No matter how educated you are, no matter how smart you believe yourself to be, you CAN be deceived.
You WILL be deceived.
Ever heard of SANTA CLAUS? He’s real. He died in 2020. His real name was James Randi and he was one of the greatest scientific skeptics and magicians of all time:
You know who else isn’t real?
Kool Moe Dee
Those freestyle skills were unreal.
Have I already written about Never Say Never Again?
Fuck it, I’ll do it again.
Never Say Never Again is the best “James Bond” film of the 80s
I will die on that hill.
I love that cold open: 007 choking out some dude to the tune of a cheesy love song. Classic.
Also, there are some killer lines:
Bond: “Free radicals, sir?”
M: “Yes, they’re toxins that destroy the body and brain, caused by eating too much red meat and white bread. Too many dry martinis.”
Bond: “Then I shall cut out the white bread sir.”
OR
Moneypenny: “Have you got an assignment James?”
Bond: “Yes Moneypenny. I’m to eliminate all free radicals.”
Moneypenny: “Do be careful!”
Plus, who doesn’t love watching a 53 year old, toupee’d Sean Connery get ogled by a sea of 20 year old women?
And Barbara Carerra Fatima Blush?
You could say that she’s an “attractive woman” and made me “sexually aroused”. But I’ve never had an erection before.
You have. But that’s because you’re fucked up.
Do people actually read Nietzsche or do they just quote him so that they appear smart?
Look, I love ramblings of insane people as much as the next guy but just because some dude from the past said something doesn’t make it correct.
Same thing with George Orwell. I legit never met anybody who read 1984. They claim that they have, but I know better. The libertarian types love bringing up Orwell, but I guess they forgot that while Orwell’s politics sound, to me, a bit nuanced, he was pretty solidly a leftist.
Maybe I just refuse to believe that anyone from the past has a greater insight into our present than we do today. It just doesn’t make sense. Bring Isaac Newton to the present and I guarantee that you could crush his ass in a game of Trivial Pursuit.
What are some other authors that stupid people claim to read (but actually didn’t)?
*cough*Christopher Lasch
*sneeze* Richard Dawkins
*fart* Christopher Hitchens
This was the first Star Trek movie I saw, so maybe I have a soft spot for it.
For the record, I don’t think Bill Shatner is the problem here. I’ll defend that man till death. The problem with this film is the poor special effects (mixed in with what I presume to be budgetary constraints) and some of the strange science that flies in the face of the grounded science of Star Trek.
I don’t think the script is the problem either. Sure there were some strange decisions. The romance between Scotty and Uhura was odd, especially since it was never hinted before (or after). Trek fans hate the idea of Sybok, Spock’s half-brother…which was also never mentioned before in Trek canon… but Sybok is actually an interesting character. However, the heart of Star Trek, particularly with the original cast, was the trifecta of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, and this film contains some of the best scenes of them together.
The “antagonist”, the aforementioned Sybok, was originally intended to be played by Sean Connery. If that had managed to work out, I’m sure this film would be looked at more favorably. That being said, Laurence Luckinbill does a stellar job making this religious charlatan both sympathetic and charismatic, enough for you to believe that he could rip apart the friendship between the trifecta. I’d say he’s the second best villain in Trek film (behind, of course, Ricardo Montalban’s Khan).
But I applaud Shatner’s ambition here. Harve Bennet, then the head of Star Trek films, hated the idea of “the Enterprise searching for God, but finds the devil instead,” which may be a controversial concept within Star Trek, but it is an interesting idea in-itself.
Did it work?
Not entirely.
Could it have worked?
Yes. Which is why it’s a shame that Shatner never got a chance to do a proper Director’s Cut, especially given advancements in CGI technology.
They gave Robert Wise that opportunity with Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and its reputation has greatly improved.
But there is an interesting fan theory floating around the internet: the main plot of the film is Kirk’s dream while camping with Spock and McCoy in Yosemite. You watch the movie, and you can definitely draw that conclusion.
That’s how I watch it. And it becomes the greatest Star Trek movie ever made.
Maybe the internet isn’t such a bad place after all.
The above interview is probably one of the the better, honest discussions I’ve seen in awhile regarding the nature of current politics.
It echoes my “everything is ideology” ranting, but Jonathon Gottschall takes it a step further: our ideology-making at the macro/political level amounts to nothing more than immersive storytelling.
Ideology, even ideological storytelling, can sometimes unite societies, but persistent vilification of fellow citizens will ultimately tear it down. With the internet, the “gatekeepers” of knowledge are gone, so it’s up to us to be skeptical…and humble…about the narratives we tell ourselves.
That’s really the only option we have.
So now comes the hard part of apologizing to those we vilified, and then the even harder part of forgiving those that vilified us.
I recommend watching the entire interview. If you have a right-wing or conservative perspective, you might think they’re dunking on you at the beginning, but they eventually turn that skepticism on their conversation and themselves.
Besides, as all of you know, I refuse to breathe the same shit-reeked air that all you plebs breath in. When I do my shopping, I hold my breath in and sprint through the grocery store before passing out.
You think I’m afraid of some VIRUS?!
Well guess what PAL….I survived aids!
TWICE!
So I was tossing and turning over night, agonizing over a specific question: is pop culture dead?
Of course, “pop culture” can never really “die” so long as there’s entertainment, fashion, etc. But has it fundamentally shifted in a way that requires new methods of critique?
Guys like Theodore Adorno were critiquing “pop culture” way back in the 1940s, claiming things like movies, music, etc. were massed produced commodities and were therefore not genuine (or whatever). But maybe the pandemic and the prolific use of the internet has changed the game.
Obviously these things have changed the way we interact with pop culture, but the question I’m concerned with is: “has the pandemic, and specifically the internet, changed the very nature of pop culture itself.”
(This is all from my dementia-driven perspective, btw)
Anyways, what made me agonize over this question is that everything feels a little passé. When people talk about reading tweets, I’m thinking “you’re still using Twitter?”. Even at 106 years old, I feel like I’m more “in the know” than most 20 year olds. It’s not because I’m “cooler” than them, it’s because they don’t give a shit. So how can “pop culture” be pop culture if it’s not popular?
Please help me. I haven’t slept in 27 days.
“All of philosophy is merely footnotes to Alfred North Whitehead” -Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)
RIP 😭😭😭
“Am I in heaven? What happened to me?” I asked myself.
“ICU,” the doctor said.
THE END
First off, thank you to those who continually read this blog. I love all of you like a bastard child I never knew I had. But if we did have a child together, then I don’t know you and please don’t reach out to me.
Now on to the subject at hand:
RoboCop 2
The first RoboCop is one of my favorite movies. Paul Verhoeven really knows how to tell a story from the perspective of the film’s ideology while simultaneously letting you in on the joke.
It’s a tough act to follow, and most claim that RoboCop 2 failed to live up to its predecessor. But I disagree. The reviews on IMDB are all over the place. Many say that it’s not a great movie, but there’s no consensus on why it’s not a great movie.
Yes, certain plot details go nowhere. This is probably the result of studio interference, which is typical for highly anticipated sequels. But my question is: who gives a shit? RoboCop 2 was made in the same vein as another infamous sequel released a week earlier: Gremlins 2: The New Batch and it should be viewed in that light.
Is it a GREAT film? Lol, no. It’s not supposed to be. When you make a sequel, you have two options: do something entirely different or double up on the same shit that was done before. The filmmakers chose the latter (which was the right choice).
Now Verhoeven definitely handled the gratuitous violence much more effectively in the first film, but that’s his specialty. At its heart, RoboCop is a satire on consumerism and corporate culture. The horrific violence and sci-fi aspects, which most people remember it for, was just the vessel to tell the story. RoboCop 2 threw up its arms and said “fuck it, we’re just gonna be satire”.
The villains are much more over-the-top, the commercials are much less subtle, and even RoboCop himself is more exaggerated. Many praised RoboCop for its self-awareness, well the same is true for RoboCop 2. In fact, it’s straight up mocking itself.
I’d say that RoboCop 2, along with Gremlins 2, might be the two most self-aware films ever made.
Does it deserve the 5.8 rating it currently has on IMDB? No.
A 6.8 seems more fitting.
The Internet Ruined Everything 