DearLeaderBlog

Un Prophète

2010-03-04T12:04:00.023-05:00

Peace Be Upon Him...

In Jacques Audiard's, Un Prophète an Arab teenager is born again into a French prison as an infant of sorts. He is unformed, unshaped, and completely vulnerable, yet despite this, he is gifted with a boundless capacity to observe, imitate, and navigate the almost infinitely hostile world that surrounds him. Throughout the course of the movie he will be adopted, baptized, learn to speak, read, survive, prosper, and eventually transcend the circumstances of his "birth." Similar to the story of another titular prophet, he enters a cave of sorts both illiterate and orphaned and emerges from a world of darkness and ignorance into one of power and revelation, where the costs of both are paid in blood.

When Malik (Tahar Rahim), the main character in Audiard's film, is introduced, we know nothing of him, save the few basic details that will define his existence inside the beast: he is an Arab, he is illiterate, has no family to speak of, and has been convicted of assaulting a police officer and sentenced to six years inside. Yet, all of these trappings and signifiers of identity mean little or nothing to Malik. We get not the slightest hint of who he is, or more likely was, outside of incarceration. He has little interest in, or even knowledge of religion--while being processed he is confused when asked about his dietary requirements, and later claims to not know which language he spoke first, Arabic or French--he is an empty mold, which will be filled with the signs, faith and knowledge of a criminal education.

This education starts early on when the Corsican gang leader, Cèsar (Niels Arestrup), who runs the prison recruits Malik to kill a snitch hiding out in the segregated Muslim unit of the prison, by telling him if he does this favor for him he will be under the gang's protection, and if he doesn't they'll kill him. A grim predestination begins to takes effect, as the actions set before Malik take shape and solidify with a terrifying life of their own. His baptism begins in earnest as he rehearses how to properly tickle someone's balls before spitting out a razor blade and slashing their throat under the guise of the ole' drugs for blowjob setup. Simply put, the tension created by everything leading up to this murder is one of the best and most harrowing sequences put to film in recent memory. What is most impressive is that before his carotid artery is opened, the unfortunate Reyeb, imparts key lessons that will define Malik's character for the rest of the movie. Namely: not everyone is your friend, so the only rational course of action is to be in control of every situation, every transaction. And perhaps most importantly he tells Malik that the idea is to leave prison smarter than when you came in. The murder he commits is a form of revelation, and from that point on, he leaves every situation he enters smarter than before.

Proving that few things are more intimate than murder, Reyeb sticks around as a kind of ghostly soul/roommate, appearing before Malik while on fire, or simply smoking out of the open fold in his neck to advise him or merely shoot the shit. Is Reyeb a vision telling him what to do? Or is he simply a part of his own mind telling him what he wants to become? It is a question that adds resonance to a vision that comes into play later while Malik is advancing his criminal degree while on furlough from prison in Marseilles. This series of leave days--granted for good behavior-- gives Malik opportunity to put his lessons to good use in the outside world, and develop into a formidable figure running hash and making connections that extend beyond the reach and charity of his Corsican benefactors. It also affords a chance to get on a plane and see the ocean for the first time, and in a particularly nice touch, as he goes through airport security, he spreads his arms to be scanned by a metal detector and then out of an institutionalized force of habit opens his mouth wide and sticks his tongue out.

It is Malik's vaguely defined sense of identity and enigmatic character that allows him to rise to the top of the micro-world of prison, and perhaps even more in the one outside. He is an Arab errand boy to the Corsicans, and a sell-out stooge to his Muslim "brothers." This seeming lack of a defined role or place is what allows him to deftly navigate the path that is set out for him early on. The pressure-sealed universe of a prison, rigidly and violently defined by its tribes and allegiances, is only a more condensed and claustrophobic version of the society that builds it. On the outside, people of a minority just have more territory than a kitchen, laundry or cell block to cloister themselves in. France has whole housing projects for that. Rejecting social classification is hard enough on the outside, and impossible in prison. Yet, our main character manages somehow, a miracle in its own right. The film is certainly a comment on the state of immigrants, and Arabs in particular in a nation and culture that seemingly wants nothing to do with them. The film seems to say that in a nation and world where lines of state, language, religion, and nationality continue to disintegrate, the individual least tethered to anyone of these is the one most capable. The only real prophecies are self-fulfilling ones, and for someone like Malik, prison is the strange, brutal, and perhaps only means of making real a vision he already had of himself.

Black Sabbatical

2009-10-27T17:00:00.002-04:00

Again...so sorry for my rather extended absence here at The Leader, but you see I have something of a real life now which makes this whole "blogging" thing increasingly difficult, as it's a medium for shut-ins of the unemployed, deranged, unhinged, or simply depressed variety. So to all fifty or so of my readers, stick with me, I'll have my review of Antichrist ("The date movie of the year!" or "Sam Raimi meets Ingmar Bergman!") up before the weekend. Stay tuned, maybe something special tomorrow as well.

Zombieland

2009-10-17T11:01:00.015-04:00

Ready...Set...Woody Harrelson!!

By all accounts, I shouldn't have liked Zombieland as it parodies my beloved zombie genre mainly by ignoring every one of its central themes, ideas and conventions. Rather than a day, night or week of the dead, Zombieland plays more like a road movie about a family of Depression-era, hobo children grifting their way across the country while being chased by--in this case undead, and blood-spewing--shopkeepers, rubes, and train conductors. In fact, outside of the very beginning, and a fairly satisfying slaughter at the end, the zombies play almost no role at all and the gore was tepid at best. Unlike Shaun of the Dead which stands alone as both a perfect zombie film and perfect zombie film parody, Zombieland is simply a comedy with some zombies. Where Shaun got all its laughs from dealing crisply from the Romero deck with a dash of a British comedy of manners, Zombieland owes much more to the work of a certain comedic actor--who makes a hilarious cameo appearance as himself about halfway through the movie-- than anything the horror genre has ever produced. The film is more early Ivan Reitman and John Landis, than Romero, but that's hardly a bad thing. At a lean 80 minute running time, Zombieland was like a cinematic bit of Halloween mini-candy: not too much, sweet, chewy, easily consumable and arriving just in time for the season.

While it may have been a brief treat that was mostly a funny and thoughtless romp, there is one large caveat, one interesting idea, that I think warrants its inclusion in the zombie canon. The film itself may not have even been totally aware of it, but its comedic pedigree and complete lack of any sense of doom or danger, makes Zombieland the first movie in the genre to focus entirely on not just how much fun a zombie apocalypse would be, but also make the case for how vastly improved this nation would be by a plague of the undead. There has always been some element of wish fulfillment in apocalyptic film, as who doesn't take at least some pleasure in seeing this stinking society and species spit out its last gasps, and what's more who wouldn't want to emerge unscathed from the ruins to enjoy all the benefits of a newly depopulated American landscape? (And If you haven't had similar thoughts, you've clearly never had to walk across 34th St. in Manhattan.) This film takes that nugget of adolescent eschatological fantasy and makes the explicit case that the only possible way for the life of the American beta-male to ever become tolerable is through cannibal holocaust.

Played here by Jesse Eisenberg, doing his virginal-neurotic thing again, "Columbus" certainly wasn't doing or amounting to anything great before the end of the world, and is depicted as something of a stand-in for the audience and screen-writers presumably, you know those geeks who stay in Friday nights and watch zombie movies, or spend Saturday morning writing about them. You see, contemporary American society has so very little to offer those quiet, sensitive souls, whereas The Zombie Apocalypse has so much. For starters, the death and putrefaction of almost every other human will immediately give you the opportunity to meet and hang out with much cooler people, like Woody Harrelson, and more importantly, you'd now have a definite chance with all those hot girls who previously wouldn't give you a second look back when most people still had faces that weren't partially eaten. Just the fact that you're both still breathing is a perfect ice-breaker, and all those other assholes who are the secret bane of the existence of every smart, sensitive guy are finally fucking dead, or deadish, so you can fill them with the all the .12 gauge buckshot you've long wished you could.

In Zombieland, the Plague is just the opportunity to live out all of those teenage fantasies that exist just beneath the facade of reasonable, lawful, civilized behavior. Namely, zombies would give us the opportunity for the completely guilt-free indulgence of things like playing with guns, shooting people, hitting them with baseball bats, driving drunk, destroying property, looting, squatting, and almost every other kind of hilarious and gratifying mayhem one could think of. So basically, Zombieland is a lot like Americaland, except you--the shy, nice guy--get to be captain of the team, pull off the big win, and get the girl, all totally consequence-free. Bring on the walking corpses please.

Work Not Play

2009-10-13T16:42:00.004-04:00

All apologies for the rather sparse posting as of late, I know I've been MIA this week, but I'm unfortunately burdened with a real job for the moment...one where I can't just pretend to look busy, but really dick around on the internet like every other job I've ever had.

I've come to expect certain standards of myself regarding the near daily output of high quality drivel we've all come to know and love here, so I promise to have "Zombieland" up by the end of the week, and I'll do my best to keep the streets wet with that good dope during this drought.

Also...

Underworld

2009-10-08T12:32:00.006-04:00

My little travelogue around NYC continues with a trip to the A, C, E Circle of Hell...

The Journey continues here...

Wanted: Sexual Tyrannosaurs

2009-10-08T09:31:00.007-04:00

What's this? They're casting a bunch of slack-jawed faggots in the new Predator movie? Via io9 and LG&M, I see that the likes of Adrien Brody and Topher Grace will be filling the boots of Bill Duke, Jesse The Body, Sonny Landham, and Arnie. Adrien Brody weighs about a buck-twenty, soaking wet. I could kick his ass, a Predator? Sheeeet....

If it bleeds, we can kill it....

I was excited by the back story for the new movie, where an all-star team of ultimate, bad-ass killers from Earth (Russian mafia hitman, Salvadoran Death Squader, neo-nazi prisoner, and Danny Trejo) are shanghaied and taken to the prehistoric jungle of the Predator home world, where they are to be hunted down in sort of a Pro-Bowl of killing. I like that they're taking Predator back to its roots, back to the jungle for some brutal tooth and nail, hunter/hunted type ish, but again...Adrien Brody? Those familiar with the Predator mythos, know that a Predator will only kill those capable of defending themselves, only those either armed to the teeth or who will put up enough of a fight to warrant the collection of their skull and spinal column. I'm not sure where the fun is in hunting down and killing some waifish hipster is...wait, scratch that, I see where the fun is, but I'm not sure a Predator would. As Robert Farley points out, the best part about the original Predator was that Apollo Creed was the bookish, nerd type in a group of manly men hewn from granite.

Manpower...

I want to have me some fun tonight, and I'm holding out hope for Long Tall Sally, but I think it may be best to just bleed this one...real quiet.

Update -- As I understand from what I've read, Topher Grace will be playing a quiet, unassuming serial killer-type, so that could work, but Adrien Brody as a Leader of men? If you're using the original Predator as our Bible, and really why wouldn't you, the correct question is not, "Can I imagine Adrien Brody going face to crab-face with a Predator?" but rather "Can I imagine him one day being a duly-elected and sworn-in Governor of a major American state?" Or President for that matter, because if we're being honest, if it wasn't for our stupid Constitution, Arnold would be our Leader...

Let's take a dip into the archives all the way back to February of this year, for a bit of Leader Classic, where in I examined the real and imagined political careers of Predators, porn-stars, and Val Kilmer, in the post "The Iceman Cometh."

A Serious Man

2009-10-05T11:25:00.020-04:00

The Jew Who Wasn't There...

Big questions about faith, God, and mortality surround small people and the even smaller vagaries of fate and circumstance in the work of the Coen Brothers. However, all those big questions are posed not as religious or philosophical queries but more as punchlines in the great cosmic joke of life. Old Testament references are sown throughout their work, be it the Song of Solomon in Miller's Crossing, Genesis and The Book of Daniel in Barton Fink, and probably the whole thing somewhere in the The Big Lebowski. Yet, if there is a common denominator to the Coen's entire body of work it is the utter absence of any controlling order, morality or meaning in the universe, so why then would God figure so largely in their films? I think the answer lies in the fact that the God of the Old Testament is their favorite fictional character. They relate to him, because who other than those sarcastic tricksters could get one of their favorite creations to try and butcher his own kid, or inflict any number of other cruelties for a bit of a laugh? So, it is fitting that their latest would be a take on the Book of Job, a biblical shaggy-dog story already in The Brothers mold. Much like the God of Abraham, the Coens know that there is nothing funner than to create a universe, fill it with interesting characters, beset them with all manner of major and minor calamities and disasters and then listen to the cries of "Why? Why? Why?" roll in, from both your creations and their audience.

A Serious Man is maybe the Coens most personal film to date and as Todd McCarthy of Variety points out, the kind of the movie you can only make after winning a few Oscars. Who else could do a black comedy about Judaism set in the suburban Minnesota of the late 1960s? The film opens with something of a Yiddish ghost story set in the "old country" where an encounter with what may or may not be a dybbuk, (a cameo by Fyvush Finkel), sets in motion what may or may not be a curse which plays itself out through the generations all the way to 1967 and our lead nebbish, physics professor Larry Gopnik, played with hilarious deadpan by Michael Stuhlbarg, whose life goes to complete shit in the weeks leading up to his son's Bar Mitzvah as circumstances conspire to test his faith. His tenure is threatened by anonymous letters denigrating him, a Korean student tries to bribe him for a passing grade, he has unwittingly joined the Colombia records club, his possibly, maybe anti-Semitic neighbor is encroaching into his lawn, his daughter is stealing from his wallet, his son is in turn stealing from his sister to buy a lid of pot, his semi-insane brother (Richard Kind) is crashing on his couch and perpetually hogging the bathroom, and to top it off his wife is leaving him for a smarmy, over-touchy widower.

It's enough to make even the most devout confront the lyrics to the Jefferson Airplane song that bookends and forms something of a coda to the film. Indeed, what Larry thought to be the truth was lies, and what's more, all the joy within him dies. In other words--in typical Coen fashion--these events snowball into a bizarre series of mishaps, all of which our lead character has absolutely no control over, save for mounting financial obligation. Larry seeks solace in the Jewish tradition and attempts to find meaning for his suffering in the counsel of a series of Rabbis. Why would Hashem give us all of these questions but none of the answers? And what good is religion if its only answer is that it's not our place to ask? Of course, Larry gets no satisfaction from consulting the rabbis and maybe more surprisingly, gets no answers from smoking weed with a foxy neighbor given to nude sunbathing. Larry's search for meaning and reason for his numerous tribulations stands in contrast to his job as a physics professor, where in front of a giant blackboard filled with mathematical equations, he tries to explain things like Schrödinger's Cat--and similar to Tony Shalhoub's monologue in The Man Who Wasn't There--the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle. All things which point to the essentially random nature of the universe, be it in Quantum Mechanics or the trivialities of everyday life, in which these principles find their expression. For Larry, in physics as with Judaism, the only true meaning to be found is in uncertainty.

Because A Serious Man, takes place in the Coen universe, it is given to demonstrations of not so much the banality of evil or suffering, but rather their absurdity. And similar to the one we inhabit when we leave the theater, the Coen universe is so meticulously crafted that the absence of an inherent order seems almost impossible. How could something of such exquisite function arise from something so absurd and meaningless? As such, we are left to pour over every detail and scene with an eye for an ever elusive tidbit or revelation that will bring the grand narrative into sharp focus. Of course, with the Coens and God we see everything through that glass darkly and the joke is always on us...and God doesn't even have Roger Deakins as his cinematographer.

Bonus -- Stay seated for the entire credits and you'll get an Easter Egg assuring you, "No Jews were harmed in the making of this film."

BREAKING: First Lady Indoctrinates Kids in Maoist Agrarian Revolution

2009-10-01T11:15:00.005-04:00

The evidence continues to pile up Dear Readers, as the First "Lady" continues the work of her husband's IslamoMarxistSocialist assault on America. In the above clip, Michelle Obama clearly intends to indoctrinate helpless children and prepare them for a future of growing soy on government-run collectivist farms. She is joined by what is clearly an impish RED goblin of some kind and a possibly homosexual giant chicken.

Clearly the Obama plan is to establish an unholy Children of the Corn-like army. After their parents have been exported to FEMA-concentration camps, America's children will be harvested and force-fed vegetables to make them "strong" for the coming purges. "Planting seeds" is an Alinsky-style radical code-word for sowing the foundations of a Socialist revolution in the minds of the nation's innocent, impressionable children. You know what else is a seed? An ACORN...Stay tuned for more breaking coverage...

Most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they're capable of... anything!

2009-09-29T10:31:00.008-04:00

(Warning: The following post is meant to be taken with a strong dose of Leader Brand Irony, a hyperbolic deconstruction of contemporary mores, etc. I in no way shape or form endorse amnesty for child rapists...untalented child rapists.)

Via Gawker I learned about an artist who has constructed a big wooden tunnel as part of an installation, where if you crawl through it into a room, he will be waiting and will rape you. It's called "The Rape Tunnel", says the artist:

I've constructed a 22 ft tunnel out of plywood that leads into the project room. There is no way in or out of the project room except for this tunnel. As you travel through the tunnel, it gets smaller and smaller, making it so that you have to crawl and put yourself in a submissive position in order to reach the tunnel's destination. At the end of the tunnel the subject will find me waiting in the project room and I'll try to the best of my ability to overpower and rape the person who crawls through.

Of course, I bring this up only to reference another artistic genius who has had to rape, suffer for his art. I speak of course of the recent arrest and possible extradition of Polish midget/Oscar Winning director Roman Polanski, who after nearly thirty years may now face punishment for drugging and ass-fucking a 13 year old girl at Jack Nicholson's house. Polanski has been at the center of a cross-Atlantic culture tug-of-war between those who view him as a tragic, artistic genius and the self-righteous Philistines who forced him into exile, for the mere "crime" of sexually assaulting a minor.

Now I don't know where you fall into this debate, or how your personal morality shakes out, but I think it is possible to hold both these views. While Polanski is almost certainly guilty, I take a view that great artists should be given the broadest possible leeway when it comes to "laws." I'm not saying they should be allowed to get away with murder, but I think if one makes a movie as good as Chinatown you get to rape at least one teenager, boy or girl, and when you add Knife in the Water, Repulsion, The Tenant, Rosemary's Baby, and The Pianist, he's entitled to a veritable one-man rape-o-caust, and Mr. Polanski is quite frankly, behind the curve thus far. You may ask, "But, but Leader, how can you excuse Polanski but openly advocate the swift and brutal executions of Catholic priests who do the same?" The answer is simple: The Catholic Church has not commissioned a decent work of art since The Renaissance.

Now all this happened almost exactly after his wife's most notorious killer died in prison, which adds another layer, that is to say most of the people righteously pursuing Mr. Polanski have never had their mother carted off to Auschwitz or had their wife and unborn child butchered by the Manson family, let alone directed The Ninth Gate. Perhaps most telling, none of his most strident accusers have ever really been in a position where naked teenage girls and drugs are freely on offer, and are thus free to cast judgment without any real frame of reference. Like Noah Cross said, most never have to face the fact that in the right time and right place, they're capable of anything. In other words most men will never the get the chance to hang out at Jack Nicholson's house. Which bring us to America's Worst Columnist, Richard Cohen, who in the course of a "lemme at him" pantomime, gives us this crime against humanity:

Polanski is a great film director -- although the much-acclaimed “Chinatown” has a muddled script -- but his true talent is to make fools of his friends.

Cohen goes on to write, "I mean 'her sister and her daughter', that doesn't even make sense." You see, what I'm trying to say with all this is that artistic crimes will always trump actual crimes. It has been said that in the realm of art all is permissible, well the same must be extended to the men who create it. Conversely, those who degrade great art or like bad art must face dire consequences, and for this particular crime of not getting Chinatown and then writing about it, Richard Cohen must be put inside The Rape Tunnel.

The Leader TV Guide, Fall 2009

2009-09-26T11:48:00.009-04:00

Teacher, Mother, Secret Lover...

After a long summer of re-runs and nothing entertaing to watch but old people demonstrate their senility at town hall meetings, finally the days have begun to shorten, a crisp chill is carried on the air and network and cable television again turns their glowing, all-seeing eye upon us, providing both meaning and brief, blessed distraction from reality with a crop of exciting new shows. Let's take a look!

....

FratForward

In an epic new mystery, the entire human race simultaneously blacks out at the same moment and receives eerie and cryptic visions of lost time, disturbing behavior, and a shared global sense of deep, deep shame. The race is on to decode the meaning of this phenomenon and discover who or what is responsible for scrawling crudely drawn penises and swastikas on the faces of billions, and to get rid of these fucking headaches.

The Misremembered

In the United States as many as 40,000 people daily and routinely misinterpret or willfully ignore their own experiences and the actions and thoughts of other people. Now a team of experts in fields of forensic psychology, investigation, and Facebook dedicate their lives to helping others recall the names, faces, and actual intentions of that girl that might have been flirting with you at a friend's birthday, but really has a boyfriend or that co-worker whose bare-minimum level of courtesy and interest in your weekend maybe quite possibly could signal interest in a serious romantic relationship. Anywhere there is someone thinking of calling an ex or imagining and ignoring reality to make their life more palatable, the skilled and compassionate team of The Misremembered will be there to deliver closure, bitter, bitter closure.

PUMA Town

In this hilarious new situation comedy, a recently divorced Mom and Hillary Clinton supporter discovers the rules of the game have changed as she struggles to cope with single life living under the presidency of an inadequate black man. Orly Taitz guest stars.

American Meth Lab

From the basements, backwoods and rented trailers amidst the economic and cultural tundra of rural America comes a reality show from the producers of Deadliest Ghosts and Man vs. Wall, which takes a look at the competition and rivalry among the nation's best crank cooks and speed addicts. You can't script characters this colorful as these tight-knit clans wheel, deal and struggle to keep their family businesses afloat. It's real life danger, high stakes and big pay days as we watch the daily grind of procuring large quantities of cough syrup and industrial methane, preventing chemical explosions, inhaling deadly toxic fumes, and staving off the relentless assault of the shadow people and the bugs they implant under your skin.

MM: Merchant Marines

There are approximately 465 ships in the United States Merchant fleet, the civilian auxiliary to the Navy, each one staffed by the brave men and women of the Merchant Marines working everyday to protect and facilitate international commerce. The creators of NCIS and PTSD bring you the latest pulse-pounding vaguely crime-related drama, as the dedicated and sexy crew of the USS Edwin Meese uses the latest in GPS technology to track and transport cargo, avoid safety hazards, and measure water depth. MM: Merchant Marines is our first and last line of defense in the import and export process.

Community Wife

What happens when one woman leaves the big city behind and accidentally winds up married to every man in a small Alaskan village? Hijinks, polyamory, and extreme social/cultural deviation ensue as one-time career gal discovers she really can have it all as she juggles the egos, schedules, and bizarre sexual hang-ups of her thirty husbands, all while running her own outsider art gallery. They may not be perfect, but when you add them all up, you get one dream guy! Nobody said matriarchy would be easy!

The Specialist

Sonny never wanted to be the leading civilian consultant to the Chicago homicide division, all he wanted was a bowl of Easy-Mac and hot dogs, but his savant-like intuition, and unusual strength make him the perfect cop: a cop with Down's Syndrome. Sonny and his partner/handler/Mom are God's very special gift to law enforcement and very special nightmare to criminals. His eccentric and rock-star like behavior and unwitting flouting of authority make The Specialist a loose cannon and wild card in any investigation.

Modern Anarchy

The first TV show with no plot, no actors, no script, no reality, no producers, and really nothing other than a steady assault of discordant images and sounds that document the ongoing decay of every single institution that governs American life. Almost everything in this wacky, mixed-up modern world, is a living demonstration of the Second Law of Thermodynamics: the universal principle of increasing entropy or the simple fact that all systems are in a constant state of breaking down. Chaos rules the endless void of the universe and Thursday nights! Coming this fall.

The Best Daytime TV Products

2009-09-23T14:39:00.014-04:00

Do you have swine flu? Are you pregnant, unemployed, "self-employed", on drugs, frightened of the outside world, mentally ill, an invalid, or just ticking off those precious few hours until your kids and/or spouse return home? If you are one or all of those things chances are you're Sarah Palin...but seriously folks, and you are among the lucky few who are able to take in some of the wonderful and life-altering products pitched on daytime television? Amidst the ever-present opportunities to change your life for the better through the lotto or e-Harmony, there is that unique brand of Buy-Now-Limited Time Offer-Gadgets and Gizmos only available only to those fortunate enough to hear their siren call. The genius of these ads is the way they craft a feeling of inevitability, that you will buy this, that your life cannot possibly continue without a motorized shoe-horn, that if you don't take advantage of an opportunity to get two customized brownie molds--a $40 value!--then you might as well just give up on life, which if you're watching daytime TV, chances are, you already have. Here are a few of my favorites...

Turbo Snake

Who is it for? Anyone with what would appear to be a dead cat's worth of hair stuck somewhere in their plumbing, and doesn't want to use "chemicals" or invite "strangers" into their home to fish it out.

What's it Do? Simply stick this wire down a drain, twist and it's patented pube-grabbing bristles will drag the offending human detritus out from wherever it's clogging. It actually looks fairly handy, except for having the confront the dead squirrel in your shower drain.

Alternate Uses? Home DIY surgery...fishing car/house keys out of a sewer...cleaning a really large glass bong...

What's it come with? Every TV product must have something extra to throw into the pot to sweeten the deal--as if you needed any extra prodding to buy a Drain Snake?--and this one is no exception...Act now and receive, get this, a stick-on hook to hang the drain snake on, because what are you going to do? Leave it in a drawer like some fucking moron, during those few occasions in which your sink and bathroom isn't filled with your disgusting hair?

Micro Touch Hair Trimmer

Who's it For? Yet another product that while not explicitly spelling it out, is intended to deal with the problems caused by excess pubic hair. Advertised as a way "to keep the man in your life perfectly groomed," so basically this is for Robin Williams' neck.

What's it Do? Micro Touch is perfect for a woman whose "man" has hair growing out of his ears, nose, back, or any other unsightly place. Like I said, they don't mention the problem of pubic hair, but the commercial does make sure to highlight its uses on those "sensitive places" like...the stomach. Micro Touch is the all purpose man-scaping accessory .

Alternate Uses? Vibrator?...Guinea Pig Styling...Milk frother?

What's it Come With? Pretty shabby on their part, no bonus carrying case or laser pointer attachment for precision body hair sculpting, just a bunch of different extensions and a user's guide. Lame.

The Snuggie Designer Series

Who is it For? "Ironic" people or "Retarded" people.

What's it Do? Did you like the original Snuggie? ("The Blanket with Sleeves!") But are you a bit more fashion conscious? Would you like to look a bit more chic in your wearable quilt? Then stay "perfectly in style" with ultra-classy leopard or zebra print! While they may have started out serious, I think at this point the Snuggie people are just going for broke on cornering the market on gag gifts by coming up with something so stupid and hideous it's practically daring you to buy it.

Alternate Uses? They actually say, when not being worn, it makes a wonderful "throw" for any couch or chair, but I think they should just be used as body-size bibs for eating ribs or lobster in bed, at the game, on the couch, anywhere!

What's it Come With? An attachable reading light, something I'm pretty sure will get zero use, and...ANoTHER SNUGGIE!!

(cartoon by Johnny Ryan...)

America's Team

2009-09-21T14:58:00.011-04:00

A symposium on the minor works of Ovid, hoagies was held at the newly opened Cowboys Stadium last night.

"It's funny John, I've been called the 'Turducken' of American presidents..."

Jerry Jones searched for new ways to fill out the luxury boxes...

The new Cowboys Mega-Stadium will double as a the nation's largest Mexican-immigrant internment facility.

Performing the ceremonial coin toss, former President George W. Bush gave an object lesson in the capricious and trivial nature of fate...

Movies I Once Thought Were Awesome: Face/Off

2009-09-21T12:32:00.012-04:00

Or: John Travolta Touches Children...

As we grow older we all must invariably face the fact that the rose colored glasses through which we view the past are likely to get more and more shit-stained with the passing of time. Things we once loved or loved us look good only through the relative distance and passage of time. As I've written about before, if our memories ever were a truly objective record of the past, it's likely none of us would be able to live with ourselves. There is no better illustration of this sorry feature of the maturing process than re-watching movies that a 13 or 14 year old version of myself thought were pure genius. Face/Off was one such movie, one that I remember not only liking, but basically thinking was the epitome of all that was awesome, anchored by the brilliant performances of Messrs. Cage and Travolta and always subtle direction of John Woo. Having actually re-watched this entire movie last week, I must ever so slightly revise my original opinion, as the movie I watched was almost two hours of Cage and Travolta going full retard amidst a plot ludicrous and nonsensical even by the standards of action movies, which all could have been forgivable were it not for the endlessly repeated motif of Travolta or Cage as Travolta touching children, and dragging his sausage fingers down their faces as some twisted sign of affection. That, and just looking at Nicolas Cage's spastic facial expressions or "acting" is still the funniest thing going in cinema.

The most amazing thing about re-watching this movie is the fact that I clearly remember thinking that the film's central contrivance--that some super-surgery could allow you to convincingly swap faces with another person--was completely on the level. Seeing it now, I wondered as long as they were going for vaguely futuristic pseudo-science, why wouldn't they just have the two principles just swap consciousness? Perhaps criss-crossing and imprinting opposing brain-waves was simply a bridge too far, and they figured just slapping someone's face onto a fucking skull like a bit of deli meat was far more believable. Again, Travolta's fat head is simply too large for Cage's face, and were such a thing actually possible, it would look so abominable that the real-life face-transplant woman would look pleasantly kissable in comparison. Please use this moment to imagine what Nicolas Cage's face stapled and stretched to fit over John Travolta's head would actually look like. You may never sleep again.

Like every other John Woo movie there is ton of very decent, thoroughly choreographed gun play, which again, absolutely amazed me when I first saw it, but now it just seems like his immigration to Hollywood completely lobotomized whatever part of his brain is capable of feeling shame. Christ, again and again with those fucking doves, I'm not sure why, but the maudlin melodramatics of his Hong Kong days never seemed even half as hammy when hundreds of Chinese people were being gunned down in slow motion amidst the fluttering of pigeons, but maybe it's just the generally inscrutable nature of Asians to a Western audience that dulled much of the inherent ridiculousness.

For all it's stupidity, there was actually a nub of what could have been an interesting movie contained within, involving the idea of a master-cop/master-criminal trading lives. I liked the idea that as soon as Cage takes over Travolta's life, his wife, family, and friends immediately like him immensely more than the straight-laced bore they've previously suffered under. He lays his wife better, cooks her dinner, showers her with affection, does his job better, relates to his sullen teenage daughter, and is all around a better person, employee, and father, despite being a mass-murdering impostor. I liked this idea so much, that while watching I formulated an alternate-version of this movie that could have been a million times better. Start with the brain-wave swap and not the idiotic face-swap, but use that a jump-off to explore the idea of the everyman-as-sociopath and the razor thin line between cop and criminal. The master-criminal really would make the best cop, because he'd already perfectly honed the instincts and knowledge of the criminal mind that most G-men take a lifetime trying to accumulate. Conversely, the upright family man turned life-time inmate would use his knowledge and experience as a Fed to become a ruthless prison gang leader. Perversely, both men would find a new found sense of freedom and self-actualization in their bizarro-swapped lives: the terrorist learning he really can get away with everything on the opposite side of the law playing it straight as the family man and All-American dad, and his antagonist, long imprisoned within the confines of the same family life and moral rectitude would become fulfilled in a way he previously thought unimaginable, i.e. Gina Gershon and a box full of drugs. Maybe he breaks out of prison, maybe he's released by cutting a deal to dish all the dirt he knows about the FBI, but in the end both men would come face to face, so to speak, with the dilemma of whether they wanted their old bodies/lives back, and would, of course decide not to go back to the way things used to be, perfectly content to live the other's life.

I suppose the transformation of sincerity to irony is a regrettable, but ultimately necessary part of growing up, all I can say is I'm glad I made it through the teenage years without getting a tattoo.

The one element of the movie that actually survived this journey intact was Cage's box of fun, which I still thought was pretty damn cool. It traveled everywhere with him and featured twin gold-plated .45s, a fat clip of crisp hundos, a dozen or so pre-rolled joints, pills of various colors and sizes, and my personal favorite, a box of Chicklets.

Are You a TV Producer?

2009-09-20T13:04:00.002-04:00

Are you possibly associated with the food network? If so...then what can you do to make this a regular series? The world needs this to happen.

Cross Bronx Pt. II

2009-09-19T12:43:00.006-04:00

And Now...the exciting conclusion of The Leader Takes the Subway and Walks Places...

Full Gallery Here...

Asmodeus Awaits

2009-09-19T11:46:00.005-04:00

In a week which has given us the deaths of a New York City punk, poet, baller legend, a much beloved pop culture icon, a charming and hilarious character actor, and a folk singer whose voice and music helped define the civil rights and anti-war movements as well as the childhood of many in my generation...people who each in their own way, through their talent, humor, decency, or honesty, all enriched our lives and the culture of America in immeasurable ways. They will all be missed, and really, it's been kind of a bummer, and these things do seem to come in clusters...Well, sometimes The Universe provides a counter-balance, and throws in a bit of a palate-cleanser, an after dinner mint to help wash away that bad taste in your mouth...

Which brings me to this charming vignette, courtesy of blog commenter Harry Hopkins:

"I remember back in the late 1990s, when Ira Katznelson, an eminent political scientist at Columbia, came to deliver a guest lecture. Prof. Katznelson described a lunch he had with Irving Kristol during the first Bush administration.

"The talk turned to William Kristol, then Dan Quayle's chief of staff, and how he got his start in politics. Irving recalled how he talked to his friend Harvey Mansfield at Harvard, who secured William a place there as both an undergrad and graduate student; how he talked to Pat Moynihan, then Nixon's domestic policy adviser, and got William an internship at the White House; how he talked to friends at the RNC [Republican National Committee] and secured a job for William after he got his Harvard Ph.D.; and how he arranged with still more friends for William to teach at Penn and the Kennedy School of Government.

"With that, Prof. Katznelson recalled, he then asked Irving what he thought of affirmative action. 'I oppose it,' Irving replied. 'It subverts meritocracy.' "

He's in a more appropriate place now.

Cross Bronx Pt. I

2009-09-18T16:37:00.010-04:00

As part of my ongoing attempts to use virtual reality experience to let you, my Dear Readers, walk in my shoes, go where I go, defile what I defile, eat who I eat, etc... I bring you my latest installment in the continuing and riveting series, "The Leader Walks Around New York and Takes the Subway Places": Cross Bronx Pt. I...featuring Van Cortlandt Park, Kingsbridge, and the #1 Train...

More here....

And tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion...

Bonus--
This photo, not actually in The Bronx, but very near The Leader home base in Washington Heights...

Iraqi Ingrates

2009-09-18T10:56:00.007-04:00

I love Rep. Dana Rohrabacher. I love him for things like this...

The House Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight met today to discuss issues of sovereignty and stability in Iraq ranging from the country's longstanding financial obligation to neighboring Kuwait to its even longer-standing issues with the Kurdish people. But Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) seemed mostly interested in berating the Iraqis for their lack of gratitude
At the hearing, Saleh al Mutlaq and former Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, both members of Iraq's Council of Representatives, spoke about Iraq's future and the importance of the country's upcoming elections.

Mutlaq called for a "moral and responsible" withdrawal of U.S. troops saying that the invasion of his country was "irresponsible."

Worried that violence and intimidation from Iraq's ruling party could distort the outcome of the January election, Allawi stressed the need for election monitoring from institutions such as the United Nations, the Arab League and other NGOs along with the United States.

Then Rohrabacher opened his mouth.

"I have never heard one word of gratitude from the Iraqi people about the 4,300 Americans who lost their lives," he exclaimed.

"We went to Iraq to try and free your people and now we're being blamed for sectarian violence," he said. "Don't blame us because that type of bloodlust exists in your society."

A defiant Mutlaq responded, "You were the ones who pushed your troops. We did not invite you."

It was at this point that an exasperated Rohrabacher threw up his hands and stormed out of the room.

It was only in the aftermath of Rohrabacher's tantrum that Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA) quietly stated that weapons of mass destruction, and not Iraqi freedom, were the reason the U.S. invaded Iraq.

Yes. The bloodlust that exists in your society. I love this because it so honestly and perfectly encapsulates how Americans really feel about the Iraqi people. We loathe them. A point that sorely needs to be made and one that must be shouted at every single mention of our charitable intentions or desires to "free" such a benighted people. No, we hate the Iraqis, be they Sunni, Shia, or Misc., and there can be no better example of that than Rep. Dana's "exasperated" demands that they thank us for fucking them so hard.

Please remember back when something like upwards of 80-90% of Americans actually supported and/or cared about this war, it was when we most believed that they were a) responsible for 9/11 and b) had nukes and were actively planning to use them against us. We loved the war when it was clearly about kicking the shit out of a country we hate. Killing them, embarrassing them, destroying their cities, getting our dicks wet, making them pay for fucking with the USA, there is nothing that excites human beings more, and at least that hate was open and honest. However, by forcing us to justify our bloodlust through gay-ass humanitarian concerns for their freedom and well being has only made us hate them more, i.e. Rep. Rohrabacher's frustration at their failure to genuflect before the size and might of our cocks. I mean 4,000 of our guys died in a war that's killed at least a few hundred thousand of yours...can we at least get a fruit basket? I'm reminded of Charlie Murphy on the Rick James Chappelle's Show, "Man, we just gave him some help...."

Let's give the last word to this unrepentant chap:

The opportunity came, and I took it.

I took it out of loyalty to every drop of innocent blood that has been shed through the occupation or because of it, every scream of a bereaved mother, every moan of an orphan, the sorrow of a rape victim, the teardrop of an orphan.

I say to those who reproach me: do you know how many broken homes that shoe which I threw had entered? How many times it had trodden over the blood of innocent victims? Maybe that shoe was the appropriate response when all values were violated.

How rude.

See Also...

People Who Died

2009-09-15T14:39:00.006-04:00

Been a rough week all around.

Just figured in light of Kayne "Jackass" West's moronic tirade--Beyonce? Really?--I thought I'd re-visit my favorite awards show hi-jacking from another member of the departed.

When it comes to the children, Wu-Tang is for the children. We teach the children.

BTW, it's not "Single Ladies" that's the greatest video ever...it's this...

Also...
(via Leader associate the Fat Jew...)

Also...

"Pain Don't Hurt" RIP Patrick Swayze

2009-09-15T09:43:00.014-04:00

It was a bittersweet bit of kismet last night as I saw the news that Patrick Swayze had passed away as I was perusing the Internet for material I could use in a possible review of Steel Dawn,(aka Post-Apocalyptic Road House) a film I had just recently re-discovered with much of the same glee and cheeky affection that so defined the Swayze canon for me. Indeed, I could say much of the Swayze oeuvre were guilty pleasures, but then again I feel no guilt at my unalloyed enjoyment of so much of his work. In looking back on his career, I'm struck by the fact more so than almost any contemporary actor, Swayze was defined by equal appeal to both the ladies and fellas. I don't know of any woman of my generation, who doesn't know Dirty Dancing front to back, and I don't know of, or rather don't want to know of, any man who can't liberally pepper any conversation with quotes from Road House and Point Break. "Utah! Get me two!!"...Okay that was Busey, but you get the idea, Swayze was a genuine pop culture icon, the star of both Chick and Prick-Flick classics, all marked by a certain trademark silliness and charm, but more than anything the pure enjoyment that only movies can deliver. Here is my tribute to three of my favorite Swayze characters...

Dalton, Road House

As the legendary "Cooler" brought in to clean up the shit-kicking Double-Deuce, with Dalton, Swayze defined his quintessential action character: the sensitive ass-kicker, the stranger who comes to town and saves the yokels from Ben Gazzara. Throughout Road House, Dalton smashes bottles over heads, breaks legs, ribs, necks, and tosses grown men around like bags of laundry, but also fits in time for a bit shirtless Tai Chi, meditation, and even brags about his Philosophy Degree from NYU to the local doctor and the rest of the toothless drunks and rubes. You half-expected Dalton to discuss Kierkegaard after a putting some redneck's head through a table, and yet the complete ridiculousness of it all never seemed out of place. Never just a thug, Swayze always made sure to include some element of vaguely Eastern spirituality or self-discipline into his serial-beatings and killings of many, many men. I think this bit of dialog nicely captures the gentleman-like approach to ass-kicking that separated Swayze from many of his contemporaries...that and the perpetual shirtlessness.

All you have to do is follow three simple rules. One, never underestimate your opponent. Expect the unexpected. Two, take it outside. Never start anything inside the bar unless it's absolutely necessary. And three, be nice.

Bodhi, Point Break

In the Bromantic masterpiece, Point Break, Swayze continued and expanded his philosophical thug routine with radical surfer/Ex-President bank robber, Bodhi, who continued to marry his brand of super-intense, lifestyle-zen to mayhem and violence. Like Road House, Point Break is the kind of movie that if I was switching through channels and happened upon it, I would be set, no matter what point I joined in. Not technically a "good guy" this time around, Bodhi was a New-Age killer out for the next adrenaline fix, and one can tell that Swayze relished the role of the "bad guy" you root for. The ideal foil to Keanu's unintentional straight-man routine, and the perfect embodiment of the budding and brainless culture of "extreme" to bubble up in the nineties, where any experience can and would be justified by the "rush" it provided. Swayze was perfect, and in the end, when we see Bodhi take off down a Tsunami size wave in Australia, one can't help but wonder, and hope, that he pulled it off. As he said, perhaps befitting the occasion:

"If you want the ultimate, you've got to be willing to pay the ultimate price. It's not tragic to die doing what you love."

Jim Cunningham, Donnie Darko

This was a bit of purely inspired casting, as Jim Cunningham and his "Fear vs. Love" self-help empire was the perfectly evil parody of the supernaturally-energetic, guru-figure Swayze cultivated throughout his career. The dark heart lurking at the center of every motivational speaker and youth counselor, Jim Cunningham's blank stare, good looks, idiotic self-help jargon and mindless followers was such a dead ringer for the Joel Olsteens and legions of "Secret" loving pod-people, relentlessly lowering the standards and IQ of our culture--or as Bill Hicks would say, "the fevered egos tainting our collective unconscious"--that never has the phrase, "I think you're the fucking Anti-Christ" been more aptly applied.

RIP Patrick Swayze, he died too young and will be missed, but he leaves behind a body of work--I didn't even mention Black Dog and Next of Kin!--that has brought us the hilarity, joy, endlessly quotable enjoyment, and fun that only film...or possibly a well-oiled and shirtless man can bring.

Short Cuts

2009-09-14T10:27:00.008-04:00

James Wolcott says what I was trying to say here:

Part of the crazy cognitive dissonance of this summer is the rabid conviction the tea baggers and conservative bloggers possess that Obama is a suave-talking, solid-core radical socialist who practices Chicago-thug hardball, when in fact if Team Obama was the steamroller they claim, they never would have acquired the momentum they've mustered this summer--a true Lenin would have squashed them out of the gate and hardly would have allowed this much slippage this fast. They want Obama to be ruthless and authoritarian because they want to think of themselves as a heroic resistance. They evoke Hitler not because they fear another Hitler, their very obsession with Nazi imagery betrays their attraction; no, they're longing for a Leader, a Hitler of their own. Even a Hitler in high heels, if you can picture such a lady, and I think we all can.

All the talk of "Death Panels", "Concentration Camps", "Indoctrination", "Brownshirts", "Brain-washing", etc. out of the Teabagging-Americastan crowd does speak to a certain kind of projection...If I were their shrink I might ask why they keep bringing up Hitler.

On a related note, Mark Ames also says what I was trying to say here:

Quick question: why the fuck are Democrats boasting that they kept their mouths shut and their hands folded on their knees during every crazed speech Bush gave, unlike that bad ol’ Confederate Joe Wilson? Is that something the Dems should be proud of? If anything, Wilson’s outburst should make Democrats flush their own heads down the nearest toilet in shame for being such spineless pieces of shit right at the time that America needed an opposition most–a noisy, vicious, unpredictable opposition–to save the nation, us, and our grandchildren. Instead, they were polite, and they’re still proud of how polite they were...

The right gets it–and Joe Wilson’s outburst reminded us yet again. I think deep down that’s what the liberals and Dems were so bothered by: they don’t like it when the rightwing reminds them that this isn’t a grammar school civics class. All across the liberal blogosphere, you see all this human plankton whingeing in unison, “Teacher! Joey made fun of Barack! Can you tell his mommie please? And can you put another star on our liberal foreheads please, because unlike Joey, we were always polite while Bush destroyed America! And pat us on the head too, like you did over the past 8 years. We like getting patted on the head like that.”

In both these examples we see the kind of symbiotic, criss-cross projection that defines our polito-sphere, where both the liberal and conservative hive-minds trade-off attacking each other for the very qualities--or absence of said qualities--that define each group. Conservative, tea-baggers are convinced the President is a Marxist, Islamo-fascist, because at the core of their beings is a deeply authoritarian mindset, whereas liberals and progressives are appalled by the Republicans actually behaving like a dead on balls opposition: stupid, in the streets, rowdy, rude, but more offensive than anything else: effective, because it is the very thing they were either unwilling or unable to do when it really mattered, or now for that matter.

I think most politics in America can be explained like this: conservatives were abused as children, and liberals were spoiled.

Update -- Excellent synchronicity, as today marks the day when this guy, who in a few seconds managed to provide the perfect coda to the Bush Presidency and show more balls than any Democrat in America did for eight years, gets released from jail today.

"This is your farewell kiss, you dog!"

Kick-Off

2009-09-13T15:57:00.005-04:00

"After comprehending the capricious nature of fate, the Jaguars could not go through with the charade of playing a meaningless football game."

Happy start of the Football season! As good a time as any to ponder the "randomness of life and the triviality of our own existence"...Go Giants!!

Also, at The Other Leader we have John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13...

Parliament Funkadelic

2009-09-11T10:39:00.010-04:00

With regards to Joe Wilson's now cable-saturated outburst at Obama's speech the other night, can all of these liberal pundits and Democratic politicians drop this canned act of being shocked and appalled by calling for him to be censured or resign for his "un-American" act of disrespect? Must we pretend that a no-doz popping, apartheid loving, neo-confederate gargoyle like Rep. Joe Wilson likes or respects the president? These phony standards of civility and decorum mask a much deeper immorality--or is it amorality?--endemic in our political culture. Christ, just look at those guys in the above picture, why must they even remain seated? At this point, Congress is basically a Civil War reenactment without the costumes, so why not take it to the next level? Besides, this feigned respect would rob us of classic press conferences, like the one Wilson had to give the other day. He looked, and sounded like he was waiting for the results of an AIDS test. Our Congress needs to be more like British parliament, with more hooting and jeering, "Question Time" Style...

Or better yet, it needs to be more like the South Korean Parliament with more people getting beaten with loafers...

or the Ukraine...

or Taiwan...

Next to Air Show disasters, Rally car mishaps, and animal attacks, these Parliamentary maneuvers are easily the best thing on any highlight reel of "Most Amazing Moments" or "Best Disasters Caught on Film." Are you telling me you don't want to see Michelle Bachmann choke a bitch? Or have someone slap the tan off John Boehner?

Bonus -- Dedicated to Joe Wilson...

The King and I

2009-09-10T10:48:00.010-04:00

Lebron James: Really Fucking Tall

While everyone else was watching the President's town-hall meeting on health care reform, your Leader was scaling Mt. Olympus, spending the evening hobnobbing among the media and sports elite at the Lebron James book party at Monkey Bar in NYC. The event was to celebrate the release of "Shooting Stars", which tells the tale of James and his closest friends/teammates rise to demi-god status and beyond playing basketball at St. Vincent's St. Mary's in Akron. More importantly, it was a solid spread of cocktail-food classics including pigs in a blanket, sliders, french fries, grilled cheese, lobster rolls, and a whole bunch salmon and tuna tartar.

In addition to the King and I, celebs in attendance included the lovable Ron Howard, Caligula himself, Harvey Weinstein, and Graydon Carter, who true to reputation, managed to be the center of gravity of the entire room for most of the night.

I figured as long as I was there, I was going schmooze a little and get my book signed by Lebron, so I made my way towards the center of the room and slotted myself into a growing scrum of patrons, well-wishers, minor dukes, viscounts, and media-types all seeking to pay tribute to His Regalness. Much like basketball, boxing out and positioning yourself at the right angle is the name of the game, but before I could edge my way inside I was closed out by Opie, who got the King's ear before I could make my move. I was then quickly edged out by a photographer who seemed to think Lebron chatting with an Oscar-nominated director and beloved TV icon was somehow more worthwhile than I was. (Note: if you happen to pick up Vanity Fair next month and see a pale, Zelig-like figure with a mop of dark brown hair, blue shirt, and dark tie, peeking out from behind that pair, you'll know who it is...)

So in the meantime, like the lion who picks out the weakest gazelle in the herd, I decided to focus my efforts on the actual author of the book, Buzz Bissinger, and get him to sign my copy, because nobody else probably even knew who he was. It was here when I was confronted with the most important questions that get asked at events like these...

Lady: How do you know Buzz?

Me, in my head: Actually I'm most familiar with him for making a fool of himself on Bob Costas' HBO special...

Me, in reality: By reputation...

Lady: Who are you with?

It was this question where I should have lied and said I was covering the event for Huffington Post or that I was a freelance sports writer or entertainment reporter, but much like the rest of my romantic and professional life, my dedication to radical honesty or rather my inability to artfully shade myself with pleasant, self-serving, half-truths tripped me up...

Me: I'm just here with my Mom, she's with the Times...

Lady: That's great!

I had betrayed myself and let on to the fact that I was just a fan, a tourist with no clout, just passing through with nothing to offer, save for a handshake. I did eventually get to touch glory and offered #23 my best wishes on the upcoming season and his collaboration with "The Big Witness Protection Program." However, I pulled the "I cover movies for Huffington Post" on Ron Howard, who was very nice when I told him I liked Frost/Nixon...the play, but I'm told the movie is quite good too. Of course, it's a title that comes without money or status, and the room was filled with people who could, and probably do, make similar or far more impressive claims, but got-dammit I was going to drop names! I should have told Lebron that I once saw Jay-Z step out of a SUV. However, as my Mom put it when we were leaving, it doesn't really matter because no one knows or remembers who anyone is at functions like this. I got my merch, and brushed elbows with my social betters, which is really all anybody can ask for.

Bonus -- On my way out, I introduced myself to Harvey Weinstein..

Me: Mr. Weinstein, my name is Will Menaker and I blog about film for...

Harvey: Oh really? What a stupid fucking fuckface name and worthless piece of shit waste of time. How about you stop wasting mine and suck my big, jew cock you fuckface, fuck?

Me: Thank you, sir!

(Ed Note: the following interaction did not actually take place...)

Riversides

2009-09-08T14:33:00.003-04:00

Scenes from in and around Riverside Park, Summer 2009...

New Rules

2009-09-08T10:37:00.006-04:00

Tim Pawlenty:

KING: Let me move on to another issue, another big issue on the president's plate, where, in Congress, he's largely getting more Republican support than Democratic support, and that's Afghanistan.

George Will, a very influential conservative columnist wrote this earlier in the week, "Forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy. America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, air strikes, and small potent special forces units concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters."

Is it time for the United States to pull almost all of its troops from Afghanistan?

PAWLENTY: No. I recently returned from my fourth trip to Iraq and my second trip to Afghanistan. The administration has defined the mission in Afghanistan as to to disrupt and destroy the Taliban and Al Qaida and other terrorist forces that represent a threat to the national security interests of the United States.

We need to make sure that mission is successful. And the rule needs to be, when the United States goes to war, the United States wins, and so we need to make sure we do those things to complete that mission successfully, and that includes putting more troops into Afghanistan if needed.

.....

Otto: You know your problem? You don't like winners.
Archie: Winners?
Otto: Yeah. Winners.
Archie: Winners, like North Vietnam?
Otto: Shut up. We didn't lose Vietnam. It was a tie!
Archie: [going into a cowboy-like drawl] I'm tellin' ya baby, they kicked your little ass there. Boy, they whooped yer hide REAL GOOD.

As of late, our record against out of conference, and even un-ranked opponents has been rather pitiful. We thought changing coaches would solve our problems, but we need to re-dedicate ourselves to a culture of winning, a renewed commitment to excellence, because right now we're the Notre Dame of super-powers, coasting on long-past glory and sweet-heart TV deals. Reduced to playing a rigged, cream-puff schedule designed to get us into the big game, and yet still taking embarrassing losses against Navy and Air Force, or rather countries without a Navy or Air Force.

Labor Daze

2009-09-06T10:25:00.007-04:00

This week I set loose the hounds of hell on Mother of Tears Julie Myerson, learned about a sacred sex technique that sounded suspiciously similar to just not getting laid, mourned the loss of Mayor Quimby, saw Band member Levon Helm in Central Park, helped stop Obama from kidnapping children, and watched Hollywood burn.

Over at the Satellite of Love this week we have...

A photo-gallery of the amazing Hortus Botanicus at Leiden University from my recent trip to Amsterdam...

It's rednecks, bloodsport, high times and low-lifes in the "the economic and cultural tundra of the deep South" in Monte Hellman's Cockfighter, which I've written about before...

And finally, George C. Scott chases his daughter down the rabbit hole in Paul Schrader's Hardcore. If you didn't feel guilty about watching drugged up runaways perform sex acts for your amusement, you will now...briefly.

Enjoy the 3-day weekend! Here's some more drivel...

Japanese pets!!

Sorry nerds, the Jar Jar Family reunion is going to suck ass...even Hitler knows it.

Harrison Ford can't seem to find his wife! His Family!!

Burn Motherfucker, Burn

2009-09-04T13:34:00.008-04:00

Bwahhahhaha....Hell.A. proves once again, it's America's most distopian metropolis....

Escape from L.A....no really, get out while you still can. More glorious photos at the always great Big Picture.

Compare and Contrast...

2009-09-04T12:16:00.005-04:00

The Soviet defeat in Afghanistan is often cited as evidence that major powers simply can't tame that miserable country. But Gregory Feifer's The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan actually offers some cause for hope about America's prospects there. We are now conducting a military operation completely different from the Red Army's stupidly brutal approach. Athough U.S. forces have at times incurred too-high levels of civilian casualities, the current commander in Kabul, Stanley McChrystal, is obsessed with avoiding them...If America succeeds where the Soviets failed, our determination to protect, not persecute, Afghan civilians will be a main reason why.

--Michael Crowley, The New Republic, Tuesday, September 1st.

NATO airstrikes on a pair of hijacked fuel tankers killed as many as 90 people early today, according to Afghan authorities. Western military officials said they were investigating reports that the dead may have included dozens of civilians...

U.S. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who assumed command of American and other Western forces in Afghanistan in mid-June, had made reducing civilian deaths and injuries accidentally inflicted by coalition troops a centerpiece of his strategy...

NATO said the attack killed "a large number" of insurgents. But later in the day, a military spokesman said the possibility of civilian deaths was also being looked into.

Brig. Gen. Eric Tremblay, a spokesman for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, said that the airstrikes were "clearly directed at the insurgents" and that the alliance was "deeply concerned for the suffering that this action may have caused to our Afghan friends."

--LA Times, Friday, Sept. 4.

We are determined not to make the same mistakes the Russians did when they tried to conquer Afghanistan. Namely, they didn't send nearly enough troops to get the job done.

Youth Against Fascism

2009-09-04T11:07:00.009-04:00

Another can of worms...another stomach turns...

I must say, I'm impressed by the right's latest stroke-inducing conniptions regarding President Obama's plans for a televised address to the nation's schoolchildren, or depending on your point of view, his plans for a mandatory Ludovico Treatment of "Marxist indoctrination." You have to give them credit for the sheer dedication that must go into this level of sincere outrage at virtually anything Obama does, no matter how banal or anodyne, as well as their knack for kicking off a cascade of media coverage for every single one of these little fits, with many a parent vowing to keep their kids home on the day in question. This might be one occasion where being the offspring of Glenn Beck fans might be an advantage, that is if you're not already being home-schooled, in which case everyday is a vacation to the Indoctri-Nation.

Of course, it should go without saying that the mommies and daddies most outraged by this are without a doubt the same people most vocally pushing for the inclusion of creationism, "intelligent design", prayer, abstinence, pledges of allegiance to symbols of the state, military recruitment, loyalty oaths, etc, into the school curriculum. They don't have a problem with the "indoctrination" of school children, per say, just Marxist indoctrination. The reason they can get so easily worked up over the President talking to kids about the importance of readin', ritin', and rithmetic, is because they already view the main goal of education as indoctrination. In short, they know this can't possibly be innocent. They know Obama is trying to brainwash kids, because it's exactly what they'd be doing--and have been doing--were they in his position.

I'm struck by the strange paradox of this brand of thought that deeply mistrusts the government's competence and ability to do anything--other than invade and conquer foreign countries that is--yet still ascribes it an almost omnipotent power and authority to...do what? Enlist an army of snot-nose non-voters to support his socialist ideology? Do you remember what you were like in third or fourth grade? Would you understand or even be interested in a televised presidential address? Unless he had something to say about a bill mandating a half-hour increase in recess, I'm pretty sure I would have forgotten mostly everything he said by the time Tailspin and Darkwing Duck came on TV.

I wonder why so many of fans of Glenn Beck and talk radio would ascribe such power to the ability of a man on a TV screen to brainwash and intimidate frightened children?

It's the song I hate...

Update-- See TPM for info on new Texas-style educational standards, and their effects on the rest of the country...

Leader Music Reviews: The Black Crowes and Levon Helm, Central Park

2009-09-03T11:00:00.010-04:00

A good time was had by all last night, as The Leader and several comrades attended The Black Crowes and Levon Helm concert in Central Park. By "attended", I mean we hung around just outside The Summer Stage venue and heard the show for free. As one guy who was actually going inside the show--"my wife loves Chris Robinson, so we have to go"--said, why get corralled into some outdoor cattle car for $60 when just outside is all of Central Park on a perfect evening? You can buy cold beer from unlicensed vendors with coolers on the back of bikes, and even one guy selling Long Island Ice Teas, mixed on the spot, he even had a little tupperware container of sliced lemons. 2 cups, $6.

It was roots rock all night as Levon Helm opened up a fairly brief set with "The Shape I'm In" and closed with a great rendition of "The Weight" with Chris Robinson filling in for a few verses. The whole night took me back to college, where "The Last Waltz" was something of a permanent soundtrack senior year, with the Scorsese film projected on the giant two story living room wall of a friend's house for at least one party. I'm more familiar with Levon's stuff than the Crowes, but they did do an amazing cover of The Velvet Underground's "Oh Sweet Nuthin.'"

Anyhow here are some clips of Levon for your enjoyment. In addition to his music career, Helm recently came back from a form of throat cancer that could have rendered him unable to speak let alone sing, but perhaps more importantly he is something of an under-rated character actor with a thing for playing backwoods, weirdo types. His first movie was The Coalminer's Daughter, but he was also in the late-stage Steven Segal vehicle Fire Down Below--probably the last Segal movie to be released in theaters--as well as a recent cameo in the Marky Mark wannabe, liberal-Death Wish action-thriller, Shooter, where Helm plays yet another Tennessee backwoods gun-nut. Here Helm explains the "Midnight Ramble" from The Last Waltz, and shares some brief thoughts about a local VFW Club...

The shape I'm in? Pretty hungover actually...

RIP Mayor Quimby

2009-09-02T10:02:00.004-04:00

I realize this is a bit late, but I'd just like to mention the recent passing of an American political giant and bid a farewell to a public figure whose life was marked by both triumph, tragedy, and personal scandal. I speak of the death of 20-term mayor "Diamond" Joe Quimby. As one of the dominant and enduring politicians of his era, Quimby was no stranger to criticism. Elected mayor in 1986, Quimby ran for re-election and won every time, despite a long record of well-documented graft, embezzlement, and 27 separate paternity suits. Quimby was briefly deposed by a former felon and children's television host in a fraudulent election in 1994, and survived a re-call election in 2005. Always vexing to his critics, and transcendent to his supporters, Quimby managed to maintain his hold on public office despite innumerate infidelities, well-publicized gaffes, and scandals--including his nephew's alleged beating of a waiter, his demand to have a hijacked airliner take him anywhere "girls are going wild", and a disastrous monorail project. An icon of liberalism and bogeyman to the right, his name became a shorthand or inkblot test along the political spectrum. Lambasted by right-wing critics, like talk show host Birch Barlow as an "illiterate tax-cheating, wife-swapping, pot-smoking, spend-o-crat," Quimby, nonetheless, seemed almost completely immune to criticism, and maintained that he did, eventually, learn to read.

Throughout a long career with many ups and downs, perhaps Quimby felt most at home at the "Quimby Family Compound", where he would spend the days with family and various beauty pageant contestants and cocktail waitresses. He was laid to rest at the family plot next to his brothers, at a funeral that was attended by both the political and Hollywood elite, including movie-star and governor Rainier Wolfcastle, who married Quimby's niece. I leave you with a fitting tribute to a life dedicated to politics, a simple campaign song that reminds us of his accomplishments. Were it not for Quimby we would not have our tire yard, our mid-sized rollar rink, our gallows, and our shiny Bigfoot trap, but most importantly, it was not his fault that the stadium collapsed.

Sacred Sex

2009-09-01T13:07:00.016-04:00

Via The HuffPo, I've discovered "Another Way To Make Love", a way that completely removes the whole "fucking" part:

I started to connect the dots in my thirties, when I experimented with a little known sacred sex technique -- and learned something unexpected. The technique calls for generous affection and relaxed intercourse. Instead of climaxing, lovers keep melting into a sort of sexual meditation until they feel completely satisfied. Over thousands of years, people have rediscovered this approach, so it goes by various names: angelic dual cultivation, le jazer (cortezia), karezza, the reserved embrace (amplexus reservatus), and so forth. (More in future posts.)

Although she doesn't spell it out in such explicit language, basically what Ms. Robinson suggests is that if you never let your man blow his load, he'll never leave you:

At some point during this learning curve, my husband joined the quest. We've been playing with this approach to lovemaking for eight years now. It's different, but lighthearted and affectionate. We laugh a lot. We find each other adorable. In fact, we're so hooked on harmony that we actually resent it a bit when orgasm does sneak up on us.

Eight long years, I'm sure her husband is very amused with this "quest." Not that "angelic dual cultivation" doesn't sound like a blast, but is there anyone in this country that gets laid anymore? This sounds like the sexual equivalent of forced sleep deprivation. Pure sadism masquerading as New Age enlightenment and "higher consciousness." Is this appealing to any actual red-blooded, living, breathing human? Along with their repeated hawking of cultish "spirituality", their propagation of dangerous vaccination hysteria, recommending colonic irrigation to treat swine flu, we now have this drivel. HuffPo contributors are without a doubt, the weakest part of that site.

Update -- comments inform this sexual technique isn't nearly as risible as I made it out to be...

Gimme a C! Gimme an I! Gimme an A!!

2009-09-01T10:40:00.006-04:00

Joke Line on the criteria for what constitutes a "serious" journalist:

For the past several years, Greenwald has conducted a persistent, malicious campaign to distort who I am and where I stand. He is a mean-spirited, graceless bully. During that time, I have never seen him write a positive sentence about the US military, which has transformed itself dramatically for the better since Rumsfeld’s departure (indeed, he ridiculed me when I reported that the situation in Anbar Province was turning around in 2007). I have never seen him acknowledge that the work of the clandestine service—performed disgracefully by the CIA during the early Bush years—is an absolute necessity in a world where terrorists have the capability to attack us at any time, in almost any place. Nor have I seen [him] acknowledge that such a threat exists, nor make a single positive suggestion about how to confront that threat in ways that might conform to his views. Therefore, I have seen no evidence that he cares one whit about the national security of the United States. It is not hyperbole, it is a fact.

The comments to this piece pretty much say it all. To echo John Cole, you have to love getting mad at someone for something they haven't said, but it's certainly instructive to learn that rimming the CIA and military along with constant reminders of the dire and immediate danger we're all in is a pre-requisite for "caring" about national security.

The thing is JokeLine, like most mainstream liberals, doesn't know very much ("wikipedia is leftist!" "Joe Lieberman is with us!") and thinks his readers are as stupid as he is. That being said, I too have certain criticisms of that civil liberties fetishist, Mr. Green, namely that he just goes on and on and on, when really most of his columns could be neatly summarized with a quick: "Fuck the media." or "Torture is illegal." Less is more Glenn!

Despite claiming with a straight face that he never boosted the Iraq War, I'm holding back the pack of starving hyenas, because Mr. Line's lies and ethical malfeasance did basically pay for my college education.

Pass that Shit!!

2009-08-31T14:06:00.009-04:00

Note to Readers: Attack on sight.

(Update-- I should point out the second Times piece by Patricia Cohen is actually much more skeptical of Myerson than I gave it credit for. Dominique Browning? Not so much.)

It seems we have a new entry into the top spot of "Person I Most Want to See Hunted Down and Eaten by Wild Dogs," and that would be one Julie Myerson, whose James Frey impression "The Lost Child: A Mother's Story" about how "Skunk" weed turned her beloved son insane will soon be crossing the pond to a book club and daytime TV appearance near you. Myerson is almost the perfect specimen of that all too common creature that is equal parts opportunistic, joyless, self-righteous, career-obsessed, hectoring, and above all, devoted to the single minded notion that their children are to be treated as objects of divine worship, even as they lead them to the sacrificial alter of their own ego and ambition. I speak of course of "Moms" and to be more specific "professional Moms," that awful subset of this wretched breed, that will gladly devour their young ones at the first deviation from whatever prescribed fantasy exists in their head. If you don't believe me see how long you can sit through this interview. This is, of course, catnip to the NY Times, who devotes two dead-serious columns by similar women who buy every last ounce of this tripe.

Not once do the articles address the central contention of the book--that there is such a thing as a deadly new strain of "skunk" weed that can lead to psychosis and bipolar disorder--if it was, the reader might find out that the entire premise is absolute bullshit. Instead we get breathless lines like:

We are collectively losing our minds. “The Lost Child” is a cry for help and a plea for a clear acknowledgment of the toll this drug is taking on our children.

The Children! Won't somebody please think of the Children! The claim that devil weed is driving children insane and THC can do "can do untold and irreversible damage" is on par with razor blades in Halloween candy and AIDS infected syringes hidden in movie theater seats. However, when the safety of the wee ones is involved, there is no easier mark than the "Mom"...or Sunday NY Times reader...

In “The Lost Child” Jake, who is identified only as “the boy,” metamorphoses from a loving, cheerful and hard-working student into a surly, violent, foul-mouthed liar and thief who is hooked on skunk, a potent, addictive form of marijuana that experts say can cause paranoia and psychosis.

So basically, he became a teenager...and his parents kicked him out of the house. I feel bad that he had the terrible misfortune of living with a Gorgon like Myerson, who in the past used her column in The Guardian to discuss his lack of pubic hair, for which he was ridiculed mercilessly at school. I wonder why he went insane, let alone, would smoke a spliff of the good ish?

Needless to say Jake has said his Mom is "insane" and that the book is a cover to cover pack of lies, and what's more he continues to smoke weed and enjoy it. Myerson defends herself by saying,"This can only ever be my story from my perspective, and all I can say is I’ve been as truthful as I’m capable of being.” Yeah... but she is right about one thing, when she says she's "cautiously optimistic that Americans won’t rush in and judge me," as both drug-war hysteria and exploiting family trauma for fame and fortune is commonplace in our society. She'll probably have a show on TLC before the end of the year.

When Kronos cannibalized his children, at least he did it to prevent them from replacing him, and not as a "cautionary tale" for "all parents, no matter what shape they think their children are in."

Via IOZ.

The danger of "Skunk" weed, seen above.

Dance Dance Devolution

2009-08-31T13:00:00.011-04:00

The Bugman Danceth. Although I was hoping he'd make an appearance on the upcoming celebreality series, I'm A Disgraced Former Politician, Why Am I Chained to This Grizzly Bear?

In related news, Jenna Bush Hager has been hired as the Today Show's newest "correspondent."

Echoing Mr. Green, I'd like to see a weekly round-table public affairs program, featuring, Jenna Bush, Liz Cheney, Meghan McCain, Luke Russert, and Peter Doocy, moderated by Chris Wallace, called Why, Claudius? Or: How the Fuck are We on Television?

PS -- Does anyone know what the hell that yoke Delay is wearing is about?

Sunday Never Comes...

2009-08-30T11:51:00.007-04:00

Remember when I said I was launching a sister-site on Tumblr?...I lied. Well, not really, it's just on LiveJournal instead. I liked their format a lot better, where I can put things behind a jump, so large galleries of images don't take up whole pages. Anyhow, despite the minor hiccup, this new satellite will still be a repository for film stills and Leader original photography. So to highlight what's poppin' off this week, we have:

Marathon Man, Is it safe?

Photos I took at the abandoned, and probably haunted, Gt. Barrington Fairgrounds and Racetrack.

I Bring you the head of Alfredo Garcia (as promised).

and Robert Altman's California Split, of which I've clipped this scene, where compulsive gamblers Bill (George Segal) and Charlie (Elliot Gould) size up the competition at a high-stakes poker room in Reno.

Let me know what you think...

Inglourious Basterds

2009-08-28T09:43:00.025-04:00

Or: How Col. Landa Got a Summer Home in Nantucket...

I was going to write up a review of Inglorious Basterds while I was still glowing, right after I saw it on Sunday, but then I read Matt Cale's brilliant take at Ruthless, and as usual he pretty much covered everything that needs to be said about IB and QT and left little else to be explored, so please take that as the definitive take on the film, and this as a minor addendum. Basically, Basterds is the perfect summation of Tarantino's entire career. At bottom, all of his films are really only about movies--certainly not any reality or humanity that I'm familiar with--and Basterds is about the terrible, glorious power of film to shape--and re-shape--the modern world. From the high-school drop-out, to video store clerk, to self-taught cinematic savant, to maybe the most influential American director of the last decade or so, the cinema is Quentin's only abiding interest...well, that and women's feet.

Going back to the beginning, I would recommend re-watching Reservoir Dogs with an eye for how much it really is a reflection of itself. A film about assembling a team of cast-offs and misfits to pull off a heist, in this case the act of making Reservoir Dogs. Consider the extended scene where Tim Roth's Mr. Orange rehearses and then performs a story to ingratiate himself into the criminal fraternity, it's all there: a movie about acting, film-making, and movies themselves. Indeed, the heist within the movie fails rather spectacularly, but the movie itself pulled off one of the greatest capers ever perpetrated on Hollywood, and American film has never been the same...and not always for the better. As Cale says, "Tarantino’s films are not only detached from any semblance of reality, they exist wholly within the cinema itself; as if the characters lack the ability to refer to anything other than their own artificiality...

...They are more than caricatures, they are clockworks lacking a point of reference beyond their fellow travelers. Those other doomed figures that sprang from the same demented pen." As a huge fan, booster, and inveterate thief of much of the great Asian cinematic tradition, there has always been this sometimes frustrating kabuki quality to QT's work, and IB is no exception. However, it is this very quality that is the source of much of what I regard as the confusion regarding the film's "morality" or lack thereof. Slammed by the likes of The New Republic as "one of the most morally repulsive movies of the past decade," (high praise coming from such a morally repulsive publication) and similarly, Johann Hari has a long critique at Huffington Post titled "The Terrible Moral Emptiness of Quentin Tarantino is Wrecking His Films." On the opposite side we have the hilarious, chest-thumping reactionary take from Dr. (...Chiropractor) Melissa Clouthier, who takes the opposite tack that the wall to wall orgy of Nazi-scalping, throat-cutting mayhem is in fact a call to arms, a work of such sterling moral clarity and righteousness that the only thing that would make it better would be if the Nazis were Arabs.

Both of these takes are dead wrong, precisely because they approach the film as if it is or should be some kind of serious statement on the H'Caust, war, or morality, when in actuality it's more like the funniest movie about Nazis since Mel Brooks' The Producers. The movie-going public has--largely through film--been conditioned to regard the slaughterhouse of good ole' WWII as the apex of this country's moral and historical achievement. How many times must we save Private Ryan or liberate a death camp to be redeemed to our satisfaction? And what more is there to "learn" or be "taught" about WWII? For QT, post-modernist class clown that he is, "it’s all propaganda; bullshit with the pedigree of noble intentions." Unlike those who look to fantasy depictions of organized mass-murder for moral clarity, at least Tarantino concedes "that war...is so beyond the capacity of the cinema to capture accurately that it’s best to dispense with pretense and cut straight to the cartoon." And a cartoon is exactly what we have. A Tex Avery, spaghetti madhouse of Reich-splattering glory and absurdist dark comedy that offers nothing more than the proposition that if whatever is flickering on screen in a darkened room is good enough to make us laugh, cry, applaud, etc. it might as well be real.

Like Mr. Orange's rehearsed monologue, IB has its own film within a film, a bit of Goebbels produced propaganda called "A Nation's Pride", which consists of little more than a brave Nazi soldier, held up in a bell tower, shooting hundreds of American GIs to the hooting and applause of even the Furher himself. This of course, is exactly what my fellow movie-goers and I were doing throughout as Nazi after Nazi was stabbed, shot, set on fire, and best of all, had their wigs split like ripe pumpkins. Is this a reflection or condemnation of our society's mad lusts and nerdish revenge-fantasies? (One in which, the Jews finally get to be sociopathic killers on par with their worst tormentors.) Or has this knot of meta self reference just collapsed on itself in an explosion of stylized, orgasmic violence? In the end, is Inglourious Basterds any more or less of an illusion or exploitation of history than any other war film? Personally, I'll take one that knows it's a sick joke--where killers are openly cheered and arch-villains wheel, deal, and get away with everything to live out their days on Nantucket--over one filled to the brim with Speilbergian pieties, or worst of all, the notion that moral uplift is to be mined from such a depraved record of human atrocity and absurdity. And who better than a savant with teenage sensibilities for such a task? Why not laugh? I know I was grinning from ear to ear when I left the theater.

As the Jewish cinema proprietor, hiding out in Paris, Mélanie Laurent is both great and painfully gorgeous as Shoshanna Dreyfus, but believe me when I say any and everything you've heard about Christopher Waltz as SS Col. Hans Landa is true and then some. Out of every character to crawl out of Tarantino's "demented pen", Landa may just stand atop the heap. Every single scene with him puts you on the edge of your seat and dares you to root for the greatest Nazi of them all, who, as Cale points out, by the end is merely one phone call away from being an American. The opening scene is so terrifying it alone is worth the price of admission. Waltz is an Oscar-lock, because from Hannibal Lector to Anton Chigur, there's nothing the gold-guy likes more than a serial-killer who steals our hearts...and massacres our family.

"I'd like to use this opportunity to further our ferocious, terrifying plans of overthrowing the government..."

2009-08-28T09:21:00.003-04:00

Via IOZ, I think the Your Leader has found his new Minister of Domestic Affairs...

Get This Man a TV Show...

2009-08-27T10:28:00.004-04:00

Sketch-comedy gold like this must be seen in primetime...

The Moran town hall was the last stop on a 10-city tour for Randall Terry, the anti-abortion activist known for his extreme tactics.

Terry's colleagues put on a skit with a man in an Obama mask pretending to whip a bloodied woman, who kept saying, "Massa, don't hit me no more. I got the money to kill the babies."

Terry himself dressed in a doctor's lab coat and pretended to stab a woman in a gray wig.

"There's no way to pay for this thing without killing granny," Terry explained.

I'd pitch it as The Kids in the Hall meets "The Hell House" experience...

Expanding the Franchise

2009-08-26T10:13:00.006-04:00

Big News!!! The Leader has launched a sister-site on tumblr! The link is in a place of honor, at the top...right under my picture. Research conducted under the auspices of my personal MK_ULTRA program have shown that the presence of words, specifically more than six of seven of them significantly reduces the interest and attention of the average internet user, and thus clouds the transmission of cultural correctness. So, The Leader on Tumblr--simply called "The Leader", will both expand and enhance The Leader brand we've all come to know and love, as well as provide a more purely visual form of stimulation for my children/subjects.

In all seriousness, the Tumblr site is something I've been toying around with for a while that will be a platform for the large deposits of screen-caps I've begun to mine from The Leader's personal stash of DVDs. I've started off with fairly comprehensive galleries of John Huston's Wise Blood and Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. I also expect to post photos I've taken myself from in and around Washington Heights, Gt. Barrington, Amsterdam, and elsewhere (don't worry, this isn't Facebook, there won't be pics of me and friends...I don't have any.) Basically, I simply have too much good propaganda taking up space on my hard-drive to not use, and I think this will allow me another way to document and engage with film/life and the rest of my lusts, obsessions, memories, and kinks. All of which I can now do when I can't think of anything to write. Die-hard fans of Leader Classic, should have nothing to fear, this will not affect my output here at the Homebase, as I will still be sharing my largely unearned opinions, poorly-informed rantings, and movie reviews (Inglorious Basterds to come shortly) right here on blogger. So please regard this new colony as a visual supplement to the already strong doses of videodrome signal available right here.

A New Life Awaits You in the Off-World Colonies!!

Black Power is Comin' For Your Momma!...Grandmomma, and 9/11

2009-08-25T09:44:00.011-04:00

In addition to using his mind voodoo to trick the elderly and now veterans into killing themselves, it would seem President Hitler has now set his sights on raping 9/11 by turning it from a "Day of Fear" into a proposed "National Day of Service." So says "right-wing butterball" and Megan McCardle groupie, Matthew Vadum at the American Spectator.

The plan is to turn a "day of fear" that helps Republicans into a day of activism called the National Day of Service that helps the left. In other words, nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.
"They think it needs to be taken back from the right," said the source. "They're taking that day and they're breaking it because it gives Republicans an advantage. To them, that day is a fearful day."

Please check out Mark Ames at The Exiled for some background on Vadum and his self-posted video slide show of him standing next to women...and Christopher Hitchens, to the tune of "I'm Too Sexy." Vadum, by the way, looks like a cross between Truman Capote, Andy Richter, and a lesbian...but much like Glenn Beck's "9/12" project I enjoy both the idea of the morbid consecration of 9/11 as a semi-official holiday as well as the rather honest and explicit belief that like the Christmas specials of yesteryear, we can all learn the true "meaning" of 9/11 by remaining as utterly frightened, bewildered, desperate, and hungry for blood as we all were immediately following the attack. After all, this "helps" Republicans, and I have no doubt the political dynamic Vadum describes here is true: Fear helps Republicans, and community service helps no one.

"Nihilistic liberal?" Surf-Nazi liberals are one thing, but Nihilists? I mean, say what you will about the tenants of Obama's national socialism, at least it's an ethos...How will you celebrate the day that gave your life meaning?

Update -- Oh yes, one more thing... HE'S COMING FOR ALL YOUR PENISES!!! Via Jesus' General, it seems a new fantasy has found its way into the slip-stream...Obama couldn't have been born in America, because he might not be circumcised. As we all know, all true Americans are clipped, and I'm hoping "the President has yet to show us his cock" will become the new "why won't he release his birth certificate?" Judging by the comments, we're already well on our way. I am sincerely praying that this will catch on and the media will have to cover it along the lines of everything else, "some are concerned with the size, scope, and shape of the President's penis. Is it too much, too soon?" To be followed shortly by, "Should we, the media, be covering Circumcision-gate? Join our panel discussion after this commercial break." Of course, if he isn't cut, that would sort of torpedo the whole "half-breed Muslin" thing, but hey who's keeping track?

It's been what, six months? And we've already moved into the "Big Black Cocks in Little White Houses" phase of the Obama presidency. Al Goldstein was right.

Animal Planet

2009-08-23T10:35:00.000-04:00

Seriously, fuck animals...

Turning and Turning...

2009-08-21T17:00:00.006-04:00

Via Gawker, a dispatch from the widening gyre...Pornstar Lisa Ann, who played Sarah Palin in the porn-spoof of the '08 Election, will now star in the 30 Rock porn-spoof, playing Tina Fey...who played Sarah Palin on SNL...

The real question is...which version of the PalinFeyAnn nexus will you masturbate to before reality folds back on itself and implodes?

America is like, y'know, the best...

2009-08-21T10:46:00.009-04:00

Someone's been thinking with their dipstick...

Also see, Taibbi himself, and then IOZ for a take on just how dismissive we should be of Chomsky's thesis in "Manufacturing Consent", that the media exists purely as a conduit for the opinions and attitudes of political elites, given the discussion with money mean girl Maria "America has the best health care system in the world" Bartiromomomo that Taibbi has. Read both posts, then watch the video clip again and witness the snake begin to eat, and subsequently choke on its tail.

(Via Balloon-Juice)

"Don't worry Marge, America's health care system is second only to Japan, Canada, Sweden, Great Britain, well...all of Europe. But you can thank your lucky stars we don't live in Paraguay!"

Also take a look at Jon Stewart interviewing Healthscare expert Betsy McCaughey.

Update --- The great Roger Ebert keeps it real.

District 9

2009-08-20T10:04:00.017-04:00

Alien Apartheid

It took until the doldrums of the late-August dumping grounds for the best movie of the summer, if not the year--made for a paltry $30 million and starring zero-name to non-professional South African actors--to creep in under the radar and absolutely embarrass/destroy the bloated glut of thoughtless, joyless, CGI chumsicles currently clogging the multiplexes. Soderbergh's The Girlfriend Experience may have been the smartest movie I've seen this year, but Neill Blomkamp's District 9 is definitely the most fun. However, this does not imply that amidst the glorious, instantaneous splatter produced by alien hardware shooting rich arcs of electricity at Nigerian voodoo gangs and corporate death squads, that the film is merely a spectacle or a good time. Far from it, Blomkamp has created a movie that manages to be a more genuinely moving and dare I say, compassionate take on the process of dehumanization than dozens of other more serious films. District 9 is a film about man's inhumanity to man, but like the best horror/sci-fi it simply substitutes the new flesh of the zombie, cyborg, or alien for a situation or socio-political dynamic common to our species that already exists all-over our lonely, fractured planet.

By now I'm sure we're all familiar with the plot details: thirty years ago a massive alien monolith/mothership appears over the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. Coming neither in peace nor for conquest, the floating city merely hovers ominously in mid-air, and here Blomkamp references the sci-fi canon to great effect, peppering the film with sly quotes from other classics. The mothership brings to mind the city-destroying saucers of Independence Day and V, but this city above a city is not the director winking at his fellow geeks, but rather the conscious referencing of the common sci-fi trope, that a more technologically advanced civilization is always to be feared. After all, throughout our own history, those civilizations that were able to master guns, germs, and steel invariably dominated and enslaved those that hadn't. The arrival of the first, fully-armored conquistador on horseback was almost surely as alien, and not to mention apocalyptic, to the Aztec empire as any flying saucer would be to our own society. However, when us humans finally decide to pop open this massive tin can in the sky, what they find is not an onslaught of overpowering alien marauders, but rather a scene more reminiscent of the liberation of Dachau or Auschwitz, as they find a million or so hideous and emaciated life-forms living in their own filth. The film is a disturbing take on the shop-worn line, "take us to your leaders." Indeed we do, and what they decide is to cram them into a massive concentration camp.

The aliens, referred throughout the film by the Kaffir-like slur of "Prawns", adapt to life in "District 9" living in shacks, sifting through garbage, eating the occasional hog-head, and developing a junkie like addiction to cat food. Their grotesque appearance--a slender, lanky crustacean-cockroach hybrid--and utterly degraded state of existence test the limits of our empathy towards a form of life so well, alien. We hear many of the same things about the Prawns as we do about so many other troubling groups of people or "others" scraping the bottom of the social barrel: they breed out of control, decent, normal people must pay for their welfare, they're violent, they're animals, child-like and most of all accustomed to a firm hand above reason or cooperation. Can't someone just do something about them? The Prawn, far from displacing the racial politics of contemporary South Africa, falls right into place at the basement of the hierarchy. A film less attuned to the reality of how oppression affects human beings would have had the impoverished South African blacks forming some kind of solidarity with their alien brothers, but District 9 has no such pretensions, instead showing that the arrival of the Prawn gives even the poorest, slum-dweller a whole new class of beings, below even them, to exploit for fun and profit.

For all its rich subtext and imagination, the success of District 9 is due in large part to the brilliant performance of Sharlto Copley--in his first film--as Wikus Van De Merwe, our everyman protagonist. Wikus is a dweebish, office drone in the "Alien Affairs" dept of MNU--multinational united--a private corporation, and surprise, surprise, defense contractor that generously offers to take over the maintenance and security of District 9 from the beleaguered government. The opening scene, an improvised, documentary take of Wikus, accompanied by a merc army of execute-at-will sadists, "evicting" prawns from their hovels in preparation for their "evacuation" to a more secure facility is a chilling sequence, where Copley obscenely mugs for the camera as he pumps himself up and jokes about the squalid conditions that surround him, pretending to be an important and tough man. The whole thing vaguely reminded me of almost every Discovery or Nat Geo host I've ever seen. Copley manages to do the near impossible in a summer-film, which is basically undergo a completely genuine and affecting evolution (in this case a literal one) of character from a totally unsympathetic dork, as Eileen Jones at The Exiled points out, straight out of The Office: South Africa, to a tragic Seth Brundle figure, who loses a humanity it's not certain he even possessed to begin with. Even as circumstances force him into the role of the dreaded "other", Wikus is no more or less selfish--or human--as he was before. By the end and the film's poignant last frame, Wikus may have achieved a form of grace, but by and large no one has learned anything. The humans aren't any more compassionate and the prawns aren't anymore free, there is no real hope, save for that of escape from District Earth.

I don't normally seek to defend movies I consider worthy or important from critical wrong-think and thought-crime, but I just want to highlight something particularly galling that Eileen Jones pointed out in her review, and that would be the complaint of one of Slate.com's stable of "contrarian" flatworms. In short, critic Daniel Engber doesn't like District 9 because of it's "dull, anti-corporate politics." You see Engber is disturbed that corporations have been slandered by so many sci-fi films, which both in film and print, starting with Dick and running through Gibson among others, seem to be troubled by the anti-democratic, anti-human nature of the multi-national conglomerate. As Ms. Jones says, "why oh why, bright bulb Daniel Engber asks, are sci-fi films so tiresomely fixated on evil corporate overlords running our dystopian future? What could be behind this strange fixation? What could it be? What cooooouuuuld it beeeeeeeeee?" I mean, aliens are one thing, but who could believe a film where a corporation could be complicit in genocide or use a private army to murder, steal and lie at will?

This is pretty standard fare for Slate.com, as their M.O. is usually something like: "Feeling Hungry? Here's Why You're Not" that often involves staking out a position seemingly at odds with their upper-class liberal readership, that for some reason always seems to dovetail with the free-market/reactionary take on most social or economic issues, but I'll just link to these two items from just the past two weeks, and leave it at that.

Only The Good Die Young...Pt. II

2009-08-18T12:21:00.003-04:00

Niedermeyer!....Dead. Dean Wormer!....Dead. Robert Novak?....Dead.

The Pubic Option

2009-08-17T13:35:00.007-04:00

How about a public literacy/spelling plan?

America is surely the only nominally first world nation on the planet whose peasants will riot to prevent the government from giving them health care. In France, all it takes for a few thousand Peugeots to get set on fire is the mere suggestion that the workday be expanded by 15 minutes. Given this sorry state of affairs, I'm also reminded of Scats of American Corpophagia's recent question of "Who is more worthy of ridicule: those who claim the Healthcare Reform Bill will lead to authoritarian socialism, or those who claim the Healthcare Reform Bill will lead to...healthcare reform?"

It is from this suicidally depressing stew that I turn to Allan Ulthman's latest in The Beast, about the Democrats "losing" yet another political battle. To be sure, the reason the "pubic" option is DOA, is because it would work. It would provide a decent level of care to people at less cost, and because of this fact it is politically unfeasible. Again, the reason we can't have even a thoroughly watered down form of public health care, is because it would provide better service at less cost, which is unacceptable to private insurance companies. The opponents of such reform have basically said as much, mostly as a cover for their true belief that if you can't afford health insurance, you don't deserve it.

You may be shocked, given what a good show I make of being a deeply cynical prick, but you can count Your Dear Leader among the sea of naive gits, who thought that with a Democratic president and congress some kind of public health coverage was a fait accompli. After all, they finally had enough votes...I can hear blogfathers IOZ and Dennis Perrin doing their best Nelson Muntz in my direction as I type this, but I simply assumed--as Ulthman points out--after handily winning an election with a clear mandate, they could secure their political dominance for the rest of my life by providing some kind of government health care plan. What the fuck was I thinking?

Probably the same thing as everyone else who even half-heartedly thinks voting affects policy. As Dear Father has pointed out on numerous occasions, even with a super majority of people in favor of it, absent any kind of mass, truly grass-roots, movement with millions marching on Washington, there will be no public option. So in other words, there will be no public option. And for everyone who wants one, either for moral or philosophical reasons or more likely because it would tangibly improve your quality of life, we have no one to blame but ourselves. It's not the Blue Dogs or the Republicans, or the Teabaggers, or the Townhallers, as contemptible as they all are, they deserve no more or less scorn than the rest of us who believed even minor or marginal change was possible within the political system. I mean, I knew I was voting for a mostly right-of-center, pro-corporate technocrat, but really? Ha-Haw indeed.

Speaking of the Mr. Muntz and The Simpsons, here is the great Dana Gould, from this Friday's Real Time, doing his thing reporting from a Townhall protest and then from a "Remote Area Medical" facility, usually deployed to places like Haiti and Zimbabwe, now setting up shop in the L.A. Forum to do things like provide glasses and pull dead teeth from people who have waited in line overnight, many of whom actually have some kind of private health insurance.

update-- Millions marching? Fuck me, what am I talking about? I seem to remember something along those lines happening back when the Iraq War was going down. How'd that turn out? I guess it's some consolation to know there really is nothing to be done.

Star Trek Sunday

2009-08-16T14:36:00.003-04:00

Saw District 9 yesterday, quick review? Fucking Awesome. Longer review later this week. Until then enjoy some Trek. Today we have The HMS Pinafore as sung by someone other than Sideshow Bob, then Picard battles his greatest nemesis: J.J. Abrams, and finally the classic Trek "Evil Kirk" episode, "The Enemy Within", written by Richard "I Am Legend" Matheson. "I'm Kirk!! I'm Captain Kirk!!!"

The Hurt Locker

2009-08-14T11:14:00.028-04:00

Death Trippin'...

"That was good." Says Staff Sergeant Will James (Jeremy Renner) as he exhales a freshly lit cigarette in a near post-coital moment, after pulling apart and defusing a car wired with a half-dozen or so artillery shells stuffed in its trunk. This steady rhythm of the build-up and release of tension as well as the drug-like effects of being intimately-close to death forms the backbone of director Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, a film that follows the daily grind of an Army "EOD" (explosive ordinance disposal) unit as they squirrel away the last forty days of their rotation in Baghdad at the height of the Iraq War in 2004. The men of the EOD unit don astronaut like bomb-suits, which give the distinct feeling of walking on Mars, rather than down the alleys and streets of Baghdad. Each one filled with more garbage and dead animals than the dumpster behind a veterinarian's office, with every pile of trash possibly concealing a booby-trap and each cell phone call the possible trigger. Admirably free of plot, the movie unfolds as more of collection of five or six vignettes as the bomb squad spends their days negotiating a series of increasingly hair-raising death-traps as they dig up and defuse IEDs buried in garbage, cars, and strapped both in and on human bodies.

The arc of the film concerns the aforementioned Sgt. James, a hotshot bomb-tec, who is brought into the unit after the original, by-the-book leader of the tight-knit squad (Guy Pearce) meets a bit of explosive-ordinance that carries out its intended purpose before he can do his job. Sgt. James is a certified cowboy who loves his job and is good enough at it to get away with a seat of his pants attitude that considering the work is both suicidal and completely rational. After all, when looking at a trunk filled with enough explosives to level a city block, why bother with a cumbersome bomb-suit in 120 degree weather? Much to the dismay of fellow EODers, Sergeant Sanborn and Specialist Eldridge (Anthony Mackie and James Geraghty), Sgt. James is a magnet for danger seeking out his next adrenaline fix with the same grim enthusiasm of a junkie.

The film begins with a quote from journalist Chris Hedges' War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning that compares the experience of combat to an incredibly potent drug. War it seems, doesn't just give us meaning, it also gets us high, really high. Of course with the glorious highs there is the accompanying cycle of jones, come-down, and withdrawal. Sgt. James doesn't like getting closer and closer to death, anymore than a heroin addict enjoys the daily routine of securing their next hit. It is merely the all-consuming need for that next rush, be it the form of a needle or in this case, suicide time bombs and snipers, that drives him. However, for the junkie no high ever lasts long enough, no cut is pure enough, no release intense enough, save for the inevitable and final one.

The Hurt Locker arrives at a time when the Iraq war has mostly drifted off the front page without any definitive cinematic moment, so it comes as no surprise that it would reach a level of critical mass and Oscar-nom inevitability. It separates itself from the pack and nourishes movie critics hungry for the perceived verisimilitude of movie combat mostly with its hand-held camera work and a talented cast free of big names, although Renner is sure to be one soon enough. Eschewing both traditional narrative and for better or worse, a point of view about the conflict it seeks to portray, the film approaches the kind of unaffected, unmediated portrayal of war and the men who live within its strange, parallel reality, but for all its "grittiness" and "realness" it can't help but indulge several Hollywood war movie cliches recognizable to anyone with even a passing familiarity with the genre. We have the looming date of returning home as a drama-enhancing device, the arrogant hotshot and his friendship with the little Iraqi urchin who sells bootleg DVDs on the base ("You want donkey-movie? I hook you up with the good shit!"), as well as the clueless, rear echelon, Army shrink whose fate is sealed the second we hear that he'll be accompanying the crew "outside the wire." By the end of the film, when we see James return to the requisite, estranged wife (Lost's Evangeline Lilly) and kid, it's not exactly a revelation to find out that the safety of domesticity and a "normal" life of cleaning gutters and shopping for cereal stateside holds no appeal to our protagonist.

The question is whether or not The Hurt Locker engages these tropes to expose them or because through film, they've become so engrained in our perception of war that we can't imagine otherwise. I'm not sure I can answer this question, but in thinking about it, I wondered how much the American war movie has shaped the perceptions of those men and women actually involved in the real thing. I think specifically of Anthony Swofford's memoir of life as Marine sniper in the first Gulf War, Jarhead, in which he relates that many of the hours spent waiting and preparing for combat were filled with repeat viewings of Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket. Whether The Hurt Locker will eventually be watched by soldiers in the next generation's wars remains to be seen, but what we have now is a meticulously executed and mostly admirable portrait of men at work in America's biggest business. Through film, we may better know ourselves, but as Louis Proyect points out, for a movie about the whos, hows, and whys of the men who locate and diffuse bombs, the second, and arguably much more important half of this equation concerning those who plant them and why--perhaps much of the same primal, death trip-addiction--remains almost completely alien and unknown.

PS- In addition to Guy Pearce and Evangeline Lilly, be on the look out for several delicious cameos from David Morse and Bigelow-vet Ralph Fiennes.

Weekend Work: Movie Round-Up

2009-08-13T11:01:00.011-04:00

One major aspect of my sojourns to the Leader family estate is that it allows me to deviate from the strict regimen of "The Project" (a.k.a. my netflix queue) and rent more recent movies I would otherwise let fall by the wayside. Here is my report...

The International

Law and Order: Financial Victims Unit

The International is a watchable globe-hoping, location-oggling thriller whose arthouse director Tom "Run Lola Run" Tywker is clearly better than script he's working with, which often reads like an extended episode of L&O, where we get sincerely delivered lines like, "The D.A. is gonna have my ass for this!" Or this rapport between two veteran NYPD detectives that goes like this:

Cop #1: "You look like a mess."
Cop #2: "What are you my mother?"
Cop #1: "I could by your father for all you know."

Clive Owen plays his usual tall, dark, and brooding _____. In this case he's an Interpol agent hot on the trail of the IBBC, an international bank whose blood funnels are rammed into a bit of everything nasty like supplying third world nations with enough guns and missiles to get their war on in a bid to control the massive debt accrued by global conflict. Naomi Watts also hangs around, but her character is giant zero that does nothing to advance the plot at all, this is Clive's show. The direction is crisp and Twyker has a thing for bird's eye views of large crowds--perhaps our ant-farm like appearance is how the engines of global capitalism view human beings?--and he does a good job creating an atmosphere of paranoia starting with the opening scene where an assistant D.A. is clandestinely poisoned with the ole' needle prick in a large crowd, but by far the highlight of the whole film is a Woo-esque, A+ shoot-out in the Guggenheim museum. If ever there was a building made for gunplay...It's amazing, probably a dozen people pull out Uzis and turn the famous spiral ramp into a living work of performance art as many clips get spent and shitty "video" art destroyed.

Verdict: Not at all mad I saw it. I should also give it credit, because as an end credit sequence implies, the very best our good guys can expect outside the satisfaction of gunning down one or two CEOs and their smug lawyers, is a toothless Senate hearing. True justice is, of course, impossible. Their immediate designs may have been thwarted, but the overall evil of those debt-creation machines we call banks is left largely untouched.

I Love You, Man

Women suck.

After much film, ink, and blood has been spilled recently over Hetrosexual men who are unable to talk to or relate to women, it was an interesting twist to see a movie about one guy who is unable to talk to men, as Paul Rudd flails around mightingly to develop the proper nickname for the object of his bro-fection Jason Segal. (My favorite was "Broseph Goebbels.") Similar to the themes explored in my review of The Hangover, I Love You, Man is a softer, sweeter, entry into the new canon of films that approach the grind of maturity, family, marriage, and domestication as inevitable and preferable, but ultimately acknowledge that even your dream girl can never hope to provide as fulfilling a relationship as that between you and your bros. It reminds me of a Patrice O'Neal bit I saw him do, where he asked the male members of the audience to imagine a scenario where they were out having a great time with their friends and be moved to say, "You know what? I wish my girl was here. She is funny as a mu'fucka." I mean c'mon, she doesn't even like Rush.

Verdict: My Mom loved it. It also has Lou Ferrigno.

Body of Lies

Satellites of Love.

Leaving aside the plot holes, the tacked on romance/white man's fantasy of boning exotic tail, and the unexamined contention that the only thing standing between the complete collapse of Western civilization and ruthless Muslim supervillains is the omnipresent vigilance of our "intelligence" agencies, I enjoyed Body of Lies quite a bit. Due mainly to the fact, that as Dear Father points out, the movie is not really about what it's about. According to him, its esoteric meaning is in the examination of the huge distances--both geographic and philosophical--between the people who devise plans--in this case Russell Crowe--and those who carry them out--Leo. As Leo runs around the slums of Iraq and Jordan killing people, getting bit by rabid dogs, and milking sources, Crowe--with an ever-present cellphone ear-piece--drops his kids off at school as he orchestrates, manipulates and assassinates, watching real-time satellite footage from high-tech, arcade-like, war-rooms. On a side note, I continued to be impressed with Leo's ability to play a badass, it wasn't until The Departed that I bought it, but he's shed his skinny Titantic frame and impish boyhood looks, and can now convincingly kill and maim.

Verdict: Liked it. It's actually the Jordanian intelligence agency that is the real "hero" of the movie, not the CIA, so make of that what you will. I also liked that it remained unclear whether or not the Russell Crowe character was good or bad. A realist or an asshole? It all depends on what end of the satellite feed you are: watching or being watched.

The Reader

Reading is FUNdemental...

I was probably prejudiced by reading Matt Cale's spot-on review before seeing it, but I have to agree wholeheartedly that there was an interesting movie in there somewhere about how we balance the scales of morality and sexuality, which is eclipsed by yet another dour and boring Holocaust movie whose second half I almost completely tuned out. The further the film got from those initial, passionate and desperate couplings between two lonely people in that dank apartment, the less interested I was. The intriguing question, as Cale puts it, is, "is the background, lifestyle, or morality of a sexual partner — again, not a spouse or close friend — ever important? More to the point, should an erection ever depend on the criminal or sociopathic tendencies of the person you sleep with?" To put it another way, if the best lay of your life happened to have roasted a few hundred people alive, would it matter? If the most lasting, and satisfying experience of your life--i.e., the sexual encounters you think about when masturbating or having sex with someone else--were with someone who was a) kind of abusing/taking advantage of you and/or b) a concentration camp guard, should you feel guilty? Or does the undiluted pleasure of primal sexual connection render all other moral, spiritual, or ethical considerations secondary? Of course the answer is yes, but this movie doesn't seem all that interested in this, favoring to beg our sympathies for a simple, horny, and illiterate Nazi.

Verdict: Kate Winslet's nipples..I mean performance was extraordinary.

Headline of the Month...

2009-08-11T17:01:00.003-04:00

Story here.

Twenty-666

2009-08-10T15:27:00.008-04:00

Woke up early on my born day...

On this day in history: Missouri became the 24st state in 1821...Missoura had to wait another six years, aficionados and collectors of fine American junk rejoiced as the Smithsonian Institution was created in 1846, in 1921 FDR's dreams of becoming a ballroom dancer were shattered as he was stricken with polio at his family's summer home, a vacation destination was born in 1944 as American forces overtook Guam from the Japanese, in 1969 Leno and Rosemary Bianca were murdered by the Manson family, and in more mass murder news from 1977, David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz was arrested by NYC police, and in 1993, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was sworn in as the second vagina-American member of the Supreme Court...

But most importantly--as those of you who have seen certain leaked documents already know-- in 1983, the viral strain commonly known as "William Michael Grace Menaker" began its life sentence on Planet Earth. As I chisel another notch in my brain and scratch off another year on this rock, I'm reminded of some of the other great men and women who share this birf-day, giants like country singer and sausage magnate Jimmy Dean, third-rate president Herbert Hoover, and Jethro Tull's flute player, but also actual celebrities like Antonio Banderas, Rosanna Arquette, Angie Harmon, Justin Theroux, and my personal favorite Tom "Billy Jack" Laughlin.

Happy Birthday Dear Leader! I'm 26.

Sunday Drivel

2009-08-09T15:10:00.009-04:00

The Leader has been hold up in his family's ancestral home/mountain bunker in the Berkshires plotting more supervillainy, eating, renting movies, and watching the natural order of things in the AL East, and by extension the universe, right itself from my lair. More edicts of cultural correctness, items of moral and spiritual uplift, and updates to my enemies list to come shortly...Until then, enjoy this fine quality drivel, including video game rape ("just endure it for a little bit"..."power welled up from deep within his heart"), a brief lesson in geopolitics, Werner Herzog's thoughts on vegetarian cuisine ("too many vitamins"), the "Sarabande" duel from Barry Lyndon ("I'd as soon go to Dublin as to hell"), and to close it all out: Predator--in its entirety from beginning to end--brilliantly summarized in rap form ("Dylan, you sonofabitch")...

Bonus-- Malt liquor ads featuring Billy Dee and Fred "The Hammer" Williamson...I like the King Cobra tagline: "Don't Let the Smooth Taste Fool Ya!", which should be followed by, "no really, it'll get you fucked up." I also enjoyed Lando's claim that it's always good to have plenty of Colt .45 around, you know, in case your planning on entertaining an elegant young lady for the evening... PS-- If anyone has the video or a link to the Wu-Tang St. Ides commercial, please give it up in the comments...

The Truth About Willy...

2009-08-06T12:46:00.005-04:00

And now you know (click to enlarge evidence of my alleged birth)

and as we all know...

Send Them Back

2009-08-06T10:01:00.013-04:00

A Modest Proposal for Dealing with Traitors...

Amidst the joyous and tearful images of "journalists" Laura Ling and Euna Lee reunited with their families following the conclusion their months-long ordeal in North Korea, a matter of dire importance has gone unmentioned by our mainstream media, who in typical fashion is too in the tank for Bill Clinton and too enthralled by "happy endings" too notice the grave consequences of returning these traitors to our sacred homeland. By successfully returning these two women to America, our national strength, honor, and purity has been badly polluted. Are there no men amongst us brave enough to speak the truth? Namely, that our country and the world would be better off if these two were left to rot and die of disease, starvation and exposure in a North Korean labor camp. Thankfully, the neo-conservative right has once more stepped into the breach, carrying the banner of our national glory and honor onto the battlefields of cable news and the Washington Post op-ed page.

Upon returning, seemingly over-joyed at having successfully supplicated our great nation to its enemies, Laura Ling said that she "feared that any moment we could be sent to a hard labor camp." Excuse me, Ms. Ling but as Dick Morris of Fox News has pointed out, maybe you should consider "living with the consequences" of your actions...in a North Korean concentration camp. It's called "personal responsibility", maybe you've heard of it. John Podhoretz of Commentary Magazine has also stepped up to the plate, calling out Ling and Lee's "amateurish" behavior of reporting from a foreign country. If an enemy like North Korea claims they "illegally" entered their country, then we should believe them and as Podhoretz says, these women need to be "held accountable", if not by a brutal totalitarian death-state, then by the next best thing: the conservative media and "realm of public opinion."

This moment brought to you by our great national shame and weakness...

What's worse is the ransom levied by North Korea for the release of these so-called American citizens. Although there is no evidence to suggest otherwise, only a fool would believe that NK didn't get some "stuff" from America in exchange for the release of these willing-Commie bargaining chips. Charles "Crazy Legs" Krauthammer may not be privy to the actual specifics of the negotiation, but knows for sure that "there was obviously a quid pro quo....it was a hostage ransom. No question at all." Going on to say that we'll eventually learn about all that "stuff" sometime in the future. This appeasement is just one more example of how far American leadership has fallen. Could you imagine a great Leader and Commander-in-Chief like Ronald Reagan debasing America by engaging in some kind of quid pro quo with a terrorist nation for the release of hostages?

Their nightmare may be over, but America's has just begun...

Although no one has spoken out on this issue as of yet, let me be the first to make the point that far worse from throwing a "life-line" to NK and their Dear Leader, this incident has appeased a far deadlier enemy. I speak of course of Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Our homeland has been damaged enough by the eight, mostly glory-free years of the Clinton administration, and to have him appear statesman-like on the world stage is a blight from which we will not soon recover. And finally, surely I am not the only one to have noticed the certain similarities between Ms. Ling, Lee, and their hosts from above the 38th. Certain tell-tale visual cues, which would lead any reasonable person to conclude that there is more at play here than the ordeal of two, poor "innocent" women. What were these Tokyo Roses doing there in the first place? Why have they been released? And what national secrets have they, or rather will they betray to their North Korean benefactors? Wouldn't any truly loyal American stoically accept their rat and rice filled future? Will there be any investigation into the collaboration between this yellow alliance? Dear Reader, we must demand that these traitors be returned to the Communist hell-hole they obviously love so much.

I thank God we have men like Dick Morris, Stephen Hayes, John Bolton and Charles Krauthammer to remind us what real courage looks like.

Channel 35: A Fond Wank Back

2009-08-04T10:43:00.014-04:00

(Pop Quiz: What movie is this image from?)

I have to give credit to Dennis Perrin for his recent flogging of the great NYC public access show "Concrete TV", which gave me the idea for a brief retrospective on Channel 35. I regard my work here at The Leader as a more laid back, lower wattage version of the hyper-linked, pop culture saturnalia of "Concrete TV." The Leader is a nice bong hit, "Concrete" is PCP with a dash of LSD. I bring this up because in many ways the hey-day of Public Access television was the progenitor of the blog-o-verse and a vibrant and community-based "citizen" media able to bypass the corporate leviathans that control the Videodrome signal. And by vibrant and community-based "citizen" media, I mean the disjointed rants of drug addicts, mentals, angry loners, the unemployed, and of course all kinds of cheap porn. So you know, exactly like the Internet. Here are three of my favorites from NYC's Channel 35.

The Robin Byrd Show

Imagine a late night talk show with the production values of a terrorist snuff film, hosted by someone slurring their words through perpetually fucked up haze of quaaludes and other prescription drugs, whose the only guests were ropey old slappers with gigantic fake tits and fully shaven, cock-waggers a few rungs below the guy who shows up to a bachelorette party dressed as a policeman and you'd have The Robin Byrd Show. The last ditch refuge for horny teenage boys, too young to buy porn, and too cheap afford the kind of softcore you might get on Showtime or Cinemax. On each episode Robin would interview both male and female "dancers" and pornstars performing locally, take calls from viewers, and allow her guests to showcase their set/grotesque silicon enhancements in fully-nude routines which prove that some things are better left to the imagination. Throughout the entire program, Byrd would constantly apply her trademark lip gloss and encourage her viewers "to lay back and get comfortable" while blurting out grating and spontaneous laughter for no apparent reason. The train-wreck would culminate with a big party, where everybody would dance and Robin would do her signature, tongue in cheek, fake blowjob move. Amazingly, this show has been on the air since 1977, and is still going. In the above clip, Robin gives us a demonstration on safe sex, thank God.

The Black Israelites

Did you know that Socrates, Mozart, Queen Elizabeth, Shakespeare, King Arthur, and God were all black? No? Probably because you haven't gone to the "School of Universal Practical Knowledge" or watched this delightful public affairs program hosted by the True Hebrews and lost tribe of Israel, The Black Israelites. The Black Israelites are angry, really angry, but you would be to if you were the true heirs of both the Hebrew bible and Jesus Christ, who once ruled the whole planet, but got no recognition for this fact outside of a low-rent public access show, a few quizzical glances and belligerent street corner confrontations. The Israelites are the "true" black man, the "true" Jews, and judging by their interpretation of history, probably the true Mormons and Scientologists as well. In this clip, not from the show unfortunately, we do the knowledge and learn that all "so-called" white people are perverts, faggots, necrophiliacs, pedophiles, and that the Germans are well known for making porn with "excrement." Truth. Truth.

Midnight Blue

In Annie Hall, when Woody Allen says that "the rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers," the rest of the country was probably thinking of Al Goldstein. Everything you need to know about the infamous Al Goldstein and his show "Midnight Blue" can be summed up in this clip where he gives a hearty "fuck you" and his famous one-finger salute to: Santa Claus, KFC, 90-year old Manhattan D.A. Robert Morgenthau, "women in general and dating in particular", and the entire project of American democracy. On his weekly show publisher of the legendary Screw Magazine and smut-peddler extraordinaire Al Goldstein would take hilarious tastelessness to Olympian heights as he would interview pornstars, do skits, but mostly just showcase his rants against people, places, things, and institutions that have slighted him in some way, usually a restaurant that failed to properly sate his gorging. Goldstein was vulgar, crude, and offensive in the extreme to anyone not a fat, dirty, "Jew Bastard" pornographer. So in other words, an American hero.

In the course of writing this, I also discovered his blog, where we are treated to his more recent trails and tribulations regarding his financial collapse and stays in various hospices and mental homes. That and the power of Barack Obama's cock.

The Internet is just another, more successful, form of public access. The democratization of entertainment, opinion, and information, but like Mr. Goldstein says, "what's wrong with democracy is it's people. Fuck you."

Third From the Sun & The Obsolete Man

2009-08-02T10:51:00.004-04:00

More Twilight Zone for you this Sunday. This time it's two of my favorites: "Third From the Sun" and "The Obsolete Man." They both star Fritz Weaver, and "Obsolete Man" also features King of the Zone, Burgess Meredith. All the Meredith episodes are classic, and though "Time Enough At Last" is the more popular one, for my money "Obsolete Man" is the better episode. Plus, Your Leader and Meredith went to the same grade school, just about a hundred years apart.

In Third, two families of government scientists attempt to escape an imminent nuclear holocaust, and in Obsolete, a condemned man flips the script on his executioner. I especially like the ultra-creepy boss, Carling, from Third. Totalitarianism, nuclear war, and future-fascism: the Zone always provides. (Note: These are from Hulu, good quality, but under no circumstances should you watch the ads peppered throughout. Should they pop up, mute your computer immediately and open a new tab.)

Bonus -- Here is Jay-Z filling in for, and paying tribute to The Beastie Boys at the All Points West festival with an epic cover of "No Sleep Til Brooklyn." The Beasties had to drop out, because Adam Yauch was just diagnosed with a form of cancer in his saliva gland. Jay dedicated his set to him, and here's hoping MCA makes a full recovery.

Drinkability

2009-07-31T10:55:00.019-04:00

Good news from yesterday's hotly anticipated White House keggar, although no apologies were given, a mutual understanding and respect was formed after Officer Crowley gingerly held Professor "Skip" Gates' legs in the air, so that he could do a "keg-stand," while President Obama and Vice-President Biden chanted "college! college! college!" "It's a testament that these two men were able to come together and play on the same team for a game of beer-pong or Beirut, if you will," said the President. According to the roughly three thousand reporters covering the event, the Obama/Biden team were able to knock-off Gates and Crowley without re-racking their cups even once. Biden allegedly eliminated the elderly prof and not-racist cop with a bounce shot that eliminated any chance for a rebuttal.

Later they were joined for a game of flip-cup by recently suspended Boston cop Justin Barrett, who let it be known that when he referred to Gates as a "Jungle-Monkey" in an e-mail, he was only describing his behavior and meant no racial offense. "I treat all people with respect and dignity," said Barrett, denying charges of racism and claiming that he allows "African-Americans" to make eye contact with him on a regular basis. The whole afternoon provided an important "teachable moment" about the virtue of quiet compliance.

The Most Liquid Beer on Earth!

The real question was what kind of beer was served? Eschewing domestic, the men sipped on the newly released Micro-brew out of Pyongyang, "Leader Brau: To Help With Stress and Glorious Starvation." This crisp lager expanded its growing and fanatical "Cult of Drinkability," earning rave reviews from the party. "This is one kind of North Korean proliferation I can get behind. We got totally bombed!" Joked Obama as he high-fived Biden. Following the success of this "Beer Summit," The White House invited the families of several people disappeared during the course of the War on Terror to join him in the Red Room for a "thoughtful conversation" and a non-alcoholic game of "Asshole." "I get to be President!" Said Obama.

Update -- I was waiting for when someone would clip this gem...

Life Imitates Stupidity

2009-07-30T12:24:00.005-04:00

Me, last week:

Lou Dobbs Demands to See Proof of Obama Conception

Washington Post, this week:

Boston: Ben, not to be a conspiracist, but how come "Birthers" and "Vince Foster" conspiracists get play on the real media while "9/11 Truthers" had to settle for posting a billion comments after articles on everything from politics to sports to dog grooming?

Ben Pershing: Perhaps because there is an actual videotape of the planes hitting the World Trade Center that billions of people around the world have seen, while there is no videotape of Obama being born in Hawaii or Vince Foster committing suicide.

No videotape, if only there was some other form of evidence...I'll just point out the fact that despite the hours of "videotape" of planes hitting the WTC, the hardcore "Truther" believes the planes were holographic projections. So even if there was video of Obama's mother crowning, pushing hard, and then being given a complimentary lei and Pineapple, I doubt it would do much to assauge those beleagured victims of the Black Man in the Fox News, "Birther", Talk Radio set. In America, reality is served À la carte.

Get the Ice Floes Ready...

2009-07-30T11:28:00.010-04:00

"Old people don't need companionship. They need to be isolated and studied so it can be determined what nutrients they have that might be extracted for our personal use."

Finally, some good news on health care, from Politico, we get "Will Proposal Promote Euthansia?" One can only hope:

Republicans are now using this language as a wedge between senior citizens and Democrats. Boehner and Republican Policy Committee Chairman Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) issued a statement last week saying it “may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia” — even though the concept behind the provision has been embodied in federal law since 1990 and has been promoted by Republicans and Democrats for years.

On Thompson’s radio show, as well as in a New York Post op-ed and other interviews during the past week, McCaughey has said the provision requires senior citizens to submit to end-of-life consultations. Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity touted the New York Post article on their shows. “Congress would make it mandatory, absolutely require, that every five years, people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner,” McCaughey said to Thompson.

“The bill expressly says if you get sick somewhere in that five-year period, you have to go through that session again — all to do what is in society’s best interest or your family’s best interest and cut your life short. These are such sacred issues of life and death. Government should have nothing to do with it.”

Unless of course, you're a brain dead corpse that can be propped up like a Pro-Life, Weekend at Bernie's, but that's neither here nor there, the important thing is that we get some movement on a Health Care Bill that has strong measures in place to ensure the culling of the elderly and feeble. You know those doddering, walking reminders of the ravages of time and our own fragile mortality, currently clogging our streets and slot machines and depleting the nation's supply of Werther's candy and Velcro sneakers when they're not killing the young and vital in driving accidents? Do something about them! Call your congressman now! We can't let the Republicans and Blue Dogs dilute the "Euthanize the Useless" provision of the bill anymore than they already have. Now if only those spineless Congress-creatures would do something about all these things--I mean children--I keep seeing everywhere.

If only we could combine a vigorous euthanasia program with David Brooks' Solar Sterilization fantasy, our streets, parks, and most of all, movie theaters would gloriously free of the most annoying members of society. That along with the kind of “cataclysmic spiritual crisis,” that would render Brooks' life “without meaning and purpose,” and we'd be well on our way to The Leader's New Eden.

I Want...

2009-07-28T15:54:00.002-04:00

Darth Joker mash-up art...Gimme.

Also, as someone who grew up with Garfield, this print from the always gloriously offensive Johnny Ryan caught my eye...

Crimes and Misdemeanors

2009-07-28T13:31:00.011-04:00

"If you want a happy ending, you should go see a Hollywood movie..."

"I don't know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They're more important than sex," says Jeff Goldblum's character in The Big Chill. When pressed that nothing is more important than sex, he responds, "Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization?" I thought of that line when pondering how to write about Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors, a film which poses the question: what is morality, if not what your conscience allows you to get away with? Outside the grim, geopolitical ramifications contained in Bananas, Crimes and Misdemeanors is Allen's most unrelentingly bleak and hope-annihilating film. His blackest comedy, it also might be his best.

Consider the "Crimes" half of the film which centers around the wealthy and respected ophthalmologist Judah Rosenthal, played in a "masterpiece of smooth, practiced diplomacy" and calmly shocking depravity by Martin Landau. Judah is successful, respected in his community, has a loving wife and adoring daughter, lives in a gorgeous home, and is also a murderer. You see Judah is caught in a bind, he's been leading on his vivacious, though unstable, younger lover Dolores (Angelica Huston) for the past two years. Promises were made, etc. etc. but he is bored with her and wants to make a clean break, but she's having none of it, threatening to expose not just his infidelity to his wife and family, but also his embezzlement of funds from a charity to cover loses in the stock market. Indeed, one gets the sense it is the potential exposure of his financial improprieties that scares Judah and threatens his easy, privileged life, far more than his martial transgressions. What is most chillingly effective about Allen's direction and Landau's performance is the way in which he seamlessly "backs into" carrying out a murder through a series of rationalizations, which rather than big and juicy, are both ruthless and self-serving, but also totally ordinary. "Is this justice? What this woman is doing to me?" "I can't confess, Miriam idolizes me, she would be destroyed." Judah says in an imaginary dialogue with the blind rabbi Ben (Sam Waterston), whose character forms the link between the film's two stories. "It's a human life. You don't think God sees?" Says the Rabbi. "God is a luxury I can't afford," replies Judah, and speaking of his connected brother (fellow L&O verteran, Jerry Orbach), who will engineer the hit, "Jack lives in the real world. You live in the kingdom of heaven. I'd managed to keep free of that real world but suddenly it's found me."

This contrast or distance between religion, morality, and the "real world" stalks the movie as Judah agonizes over his guilt. Yet far from genuine contrition, this "guilt" and his sudden fear of God are shown for what they really are: another self-serving form of rationalization. "May God have mercy on us," he tells his brother after being informed that Dolores has been taken care of. Have mercy on us? Consider the inherent comedy of that statement in the context of a successful murder for hire conspiracy. Roger Ebert writes, "Judah has mastered the art of ameliorating his crime by being shocked at it. Yes, he had Dolores killed -- but if he feels terrible about it, doesn't that prove he's not an entirely bad man?" Much like most people who "get religion" in the wake of tragedy, incarceration, hardship etc. Judah's flashbacks to his religious upbringing and pangs of guilt are little more than a way of covering all his bases in the event that God does "see all" and the universe isn't empty. As for where the film stands on this question, Ben, the one truly good and moral character who believes deep in his heart that the universe does have a moral structure and meaning is completely blind by the end of the film.

As for the "Misdemeanors" part of the film, we get the comic relief as it were, in a secondary story where Allen plays his usual stock character, this time in the form of unemployed documentary filmmaker, Cliff Stern. Cliff is a professional failure trapped in another one of Allen's loveless, sexless marriages/relationships ("The last time I was inside a woman, was when I visited the Statue of Liberty."), who is coaxed into doing a feature for public television on his glib, arrogant, bag of a brother in law Lester, (a hilariously awful Alan Alda), a mega-successful TV producer, or summed up by Lester as he spits into his tape recorder, "Idea for farce: poor, loser agrees to do the life story of a great man, and in the process comes to learn values." While filming his movie, Cliff grows to despise Lester more and more, while falling for producer Halley (Mia Farrow), who shows interest in his real passion project: a documentary about a philosophy professor who ponders love, morality, and the project of existence. Cliff is immediately smitten by a woman, both beautiful and intelligent, but most of all interested in his work, and carries on a kind of emotional, non-affair with Halley, pining after her but incapable of the kind of grand gestures or romance that would attract a woman like her, and for once, it was a relief to be treated to an Allen film, where he doesn't get to fuck some gorgeous woman.

Of course, Cliff screws himself over by editing his film in a way that compares Lester to Mussolini, unable to make the even the smallest kind of moral compromises necessary to get by and prosper in the "real world." Things only get worse for him when his philosopher subject, who counseled the importance of continuing to exist despite it all, kills himself and his advances are re-buffed by Halley, who by now is obviously interested in the hated Lester, and why not? She is attractive and ambitious and he is successful, poweful, "charming", and on top of life, whereas Cliff is anything but. He strings himself along, holding out hope and setting up his eventual demolition when Lester and Halley announce their engagement at the end of the film, where Cliff and Judah randomly cross paths at the Wedding of Ben's daughter. Judah confesses to the now divorced Cliff a "hypothetical" murder scenario with a "strange twist", where a rich man gets away with murder, and comes to realize that all people carry around awful deeds with them, and with the passing of time all crises fade, and life goes on. In other words, in our own lives, we are the "eyes of God." We're the only ones who "see everything" and if we can live with ourselves, we can do anything. Like Cliff's documentary subject says, "We are the sum total of our choices," and thus defined by them, as Ebert writes, "By choosing to have Dolores murdered, Judah has defined himself as a man of wealth and privilege, respected by society, 'idolized' by his wife, and a murderer. He can live with that." This is the "real world" we are left with: the rich and powerful routinely get away with murder--literally in Judah's case, and figuratively in Lester's--evil is respected, adored, and worst of all, gets the girl. Meanwhile the weak get shit on.*

Here we have two men, one capable of rationalizing even the worst evil, and one who is thoroughly broken and doomed by the perpetual burden of his "misdemeanors." One man's personal morality prevents him from leading a happy life, while another's lack of guilt only rewards him. Does God see all? If he doesn't, then he's not God, and if he does, he's just another rich and powerful asshole who can gets away with murder. A strange and sad universe indeed, but as Allen himself has said, "to me it's a damn shame that the universe doesn't have any God or meaning, and yet only when you can accept that can you then go on to lead what these people call a Christian life — that is, a decent, moral life."

*Unfortunately, this is literal, in the case of Cliff's poor sister..."A strange man defecated on my sister..."

Hope Dies Eternal

2009-07-28T12:34:00.005-04:00

Sigh... Taibbi on what happens when what you knew was going to happen, happens:

It’s funny, earlier this summer I was watching the Federer-Roddick Wimbledon Final. Great match in a way, final set was 30 games long, one of the all-time epic battles. And yet, as I watched it, I thought to myself, “This has to be the least suspenseful epic sporting event of all time.” Because there was never any doubt in my mind that Federer was going to win the match. I simply could not envision a scenario where anything else than a Federer victory could happen. I think I even turned it off at 7-7 in the final set, figuring I could catch Federer’s award ceremony later on.

It’s the same with this health care bill. Who among us did not know this would happen? It’s been clear from the start that the Democrats would make a great show of doing something real, then they would fold prematurely, ram through some piece-of-shit bill with some incremental/worthless change in it, and then in the end blame everything on Max Baucus and Bill Nelson, saying, “By golly, we tried our best!”
...The reason a real health-care bill is not going to get passed is simple: because nobody in Washington really wants it....
It won’t get done, because that’s not the way our government works. Our government doesn’t exist to protect voters from interests, it exists to protect interests from voters. The situation we have here is an angry and desperate population that at long last has voted in a majority that it believes should be able to pass a health care bill. It expects something to be done. The task of the lawmakers on the Hill, at least as they see things, is to create the appearance of having done something. And that’s what they’re doing. Personally, I think they’re doing a lousy job even of that. I lauded Roddick for playing out the string with heart, and giving a good show. But these Democrats aren’t even pretending to give a shit, not really. I mean, they’re not even willing to give up their vacations.

Read it all, and you may want to wash down that handful of prescription drugs that you may or may not have coverage for, with the one medical treatment still affordable to the average American: vodka. Or as IOZ says, "Obviously nobody has explained to Matt Taibbi that we must continue to elect more and better Democrats." If blog-father were in the Wu-Tang, his name would be the "HopeFace Killah" a.k.a. "Donkey Nickles."

Da Mystery of Lego Boxin

2009-07-26T10:17:00.003-04:00

Mega-trife, and yo, I killed you in past life...

Also, for your Lazy-Sunday viewing pleasure...

The first and third guy are brilliant...everyone else...well, sort of like every other Caucasian Walken impression you've ever seen...or done yourself. But it does remind me of an earlier post from here at The Leader, "Talkin' Walken", that highlights some of my favorite Walken moments. What are yours?

In His Colony...

2009-07-24T12:03:00.014-04:00

Just like The End! Except without the rape and cannibalism!

Coming Tuesday nights to the Discovery Channel, the producers of Ice Farmers, Zoo Cops, and Deadliest Ghosts, bring you a daring new experiment in post-apocalyptic reality television with The Colony. The Colony poses the age old question: how would you get by in the movie Road Warrior? How would you find food, shelter, water, love, and update your Facebook status when the infrastructure that maintains the paper-thin artifice of civilization crumbles around you? How will your degree from a small liberal arts college prepare you for a future career in scrounging, foraging, and hiding? For 10 weeks, 10 volunteers, representing a cross-section of society, from martial arts instructor Kayla to marine biologist Joey, to Meth-lab assistant Corey, will learn to live and start again in...The Colony.

How will our survivors adapt to life in the isolated, dilapidated, wasteland of downtown L.A.? With no natural water supply, poisoned air, roaming gangs of post-human, surgically-altered lizard people, a mild level of radiation, and a climate incapable of supporting any kind organic life or community, the city of Los Angeles provides the perfect real-life simulation for any and all post-apocalyptic scenarios.

After emerging from 48 hours in their sleep and sensory deprivation tanks, the volunteers are treated to a simulation of their friends and family dying of the plague and being eaten by feral dogs. They are then set loose in our looting course, where they will have ten minutes to find the hidden stash of Ramen noodles and wrestle away any drinkable water from the frightened shopkeeper and his family before the Lord Humungus and his men arrive. Our team will then have to float down the L.A. River and make their way through the abandoned offices of the William Morris agency, before arriving at their sanctuary and home for the next two months. From there, they will have to survive off the grid, using only the abandoned solar panels, car batteries, welding equipment, gardening tools, diesel generators, flame-throwers, motor-cycles, and the Brinks truck the producers have left behind for them.

Throughout the show, experts in the fields of Post-Traumatic Stress, consultants from the Dept. of Homeland Security, and Phillip Zimbardo of the "Stanford Prison Experiment" fame, will check in and provide lessons on surviving by any means necessary, how to dominate weaker members of the group, establish a place in the new social order, and the ethics of using human guinea pigs for entertainment purposes. They will also answer apocalypse related trivia from Cash Cab's Ben Bailey. When you hear the air raid siren, then you know it's time for cash prizes!

This season on The Colony: Cat-food heiress Michelle learns how to prepares meals on the hood of a car, mechanic Manny must struggle to overcome his fear of marauding, chain-saw wielding gangs, the fight for social dominance continues as Alphas John and Michael butt heads over control of breeding rights and the fertile women in the group, the group is elated when they discover they can piggy-pack off the wi-fi signal of another nearby group of survivors from The Learning Channel, but devastated when they must draw straws to decide who will be tasked will killing the beloved school-teacher George "Bags" McDonald before the "T-Virus" transforms him into a blood-sucking ghoul. Tune in every week and watch our survivors learn how to let go of their moral compasses, kill their compassion, and forsake their religion as a new society rises like a phoenix out of the ashes of a sick and decadent one.

Tuesdays at 10, following Man vs. Wall.

Dirty Jerz

2009-07-24T10:03:00.006-04:00

Via Gawker and TPM, you've got to check out the details of the sting that netted nearly fifty arrests in New Jersey yesterday, including the mayors of Hoboken, Ridgefield, and Secaucus. It reads like a Coen brothers movie. You've got real estate scams, kickbacks, corrupt pols, a "vast money-laundering network" run by Syrian jews, and to top it all off, black-market kidney sales.

"I'm talkin' about friendship. I'm talkin' about character. I'm talkin' about - hell. Leo, I ain't embarrassed to use the word - I'm talkin' about ethics."

Obama and Lorezno Seen Rolling in a "Benzo"

2009-07-23T14:16:00.009-04:00

What Obama said:

What the Media sees:

"Obama attacks docs, cops," says Bill Kristol, who forgets to mention that Obama also said of the cop in question, that he wasn't sure if "he was fag, or what."

I know it's hard to believe the cops in Boston could be racist, but as is usually the case with police misconduct, we will be treated to an endless parade of letters to the editors from white people who will assure us their authority must always be deferred to and that most all, "you just don't talk to police that way," lest you be arrested for "exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior" inside your own house. He's lucky he wasn't tasered. Fuck the police indeed, or as Prof. Gates put it: "ya, I'll speak with your mama outside!"

Lou Dobbs Demands to See Proof of Obama Conception

2009-07-23T11:12:00.013-04:00

Pundit claims "money-shot" of Obama's parents would be definitive proof of his eligibility to be President. Meanwhile, Alan Keyes wants "proof of Obama."

WASHINGTON DC -- CNN cable news pundit and radio host, Lou Dobbs, has joined the growing chorus of voices concerned about the legitimacy of the Obama presidency, based on lingering questions regarding the President's birth certificate and status as a natural-born U.S. citizen. "There are questions here, folks," said Dobbs on his nightly CNN program. "Questions that could be easily resolved if only the president would produce a copy of his birth certificate, a copy other than the one he already released." Not content with the document already certified by the State of Hawaii, or the notice of birth in published in the local papers, Dobbs speculated that this issue would remain relevant, until it was adequately dealt with to his satisfaction. Saying, "we need some real solid proof other than these 'documents.' A photo or footage of some kind, clearly depicting Obama's alleged parents engaging in some kind of unprotected intercourse or sexual congress while holding up an American newspaper with a date corresponding to his birth in August of 1961 would go a long way towards dispelling these rumors, but unfortunately the White House has been less than forthcoming on this matter."

Dobbs' demand for proof of the Obama conception picked up steam on the Hill, when several Republican Reps. co-sponsored a bill that would require all future presidential candidates to provide, "detailed video or photographic documentation of their mothers and fathers having sex." "This bill is about clearing up any potential doubts there may be in the future," said Rep. John Campbell (R-CA). A grainy or badly blurred copy will not do either, "As Americans we demand nothing less from our leaders than a clear, unaltered, unedited shot of the moment when their fathers' erect penis ejaculated sperm into their mothers' vagina on God-given American soil," Campbell stated, before qualifying his comment by declaring, "As far as I know, that is how U.S. children are made."

The "Where American Babies Come From Act" has gained support from Fox News and Talk Radio, including rising star Glenn Beck, who suggested setting up an independent "people's commission" of "patriots and citizens" to verify and bear witness to any sex act that could potentially produce an American president. "This is dangerous people" intoned Beck. "Mark my words, as we speak illegal immigrants and ACORN operatives are impregnating American women on foreign soil and planting forged documents ahead of time, so that in forty or fifty years they can get one of these 'children' elected president and complete their final goal of destroying liberty in America."

Proof of birth and conception may not go far enough for some, including former Presidential candidate Alan Keyes, who warned of a looming "constitutional, philosophical, and existential crisis" unless the "usurper" Obama could provide some proof of his actual existence. "My perception of the figure called 'Obama' does not necessarily correlate to an objective reality," said Keyes. "Obama's existence cannot be known unless identified through thoughts, memories, and feelings, all of which are subjective, and so it is not unreasonable to question the reality of his very being." It is likely that these questions about Obama's citizenship and alleged existence will continue until such a time as when The White House can prove something is not to someone who has experienced a reality of something that is.

Update -- Now available on SnuffPo...

Midnight Sun and Goodnight Moon

2009-07-22T15:15:00.008-04:00

Continuing with this week's "Knowing Me, Knowing You" theme (A-ha!), here is the Twilight Zone episode "The Midnight Sun," which nicely captures the same "sun incinerates the planet" dynamic we saw in the craptacular-Cage movie. The episode features two women slowly being roasted in an AC-less apartment--a horror I can relate to--as the planet, sprung from it's orbit, drifts closer and closer to the sun and civilization bakes, chokes and struggles to squeeze out its last gasps. I think it's a great episode, which in classic Zone tradition, does a lot with a little, and is quite effective at conveying a sense of both impending doom and stifling heat. Though subtle, the intonations of rape inherent in the scene with the male intruder is quite disturbing. Like so many other Zone episodes, it portrays giant "macro" ideas and themes--nuclear war, race, totalitarianism--from an tiny, individualized perspective. I especially like the moment towards the end, when the older lady bugs out, and the paint on the canvas starts melting.

From the wikipedia entry, J. Hoberman writes,

Whether explicitly nuclear or otherwise, the apocalypse was never far away [in the Twilight Zone]. "The Midnight Sun" was telecast on the day the U.S. consolidated its drive for "push-button warfare" with the first successful launching of a Minuteman missile from an underground silo. The episode substitutes a kink in the Earth's orbit—an analogue to what we currently call "the greenhouse effect"—for an atomic holocaust. Instead of blowing up, the planet is falling into the sun. Rape and pillage seem imminent, and even the pigment is boiling on the heroine-artist's canvases as the radio weatherman goes nuts on the air.

Also, I want to second the crew at Agitprop's tribute to the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing...

"Don't mess with God's America..."

Creating New, and Better Realities...

2009-07-22T10:52:00.004-04:00

"Being a Scientologist, when you drive past an accident, it's not like anyone else. You drive past, you know you have to do something about it, because you know you're the only one who can really help."

I'd like to dedicate this to the Church of Scientology ads that appear to be sporadically cropping up in my blog ads. The google blog ads usually try to match up with the content of the post they appear under--see my Alien review--so I'm trying to figure out whether it is my messianic delusions, my continued indulgence of poorly written science fiction, or my self-styled aspirations to form my own cult that have kicked off this particular algorithm in the google hive-mind. I guess I can put this down along with my other favorite ad that perpetually shows up here at the Leader, "How to tell if your man is gay."

(h/t to Quin from PunkassBlog, who noticed this suppression shattering, Dianetic volcano of KSW, not, I repeat, not, PTSB, earlier in the week. I should also note the text from the ad blatantly cribs from well known Leader favorite, Fight Club.)

The Big Aristotle & Panda

2009-07-22T10:41:00.001-04:00

Pic o' the month...(via Deadspin)

Amsterdam: Odds, Ends, and Artifacts

2009-07-21T14:37:00.035-04:00

As commenter Phillip Allen has already pointed out in Part I of my little travelogue, did y'all mu'fuckas really think I was going to go to Amsterdam and just give you a bunch of nice post-card photos of canals and churches at sunset? I was only setting the stage...

Unlike my hometown, which is based around constantly drawing eyes, bodies, and imaginations up, up, up, almost everything worth seeing in Amsterdam from graffiti, to interesting little book stores, shops and cafes, to all kinds of assorted odds, ends, and artifacts, to stranger's living rooms, pets, and yes, whores...takes place at exactly eye level. Some of the best things I saw were among these random curiosities--mostly seen through shop windows--I happened across just walking around. Here is a compilation of some of the views from street level in a less scenic, but hopefully more interesting photo-gallery... (click image for larger views.)

This MJ stencil--from his better days--had serious ups, all city...

Here, he is joined by a blonde with big, fake tits...

The Male Gaze returned...

The Male Gaze reflected...

A sentiment I think we can all sympathize with...

A bit of nostalgia...

Keith and Mick...
Debbie and Bowie...

Berry and Debbie...

NYC graf artists bomb the planet...All World...

I was really feeling the Alfred E. Skullface...

There are two dogs in this photo...

Pretty Things Komen...
Man in the mirror...

Here is the girl with fake tits in color. Any idea who she is?

If I know my readership, (alcoholics, angry loners, the unemployable, etc.), as well as I think I do, then I know what you're really thinking about when you hear "Amsterdam." So please wait for Part III tomorrow...