Even when the mind is completely stultified by boredom it can become creative by producing the very objectification of that boredom and projecting it onto the physical world (pic link). In the case below we have nothing less than bored braincells that have, by what must have been magnetic osmosis, geometrically pooled on the sidewalk, mingling into the harsh physical world to form a deflected continuum.
An example of a rare human activity that cannot be duplicated and surpassed by a chimp.
Of course the reference is to so-called Islamic honor killings. ” Throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, young Muslim women are being targeted for violence. Lest it be thought hate crimes are to blame, it is, in fact, their own relatives who are the perpetrators. So-called honor killings, whereby a Muslim male family member, typically the father, murders his daughter in order to defend the family’s honor, is a growing problem.” read more of this article by Cinnamon Stillwell (great name) in SF Gate.
Some non-cynical news about the book industry: “When Mr. Jobs was asked two weeks ago at the Macworld Expo what he thought of the Kindle, he heaped scorn on the book industry. ‘It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is; the fact is that people don’t read anymore,’ he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.” To Mr. Jobs, this statistic dooms everyone in the book business to inevitable failure. Only the business is not as ghostly as he suggests. In 2008, book publishing will bring in about $15 billion in revenue in the United States, according to the Book Industry Study Group, a trade association.” Read rest of article in the NY Times.
I’ve never been a big fan of Sylvester Stallone’s movies. I liked First Blood, the first of the Rambo movies, but after that is was strictly down hill, especially with the third Rambo, the one which had him in Afghanistan lending a killing hand to the so-called mujahideen against the Soviets (big mistake). So against my better judgment I went to see Rambo IV last night. Actually I had been planning to see Meet the Spartans, which I thought would be on the zaniness level of Airplane or Walk Hard (I understand it isn’t very funny at all) but instead I opted for the new Rambo.
Rambo IV: Love it or leave it.
Rambo must save a group of well-meaning Christian missionaries (very politically incorrect in this day and age) who were bringing in medicine and medical help and who are now in the hands of brutal Burmese troops. Seems the missionaries are in the wrong village at the wrong time. They’re placed in bamboo cages; one of them is strung up in a pig’s pen where the beasts quite graphically gnaw the flesh off his body. The troops make great sport of torturing and killing, especially villagers they feel are not loyal to the government. It’s not pretty. Flies hover and buzz around bloated and decaying corpses. Headless bodies are placed in graves. Body parts are strewn about. Some of the death footage is real, taken from the recent crackdown on thousands of Buddhist monks and their sympathizers.
As usual Rambo, now in league with a handful of mercenaries hired by the church group trying to get its missionaries back, doesn’t talk much (he mostly says what he has to say with his eyes and muscle flexing). Maybe that’s because he’s been living in relative seclusion in Thailand for “a long time”, eking out a living catching deadly snakes for snake charmers in tourist shows, at least that’s what he’s doing as the movie starts. Rambo is initially hired to bring the missionaries to a clandestine drop off destination up river in evil Burma. His obligation to the group is supposed to end there. It doesn’t. He’s especially touched by one of the missionaries, a very gentle and beautiful woman who braves brutality and risks her life to help stricken villagers. Evidently, down deep, her kindnesses renew Rambo’s own faith.
There’s been some controversy about Stallone’s appearance, that perhaps he had been using steroids for his role in this movie. The man’s bigger than the Incredible Hulk’s bigger hulkier brother (if he ever leaves movies he’d make a great baseball player). I mean this guy rips through the bad guys like an eighteen wheeler on PCP.
I you’re looking for a non-pretentious, politically incorrect movie with climaxing layers of action, all with pulsating surround sound (e.g., Rambo unleashing a massive explosion that takes out half the jungle or pumping an anti-aircraft gun with the ease of use of a cap pistol) than get a ticket.
Here’s just a few of the many syndromes:
Stockholm Syndrome
Lima Syndrome
Diogenes Syndrome (a personal favorite)
Paris Syndrome
Stendhal Syndrome
Jerusalem Syndrome
Capgras Delusion syndrome
Fregoli Delusion syndrome
Cotard Delusion Syndrome
Reduplicative Paramnesia Syndrome
“My concept of death for a long time was to come down that mountain road at 120 and just keep going straight right there, burst out through the barrier and hang out above all that . . . and there I’d be, sitting in the front seat, stark naked, with a case of whiskey next to me and a case of dynamite in the trunk . . . honking the horn, and the lights on, and just sit there in space for an instant, a human bomb, and fall down into that mess of steel mills. It’d be a tremendous goddam explosion. No pain. No one would get hurt. I’m pretty sure, unless they’ve changed the highway, that launching place is still there. As soon as I get home, I ought to take the drive just to check it out.” Hunter Thompson –Quoted in St. Petersburg Times, February 22, 2005 I’ve read a lot of stuff by Thompson but this is the first time I’ve come across this particular quote. I guess he didn’t want to go out in his sleep. At any rate, he shot himself in the head a couple of years back at the not so old age of 67. But then it started–the conspiracy theory. When Prison Planet got a hold of this back in ’05 Alex Jones wrote: “Hunter telephoned me on Feb. 19, the night before his death. He sounded scared. It wasn’t always easy to understand what he said, particularly over the phone, he mumbled, yet when there was something he really wanted you to understand, you did. He’d been working on a story about the World Trade Center attacks and had stumbled across what he felt was hard evidence showing the towers had been brought down not by the airplanes that flew into them but by explosive charges set off in their foundations. Now he thought someone was out to stop him publishing it: ‘They’re gonna make it look like suicide,’ he said. ‘I know how these bastards think . . .’ ” Maybe Hunter should’ve followed his first instinct and went off through the barrier. It wouldn’ve been a lot cleaner…Hey I know this is old stuff but it’s new to me.
Yes, first it was blackploitation and then chickploitation; but now in this age of equality -ploitation syndrome has been forced to move on to the literary field–now there is classicauthorploitation. To wit–
Click to enlarge
This movie made me almost throw up. Not from the content but from a wussy middle ear (as a kid I once vomited for a good hour after a ride on a merry-go-round at a carnival) deluged by visual cacophony—a constant throughout this camcorder-held POV movie.
Looks like I’m not the only vertigo victim of this movie (read comments here)
A big battering fireball-shooting monster (one a lot creepier than Godzilla) is loose in Manhattan. The closest we come to understand how it got there is when one of the fleeing characters mentions most unauthoritatively that it could be from a deep ocean crevice. But I didn’t care where the hell it came from. I only hoped it would soon stomp on the person holding the camera (unfortunately you have to wait for the end of the movie for that to happen). Nausea surged as the camera perspective violently shifted every second from one element of strung-along mayhem to another. Running. Dodging. Up. Down, Sideways. Now I know how Jimmy Stewart felt as he climbed those stairs in Vertigo. People seated to the right of me, to the left of me. I couldn’t have made a gracious exit to the rest room; no, if I had to unleash it would be better to do it down the inside of my coat. I wasn’t looking forward to it but at least I wouldn’t go through the indignity of hurling partially digested buttery popcorn onto someone’s lap.
Jittery camera effect is a good way to instill immediacy, to instill a non-structured, deliberalty confusing running account of action. Used sparingly and with special lighting effect it worked superbly in 28 Weeks Later. In its rawer form, it’s a technique often used in disaster sequences to give a jagged you-are-there context to a frightful predicament in progress (9/11 type footage comes to mind). The only other movie I know of off-hand that used the “camcorder POV technique” throughout was The Blair Witch Project.
What is jittery exactly? Take your pick: edgy, tense, anxious, ill at ease, in a state of nerves, in a state of agitation, fretful, uneasy, restless, fidgety, worked up, keyed up, overwrought, wrought up, strung out, jumpy, on tenterhooks, on pins and needles, with one’s stomach in knots (yeap), worried, apprehensive, strained, stressed; shaky, shaking, trembling, quivering (yeap, that was my stomach).
The problem is when a novelty technique—and that’s all it is– becomes the whole movie that whole movie becomes a novelty. In other words, the whole of it becomes something that should’ve been five minutes–not eighty. It’s as if you’re waiting for the real movie to finally begin, for the novelty shots to cease, so you can get your feet back down on the ground and get on with the real story.
Is there a plot to this movie? Not really. Not in the classic sense anyway. The crux of it is that during a kind of Soho loft party a group of young people are sipping cocktails and dancing—and blathering. And blathering. Someone has been designated to shoot the proceedings with a camcorder. Suddenly, after about fifteen minutes of image sparring and inane dialog (like the kind that drained blood from my brain during Death Proof), which seems like at least half the movie at this point, there are fiery explosions. Finally. In between dry heaves (which had started right from the beginning) I’m praying for just such destruction. Maybe one of them would blow up the camcorder (along with the annoying person holding it) and the movie will end early. At first we have no idea what’s causing these fireballs: Then we realize, through fleeting glimpses, that there’s a VBM (Very Big Monster) loose in the city. There’s a lot of little monsters loose too but they seem to be easily clubbed to death. As our group of partygoers make a run for it, trying to get out of Manhattan they are intermittently assisted by groups of soldiers, who have so far been battling this monster to little effect. Buildings are going down at an alarming rate. (Trying to calm my bubbling stomach, I’m visualizing pleasant alternative non-jittery images–of how Manhattan could now be finally rebuilt to a great new standard of beauty–a new park here, a new one there, wider streets with pedestrian bridges). The head of the Lady Liberty lands in the middle of the street. Military helicopters are whirling by. Jets careen trough the night air at building top level, dropping bombs. We see this in quick bursts. I’m not even looking at the screen
anymore except maybe for five or six seconds at a time. I look up to see our partygoers descend into the subway. I look up again and see them leave the subway. they’re running. They are in a helicopter; it’s crashing, spinning violently. The camcorder is spinning violently. Top, bottom, sideways. The surround sound gets deafening. Even staring at my shoes doesn’t help my stomach. My inner ear is flashing a red Danger light. I’m trapped in a video game being manipulated by sadistic twelve-year olds.
Thank God after about an hour and a half the monster finally won and put a stop to my suffering.
Partying with the Cloverfield cast.
Cloverfield = Motion Sickness.
Cloverfield Warning: Take your motion sickness pills.
Is this the real life Cloverfield monster?
Oklahoma City hit with Cloverfield nausea
Cloverfield reaction in still shots
When you feel like the woman below there’s only one book that can clinch it for you; it’s your heavy-hitter volume visceral getttin’ seductive book of books –presenting…drumroll…. How
to be a Super Hot Woman: 339 Tips to Make Every Man Fall in Love with You and Every Woman Envy You. Yeowwwwww! That’ll do it. Listen, girlfriend show that boyfriend who’s boss. Express your constitutional right to feel beautiful and make that bastard suffer the consequences of questioning your gender superiority. When in doubt manipulate.
From Amazon.com user reviews. A real life account of a girlfriend who wasn’t going to take it anymore from her damn boyfriend and needed a damn good excuse to dress like Britney Spears (sans panties?) to attract other damn boyfriends and so bought this book…Yeowwwwwwwwww….“I have had a very cruel boyfriend. Nothing I ever did was good enough for him. Nothing I ever did could ever seem to please him. And all I did was giving him my heart because I loved him so much.But he tried to keep me down on my knees, he always was trying to make me feel small. My self-confidence was lost. I have always been a beautiful girl but started to feel that I am not. He had control over me. When I was with him I never felt pretty enough, never felt sexy enough and never felt good enough. Not until I found this awsome book that changed completely my life. This book has helped me to escape from this black hole that he made for me. It helped me to break forever with this person. It also helped me to got myself back up on my feet and open my eyes. I would never let anymore someone to take my right to feel beautiful. Now I stand with my head held high and I feel beautiful and sexy. And it’s all because this book helped me realize that. Because my ex tried to make me feel worthless but now I know I am not. My worth is priceless and I got back my pride. I am incredibly thankful to the authors who have written such an amazing book that I am sure will help other women too. Thank you so much for helping me taking back my life!”
Looks like this is what it’s come to–taking their cue from comic books, average citizens (of the genus Humanus baboonus) are donning masks and costumes to fight crime. His breath “fogs the winter air as he surveys the frozen Minneapolis skyline, searching for signs of trouble. His long duster flaps in the breeze as his eyes flick behind reflective sunglasses; a wide-brim hat and green iridescent mask shroud his identity from those who might wish him harm…”. That’s the superhero Emerald Enforcer. According to the article he uses “smoke grenades, pepper spray, a slingshot, and a pair of six-inch fighting sticks tucked into sturdy leather boots. Leather guards protect [his] arms; his signature weapon, an Argentinean cattle-snare called bolos, hangs from a belt-holster.” There are supposedly up to two hundred such superheroes in America. Read more
They’re out there, guarding you 24/7; they are the brave street superheroes
See slide show of real life superheroes
Incidental intelligence question: Why do so many superheroes insist on wearing their underwear on the outside of their costume?
UPDATE: here’s another link, describing real life homeless superheroes.
UPDATE: from Rolling Stone Magazine
Hey here’s a Dragnet episode (from the late sixties) on the this very subject–right HERE.
Here’s an update, this one from Ohio:
Update (7/10/09): Superman and Batman battle law enforcement in NYC..
That seems to be the case, at least judging from this NY Times article (pssst…it has to do with our youth-obsessed culture).
“I recently heard about a severe case from a patient whose husband of nearly 30 years abruptly told her that he ‘felt stalled and not self-actualized’ and began his search for self-knowledge in the arms of another woman. It was not that her husband no longer loved her, she said he told her; he just did not find the relationship exciting anymore. ‘Maybe it’s a midlife crisis,’ she said, then added derisively, ‘Whatever that is.’ Outraged and curious, she followed him one afternoon and was shocked to discover that her husband’s girlfriend was essentially a younger clone of herself, right down to her haircut and her taste in clothes.” Read more.
Rejoice, for another Devil hand receives its just reward. “A man who believed he bore the biblical “mark of the beast” used a circular saw to cut off one hand, then he cooked it in the microwave and called 911…” (I have this curious question , though. When he was microwaving his severed hand did he still “feel” the heat?)
I’ve always had a sneaking suspicion that the inmates of our 51st state had a strange collective psyche. This seems to prove it. You can see these videos and read comment at the link below.
From The Beer Blog: These…Public Service Announcements are so hideous and grotesque that we gave them one full post. So these …guys want Canadians to be more careful at work, so they try to shock some sense into them by showing the most gory sights, and horrid images. Like they don’t show someone slip, but slip and get burned beyond recognition. There is something wrong with Canada if you need to show these kinds of gut-wrenching videos just to get a point across. “
See Prevent-it.ca
When I first read a one-line synopsis of Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (starring John C. Reilly) I figured it was probably in the parody vein of This Is Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind, both sort of subtly funny movies. Turns out Walk Hard is more in the vein of, well, something akin to Airplane (without the airplane) produced by the writing staff of Mad Magazine.
Dewey Cox is a singer who’s had some ups and downs in his life and career, starting when as a young boy growing up on his parents’ ramshackle farm in Alabama he accidentally cut his brother clean in half with a machete (don’t worry, it’s done in funny mode). Turns out this incident comes in mighty handy for young Dewey. They say you need to have suffered before you can sing the blues so this at least gives Dewey some great blues background for that singing gig he gets in an all black club of erotic dancing. His rendition of “Mama, you got to love your Negro man” goes over well with the at first shocked black audience and, fortunately for Dewey’s career, also with some visiting Orthodox rabbis who also happen to be music producers looking for fresh talent.
Then there was his marriage at age fourteen to a twelve year old girl that caught his eye at the school talent show. Then there were all those kids he began having from that point on (I think he ends up with forty or fifty by various women by movies end).
On his way up the musical ladder in the late fifties Dewey meets at least two Elvises. Elvis Costello, looking like a twelve-year old with immense glasses, and a karate-obsessed hilariously overplayed word-drawling Elvis Presley (“Dewey, only two kinds of people in the world know real karate– me and the Chinese”).
Dewey changes musical personas through the passing decades, trying to keep up with the times, taking on the styles and looks of Bob Dylan (“…mailboxes drip like lampposts in the twisted birth canal of the coliseum…), Johnny Cash, the psychedelic Beatles and the Partiridge Family. There’s the sixties social awareness songs and causes too, like supporting midget liberation. Throughout, Dewey Cox has an innocent though flustered pudgy Teddy Bear look, even when he’s high and destructive on PCP and overturning cars and climbing up the side of a building to escape police.
Not only is pop music itself heavy-handedly parodied (satire would be too sophisticated a description) along with the various on-the-road drug crazes—marijuana, cocaine, LSD (which involves a funny minute or two of a Yellow Submarine type cartoon where the trip is going bad), ecstasy and various uppers and downers, but also repressed sexuality, race, dress, marital cheating, even an implied parodying of Michael Jackson’s lifestyle with a giraffe and a chimp he lodges in his house. Even nudity itself is parodied in the guise of full male and female frontal nudity (brought down to the level of un-redeeming social value scenes). There’s even a dose of uptight religion parody. As Dewey’s just starting out in his singing career (we’ll call it the early innocent American Bandstand era) an uptight pastor scolds Dewey’s “devil music” because one of the lines involves holding hands (it’s sinful—“the Devil has hands–and he holds things”).
Of course as pop parody/cheap laughs Walk Hard has a lot of competition. Not with other movies in its genre but in the lives of real life pop figures. American Idol performers in police mug shots, Britney Spears publicly shaving her head (and running over paps), tattooed blues singer Amy Winehouse walking the London streets late at night in just a bra and cruxifix, Rap stars in shootouts…but maybe all that’s being saved for Walk Hard 2.
Blogging from the trenches (“I have received a letter from you and a box of biscuits all right. I got them on Christmas morning and you can bet how pleased I was. I have also had a letter from Kate she said she was having a holiday this Christmas the first for seven years. I hope she enjoys herself. I’m sorry to hear that Mr. Thomas’s son as got killed what date did it happen. I have had a letter from Mrs. Higgins I shall write back as soon as possible…”)
Related link: 9th Btn Y & L War Diaries ( “20th ATTACK DAY: at zero hour, 5.40 am A Coy lost 22 killed & wounded. 3 Coys & Batt H Q went into tunnels. 1 Coy in trenches on top: about 1 P.M. C Coy (Harry’s Company) went forward to reinforce 68th Bde and dug in in rear of BLUE LINE nr JASPER TRENCH: 4.30 Batt ordered to relieve10th N.Fs in BLUE LINE: 5.45 pm to 7 pm terrific shelling: releif complete 10 pm…”)
WW1 nurse talks of her experiences (in internet audio clips) on the fringe of No Man’s Land.
Man hits sister in head with iron bar to free her of demons. “…When they started to pray, Lagrandeur [the sister] noticed Varemond [the brother] “change,” she told police. He locked the doors and jumped on Lagrandeur and started biting her on her back and beating her head with the iron…When…Varemond’s 80-year-old mother intervened and tried to stop him, he… bit off her fingertip and started pulling his own teeth out.” No mention if the the sister expelled green vomit (think Linda Blair).
“Richard Mellon Scaife, 75, the conservative Pittsburgh banking billionaire who nearly succeeded in driving President Clinton from office, had lunch with Clinton last summer and said, ‘I never met such a charismatic man in my whole life…[philandering] is something that Bill Clinton and I have in common.’ ” Read more.
Read ‘em here (there’s also links for earlier years).
