HOLY $#!*

If you want to watch a movie that will make you sit right up in your chair, with your eyeballs popping out of your head in disbelief and general horror, while your stomach queases over with disgust at the inconceivable images of brutality and the actor from Old Boy loses all the dubious sympathy he had gained... man, this is the flick for you. It's called I Saw The Devil and it is NOT messing around. I don't so much recommend it as warn you about it. I'm glad I saw it, but it is most definitely not for everyone.

It is as if the writer and director watched a series of revenge movies, Straw Dogs, Death Wish, anything else with Charles Bronson, and they said, "That's pretty good, but not revengey enough. Needs more brutal revenge and more brutality to the victims." They took the revenge genre adn turned it up to 11. It's impressive, but not something to watch if you want to sleep easily.

In true Bluth style, though: That's why you always kill the serial killer when you first catch him.

Makes me sad

Upsetting

To all my in-laws

While I still love you all and respect you, ultimately this is how I feel about this.

An experiment in Entertainment

First: watch The Deal or The Queen with Michael Sheen.
Second: Watch any of the Underworld movies.
Third: Try not think sentences like: "Tony Blair just bit the hell out of Felicity Guy's neck!"

It's fun, give it a try.

Tootsie and Sinatra, some thoughts on some movies

Depressingly, while I was looking for a good photo of Tootsie I found a blog entry by some other guy, who seems to be a Clevelander, who summed up what I wanted to say even better than I ever could, but I will champion on anyway. Tootsie is NOT the God Of All Comedies. I am not sure what film that title would go to, though I have always remembered the first time I saw Dumb and Dumber, with Jon Park. We got into the end of the early showing and without having any idea of the plot watched the last half hour. We were laughing so hard that our sides ached before we ever even saw the last of the credits. By the time the movie started over we had calmed adequately to be able to breathe. But from the first moment seeing Jim Carrey's absurd haircut again we were rolling. I think I laughed more in that movie than at anything in my whole life. But I WAS 16, so I probably had hormonal issues going on. Or perhaps what I thought was laughter was actually some sort of internal zit popping.

My point, I promise there was one in there, is that Tootsie is ok. It's not great. Bill Murray is far and away the best thing about the movie. Without question, his last line, sitting in an easy chair and reading Dashiell Hammett, is the best line in the movie. If the film had ended right there, I'd have been happy.

The music is embarrassing. Jessica Lange... let's talk about Jessica Lange. She got an Oscar for this? Really? And why is she considered better looking than Terri Garr? Terri Garr is WAY more attractive than Jessica Lange, and more fun, seemingly. I mean, at least she gives it up, and on virtually no effort. For Hoffman's character, I mean, this guy is BEGGING women to talk to him and he had Terri Garr sitting right there? What's his problem? (Admittedly she is shown to be a little cuckoo, but isn't that what women in romantic comedies are supposed to be?)

The supposedly feminist slant was ludicrous. The only way I could see it was that if a woman was more like a man, or indeed a man, then she would be more like what women want to be. It is like when Hooper breaks down the racism of Return of the Jedi in Chasing Amy. I wish I wasn't at work so I could put up a YouTube of that scene. The crux of his argument is that Darth Vader indicates the filmmaker's vision of African Americans really desiring to be white men. It seems that this goes double for Tootsie.

But man, Bill Murray slumming is still better than anyone else doing anything, ever.

Then we come to The Son Of A Bitch, Frank Sinatra. Even before I really understood who Frank Sinatra was I knew that my Aunt Mae hated him. I remember before going to Florida for the first time, when Grandpa Pitrone told my parents all about Aunt Mae's habits. I think that I was eating Kix at the time. Anyways, he was saying the she never swears, something like: "She says Jimminy Christmas and things like that, but she does say SOB whenever Frank Sinatra is mentioned." I was little, younger than 10, so this mostly flew over my head, except that I liked the phrase Jimminy Christmas. It then became this little joke between Tom and her. Or at least Tom used it to make fun of her, which was always funny. An Aunt Mae a little irritated was an Aunt Mae happy, so that worked well.

In later years I have always wondered, given Aunt Mae's life and Frank Sinatra's reputation, whether or not they had had a fling at some point, or if her distaste was more of a second-hand thing. I like the idea of Aunt Mae being on Frank's arm and some ding-a-ling function, but it is probably just a figment of my over-active imagination.

Again, sort of a rambling method to get to what I wanted to say, which is this: Frank Sinatra really kind of seems like a Son Of A Bitch in this movie. I could kind of believe that Aunt Mae just saw this in the theatre and decided he was scum from there.

I really like the movie, for the most part. It starts out really strong. The story of a cabaret singer in 1920s Chicago, defying the mob to do what he wants. Lots of renditions of All The Way. This seems to have everything you could want. Then, tragedy. He gets beaten up and, as one character puts it, "They slashed his vocal cords." (This seems unlikely to me. It's a pretty careful surgery to have random thugs perform. There is no evidence here, but I suspect they just slit his throat.) Then he disappears from the hospital and all of a sudden it's 1937. Time jumps around a bit in this movie, but it's worth it.

There are some really terrific little things here:

There are scars on Frank's face that no one mentions in the whole movie.
There are two women who love him, and he is just a jerk.
His marriage falls apart and it is indicated that it is all his fault, but watching the film I can't figure it out. It seems like his career-girl wife is to blame. Or at least, it seems so to me. Margaret says I always take the man's side. I argued my point pretty loudly, and I suppose too long. Finally she told me I was right and could we please watch the movie again.

However, the end is terrible. It has some thematic significance, but ultimately it just feels like the writers ran out of steam.

Oh, and the jokes are so bad that it reminds you that comedy was a bizarre wasteland for a long time. People sing the praises of Lenny Bruce, people including Bob Dylan, but come on, that stuff wasn't funny. Was it provocative? Possibly. Was it satirical? Probably. Was it funny? Hell no.

Sam Kinison is the same thing. And Andrew Dice Clay. What the heck are people laughing about there?

So maybe Tootsie really seemed like The God Of All Comedies when it came out.

Finally, I am making another, by now routine, impassioned plea for further Uncle Michael stuff. I am adding everything I get to the site, as I get it. If you have anything you'd like to see, or would like others to see, send it on over to my e-mail and I will post it. Thanks.

Thoughts?

Very Good

I liked it. They tore up Tricky Dick pretty hard, but it was still pretty doggone good.

Huh...

A Couple Things

This first:



Second:

No one has anything else in regards to Uncle Michael? I am shocked. I thought there would be an overflow of many, many things. I am very surprised.

Deee-licious

Can I suggest that everyone, including and especially Don Tomaso, start checking out the "All The Things I Look At Daily" link on my Links menu. I update it daily with many, many interesting things and the things I have found this evening will enthrall. Trust me, enthrall.

Uncle Michael Pitrone 101

On what would otherwise be a pretty joyous occasion, the writing of my 101st blog post, instead I am here to mourn the passing of my Uncle Michael. He died yesterday evening at 9PM EST. It was 11AM here in Okinawa and I had a whole work-day to think about how I feel about it. (Well, I did have work to do too, but I thought about it an awful lot.) And I feel like I never really knew the man. That's what I feel like. I liked him, I loved him. He was family and in the Pitrones that means something and a half. But I guess I never knew him.

I remember that his coming, when I was little, was the first time anyone explained what being gay was to me. (And thanks for that one, Tom. It would have been uncomfortable except that I had no concept of it at all. I thought it was yucky. To this day I think that it is kind of yucky, but I suppose that my way of doing things seem pretty yucky from the other side of the fence. As Stephen Fry has said, "When I was born I took one look at my Mother's birth canal and said to myself, 'That's the last time I go in there.'")

He was cool, though. He read a Return of the Jedi book to Frank and I, even though Tom would NEVER read that book to us. He was funny, and I just liked him.

Then I didn't see him for a long time. That was kind of a hallmark of my relationship with the man. There would be long time periods where I didn't see him. I'd hear from him now and again, mostly about him, I guess. But no contact.

Anyways, all this to say that I will miss him.

I started a website in his honor, for those that are interested and want to go it is at michael.pitrone.9f.com

If you have anything to add, please add it there.

Windows 7

This is it! The Public Beta has arrived and I strongly suggest clicking these words to get it! This is the 64 bit and the 32 bit, whichever you need!

Two Great Tastes That Taste Great Together

So, I found these two things today that made me happy, and I offer them here, to those of you who hang on my every posted word.

Thing One

and

Thing Two

Now, obviously Thing One is less vital to National discussion. BUT it is a great little essay about a terrific movie that I strongly suggest to anyone who hasn't seen it. (And for those of you haters who still have aught against the 1970s, this might be the balm you need. Watch this and then watch the re-make and tell me that the 1970s didn't kick all sorts of cinematic tail.)

Thing Two, I strongly suggest be read, re-read and then promulgated as a new National Doctrine. It is excellent.

Finally, for those of you who were interested in the Windows 7 post from earlier in the week: Microsoft is offering a free public beta on Friday. This is the Wired article on how to get your hands on it.

N-Likely N-All

Today I found myself asking, "Will I ever write anything as clever as this?"

The answer of course is, "Unlikely."

That David Mamet gets me every time. I find his novels to be somewhat un-readable, but his plays and films are always an occasion for joy and this essay of his is no less than tremendous. He is making some splendid points throughout and I wholeheartedly salute him.

What a guy.

New Records All Over

Two posts in two days? It's incredible!

First of all, to address the comments from my post yesterday, what makes Belle the best? That's my problem with the whole thing. I don't see Belle as the best and I can't understand why Gaston would. She was physically identical to the blond trollops. What set her apart? Her brains? Why does that appeal to him? Does he need someone to read to him at night? I am not convinced that the characterization makes sense.

And then my new thing: Windows 7.

I might have seen someone's computer who might have a slightly bootlegged copy of Windows 7 that they might be using as their main OS. Here's the theoretical skinny from an expert.

Here's my take:

This software is incredible. As the article above suggests, beta versions of software are all about probable stability, not about speed. The speed on this software is incredible. I can't get over how fast this thing is. My friend hasn't really burned any discs with it, he usually uses thumbdrives, but copying files is absolutely smoking fast. I can't get over it. The GUI is really, really classy. There is a neat little spot in the right-hand corner that clears the desktop and all the Start line items/icons show what is happening in them when they are minimized using Picture in Picture technology. The start up, from boot to running is about 45 seconds. My friend says that there is nothing like it, and I have to agree.

This is not to say that there are not bugs in it. There have been some BSODs, some random shut-downs, some video shakiness... but all in all, my friend says that every time he considers going back to Vista or XP the OS stuns him in some new way.

The upshot, it's a strong recommendation from my friend, and I accept his word implicitly. It breaks records as far as Microsoft Windows is concerned. I know that there are a million folks out there who claim that Linux based things are the greatest, but I tried Ubuntu, and so did my friend, and it just didn't cut it. I like just being able to click on things. I like it to be easy. Maybe that's lazy, but why should computing be complicated? There were things my friend and I liked about Ubuntu, but in the end, Windows 7 is the trick.

Disney Character Motivation Dissection

I have been taking issue with the Disney version of Beauty and the Beast. What's the deal with Gaston's character motivation? I am really not clear. Why is he interested in Belle? I can't suss it out. He's got these three bolonde girls who are swooning for him and dressed like trollops. They all have the exact same body and face as Belle, so other than that he digs brunettes, what is the difference? Belle is bookish, snobbish, dislikes him, has no money. Her Father is crazy... I am not understanding. The best that anyone can explain it to me so far is that he wants her because he can't have her. But that is like saying that I can't have a sperm whale as a pet. Why is it an issue? I don't get it. And without some motivation for him wanting Belle the whole story falls apart. Everything he does revolves around him wanting to marry Belle, but I can't conceive of a reason he'd WANT to marry Belle. I can see that he'd want to have sex with Belle, I guess that makes sense, she's good looking, he's a hunter... But even that is pretty specious reasoning. I think that he'd settle down with one of the three blondes, while throwing the other two a bone from time to time, get fat and pump out some disturbingly chinned children. The whole movie falls apart for me on this point. Thoughts?

Thoughts?

Here is the thing about failure: Once it starts, once that ineffable losing streak begins to weave its path into your day-to-day fate, you never again regain the sense of invincibility that you once had. Every teenaged boy is a bristling ball of security. No matter how abused or down-trodden, no matter how self-conscious or needy in most respects, no teenager ever thinks of himself as anything other than invincible and eternal. Sure, there are the death fantasies and there are the moments of horror about complexion or school-yard cruelty, but the fact remains, hope and life are still intertwined in inexorable affinity.

There is a point however, usually sometime in the mid-to-late twenties, when the inherent flaws and perfectly honed responses that family, friends and community have built into the individual, when failure begins to raise its ugly head. There is no way to avoid it totally. Some people can manage to make it into their thirties; usually they have money or phenomenal looks to back them up, some magical charm that keeps them safe from the inevitable, without facing up to the evil visage of their own self-defeating nature.

When it comes, it crushes. There is nothing like a true failure, a failure in career, in love, in friendship or general denial of the boons and graces that life has granted hitherto. It is the end, quite simply the end of childhood. It is not the beginning of adulthood, merely the end of the previous, grace-filled state. Failure doesn’t make one a man. Failure can hone a person’s manhood, but it does not create, ex nihilo, manhood.

That is what failure does not do; let’s talk about what it does. It steals, even if you give yourself to your failings, even if you have granted failure every possible advantage and license, it still steals the sense of value that you had a right to. It steals it away and while you may regain this or that sense of self, or this or that sense of worth, you can never regain the sense of value, inherent value and pride that you held beforehand. In some cases this is a good thing. Inflated sense of worth is a negative attribute and failure is the comeuppance of the arrogant soul. But it is a cruel lesson learned.

One might find, as I confess to having found, that later in life, after the failure of youth and after the hard won and oft referred to struggle to regain self-worth, that any minor failing, and minor falling out or disagreement, any minor ruffle in the otherwise placid surface of day to day life causes me to question everything I hold dear. I am not a man, I am not of value, I am not capable, I am not intelligent, I am not worthy or worthwhile. I am merely a failure.

Each time I reach this conclusion, each time I fail, I have to re-fight the battles of my nature and my upbringing and regain the sound footing that tells me that I am a man, that I have value, that I am capable, intelligent, worthy and worthwhile. But each time, that victory, once won, is less sweet. It is tinged, each time, by a greater and greater knowledge of how tenuous, how easily lost the ground is. The battles are less difficult to win, the points less difficult to score, because in each battle I better know the ground recovered. But that makes the ground worth less and less. And I am not becoming MORE of a man, etc. each time. I am remaining, sustaining a manhood. My value does not increase, but the value of holding onto it decreases. It is a losing battle, in the face of failure.

Just as pain is a supposedly necessary part of physical existence, failure is a necessary part of the emotional makeup of a man. But just as pain is also attached to destructive forces and the deterioration of the body, so failure is the anathema of success. And it is a poison that once tasted is forever a part of the self.

Too Clever By Half?

The Bodies Exhibit, Washington DC

The exhibit is held at the too-modern for words Newseum at The Dome in Rosslyn. The locale is extremely futuristic as befits this post-modern, post-moral, post-mortem. The rather stark entrance-way leads directly to the stark-raving coat-check fellow, who rambles semi-coherently about flash photography. Then up the stairs to the Will-Call window and a quick stop at the trivia-festooned bathrooms. (Hint: Toes is the correct answer.)

The exhibit itself: It starts out with a whimper. From behind a small partition you emerge into the soft light of a scapula and the first of the eerily standing corpses. The lighting is subdued, bringing out the brown of the epicanthically-folded, oddly taxiderm-ish eye on the plasticine'd cadaver. The initial reaction is one of stressless shock. It hasn't sunk in yet that there are former human beings posed around. You still have your vaguely clinical detachment, as you move to the second room, noticing that the trivia motif has continued, that the lighting now shows anatomic structures on the walls and that your mind insists that they are only patterns. That's when two things strike you, hard: the flesh is shiny, wet-looking, too biological to be detached from; the second is the tiny, blood-red bug trapped in the case with the sagittal section of the brain and skull. It's moving about, Escher-like, with the maggot assurance that there is food somewhere. You insist to yourself that it is old-fashioned, archaic, to be grossed-out. You try as hard as you can not to imagine it eating anything... That's when you enter the room of the disembodied flesh and your gorge starts seriously to rise.

If you've ever seen the Texas Chainsaw Massacre II, there's an immediate reference, but it sends you reeling into horror terminology and becomes one more thing to repress...

Past partition after partition, past the respiratory system, some grisly hearts and the absurd anti-smoking section, you stumble half-heartedly. The question of the participant's willingness keeps rearing up, but it's not till you move downstairs that the force of it shocks, literally shocks your system.

In a series of jars, preserved like berries at Grandma's house, are succeeding stages of fetal development. All questions of willingness, voluntary participation or free will dissolve at the recognition of the miniature fingers, toes, eyes and hearts. The increasingly manic trivia proclaims the beginning of the heartbeat and the helpfulness of the placenta. To be fair, you can side-step this room, but it doesn't make the room not exist and you no longer have any desire to be fair.

The final room contains a lab-coated museum worker to offer a scholarly benediction, to point out the scientific value and natural wonder of what you have just seen. Like an apologist at an abattoir she directs your gaze around the dissected Asian bodies that haven't already shocked you. A stronger stomach than yours would have been quaking by now, and you are feeling sick to death of it. The crowd around her, in a religio-scientific rapture excoriates our, "insane morality," for holding us back from performing this act on our own. And one can't help but reflect on the other horrors that have been encouraged in the name of science.

If this seems a breathless, or an over-excited review, it is only because perspective has not yet been reached. It is an artful exhibit, well set up, cleverly controlled and brilliantly propagandized, but one can't help but lose perspective in the host of unanswered moral dilemmas that no one in the room seemed even slightly bothered by.

The Coolest Place on Earth

Wired has this article today. I am envious to end all envious. It's all very well not to covet your neighbors whatnot, but they never mentioned a library in the text...

Random Thoughts on Many Things

I have no particular thing I wish to express today. I have lots of little things that have popped up and been considered.

• Sarah Palin/Tina Fey: Ok, I love, love, love Tina Fey. Margaret and I are huge fans of her work and especially 30 Rock. I can't help but think that there is a really strange convergence of events that bring her and Palin to the forefront of pop-consciousness. Normally our parodic instincts give us people who look nothing like the political figure they are mocking. Chevy Chase and Gerald Ford? Dana Carvey and Bush Senior? Nothing like each other. Phil Hartman as Bill Clinton was close, but Phil Hartman could have played Mary Tyler Moore convincingly, so that's not going to fly. But from the moment Palin was announced, all I could think was that Tine Fey was going to do a drop dead perfect Palin. And sure enough, she does. Seriously though, how does that work? Did McCain pick Palin with Fey in mind or what? How did they work that out? (And, to be fair, the first sketch, with Amy Poehler as Hillary, was so funny that I almost choked.)
  
• This election: I am not excited about anyone in it. If Obama wins I think that my life will change virtually not at all. I know a lot of conservatives that are convinced that he will be a death-knell for individual liberties in the US, but I think that since the Bail-Out Bill gives the IRS permanent powers for undercover operations indicates that there are very few individual liberties to take away. What the hell is Obama gonna do? NKVD powers for the IRS are about as evil a set of circumstances as I can imagine and I really doubt that there is anything else out there. Will he make abortion more legal? Will he legalize pedophilia? Probably not. The only issue I can think of that might be in the danger zone is Israel, and from what I am reading Israel is about ready to take a swing at Iran, at which point it doesn't matter who is in charge, we're probably not along for the ride. This election seems like a circus, which makes me think that it doesn't matter. It's a show and the actual powers that run the USA probably have it on as another opiate for the masses. Who is actually running? There are two old guard players with equal experience in saying insane things that you have to hope they don't mean. McCain and Biden. There are two inexperienced, hopefully well-intentioned but seemingly kind of dumb outsiders, Obama and Palin. Either way, it seems like we're getting the same choice. I am not convinced that voting matters this time, and the fact that MTV and Rolling Stone insist that it DOES matter makes it seem all the more unlikely.
• OJ Simpson: Man, that sucks. You really had to think that you could get away with anything, didn't you? I mean, let's face it, you walk away from a double homicide, you figure you're untouchable. Who'd have thought that some minor vigilantism would bite you in the ass?
• Books: I think that I have read every book on the entire island of Okinawa. I am going crazy. Thankfully Margaret got a job and our income is about to reach a level where I can buy books again. Amazon is about to get a payday. I need to read something new!
  
• My Brother Drew: He might get to come visit Okinawa for an extended stay. Certain personal issues in his life are leading to his needing a vacation. I am looking forward to seeing him, if it works out, more than I can say. Margaret and I talk about him all the time now. Everything we see we interpret through the likely Drew response to it. It is a safe bet that we end up laughing.
• I had this strange experience at 3:30 this morning. I was fast asleep and heard this screaming sound. It kind of reminded me of that old alarm clock we used to have that had a high-pitched whine as the alarm. I got up, to check the house. When I got up Margaret woke up and heard it, and she thought that it was some strange Japanese noise and that there was no way it was in the house. I walked out to the computer desk and one of my external hard drives was screaming, and I reached out to touch it, but just before my
  fingers hit it, it stopped. And it never started again. But then I was awake till about half an hour before it was time to wake up. So I slept in a little, which is unusual for me.

I can't think of anything else that I need to talk about. Thoughts?

Apparently the final update...

The Google Phone arrives.

It is a little more expensive than was indicated, and without the great bandwidth deal that has apparently been kiboshed by Congress the data package isn't as wonderful as was projected, but it still sounds worth it. It's cheaper than the iPhone, by about $20. The data package isn't too bad, though the whole thing is less exciting than I was projecting it could be.

And Google is now starting to be considered evil in its own right, which... talk about a bummer.