Tag: opinions

Ow my bowels

I think I ate too many pizza rolls yesterday so I was busy shitting out my doo doo ass to write anything. But a dark cloud is hovering over the real world right now. It’s like the feeble dam that separates the eccentricities of the internet has broken down and now all the groypers, paranoia, and post-irony is bleeding out into reality. It’s really hurting my brain. And as a so called “writer”, it sucks. The moment you put pen to paper, it’s too late. Reality has jumped 10 steps ahead of you and you’re left scratching your ass wondering what to do next.

How is it possible to have a reality where everyone is out of touch? There is no center of gravity. Whatever anchored a shared basis of perception for thousands of years has withered away. We’re all raving lunatics in a boundless asylum. But I have to remind myself that the world has always been shit for the vast majority of people. Which doesn’t make me feel better if I’m being honest. But it does remind me that progress and regression are historical constructions.

The truth is humanity is stuck in perpetual purgatory.

Anaideia 53

It was just before sunup when a trucker in a Peterbilt pulled off and rolled down the window. He was shirtless and a Buc-ee’s hat was resting on his head. “You boys need a ride?” he shouted past the loud ass diesel engine.

“Are you headed to Los Angeles?” I asked him.

“I’m going as far as Santa Clarita,” he said.

Shit, I thought. Close enough. So Jim and I climbed into the cab and I closed the door then the 18-wheeler rolled back onto the interstate. We were maybe an hour out of Santa Clarita and I was deadass tired. I didn’t have much to say but the trucker belched and farted and rolled down the window to hock a loogie. “You boys from Los Angeles?” he asked us.

“Yup,” I said.

“Ya know, I used to have a Mexican wife in Los Angeles,” he told us. “And let me tell ya, she sucked a mean weiner too boys. Let me tell ya.”

“Uh huh.”

“I don’t understand why they’re deporting them folks. If they should deport anyone, it should be them goddamn Koreans I tell ya….”

While he went on his diatribe, I fell asleep and 45 minutes later we were in Santa Clarita. Before splitting off towards Palmdale, the trucker pulled off the interstate to let us out. “If you boys ever want to hang out, you can reach me at my Kiwifarms account at…,” the trucker began to say but I immediately close the door behind me.

Jim and I walked for a few miles more before I threw out my thumb again. Minutes later a wino mom crashed her Buick into a guardrail and rolled down her window. “You boys need a ride?” she asked.

I nodded and climbed into the front seat. She weaved in and out of traffic and narrowly missed other motorists down the 405 before arriving at Sherman Oaks. I thanked her for the ride before she barreled off back into traffic and I reached for my wallet.

“We only got $7 bucks left,” I told Old Jim. “We’ll see how far a cab will get us.”

Once again I throw out my thumb. A cabbie stopped. He rolled down the window and glanced at us with his aviators on and I didn’t recognize him. “Can you get us to LA?” I ask him.

The cabbie said nothing for a few moments before lowering his shades. “Where do I recognize you from?” he asked me.

That’s when I knew I made a critical mistake. “I’ve never seen you before in my life,” I told him.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “You’re the son of a bitch who stiffed me in Norco.”

“No sir. Wasn’t me.”

“Bullshit. You owe me $498 bucks.”

“Look, I’ll just hail another cab sir. Have a nice day.”

I kept walking down the road dragging Jim behind me and hoped that the cabbie would move along. But he persisted by getting out of the cab. The fella was big. He stopped in front of us and put his hand to my chest. “Give me my goddamn money,” he demanded.

“Look! I don’t know you!” I pleaded.

The cabbie reached for his ankle holster and pulled out a small caliber .40 then held it to my abdomen. “Now!” he said.

I raised my hands in the air and searched for the right words. “All I have is $7,” I said.

“Give it to me,” he ordered.

I lowered my right hand and pulled out the wallet. With my hands shaking, I handed him the seven bucks. He took the money and stuffed it into his jean pocket. “$491 bucks left,” he said. “A couple of vagrants walking the streets of Sherman Oaks. I don’t think folks around here would object to me blowing a hole in your belly.”

I swallowed hard. “Please don’t,” I said.

But he cocked the pistol and pulled the trigger.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Anaideia 48

Randy didn’t know what to make of Susan. He sipped the scotch mere feet from her face with her eyes bowed to the floor. I turned my head to see a tear stream down her face. Though this was the moment she had been waiting for, nothing had prepared her for it. “I don’t think I know you,” Randy said.

Susan palmed her eyes and lifted her head to face him. When I looked at Randy, I could tell he was genuinely perplexed. “Where is my mother?” Susan managed to squeak out.

Randy squinted his eyes and took another sip. He lowered the glass and placed it in his left hand. “Darling,” he said, putting his right hand to her cheek, “I’m sorry but I don’t understand your question.”

“Where is MY mother,” she repeated.

“If you could tell me who you are, perhaps I could help,” he said, taken back by her sudden forcefulness.

“Susan.”

“Susan who?”

“Susan Brucetti.”

He took his hand off her face and had another sip. “Brucetti?” he asked and swallowed hard. “I believe a Lyonette Brucetti was under my employment many years ago. Is that your mother?”

Susan nodded and lowered her head again. Randy’s face began to blush and he nervously scratched his head. “I’m afraid that I haven’t seen Lyonette in some time,” he explained. “Last I heard, she was living in Chico with her husband. I apologize, but I haven’t been keeping close tabs on her.”

“You’re a liar,” Susan said.

“Pardon?”

“You’re a liar. You sold her into sex slavery.”

“W-why would I do that?”

“Because that’s the kind of man you are!”

“Susan, sweetheart, I think you have the wrong idea. You see, Lyonette and I were lovers for a very long time. I loved her. Why would I sell someone I love into slavery?”

“Then why would she abandon me?!”

Randy turned around and refused to face us. He sat his glass of scotch down and rubbed his brow. “I’m sorry Susan,” he said, “had I of known, I would have done something.”

“What do you mean?”

“We had a child together. A girl.”

Susan looked at me with wide eyes. No words came. In real time I could see her heart sink to her feet and Dale shook his head. “Told you it was a mistake,” he uttered under his breath.

“Goddamnit Dale,” I said.

“What was a mistake?” asked Randy, still not facing us.

“Forget it,” I said.

“I’m gonna be sick,” said Susan.

Randy picked up the glass again and ignored the comment entirely. He turned around and leaned against the table. “Susan, my dear, I think you should leave,” he said. “I don’t want you to be a part of what’s about to happen.”

Susan quietly nodded and the driver took her by the arm and escorted her upstairs. She never looked back at me. She was defeated.

When she was gone and the shock wore off, I looked at Randy. “Two damaged children,” I said. “That’s your real legacy.”

TO BE CONTINUED…

I’m old as shit

As I always tell my grandkids: “if I ever turn into an old cantankerous bastard that can’t accept change, shoot me and dump my body into the river.” And that’s why I’m still alive. Those kids will kill me at the first sign of senility.

Yet even my grandkids (who are 80 years old) will agree: comedy is dead.

Which is why jackass forever is such an anomaly; no social commentary, no pretensions of being something profound. It’s just a bunch of dudes smashing their dicks and shoving things up their ass for a laugh. In fact, kudos to Johnny Knoxville and the gang for not slowing down at their advanced age. The world needs comedy like this.

Sure, eventually I’ll get cancelled for my praise of Nick Mullen and Cumtown, but the man knows how to craft a joke on the fly. Of course everyone knows that Mullen (who is president of the DSA) and his sidekick Adam Friedland are NOTORIOUS leftists (however, The Adam Friedland Show is officially center-left), don’t let that fool you. Mullen is fully committed to the bit; he’s always playing a deranged version of his already deranged self. Forget “punching up or down”. The joke is supposed to be on him AND especially Friedland.

That level of commitment is gone in today’s comedy. So never let the mask slip. But mostly, I wish they’d bring back the gross-out comedies of the late 90/early 00s.

That was the one thing that era got right.

Dirty Harold

I sometimes forget the impact that Dirty Harry had on me as a kid. I was expecting it to be some stupid exploitation flick from the 70s, but it turned out to be much more.

Unlike other gritty crime films from the 70s, like The French Connection or The Taking of Pelham 123, director Don Siegel and DP Bruce Surtees shot the movie like it was a western. Clint Eastwood looms large in mythic form over the screen, but he never completely dominates it. Like how the rough and tumble deserts and mountains are a major character in westerns, the streets of San Francisco play a similar role.

But Dirty Harry was slightly ahead of its time. While westerns were fading away, and with it the gunslingers delivering justice on the prairie, Clint Eastwood was offering the a audience a new hero: the pissed off cop that’s tired of rules and regulations and the constant whining from bureaucrats over the rights of individuals. Dirty Harry fit the mood of white conservatives during the age of Nixon and those that wished to return to a simpler ethos of good guys vs bad guys. In short, Dirty Harry was the predecessor to the Cannon Film craze of the 70s through the 80s.

But in my view, the unsung genius of the film is Andrew Robinson as the crazed villain. Even now, it’s an unnerving character…one that no one could get away with today. The closest comparison that I can think of is Heath Ledger’s Joker, but no sensible writer would permit Batman’s arch nemesis to kill, rape, and abduct children. THAT would be crossing the line. But Robinson’s Scorpio does it numerous times throughout the film.

Which is why the ending was so effective. Sure, it’s a cliche to hear Eastwood utter “do you feel lucky?” before blasting his last round into the bad guy. But you actually feel his rage as he asks Scorpio “well do ya? PUNK!!”. In my view, that was Eastwood’s finest moment as an actor.

While Dirty Harry might be synonymous with Clint Eastwood, I think it would be interesting to see the character return to the screen given its political undertones. Obviously Clint Eastwood is too old, and casting someone like Karl Urban to replace him would seem like parody. But now that the nature of masculinity on film has come under scrutiny, and the zeitgeist has turned skeptical towards law enforcement, it would be fascinating to see Harry Callahan return…especially to such a divisive city as San Francisco.

The 90s Reevaluated

Sorry, still sick so here’s another phoned in post.

Pierce Brosnan has been blowing up my news feed for whatever reason. I guess he’s playing some superhero or whatever, but I don’t watch that stuff. Unfortunately this has created a lot of (likely clickbait) opinion pieces that reevaluate his James Bond tenure.

I’ve always placed Goldeneye in the top 5 Bond films, which is where most 007 fans have historically placed it. But there’s a massive drop off with Brosnan’s other three films. The consensus is that while Brosnan could have been a great James Bond, his movies were either mediocre or terrible.

Or, I should say, this WAS the consensus during the Daniel Craig era.

Now that Craig’s moody and brooding Bond is dead and gone, perceptions on Brosnan’s portrayal have shifted. Craig’s 007 matched the times while Brosnan’s seemed clownish by comparison.

But after two years of a pandemic, record high inflation, and superhero movies flooding the theaters, audiences seem primed for a more tongue in cheek James Bond. So the Daniel Craig era is looking more passé by the second.

People are looking to return to a simpler time. And the most (relatively) simpler times in recent memory is the 1990s. At least this is my best explanation for why Pierce Brosnan is undergoing a micro-renaissance.

As a side note, the Star Trek: Next Generation films (which were also released in 90s) are being reevaluated. This is probably due to the cast returning for the final season of Picard. So Generations, released in 1994 and which infamously killed the original Captain Kirk, is being discussed again.

Why I bring this up is because a fourth “Kelvin era” Trek film, starring Chris Pine as nu-Captain Kirk, has stalled for probably the 10,000th time (thank god). While that (hopefully) means we won’t ever see Zachary Quinto as Spock and Karl Urban as McCoy again, that does NOT mean we won’t see Pine as Kirk again.

Why?

Because as any Trek fan can tell you, while Shatner’s Kirk was killed in Generations, technically his existence is preserved in some “ribbon” that floats around in space where time doesn’t mean anything blah blah blah. And this “ribbon” hasn’t been mentioned in Star Trek since.

So you can see where I’m going with this: when another Trek film makes it to the streaming services sometime this decade, the original Captain Kirk will be pulled out of this ribbon to be played not by William Shatner but by, you guessed it, Chris Pine.

Anyways, enjoy the 2020s, aka the 90s Reloaded.

Skeetin

I’m a little under the weather so I’m just gonna phone this one in.

But I was doing my annual Paul Schrader marathon when I got to Dominion: Prequel to the Exorcist. A few thoughts: 1.) it’s a shitty movie but 2.) Vittorio Stararo was the DP?!!! How did that get past me?

And it’s such a shame that this film didn’t work because it is very much in line with the themes that occur throughout Schrader’s work. I haven’t bothered with the retooled Exorcist: The Beginning, but I’m glad Schrader stuck to his guns and at least attempted to make a cerebral film rather than make a run-of-the-mill horror. That’s what made the original Exorcist so interesting: director William Friedkin stated that it never occurred to him that he was making a “horror film” (he could be bullshitting though).

Schrader probably should have had a bigger say in the screenplay. Much of the introspective philosophical back-and-forth that, in my opinion, slightly bogged down The Last Temptation of Christ (which clashed with Martin Scorsese’s rather “extroverted” direction) would have been quite effective for Dominion. Additionally, the event that caused Father Merrin’s lack of faith should have been revealed later in the movie. And while there was some good stuff with the British colonial troops, I felt that there was no payoff for any of it.

(Plus the special effects REALLY sucked ass)

I also saw Touch for the first time. I don’t remember a damn thing about it other than Skeet Ulrich was in it.

Whatever happened to that guy? That dude was like, super fucking hot. Shouldn’t he have had a bigger career?

Were people disappointed to find out that he wasn’t Danish?

who watches the watchers watching the watchers?

I’m a little late on this Alan Moore thing. But while I can empathize to a degree on Moore’s point here, I recall listening to his interview with Chapo Trap House’s Will Menaker from a few year ago where he stated “everything is politics” and it makes me want to beat my head on the wall.

I’m afraid that we’ve reached a point where audiences aren’t allowed to enjoy anything due to the hyper-politicalization of EVERYTHING. The last few years have been a wet dream for ideologues because finally people are as miserable as they are. And I’ll admit, much to my embarrassment, that I’ve played a hand in this. But people need their distractions from a world that’s seemingly falling apart all around them.

While I’m not a comic book fan, I’d venture to guess that most comic/superhero fans don’t connect this material to any sort of real world scenario. They recognize it for what it is: entertainment.

And that’s okay. Let people be happy.

I think Moore is projecting his “everything is politics” (🤢) worldview here. And that, in my opinion, is far more toxic than what the comic nerds are doing.

whats this sh…

Look, I’m just not ready for the 90s aesthetic to make a comeback. Mostly because, stylistically, that decade sucked balls.

Know what I mean:

Grunge was overrated (no, I didn’t stutter), Reservoir Dogs isn’t as good as you remember, and that blowjob Bill Clinton got in the White House sounds worse and worse by the day. Except for gangsta rap and West Coast Hip Hop, nothing in the 90s worked.

So let’s allow Nicole Brown Simpson to Rest In Peace, and we’ll move on with our lives and forget that an entire decade happened.

While we’re at it, we’ll do the same for the 2000s. And BAM, just like that, 20 years of American history are gone 🫰

All good things…

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. -Paul of Tarsus

In all sincerity, in his review of Picard Season 2, Mike Stoklasa nearly moved me to tears when he discussed his realization that Star Trek really was dead, comparing his journey to the that of the boys in Stand By Me (which coincidentally starred Wil Wheaton). His journey of grief led him to face the realities of life, put away childish things, and blossom into a man (who subjects his friends to shitty movies and laughs at old people for a living).

After the disaster that was Season 1 of Picard, I figured that the powers that be…the writers, producers, Paramount+…would have corrected course and made a proper send off for the legendary cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Then the trailer above dropped.

And I’ll admit: my heart absolutely sank to my feet. Patrick Stewart will no longer be alone in his debasement for the upcoming season. Now the entire cast of TNG will be along for this pitiful, disgusting ride.

I could go on ripping this trailer to shreds, but I won’t. You know why? Because someone…a LOT of someones…LOVE this show. When the Star Wars prequels arrived, they were derided by the entire fan base. But they made a FUCK TON of money. So I knew in my heart, despite me hating the SHIT out of the prequels, there’s gonna be a whole generation that will love them.

And honestly, good for them. It’s the next generation of fans that these long-established franchises are aiming at. I could spend the rest of my life being angry at what these new producers have done to my beloved Star Trek. But I’ve been on the ride long enough.

It’s not the way I would have liked to have seen my favorite character go out, but he was a hero of my childhood. And it’s time to put childish things away.

Farewell TNG

***

But you know what I WON’T put away…or even put DOWN:

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I said “31% off for the entire month of October! You gotta be shittin me!”

And HE said, “why would I be shitting you? I’m AFRAID of you?!”

So after the police and the Los Angeles Superior Court banned me permanently from the airport, I immediately saved 31% off my next purchase at Dead Star Press!

Look at what I bought:

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