take a seat

After watching all 24,000 hours of Chris Hansen’s investigations into online predatory behavior (in one night) I’ve arrived at a radical conclusion: Chris Hansen is not a journalist. That’s a view for the simpletons. He’s something a little bit more.

He’s a provocateur. A performance artist.

I’m not throwing shade at Hansen necessarily. Indeed, if my interpretation of him is correct, he’s the greatest to ever do it. Unlike all the other firebrands, Hansen didn’t rise up through stand up comedy or cheap political punditry. He captured the public trust by doing legitimate investigative journalism. But as usual, the times make the man. And Hansen stumbled upon a subject matter that was alarming, darkly provocative, and timely. After the Satanic Panic and Stranger Danger era of the 80s and 90s, followed by the intense paranoia and entrenchment of the surveillance state during the early 2000s, Hansen invited us to take a seat and peek into the world of online predatory behavior towards children.

As mentioned in the video above, To Catch a Predator always had its controversies, specifically regarding the media’s relationship with law enforcement, entrapment, etc. Initially, the program dedicated time towards educating parents on how to protect their children online. So there was, in a sense, an educational component. But then the show kinda morphed into something else. Something a bit unsettling and much more difficult to put your finger on.

We all know the setup. After baiting a predator, a “decoy” (usually a paid actor playing an underage girl or boy) waits at a sting house for the individual to show up. The predator comes into the house, the decoy disappears, and out comes Chris Hansen asking the man to “take a seat”. What follows is an uncomfortable conversation where Hansen attempts to understand the predator’s motivations and intentions. The first few interviews, you’re like “hahaha fuck that guy.” But the more you watch, the sadder it becomes. Eventually you have to ask yourself: “what are we accomplishing with this?”. Even in the rare moments where the predator is calm and honest, we really don’t learn anything that we couldn’t have deduced ourselves. So the interviews are like watching a trapped animal. The predator spins their tires until the interviewer gets bored and says “I’m Chris Hansen of Dateline NBC”. The man panics and tries to leave until they are busted by a whole squad of cops. It’s the strangest and most unsettling bit of television you will ever see.

Sure they catch a predator. But Chris Hansen presents himself as a predator of a different beast. With his access to primetime television and absence of a court of law, Hansen becomes the judge, jury, and executioner. You and I, as viewers, are his co-conspirators.

But as with any good art, there’s an undercurrent of themes presented but left to the viewer to ponder on. Male loneliness. Declining social mobility. Mental health. Rarely, if ever, were these subjects outright discussed but were nonetheless screaming at us through the television. Moreover, the pretense of journalistic intent was addressed only in the most halfassed way. If Hansen was truly concerned with online sexual predators, more attention would have been paid to victims of it.

Instead, Chris Hansen chose to turn a disturbing subject into spectacle. That’s why it’s not fair to call his work in the subject “journalism”. Not to knock To Catch a Predator and its successors though. It not only provided spectacle but it also gave us insight into ourselves and our times.

That’s what good art is supposed to do.

Mark chapter 1

I’ve always said that three things have influenced my writing the most: Cormac McCarthy, Columbian cocaine, and the Gospel of Mark. The first two are self explanatory. The last requires a college dissertation.

The Gospel According to Mark is my favorite ancient text. It’s weird. It’s esoteric. And I believe it caused a massive shitstorm when it reached the ears of early Christians. For those who don’t know, Mark is the oldest surviving Gospel. Matthew and Luke made liberal use of it. And it is thus seen as the first ancient “biography” of Yeshua aka Jesus of Nazareth aka Jesus ‘H’ Christ. Sure, it is attributed to a guy named “Mark” but no one actually knows who wrote it and where and why it was written. At first glance, you might think it was composed poorly in Greek. Yet if you move through the text with that assumption, the author will make you look like a fool (which you are). But for ears willing to listen, Mark packs one thematic punch after another. It’s on par with any of the other shit floating around the Greco Roman world at the time.

But I think it was controversial. Like all good art, people weren’t ready for it. After all, there’s a reason why two other versions of the same story were composed 10 to 30 years later (Matthew and Luke. Plus John if you think there’s a synoptic relation). They had to explain some of the “problems” that Mark posed.

And the first problem is that of John the Baptist. John was apparently a real guy. The historian Josephus discusses him roughly 20 years after Mark. There’s a lot of academic speculation about what Jesus’s relationship to John was. Was Jesus a follower? Was he high up in John’s movement? Or was he merely passing by the Jordan River when he decided to get baptized by the preacher? It is common for scholars to declare Jesus’s baptism by John as an actual historical event. And why do they think this? The answer is something called the “criterion of embarrassment.” Mark states that John preached baptism for the repentance of sin, leading one to wonder what sins Jesus committed. Sounds like blasphemy, eh? It makes no sense. What’s funny is that Josephus states that this is specifically NOT the reason why John preached baptism. Nevertheless, John baptizes Jesus and, as Mark writes, he came up out of the water and “a Spirit” “descended” “upon” “him” “like” “a” “dove” and said “thou art my beloved son in whom I am well pleased” (or something like that). A clear reading of this would lead one to believe that Jesus was “adopted” as God’s son and his powers only activated after John’s baptism. Keep in mind, there is no birth narrative in Mark. This is literally Jesus’s first appearance and I’m assuming that this was a big ass problem because “birth narratives” were subsequently added to later canonical gospels. Therefore, theoretically, you can read in Mark that Jesus was a normal living sinner before his encounter with John.

Hence the “embarrassment”. Mind you I don’t think that criterion of embarrassment is sufficient enough to establish the baptism as a historical fact. Through this reading, it’s possible that the author of Mark (or his sources) was using John’s movement as a way to legitimize his own nascent Jesus movement.

Nevertheless, I think it’s an odd story to include. As mentioned, Mark was written in Greek. Presumably this meant it was written for a mostly gentile audience abroad and not for the Aramaic-speaking followers of Judaism in Palestine. There’s a very low chance of a Greek speaker in Thessaloniki during the 1st century CE, for example, having ever heard of John the Baptist. If one wanted to extol Jesus’s authority as the son of god, I imagine it would behove one to excise the story altogether. In fact, if you recall, baptism plays no role in the rest of Mark. Jesus baptizes no one. In my view, the best possible reason to include this story is because John’s movement was interwoven, somehow, with Jesus’s ministry and it was too big of a fact to ignore. And Mark, without the development of higher Christology by later Proto-Orthadox churches, simply didn’t see this as an “embarrassment.” I think that this is a better argument for Jesus’s baptism by John as a historical fact.

Mer Rouge (Part 56-I’m just trying to get through this story)

The deputy walked a few yards from the road and stepped behind a tall southern pine. He barely managed to get his pecker out before a knife slid across his throat. Piss and blood sprayed every which way. DuPont let the body drop and he knelt down. The five remaining deputies were facing the opposite direction. The priest meanwhile, covered in camouflage from head to toe, drew his Walther with a silencer. He fired one shot and it barely grazed his target’s ear. “The hell was that?” the deputy cried out. With little time to consider his options, the priest popped out of the bushes and ripped off three shots at the officers. All of them landed and killed their targets. The priest was shocked. The remaining two scrambled to reach for their weapons before DuPont hurled his Bowie knife into the back of one. He screeched and collapsed dead to the ground and the last man hopped into the squad car and squealed away. 

“Fuck!” DuPont shouted. 

The priest lowered his Walther and closed his left eye. The vehicle was a hundred yards away. “Fire goddamnit!” urged the sheriff. The priest pulled the trigger and the bullet smashed through the rear window. A car ramp was inexplicably on the side of the road and the vehicle went up it and into the air and crashed upside down in the grass. 

Then it exploded.

“That was close,” DuPont said. 

“That was one hell of a shot!” Oren shouted to the priest as he climbed out of the brush. 

“Where the hell did you get that Walther, padre?” asked Moses. “What the hell else are you hiding under that cassock?”

“It always helps to be prepared,” said the priest. 

Oren glared at DuPont and spat. “One hell of a body count you’re stacking up, sheriff,” he said.

“There’s no time for justifications,” he barked. He pulled out his walkie talkie and radioed Chaz. “All clear,” he told him. He reholstered the radio and placed his hands on his hips. He glared at the car explosion. “It’s only a matter of minutes before they see the smoke.”

Then a rifle shot rang out and struck Moses on the shoulder.

TO BE CONTINUED…

MySpace

It was 2006.

The US was stuck in a military quagmire. Justin Timberlake was bringing sexy back. Cialis was popping off. And I was spending half my waking hours talking to chicks on MySpace.

Times were good.

But then came September.

The Crocodile Hunter unexpectedly gets got by a sting ray. And three weeks later Facebook opens its registration to anyone and everyone. Little did we know that it was the beginning of the end for the internet. It was the second worst September in human history.

To say that Facebook’s impact on the internet has been a catastrophe would be an understatement. And the sad thing is that it just didn’t have to be. No one in their right mind, then or now, could say that Mark Zuckerberg’s platform was the superior product. In hindsight, Myspace’s collapse is the great enigma of our time.

But 20 years later, MySpace is attempting a triumphant comeback. I tried to register today but I only ended up crashing my browser. So some things never change. And I hope they never do. Yet this poses a difficult question: can the wheel of time be turned back?

The age of social media might be dying. Should it be saved?

Under normal circumstances, my answer to both questions would be no. But we live in a strange nexus. The pushback against AI and social media algorithms has been far more successful than what I could have anticipated. It has made me wonder: can we turn back time on the internet? Is this where the people set their foot down and reclaim the worldwide web?

Could MySpace renaissance be the harbinger of this new era?

Probably not. But I’m still all in on MySpace. At the very least, we have to right the wrongs of the past and make the internet cool again.

Mer Rouge (Part 55)

The gravel road was about a hundred yards away. It’s entry point was guarded by a half dozen deputies. DuPont lowered the binoculars and radioed to Chaz. “Stand by,” he ordered. Hidden in the treeline, the priest threw on his camouflage smock. “Is that standard issue in the Orthodox Church?” Oren asked him.

The priest nodded. “Yes. Strangely,” he said.

DuPont met with the men huddled together in the wood. He pulled out a .44 Magnum and checked the cylinder. “There’s six guards,” he announced. “We’ll maybe have a minute to take them all out before the other deputies are alerted. Chaz is on standby with the dynamite.”

“If attacking them don’t alert the others, that .44 sure will,” the priest said.

“Will we have to kill em?” Hutch asked.

“Oh yeah,” said the sheriff. “BIG time.”

Oren shook his head. “Hutch and me never killed no one. So you guys go on ahead.”

Moses slapped him on the head. “Fool! And you think I have?!”

“Oh I know YOU have,” the priest interrupted.

Moses thought. “Ohh yeah. I’ve killed a lot of people actually.”

“Alright, the Priest and I will take the lead. The rest of you follow,” DuPont declared. “Remember, this is like Loc Ninh. Keep your eyes peeled and your weapons ready.”

“None of us were there, sheriff,” Oren said.

“Shit, I was,” the priest told him. “Got my testes shot clean off. Of course, that was last year though.”

“Enough,” DuPont barked. “We’ll ride the treeline then take cover in the grass,” he said. Then he unsheathed his Bowie knife and gave it a long hard look. “I’ll take out the first guard. Once first blood is shed, you must move quickly. No hesitation. If you hesitate, you’re dead.”

“Except for me and Moses,” the priest said. “But yeah, the rest of you would be fucked.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Stories No One Should Read

Sorry folks. Been sick all week. Sick of this SHIT that is. Sick of this summer heat!

That is until I got a phone call. I cleared my throat and picked up my old rotary phone. “Hello?” I answered. “May I ask the name of the asshole calling me?”

“Uhh, hello,” the voice said. “Is this a Mr…,” then the voice trailed off.

“Uh huh?” I asked.

“Beau Mantegna?”

“Montana,” I said. “You know. Like Al Pacino in that one movie.”

“Oh I see,” the man said. “Well I’m calling to tell you congratulations!”

“What the hell for?”

“Our editors have your stories 2051: A Space Monstrosity, The First Coming, and A Shot at the Title. First they notified the FBI about a possible serial killer on the loose. Then they lit the manuscripts on fire out of fear they might conjure Satan himself. Then, after they thought the nightmare was over, they found the manuscripts in pristine condition, as if they were never torched into a blackened dust and cast into a deep pit where no man could ever lay eyes upon them again. So, not wishing to unleash the power of Pazuzu — or whatever Child of Hell you might possess — we decided publish your works into a single collection.”

“Oh wow. Gee. I don’t know what to say,” I said.

“Well I guess we should extended our gratitude to you for not casting our souls into eternal damnation,” the man explained. “But we figured that we would do humanity a disservice by not providing a warning to the consumer. That’s why we’re titling the book Stories No One Should Read.”

“But do you think that will sell?”

“As a business, we hope so,” he said. “But as moral beings, we hope that we haven’t unleashed the Apocalypse onto the world. Satan awaits his kingdom. So may god, if there is one, have mercy on our souls.”

You know what that means right?

This is great news! The good folks at Dead Star Press have agreed to publish Stories No One Should Read. So be sure to check out their website to purchase books from other great authors and buy some merch while you’re at it! Support indie publishing!

Needless to say, the news has made my summer a whole lot better. Heh. It sure does put things into perspective don’t it? I guess this summer heat isn’t so bad compared to the raging inferno that is hell 😏

Mer Rouge (Part 54)

The two deputies sat on foldout chairs and whittled away at small sticks with their pocketknives to pass the time. It was almost midday. While the sun cast down an intolerable heat, one reached into an old Coleman cooler then dug through the ice. He pulled out a Miller then cracked it open and drank. Then he spat. “This is some bullshit,” he bitched to his partner.

“Beats the hell outta workin.”

“For you maybe. I’d rather be at the house.”

“Pokin the wife?”

“At least I got somthin to poke.”

A slight wind swept through the trees and kicked up a flock of crows. The men looked up. Seconds later there was a cracking of dead brush and two men with shotguns appeared through the wood. The deputies leapt up from their seats to get a better look. One called out. “Halt! This is private property!”

The two men changed directions and slowly approached the deputies. Decked in camouflage, it was apparent to the officers that these men were hunters. Feet away, one of them apologized. “Forgive me. We didn’t realize we was trespassing,” he said.

“Well, you are. So you best turn right around.”

“Mind if I ask who the owner is?”

“Yes I do mind.”

“Shit fellas. We was just chasin a buck. Didn’t mean to cause no trouble.”

“If you don’t go back the way you came, there’s fixin to be trouble.”

The hunter nodded. Him and his buddy turned around and walked back toward the tree line. The deputies drew their service pistols and followed them. Not a word was exchanged during the escort until the other side of the treeline was reached. A deputy gave his final warning. “Come back through here and I’ll put a bullet in ya. Ya hear?”

Three more men with daggers appeared from the rear of the deputies. They plunged them into their backs and their attackers swiftly covered their mouths to muffle the screams. They collapsed to the ground. Two of the attackers dragged the bodies away and the hunters wiped away the camouflage from their faces. They weren’t happy with the other three.

“I think you went a little far there, Sheriff!” Oren yelled.

DuPont resheathed his dagger and waved him away. “There was no other option,” he explained. “Two dead men means two less guns we have to face. Now we just have to find a way to get that dynamite inside.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

Mer Rouge (Part 53)

The deputy stuffed the contents back into the billfold and placed it where he found it. Dirk finished his business with the other deputies and strolled back to the cruiser. He opened the door, hiked up his pants, and plopped down in the driver’s seat. He noticed that he left his wallet in the car. “Shit,” he said under a muffled breath. Then he picked it up and placed it in his front pocket. After starting the engine and making a u-turn, they headed back in the direction of the Judge’s mansion. Fornier picked his teeth in the passenger’s seat. He rolled down the window and threw the toothpick into the wind. Then he rolled it back up and stroked his chin.

“Say sheriff,” he said, “remember that time when all us boys went gambling in Gulf Port? Remember that whore we picked up?”

“Uh huh.”

“Well why didn’t you fuck her?”

Dirk lowered his shades and glared at his deputy. “Why are you bringing this up?”

“Well,” Fornier continued. He made sucking noises between his teeth. “I guess it just made me remember that I never met your wife.”

“You know I don’t have a wife, Forn.”

“Shit. Why not?”

Dirk stammered. “Because, you know, filing for a marriage license would raise a lot of questions. I don’t even have a birth certificate.”

“Hell, Dirk, you know that the judge would take care of that for ya.”

“Sure, I guess I just haven’t had the time.”

“Just haven’t had the time, huh?” wondered Fornier. He loaded his lip with a heavy pinch of Copenhagen. “You’re old as dirt, Dirk. I’m sure you’ve gotten plenty of strange through the years.”

“That I have.”

“Let’s just hope your boys in the Klan never find out about Alajandro.”

The sheriff slammed on the brakes. He reached for his pistol but Fornier already had his drawn and pointed at his eye socket. “Now listen here you cocksucking queer,” the deputy said. “These guns might not do us a bit of good but it’ll be enough to put you out of commission. And I’ll tell everyone we have a homo in our ranks! That is unless we can cut a deal. So listen good: I’m no longer a second fiddle in this outfit, ya hear!”

TO BE CONTINUED…

The odyssey

I had an existential crisis after watching The Odyssey. The film was good—if not great—don’t get me wrong. But I kept finding flaws: Tom Holland was boring; the story ends 20 minutes after its emotional climax; some of the back stories were difficult to follow; where the hell was Logan “Not Tom Hardy” Marshall-Green? Etc etc.

Then I realized something: am I the problem?

Christopher Nolan has done something that no other filmmaker has ever achieved. The Odyssey, if not many other titles in his filmography, is foolproof. You can find flaws until cows come home but none of it will matter. Even Nolan’s biggest hater — along with the right wing trolls pissed off over his casting choices — will have to admit that no matter its shortcomings, The Odyssey is a great movie.

And how he does it is no secret. It’s all right there in front of you: big ideas, big emotions, hire the best in the business. When Nolan introduces one big idea, seconds later he’ll introduce another big idea. If he doesn’t have an interesting plan on how to stage an action scene, fuck it! He’ll let the music and sound carry the weight. The only way he could have failed is if he had chosen uninteresting source material or ran with an original concept. And obviously that’s not what happened. Nolan made a film adaptation of the literal bedrock of the Western canon.

In short, there was no way that Christopher Nolan could have failed here. It was genius. I haven’t been the biggest Nolan fan, but he absolutely destroyed my every attempt to hate this movie. It nearly killed me.

So I’m gonna be real with you folks, The Odyssey is on par with Lawrence of Arabia, Ben-Hur, or any other great Hollywood epic. That’s just a fact. But then again, perhaps we’ve been fed CGI slop for so long that it’s refreshing to see real actors on real sets.

So just a tip for Hollywood execs, take a step outside the studio on occasion.

Mer Rouge (Part 52)

He sulked in the passenger’s seat. Dirk didn’t say a word to him as they rolled around the large country ranch dotted up with flame retardant grass. He reckoned every sheriffs deputy was on site. But Morehouse parish was safe. It was Sunday. The time for crime wasn’t today unless it was an attack on the Judge’s land. Yet Fornier was still pissed at the Sheriff. His leg wound hadn’t healed and the rising sun was threatening to scorch the earth. Dirk was driving. He lowered his shades and looked to his deputy. “Hot one ain’t it?”

Fornier said nothing.

“The hell is wrong with you?”

“You shot me all to hell Dirk.”

The sheriff raised his shades and gazed out the windshield. “The mayor was standing there. I had to do something,” he reasoned. 

“You’ve always treated me like a piece of shit.”

“What the hell are you talking about? I relieved you of death.”

“But I’m not treated as one of you.”

“You gotta understand,” Dirk said. “We’ve been around a long time. Things work different between us. You still know your mother and father. Ours have been dead for centuries.”

“Doesn’t give you the right to shoot me.”

“You fucked up Forn. Hell, even you can admit that.”

Fornier didn’t reply. The cruiser rolled up to the estate entrance and Dirk climbed out the driver’s seat. The deputy sat there. Meanwhile Dirk whistled into the thicket and two deputies sprung out with their faces painted by camouflage and the sheriff stood with hands on his hips and discussed the day’s business. The Oak Ridge Boys were playing on the radio. Fornier relaxed in the air conditioned cruiser and looked at the empty driver’s seat. Dirk’s billfold fell out of his pocket and was resting between the seats. He picked it up and looked at its contents. Inside was an old folded tintype photograph of a well dressed man of no more than thirty. In the handwriting below it read the name Alejandro Caballero. Also in the wallet was a handwritten note in Spanish. Fornier barely understood it. But he understood enough to recognize the handwriting and the opening line: mi amante, Alejandro.

TO BE CONTINUED…