Tag: nostalgia

meh

My news feed has been buzzing the last 24 hours. More so than usual. No, it has nothing to do with the Russians possibly invading Ukraine. It’s the announcement of a fourth “Kelvin Timeline” Star Trek film.

Unlike most Star Trek fans, I am content with saying that Star Trek died with the last episode of Enterprise. And we all owe Rick Berman an apology (even though he sounds like a legit asshole).

So I don’t give a shit about this new film (written by a bunch of writers whose work I also don’t give a shit about). 🚨 Spoiler Alert 🚨: it’s gonna suck.

How do I know?

Let me tell you about two men named JJ Abrams and Alex Kurtzman.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be too harsh. They did revive Trek. Because of them, there are four…about to be five…Star Trek shows airing. Audiences change. As ridiculous as it sounds now, TOS fans were reluctant to accept TNG.

Now I’m a TNG fan that’s reluctant to accept Kurtzman Trek.

The thing that TOS and TNG had in common though is one VERY important thing: Gene Roddenberry. And Roddenberry was succeeded by Rick Berman, who was hellbent on carrying out his predecessor’s vision.

No such chain of succession with this new Trek.

JJ Abrams did do one thing right though: the first 10 minutes of Star Trek 09. And that kinda highlights my biggest gripe with this current set of producers: they are Kliff Kingsbury of Star Trek.

All three movies, plus Picard, plus Discovery, start off fairly strong in their opening acts (or first few episodes) and then inexplicably derail into a total train wreck.

Moreover, this new “cinematic” feel to Star Trek just doesn’t…feel right. Trek works best on a shoestring budget, phenomenal writing, and the perfect casting. Case in point: Wrath of Khan. It is probably the Trek film with the smallest budget, but it’s also considered the best.

There’s a Shakespearean, theater-like quality to the Roddenberry/Berman-era Trek that, I think, many fans find appealing (even if we didn’t appreciate it at the time).

Of course, those days of television and movies are over (in part, due to JJ Abrams’ impact on the industry) and that’s okay. Things change.

Which is why we must let Star Trek go.

enema at the gates (and why I go to bat for Dances With Wolves)

Most nights I can’t sleep. Most nights I can’t sleep because I can’t stop thinking about a film. Usually, it’s not a great film that’s keeping me up. It’s a film that could have been great, but everyone fucked up.

One such movie is Enemy at the Gates (2001).

It’s a shame. This movie could have been dope. So what happened?

Now forgive me, it’s been a few weeks since I’ve watched it so I won’t go into plot details. But the screenwriters shouldn’t have committed to telling a love story AND a game of cat and mouse.

Individually these stories could have been interesting on their own. The Battle of Stalingrad was such a test of the human spirit that it provides an interesting backdrop to any story.

But Enemy at the Gates falls victim to a very serious problem…a problem that plagued so, so many movies of the era: it tries to have it both ways. It wants to be a gritty war film AND appeal to 90s sentimentality.

“But it’s based on a real historical account,” you might say.

And lo and behold, this is largely true. Of course, it takes a few creative liberties. I doubt Joseph Fiennes’ character was real. Same with Ron Perlman’s…a character that I hated so much because it seems to have been included for expositional purposes only. Because the film takes such liberties…it is a movie after all, and not a documentary…then pick a lane.

If I were making this movie, I would have focused exclusively on the chase between Ed Harris and Jude Law. But there’s no sense in crying over spilled milk.

Enemy at the Gates appears to have been one of the last of the so-called “90s, mediocre, sentimental historical dramas.” I don’t hate all of these movies. In fact, I go to bat for perhaps the greatest example of this genre: Dances With Wolves.

“Can you believe that Kevin Costner beat Martin Scorsese at the Oscars?” everyone says to me.

No. That’s not surprising at all. Have you seen the movie? I will pound the table every chance I get: Kevin Costner DESERVED his Oscar.

Quote me on that.

Honestly, as much as it pains me to say this, if there’s a flaw with the movie, it’s the screenplay. That’s a big one. This might not have been obvious to audiences then, but it’s clear 32 years later. BUT, it appears to me that Costner was involved in the project from the moment of its inception, so the script was suited to his strengths.

Could anyone else have made Dances With Wolves?

No.

And here’s where Costner excels: every character…EVERY last character…has their moment, however brief, to shine. When Stone Calf is killed, you feel it. Even when LT. Elgin is killed, one of the “villains”, there’s a shred of sympathy for him. This helps you become immersed in this lovely, bloody world.

Costner approaches the subject matter, much like his character, in a child-like, gentle manner. Not a detail is missed. It felt genuine, and not at all like it was trying “to have it both ways”.

It worked. It worked so well that nobody was able to emulate that style. They tried. But where every mediocre 90s historical drama failed, only Kevin Costner succeeded.

(Yes, I’m including Braveheart)

(Not sure about Saving Private Ryan)

This is bullshit

I can’t believe that in the middle of my obsession with Phil Spector, it completely missed me that Ronnie Spector died!

Why didn’t anybody tell me?

I guess between Bob Saget and Meat Loaf passing that the news somehow fell between the cracks. But that’s no excuse!

Pop music wouldn’t be what it is without the Ronettes.

Why are all the GOATs dying?

Somebody keep an eye out for Tom Brady. 😕

u look like a fool!

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.

facebook (update)

(Update: I’m 119 years old and I don’t understand technology. It doesn’t help that I lost the use of my left side brain at the Battle of Verdun. So forget all of this. It never happened. But I’m leaving this up because some of it is funny. I dunno. Then again I’ve been off my anticonvulsant meds the last few days)

So I was watching The Beastmaster when the Tanya Roberts bathing scene came on. I was about to “master” another “beast” if you know what I mean 😉😉😉 (Rip Torn gets me hot), but then I thought “I should create a Facebook page for my website!”

First, I tried setting up a business page, but Facebook forbids that with WordPress sites or some crap (or I have to buy some add-on, but I ain’t paying for that shit) so I set up a group page instead.

Here’s the link:

(not available)

“Why Facebook?” a question you’re probably not asking.

Because it’s the only social media site that doesn’t make me want to hire a hit man to set me on fire.

So come join! If you don’t then you probably have a tiny penis anyway. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’m just saying that you’re less of a man if you don’t join my group.

So if you want to regain your self-respect, you better join the Internet Ruined Everything group and meet other weirdos just like YOU.

4 the record, I do wear masks

I’m only saying this because my posts “i ain’t wearin no masks” is currently my most viewed of the month and almost no interaction.

So I feel the need to explain a bad joke.

I just want to say that there’s nothing to worry about, I was just trying to make a post that would offend everyone. No big deal.

I do wear a KN95 mask when I go into public. BUT, it should also be noted that I was doing that BEFORE the pandemic and will continue to do so long after.

I ONLY go into public incognito.

I ALSO got the vaccination. Again, not because of a “pandemic”, but because I will inject my body with anything at least ONCE. In the case of the vaccination, I did it THREE times (the two initial shots PLUS the booster) because it was that damn good.

Like I said, I don’t believe in overwhelming scientific evidence that says that there’s a raging pandemic going around the world. Science is liberal bullshit.

I’m a Jehovah’s Witness. I have God’s protection.

albert Eisenstein

I sometimes wonder: do people not know when they’re insane?

I mean, obviously if they did know they were crazy, then they wouldn’t be crazy. That makes sense, right?

But has society made insanity somewhat permissible? And has this become apparent to some people but not to others?

I grew up around rich kids. My parents weren’t rich. They liked to think they were but they weren’t. Everyone knew they weren’t rich…at least not as rich as they were…so everyone kinda patted my family on the head and said “nice try, but you’re not in the club”. So I had an unusual upbringing where I was at the bottom of a rather exclusive and rarefied ladder.

I’m not asking for pity, I had it pretty good overall, I’m just saying: I grew up on the outside looking into a party of insane, sociopathic people.

Now all my rich friends are grown up. I don’t talk to any of them, but I CAN Facebook stalk them and what I find is extremely gratifying: many of them have been arrested and/or have drug problems.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been in the same situation, but those were youthful transgressions by comparison. I didn’t have a career or family and people just kinda accepted that I was a drunk asshole. But eventually there came a point where I said: “this is not acceptable” (or rather, a judge said that).

But by looking at the Facebook profiles of a bunch of 30 and 40 year olds, that thought hasn’t occurred to any of them. I mean, how many domestic violence arrests do you need? They do know that bail and attorney fees costs money right? The police are “harassing” you? But you’re white and rich!

Like I said, reading this shit is like Christmas to me. Is my life much better? Maybe not monetarily. But at least I’m not in a state of denial about being an asshole and a menace to society. You can have sympathy for them, but these people contributed to my inferiority complex. So until I get an apology, fuck em.

But I guess when you live in that rarified atmosphere, you can double down on your bad decisions. Some smart guy supposedly once said: “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” And if you’re rich enough, you can afford to do that.

No I’m not bitter about being condescended to by rich people as a child. I have a lucrative job at the toilet factory and run successful blog. Why should I be jealous?

penisball

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.