Evidence for such a decade is the 2000 film 100 Girls. It’s hard to believe they used to make movies like that.
The plot’s pretty simple: some dude in college loses his virginity in an elevator like it’s some big deal. Then he spends the rest of the movie looking for this mystery girl in a dormitory.
His roommate also has a fucked up penis.
If this was a typical boner comedy, it probably would have been standard background noise.
You see, discussions on the differences between men and women used to be “interesting” to people. Not to me though. I thought girls were just boys with vaginas and left it at that. I would know because I’ve definitely seen a vagina. But 20 years ago, people didn’t know that.
So there were things like The Man Show, Kevin Smith films, American Pie, etc. The difference is though, occasionally those things would be funny.
100 Girls attempts to elevate the formula. And the moral of the story is this:
“Girls have boobs. But did you they also have personality? What a revelation!”
*Cue Bowling For Soup.
So be thankful that you live in a time of terrorism, pandemics, catastrophic climate change, massive wealth inequality, and dying democracies.
I love schlocky action films. I will always respect a movie that knows what it is and embraces it.
The John Wick films do a pretty respectable job at that. The scripts are laughably formulaic, a computer could have written them. That’s the way schlock is supposed to be: everything is supposed to be up on screen. I love the juxtaposition between violence and every day life. Even the casting of Keanu Reeves is a stroke of genius: he is an extraordinarily limited actor. When you see him, you know you’re not getting anything deep. He’s just there to kick ass and kill. Respect.
Sure, I talked shit about Keanu before. I don’t think I’m being controversial when I say that I don’t find him compelling usually. Not that he has to be. He’s a pretty boy that’s limited to certain roles.
It’s rare to find a true gritty action star, one that’s not necessarily being tongue in cheek, one that’s not a pretty boy, or trying to overly impress you with their physique.
I suppose Daniel Craig is such an actor. Jason Statham could be another. Maybe Bruce Willis at times.
But the best one was Charles Bronson.
For whatever reasons, I’ve been binging the fuck out his movies. Bronson’s stretch through the 70s was the greatest run of any action star. It’s hard to imagine an actor like him succeeding in modern Hollywood.
Contrary to popular perception, Charles Bronson could act. In fact, I’d say he was much more capable of handling emotionally intense scenes than Clint Eastwood, a contemporary of Bronson and an actor of similar caliber. Just watch Breakout or Mr. Majestyk. This is especially true when he’s playing opposite a female costar, specifically the romantic interest. There’s something about his glare that can carry those scenes.
Was Charles Bronson a good looking man?
Seriously, was he?
I like that ambiguity about him: a sex symbol whose appeal is derived from raw power and everyman looks. Daniel Craig, at least as James Bond, has similar appeal.
But, for me, the biggest appeal was that he wasn’t an actor’s actor. He had a workman approach to his craft. He knew exactly what he was creating. And the days of those actors are long LONG gone.
Unpopular opinion, but Bronson’s collaborations with Michael Winner are some of my least favorite, specifically Chato’s Land and The Mechanic. Winner seems to have overestimated his abilities as a director. (Death Wish III is an undeniable classic though) J. Lee Thompson was better suited to Bronson, specifically 10 to Midnight.
“It’s hard being a gay man in the old west,” Mr. Ree said.
“Word. Wait…you’re gay?” I asked.
“Well I wouldn’t say I’m gay. But I exclusively have sex with men.”
I took a sip of whiskey. My mind was on other things.
We were in Montana. I reckon the year was 1879. Mr. Ree and myself have been stuck out of time, out of place, for the last two years.
Time travel does strange things to a man. For one, it strips you completely naked. Mr. Ree and me were found in San Francisco, ass to ass, behind a brothel on Haight Street when we emerged from the plasma ripple. But it does something else: you realize that everyone, and everything, you’ve ever known is out of reach.
I’ll never see Miriam again. Or my unborn child that I left back in another timeline.
But Mr. Ree maintained hope. “We might as well get filthy fucking rich,” he said. The gold mines in California were stripped by 1879. Resigned to our fate, we travelled to Elkhorn, Montana to start a new life.
As we sat in the local tavern, townsfolk glared at us. One burly man came up to our table.
“We haven’t seen your kind ‘round here before,” he said.
“So?”
“We don’t take kindly to strangers. I reckon y’all better drink your whiskey and ride out before sundown.”
“Why don’t you mind your own business buddy?” I said. “We ain’t bothering you. How about you ride your fat ass back to your table?”
“Them are fightin words.”
“Damn right pal! You don’t want none of this!”
“Now gentlemen,” Mr. Ree interjected, “there’s nothing here that can’t be settled by a good old fashioned duel.”
The burly man nodded. “I’ll see you outside.”
“The fuck are you doing Mr. Ree?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about it. You got a Korth 357. You’ll blast his ass into the future,” he replied.
“Ree, this is 1879,” I said, “they don’t make bullets for this gun yet. I gotta conserve my ammo. Besides, wouldn’t I be disrupting the timeline?”
“Nah. According to J Robert Oppenheimer, this is a new timeline, remember? We can do whatever the fuck we want.”
I just shrugged and walked outside. The burly man was standing in the street. The townsfolk all stood around.
“Alright,” I said, “fastest draw wins, or however this bullshit works.”
The burly man opened his duster, exposing his six shooter. “Ready whenever you are,” he said.
We had a stare down. The townsfolk stood around nervously, waiting for the fireworks.
Suddenly he reached for his six shooter. I drew my 357. The sound thundered from my gun, echoing across the town and down through the mountains.
I shot off the burly man’s suspenders. His pants fell down, exposing his ass and penis.
I twirled the 357 and placed it back my holster.
Suddenly a shotgun blast went off. The townsfolk scattered. Out of the shadows appeared a man dressed in black. His spurs jingled as he walked towards us.
“I won’t have this nonsense in my town,” the man in black said.
I recognized the face.
“I’m James,” I said. “And this here is my partner, Mr. Ree.”
“I know who you are,” he replied. “And if you fire that gun again, I’ll shove this shotgun right up your ass.”
“Doesn’t sound like much of a threat,” I said.
He stepped a little closer.
Could it be?
“I’m Oppenheimer,” he said. “SHERIFF J. Robert Oppenheimer.”
“I have a gambling problem,” I told my therapist. “I can’t control myself. I’ve been acting manically: I’ll have advantageous, uncharacteristic sex with my wife. I sometimes load a bullet into a revolver and stare down the barrel. I’ll go 90 in a school zone. I’ll straight up snort Adderall. What’s wrong with me doc?”
As we fall further down the technological abyss, bombarded by competing information and ideas, we struggle to make sense of anything.
With an endless stream of movies, television, videos, and literature, we perceive the world through a dramatic prism, unable to grasp that the universe is impartial to our reasoning.
When confronted with this cognitive dissonance, we double down. And the opportunists in the media are all too happy to entertain our delusions.
In a sense, we are living in the “matrix.”
But perhaps this has always been true, even prior to the Internet. Maybe to live in a cultivated society means to live in a “matrix”, and no one wants to admit this.
Because of this, there rises either futile sentiments of cultural superiority, or need to “break free” from the restraints of society. But they’re both fantasies…fantasies that fuel our collective imagination.
Philosophers and theorists have failed to understand this: “the dramatic progression” that underpins our understanding. This is how nationalists can assert dominance, or how Christians and Marxists share an almost identical eschatological worldview despite being seemingly opposed. We view the world through a dramatic lens, and there are bad actors out there that try to entertain it.
All of this lies in our subconscious, and we may not be able to escape it. Being a part of this human collective is what makes us…human. So maybe the real political objective is not more theory, but to take from Sigmund Freud: we need to “sublimate well”.
Some might argue that’s Machiavellian, or utopian, or Orwellian, or naive, or overly optimistic, over pessimistic, liberal, conservative, or whatever.
With the Kantian blockage…or the inability to perceive the universe in its total, final form…it becomes difficult to understand that multiple truths can simultaneously exist.
Or maybe none of it is true.
It doesn’t matter. Stay pissed off if you choose. The universe goes on.
Furthermore, I’m not some postmodern lunatic claiming that real truth doesn’t exist and therefore it’s pointless to speculate on the nature of it.
What I AM saying is that Immanuel Kant was RIGHT. And philosophers from his day onward have been pissed off because of it.
Kant claimed we can’t know things “in themselves”. Meaning we can’t perceive objects and nature in their true form. We can only perceive “phenomena”, or nature though the prism of the human mind. In other words, the human mind is VERY active in shaping our reality.
No one likes this.
And they don’t like it because they know it’s true.
To perceive objects and nature without the human mind would mean to transcend the human mind. OR, ceasing to become human altogether.
As it currently stands, that’s impossible and we run into many metaphysical holes when we try to speculate on that.
Now, that isn’t to say we are “cut off” from external reality. But we are hobbled by our own physical brains. The universe is seemingly infinite, but our brains are finite.
We are like a small hole in the bottom of a beach, where only one grain of sand can pass through at any one moment.
Lame example, I know. But that’s how it feels.
But my larger point is how the Internet affects all of this. Is our logical faculties, rooted in a material brain, designed to handle this shock load?
In our evolutionary development, we developed our facilities to handle immediate needs. Tools and complex communication emerged from this, leading to advanced society and advanced technologies that have seemingly advanced passed our understanding.
I often like to think that art is an unintended byproduct of this development. Literature, drama, paintings, etc. got spat out and reabsorbed back into the machinery. It became an integral part of our language.
Along came the internet and telecommunications where we are bombarded by intellectual work. Now we can’t help but see the archetypal dramatic progression written in the fabric of the universe.
In other words, the internet permits us to live in our own fantasy world….a fantasy that objectively doesn’t exist….it’s a prism on top of a prism.
Are we made to sit behind a computer?
And is it worth tearing the world down because of Jon Gruden’s emails?
The Internet Ruined Everything 