were he not the president of a “Christian” organization. Indeed, many a person of my acquaintance is neither Christian nor any other particular religion. However even the most diehard atheists in my social circle are respectful enough that they would not bastardize Christianity’s dogmata to serve their own economic agendas. Even for heathens, this is beyond the pale.
This is not to say that Tony Perkins doesn’t identify himself as Christian. I’m sure if you asked him at a party, he’d tell you in no uncertain terms that he’s down with JC. But the fact of the matter is that JC is not down with him. In the religion of Christianity there is no lower anathema than the False Prophet. Jesus himself (according to Matthew 7:15) took to the Mount to warn his followers: “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.” Tony Perkins clearly hoped that Christian readers would be stupid enough to believe that everything they’d learned about Christianity, even the words of Christ himself, were in fact exactly their opposite. It would take no less hubris to assume he could convince readers that down was up and day was night.
Luckily on this subject we KNOW where Jesus stood. Jesus didn’t raid an abortion clinic in his time on earth, even though abortion had been around since as far back as 1550 BC; but he did throw money changers out of the temple. He also had nothing to say concerning homosexuality, even though homosexuality had been around as long as humanity itself; but he did feed the hungry. Clearly these topics (abortion, homosexuality) were not the high priorities for Jesus that they are for many contemporary Christians: He didn’t deign to speak about them, not once, not ever. However Jesus did have a great deal to say regarding the “free market” style avarice and greed (see also: collusion, corruption, exploitation, price-fixing, monopolization, consolidation of wealth) that the Occupiers are currently protesting against:
“Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” (Luke 12:15)
“But woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full.” (Luke 6:24)
“No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and riches.” (Luke 16:13)
“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24)
He was also quite concise about helping the poor:
“If you have two coats,” he replied, “give one to the poor. If you have extra food, give it away to those who are hungry.” (Luke 3:11)
“Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.” (Matthew 22:39)
“If you wish to be complete, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you shall have treasure in heaven.” (Matthew 19:20)
Indeed, it would be impossible to be more concise. Jesus left literally no room for confusion regarding this issue, and yet confusing the issue is precisely what Tony Perkins is trying to do.
As for why, we must understand Tony Perkins and the group for which Tony Perkins speaks. Family Research Council is a hate group; not unlike the KKK, but with slightly less focus. This distinction was not given to FRC merely by me, but also by the Southern Poverty Law Center — a noted watchdog of hate groups, militias and extremist organizations.
It is also a 501(c)(4) lobbying PAC. FRC has lobbied against LGBT rights, reproductive choice, embryonic stem-cell research, global warming — and pornography. Though the latter is clearly the most odious (you’ll take my porn out of my lube-smeared dead hands), the penultimate talking point is the biggest head-scratcher: Why would an organization claiming to represent “Christian morality” give a hoot one way or the other about global warming? It’s not a religious issue, it’s not a moral issue… but it is, for some at least (e.g. petrol and chemical corporations), an economic issue.
And that should tell you everything you need to know about Tony Perkins and FRC. Their intent is not to represent Christians at all, but to “bundle” typically Christian social issues with those issues representing the interests of deep-pocketed big business. Their intent, I’d imagine, being to blur the line between religion and politics until Christians think they are one in the same. If you’re against abortion, you should be in favor of laissez faire economics. If you want to protect the sanctity of marriage then you better be against environmental regulations, too. False prophet, indeed.
Luckily, American Christians aren’t so stupid. Because Americans aren’t so stupid. We may disagree about a great many things (see: any internet message board), but we didn’t become the First Nation of the Free World (or rank in the top five anyway) by allowing ourselves to be easily duped.
Sadly, the same apparently does not apply to CNN’s editors. For the life of me I can’t understand why this offensive-to-nearly-everyone-on-earth op-ed piece (don’t believe me, read the comments) ran on CNN.com at all — never mind on the front page, above the fold no less. The New York Times doesn’t give the Grand Wizard of the KKK a pulpit. The Wall Street Journal doesn’t give Ayman al-Zawahiri a Dear Abby style advice column. Nor should CNN allow an acknowledged hate monger to push his big-business-pandering conservative agenda under the guise of a “faith” column. It is offensive to both believers and non-believers alike.
Oct 14th, 2011 @ 1:34 pm
Greasy Hotdogs and Chocolate Starfish: Why Fred Durst Is The Backwards Ballcap Bedecked Beast Of The Tele-pocalypse
So this happened:
Fred Durst Signs Deal With CBS & CBS Studios, Will Star In Comedy Project
Per Deadline, the project “centers around a rock legend (emphasis mine) looking for balance between his high profile lifestyle and trying to raise a family.”
CBS, a broadcast network ON TELEVISION, has signed the loathed singer of a band that was briefly popular but hasn’t been relevant for over decade to a pilot deal. Now in a way, this news is beyond mockery. What angle is there that’s funnier than “Fred Durst signs a deal with CBS to star in comedy project?” I don’t think even a Richard Pryor/Bill Hicks braintrust could spin this into anything funnier than the actual fact itself. But let’s break down the conceits contained therein.
Fred Durst is a “rock legend” — CBS has a lot of faith in Fred Durst’s acting abilities if they think he’s got the chops to pull off a stretch like this. It’s like Charlize Theron playing an ugly chick. I’d assumed he’d spent the last decade bouncing between Bally Fitnesses, strip bars with lunch buffets, and the happy hour at family dining restaurants like most butt rock wash-ups. But apparently Fred Durst spent his down time at actor’s workshops, the Strasberg Institute and doing summer stock theater. Good for him!
Fred Durst has a “high profile” lifestyle — Until this story came out, did ANYONE know what Fred Durst had been up to for the last ten years? Other than the 5 or 6 Florida strippers and flame-skull-shirt-wearing cover band musicians who are still MySpace friends with him?
There are still rock stars with high profile lifestyles — Perhaps CBS hasn’t yet caught wind of the fact that we don’t have rock stars anymore? Oh sure, there are dinosaurs (Springsteen, U2) big enough to milk their back catalogs indefinitely, and there are bubblegum pop phenoms (Bieber, Gaga) culturally relevant enough to get the occasional blurb in Us Weekly, but the “rock star” concept is as anachronistic as fax machines and dial-up modems. Some still exist, but huh?
Understand: This was a decision that someone made. Someone who gets paid a lot more than me said yes, this is a good idea. And it wasn’t even their idea! Someone else came up with the idea, told it to an agent who agreed it was a good idea, who brought it to a studio exec who thought hmm this is a good idea, so they brought it to the network exec who said fuck yeah is this a good idea, until the press got wind of it and literally EVERYONE ELSE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD said OH MY GOD THIS IS A HORRIBLE IDEA.
But more than being funny — and oh, it is funny— this story is truly, truly sad. Because it’s the tell-tale cancer cough of a medium that’s been vital for almost a century.
Network TV is dying.
Which is ironic, because in many ways this is the golden age of television. The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, The Wire… these are programs ON TELEVISION that will hold their own with any artwork, in any medium, from any era. And for you “I don’t even own a TV” people — shut up. Seriously. Shut the fuck up. Saying you don’t watch television is the exact same thing as saying you don’t read books, or watch films, or listen to music. I’m not saying you have to watch TV. By all means, do what you like. But don’t act like this makes you intellectually superior to those of us who do watch television, because in fact it does the exact opposite. For the most part, we do not grow by limiting our experiences, but rather by expanding them. Now I’m not saying you have to shoot heroin into your cock or murder a hobo in cold blood just to experience personal/intellectual growth, but if you are not watching Breaking Bad strictly because you have a bias against its delivery medium, then you’re really no better than one of those OCD weirdos who doesn’t eat gluten (yeah, I realize there’s a handful of people out there with actual gluten allergies, but you know what I mean).
Oh, and if you’re watching Breaking Bad off bit torrent on your laptop? You’re still watching television, dummy. Grow the fuck up.
The truth is, there’s a lot of great television out there. It’s just not on network TV. Because network TV clings to an archaic business model. Network TV assumes people still watch television the same way our grandparents did — passively, on the couch, eating a TV dinner. Shit, televisions didn’t even have remote controls back then! You had to physically get off your ass if you wanted to change the channel, so most people didn’t.
Circa now, people watch what they want, when they want. They don’t watch commercials. They don’t watch reruns. They don’t sit through a show they hate just because the one they like is on right after. The only exception to this rule — and the only reason network TV is still around — is sports. Sports demands to be watched live, so we’ll sit through a million bad beer ads and Geico commercials. But the bigger the cable networks get, the more we’ll see the big sporting events move to sports-specific networks like ESPN. Or even Pay Per View. Do you have any idea how much fucking money a Superbowl PPV would make? Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that the idea of Fox getting the Superbowl was crazy.
In a lot of ways, the traditional TV networks are in the same place that record labels were a few years ago. And yeah, record labels are still around, but barely, and they won’t be for long. What screwed the record industry’s pooch was equal dollops of inflexibility, arrogance and good old fashioned stupidity. By the time they realized they were in the shit, it was already neck deep. So what, in their state of panic, did the record labels do? Did they adapt? Did they innovate? Did they fire the old guard and recruit forward thinkers from outside their industry? HELL NO! They focused all their energy and resources on lowest common denominator SHIT. Stuff they thought couldn’t fail, because how the fuck can a cute 16-year-old singing over vamps produced by established hit-makers and by the way SHE ISN’T EVEN ACTUALLY SINGING fail? And that actually worked, for about 3 years. Until people realized, hey, this really awful shit is as good as it’s ever going to be. So they found distractions elsewhere.
How did this happen?
It happened because the world is being run by bottle service douchebags.
People of means who grew up with means, who went to the right prep schools and the right colleges and the right grad schools and got the right jobs right away. People who’ve never had to challenge themselves. People who’ve never had to be creative. People who’ve never had to make a hard decision in their entire blessed lives. These are the same people who caused the economic collapse. The same people who turned our downtowns into generic walking malls full of Gaps and Starbucks. The same people who convinced you that your mini-mansion in the burbs would appreciate in value instead of being practically worthless before you had to change your first light bulb. These are the same people who made Paris Hilton a thing. The same people who pay $1000 for a bottle of Grey Goose so they can sit at a table in a club’s VIP section, looking down their noses at all the little people who are standing, talking, living. They are the people who made cocaine popular again.
And they are fucking assholes.
Jul 28th, 2011 @ 12:31 pm
Why Battleship is the most horrible thing ever
Yesterday Universal debuted the trailer for their upcoming tentpole Battleship to much fanfare. “Fanfare” here used to mean almost unanimous ridicule from every single human on The Internet (I understand this is not the dictionary definition of the word — I was being sarcastic, okay?).
The reason for the ridicule becomes Operating Thetan Level 7 clear upon viewing the trailer, which you will do after clicking play on the embedded video below:
Battleship Trailer by teasertrailer
It is quite obviously the most horrible trailer ever made.
In the case that you didn’t have the guts to watch past the Universal logo, let me break it down for you: After a montage of ships and airplanes and surfers and fucking rainbows – over a wildly malapropos blues rock ditty by The Black Keys (whose music we’ve never heard in any other trailer, movie or TV show ever) – we see a young, studly naval officer on a beach getting some hot woman-on-top action from Generic Orange County Blonde #4. The blonde, as it turns out, is not only stud-muffin’s fiancée but also the daughter of his boss, here played by Liam Neeson (who is quickly becoming our generation’s Michael Caine (in that he’ll cheapen his prodigious talents by appearing in any piece of shit so long as there’s craft service and a paycheck)). After some bla-bla-bla establishing tension between the officer and his arm candy’s old man we find ourselves in the ocean, on Day 1 of what some subtitles inform us is an “International Naval Drill” (because, you know, that’s a thing). This is where the real bullshit happens. A giant fucking whatever covered in glyphs appears in the ocean – it’s either the Generon Cube or the Borg, we can’t tell which exactly. So as logic would dictate, the Navy sends Rihanna out on a fucking raft with a M-60 and squad of soon-to-be-deceased red shirts to sort things out. Which they don’t manage to do, though they do inspire the Borg/Generon cube to jizz out a force shield, and before we know it a Decepticon leaps out of the ocean and starts firing… fucking… battleship pegs. Because, you know, the movie’s called Battleship. Like the board game, get it?
But this movie has nothing to do with the board game. How could it — unless the dialog was comprised entirely of numbers between 1 and 10 and letters between A and J? However that’s not what makes the trailer horrible. What makes it horrible is that is serves as the studio’s bold (and probably correct) declaration that audiences don’t need anything in the way of substance, story, originality or even FUN anymore. They just need CGI bullshit and fucking EXPLOSIONS.
It is that ultimate, capitalized exclusion in the second to last sentence above that’s most troublesome, i.e. FUN. Say what you will about Michael Bay – and yeah, I realize he bears a lot of the blame for this particular variety of bullshit – he at least attempts to infuse a bit of the fun stuff in his mind-numbing explosion-and-CGI cinematic abortions. In generic family dining restaurant terms, Michael Bay’s Tranformers franchise is like Chili’s; a mouthful of smoky jalapeno-smeared sensory overload which we know is very, very bad for us in every sense — physically, spiritually — yet for reasons unknown still manages to be occasionally enjoyable as it’s forced down our gullets. Battleship, meanwhile, is Applebee’s. Nothing but shit. Horrible, horrible shit.
In other words, Universal thinks you are a fucking mouth-breathing moron. And you probably are. Because you’re probably going to see this piece of shit. Just like I’m probably going to see this piece of shit. Even though we both know that it’s going to be jaw-fucking-droppingly awful. Because, well… EXPLOSION… am I right? Like a binge-eating fattie at the Applebee’s bar during happy hour, we can’t stop stuffing our faces with cheese-and-bacon covered shit. We’ll keep stuffing ourselves until we burst.
@ 1:02 am
Tonight We Riot emphasis on the “e”
Tonight there was a riot in Hollywood. It was not due to public outrage over double digit unemployment, our country’s three wars (including the very real class war being waged by the rich against the unwitting poor) or the impending collapse of our economy due to evil old men in Washington waving their shriveled dicks at one another like rival fraternities during Greek Week. It was due to a rave.
Or rather, a movie about a rave, and a DJ who was supposed to “perform,” but didn’t. Or something. On the one hand it’s good to know that America’s youth aren’t yet so Infinite Jest-numb that they aren’t able to get their American Apparel onesies in a twist over anything at all. But on the other hand it’s unfortunate that it had to be a DJ to get them off their asses and hurling Molotovs. By the way, as the quotes around the word “perform” in the sentence at the beginning of the paragraph are meant to suggest, I use the term loosely. To say that a DJ performs suggests that he or she has some sort of talent or skill, which they do not. Well, at least not in the realm of DJing, which when used as a verb as it was thusly means only one thing, and that is the playing of records (or CDs, or as is more and more the case, digital files). They press PLAY. That’s it. That’s the sum of the job description. To suggest that this is a talent is to suggest that using a cable remote is a talent, or likewise successfully pressing the “start” button on a microwave. Please, let us never suggest that these are talents.
But tonight a thousand-odd twenty-somethings hit Hollywood Blvd. en masse, fought police, set fire to squad cars and caused all manner of general mayhem. Mayhem that resulted, among other things, in my sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic for twenty minutes in order to drive a distance of about thirty feet. All over someone who is the famous version of a lonely cat lady heating up a Lean Cuisine to eat while watching The Bachelorette. The youth of America circa 45 years ago behaved similarly, only it was due to social injustice and war. Oh they loved their music too – see Woodstock – but their music contained, you know, words and stuff. Words which themselves contained meaning. It’s still good to know that the youth of today are capable of getting riled up over SOMETHING. It’s just too bad that something was nothing.
May 24th, 2010 @ 12:20 am
On The Other Side of the Rainbow
I suppose the details of heavy metal’s Initial Singularity are still under dispute. Some metal historians believe Steppenwolf spake the genre into existence with the line “heavy metal thunder” from their 1968 biker anthem “Born to be Wild.” Others point to the sludgy breakdown at the 2:05 mark of Blue Cheer’s take on “Summertime Blues,” as found on the band’s debut Vincebus Eruptum, as the tell-tale placental drippings of the genre’s birth. Still others, a more discerning lot, maintain that it was not until 1969 when Led Zeppelin’s self-titled record was released — which contained “Communication Breakdown,” a canticle of banshee wails atop Jimmy Page’s genre-epitomizing “chug-chug-chug” guitar riff — that the demon Heavy Metal first placed its cloven hooves upon our earthly soil.
Blood has been spilled, bones shattered and broken, over what is a purely academic and ultimately irrelevant argument (heavy metal historians tend to settle disputes in the same manner as Vikings of old). For whatever the alpha catalyst might have been, what is true as fucking gravity is that heavy metal’s BIG BANG occurred in 1970 when a slab of vinyl was unleashed upon the general listenership so Satanic as to blacken their ears forevermore. I refer of course to Black Sabbath’s self-titled entrée. Not since the druidic sacrificial chants had musics been so terrifying.
I don’t think anyone would argue that Black Sabbath were NOT the true architects of heavy metal, outside of some drunken contrarian looking for a punch in the face. Yet by the time the band had come upon this hesher’s radar, when I was but a grade school neophyte sporting a Toughskins jean jacket and a starter mullet that barely breached the collar of my Garanimals shirt, Black Sabbath’s creative vessel had already drifted into the murky waters of Technical Ecstasy and Never Say Die. Now contrary to popular opinion, these weren’t entirely awful albums. Both contained gems among the dreck. The problem was that they weren’t entirely Black Sabbath albums. Major keys, synthesizers, Bill Ward’s vocal stylings, tambourines (God, I hate tambourines)… chemical experimentation led to musical experimentation, and not the good Sergeant Peppery kind; more the Brian Wilson smeared in feces banging on lawn furniture kind. But the larger problem for Black Sabbath was that their then singer, Ozzy Osbourne, had already turned into the incoherent shambling mess of humanity currently used as a punch line in mobile phone commercials. Outside of the most puritanical Sabbath purists I doubt anyone blames Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler for giving Ozzy the boot. Hell, if they hadn’t, we’d probably only know Randy Rhoads as the dude from Quiet Riot (meaning not at all), and to say something “Black Sabbathed” would be the slightly less hackneyed way of saying it had “jumped the shark.” Instead, care of 1980’s masterpiece Heaven and Hell, Black Sabbath was reborn like a three-headed fire-breathing phoenix sent by Satan to scorch the earth and violate its virgins with razor-sharp talons. And there, riding atop my clumsy-metaphorical hell-bird, was the man responsible for it all.
A man named Ronnie James Dio. And with all due respect to Ozzy, Dio was MY Sabbath frontman. His voice was like the war-shriek of some Middle Earthen battle eagle: Clear, powerful, terrifying and always true. Unlike Ozzy, who sang of black-clad finger-pointing evil from the perspective of its victim, Dio sang from the perspective of its harbinger. Ozzy was down in the muck and was gonna drag us down with him. Dio meanwhile was here to tell us that evil’s a-coming and it’s going to fuck us in the ass – thus his many exclamations of “look out!” And while I’ll happily acknowledge that Black Sabbath’s first four albums are essential, genre-defining documents of heavy metal, I will posit that the band’s most purely metallic album is Heaven and Hell. Heresy? Fuck that. Minus the fuzzed-out jam band digressions and Ozzy’s marble-mouthed meanderings, Black Sabbath 2.0 reduced heavy metal to its essence… then from that essence forged a broadsword which they whet on the bones of raped and ravaged nuns.
Granted not all Sabbath fans share my opinion. In fact many don’t consider the band’s Dio era as Black Sabbath at all. Admittedly Heaven and Hell, as well as the 1981 follow-up Mob Rules, are closer stylistic kin to Ronnie James Dio’s solo catalog than to the Black Sabbath records which came before and after. But my neophyte hasher self didn’t know any better. This was MY Black Sabbath, and it was the most metal thing that metal could be.
Barring Alzheimer’s, stroke or head injury, I won’t forget the moment I first heard of Dio’s passing. It was in many ways my personal 9/11. Sure, I knew that Dio’s death was a technical possibility given that he’d been battling stomach cancer for several months. But I’d naively assumed Dio was too powerful to be taken by such a positively human affliction. Though short in stature, Dio’s presence was larger than life. I’d never really considered him a mortal. In fact I didn’t consider him to be human at all. Humanoid yes, but surely descended from some ancient race of elf lords, not the East Coast Italian-Americans who’d given him his birth-name. But I don’t think I fully appreciated what Dio meant to me until his death. While I was never hesitant to name Dio among my top 5 favorite vocalists of all time, and for several years had “Holy Diver” as the ringtone on my mobile phone much to the annoyance of every non-metal fan in my acquaintance, there’d always been an air of post-modern quasi-ironic detachment to my Dio love. I was fully aware that the sword-and-sorcery imagery omnipresent in Dio’s lyrics — when taken at their most superficial level — was seen by some as slightly… well… cheesy. And I lived in Los Angeles; earnest love of fantasy was not hip. Fuck, earnest love of ANYTHING was not hip. So while I was always vocal about my Dio fandom, I never went out of my way to show my hand when the glib nudge-wink was assumed. If Ronnie James Dio was the Christ – and I’m honestly not ruling that out – I was his thrice-denying Peter.
But now that he’s gone, there’s no denying the hole he left in my heart. I’ve been depressed. Drinking too much. Wondering if all this bullshit’s really worth it. And I truly, truly miss him. Not just because he had helped shape my worldview when I was but a neophyte hasher in a Toughskins jean jacket – but because he was a positive force in the world. And this world needs all the positivity it can get.
