Wisdom of the Sages
Episode V
May – Spring 2010
Hello People of the World;
Well, here we are at the “unofficial” beginning of the Spring Season. Some how May just screams new beginning and warmer weather and the like. I hope the weather is good wherever you are reading this. We also honor Moms during May. So, here is a quick shout-out to you Moms.
To honor Moms, I think I will get all complain-y this month. I have had enough of a lot of things and I will now point them out for your enjoyment…
Let’s get started, shall we?
:[ First Item of the Month: Arizona, really? Is it just me or is this new Era of Hope in America the most racist since the civil rights movement? With an African-American President, it is as if we can now vent our racism under the guise of anti-socialism and racial “equality”. Let’s face it; “Socialist” is the New “N*gger”.
I’ve o’erglance the comments sections pertaining to the new Arizona laws the Governor is signing into being and too many are so happy about both the racial profiling and the oppression of ethnic studies. Quoting the AP, the State’s School Chief (!) states that ethnic studies “…promotes ‘ethnic chauvinism’ and racial resentment toward whites while segregating students by race.”
And to prove that this is not the case, the state of Arizona oppresses Latino students’ rights to this avenue of education. Wow. The first tenant of any dictatorship is hypocrisy. If you think these new laws are good things: You might be a redneck. And racist.
:[ So, I fail miserably at the Poem A Day thing. I tried keeping up everyday with getting the prompt off the Poetic Asides blog, but I usually fell behind doue to other things happening. It has been that way of late. I just cannot keep up with my own writing. I’ll comment more about it in my Redshade Productions Update.
:[ Hearing the new Natalie Merchant album playing in both the Borders Bookstore and the Barnes and Noble was weird…
:[ Admit it, when you hear Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” on the PA at the bookstore or grocery, you subconsciously walk in time to the beat… Yeah, I thought so.
:[ Redshade Productions Update: My writing is stagnant. My production on “Hamlet” is stalled. I am at a creative crossroads, so to speak. I need to make some moves, look at evidence, and chart some courses. Let me tell you:
“Hamlet” status: stalled due to volume of work-related and other writing. With the warmer weather I hope to get more footage shot.
“Three Kingdoms” Status: Stalled. No further writing done.
“The Shoshoni Connection”: Stalled. Second Draft incomplete.
Hoping to register treatments for two movies: “Yelling Fire” and “Drawing Near the Place”.
Fiction Writing:
“Nameless”: novel, incomplete
“Brothers”: novel, incomplete
“Blue Woman” short stories: volume one complete, un-submitted, series writing, stalled
“A Rez Tale” novel: incomplete
“Once Upon a Time on the Rez”: novel, first draft complete, no further momentum
“Avenger”: novel, incomplete
Film:
Personal project shelved
“Once Upon a Time on the Rez” & other videos – unedited
Two-Minute Mystery with L’Amour and Cruz: no further action
“Hamlet” no further writing.
Well, it’s a lot, and sooner or later I’ll tackle it all. A lot of projects there but really no time to get to them all. Soon. I hope.
:[ Big, giant, black-frame eyeglasses are starting to look stupid on people. I hate that the trend is now to wear these in some failing effort at looking both smart and fashionable. Thanks Tina Fey…
:[ Why is it that people that drive Hummers, never look happy?
:[ Seriously folks, we need to stop praising the mediocrity that is the movie “The Room.” I am getting so tired of everyone and their dog thinking that this terrible movie is the height of satire. We are simply making something out of nothing to sate our intellectual egos because we like something stupid. Grow up.
:[ While going to visit Bonnie today I spied this guy on the train platform heading for Skokie. He wore the ”gangsta lean” baseball cap with the wide, flat brim, sleeveless Ed Hardy t-shirt with the tattoos up and down his arm and all manner of piercing in his face. Looking tough and rebel-cool, he strikes up this conversation with this lady over where they both bought their tough, cool man-wallet chains. You know where they bought them, these bastions of rebel cool and anti-establishmentarianism? Hot Topic.
It reminded me of this hobo that got on the train at the Loyola stop and sat next to me on the train. Well, he dressed like a hobo with an old, worn-out plaid shirt, old cargo pants with second-hand shoes and old man tote bag. He looked like he just rolled out of bed with his shaggy unwashed hair and three-day growth on his chin.
So, he sits down next to me this paragon of poverty vows, and after a while he digs in his pocket for the iPad Touch he own and pops in his headphones and listens. Dude, you cannot act poor and enlightened if you are pulling the latest electronic gizmo out of your pocket. I hate those kids that really cultivate their “poor” look and yet have the fucking gall to pull out the cells and iPods and the latest techno thing everyone else cannot afford. Fucking phonies.
If you have the latest techno gear and you still try to dress eclectically for eclecticism’s sake, you’re a phony. It is as if we are pretending that we weren’t duped into buying into the latest fad, because we all know, we are simply too smart for that. TV says so.
:[ A Tale of Two Superhero Movies: A Kick-Ass/Iron Man 2 Review
I went and saw “Kick-Ass” because it seemed like it was a movie geared towards a fella like me, a comic book and movie geek: without a social life. I have to admit that I liked maybe the first twenty minutes of it because like the main character said, you don’t need comic book conventions to be a superhero. I dug that he was a regular guy just trying his best because he had the passion and the deadened nerve ending to do so.
Then, Big Daddy and Hit Girl showed up. Then they filled the screen with every comic book cliché ever made that I was never surprised at it. It lost its spark. The only way we could make it seem like it was the Cool it is supposed to be is to have a foul-mouth, mass-murdering 11-year-old? Really?
I like violent movies as much as the next guy but something about a child committing these acts took me right out of it. Yeah, I know, Ebert had his objections and all that but I don’t know. It didn’t impress me, nor did it make it “cool” because Ebert disliked. You need to raise a little girl to get what I’m saying I guess. To see a small child commit murder (The swearing I had no problem with.) as our new level of "cool shit that happens" made it all seem weak. It bugged me. Yeah.
Are we that jaded and cynical that we get our jollies off this? Maybe we are.
Oh yeah, and I get it, Cage is doing Adam West. You don’t know how many lonely geeks pointed that out in the theater. So, Cage pulled a Jamie Foxx and rather than act, he does an impression. Let’s all pat ourselves on our big fat backs for noticing that and sating our egotistical intellect because we like a crappy movie.
There has been a dearth of stupid movies acting like they’re smart lately: “Watchmen”, “300”, “Kill Bill vol’s 1 & 2” and now “Kick-Ass”. Stuff we geeks can fall all over ourselves for liking because they were made for us, man. Sheesh.
It’s like we cannot even intellectually defend these movies. When reading all the comments to Ebert “Kick-Ass” review, the best anyone came up with is “FUCK ALL YOU H8TERS!” Yep, maybe these movies do appeal to the correct sensibility then.
And speaking of comic book clichés, who didn’t see that last shot coming as soon as Red Mist was introduced?
Then on the other hand, I did enjoy “Iron Man 2” even though the general consensus was that it was not as good as the first one. I think he had a better villain this time. Rather than an old man who raised him and never wore an iron suit before, this villain had a motive and the means. While it amped up the action the action that was there seemed too short. The fights didn’t last too long with the exception of the Rhodes/Stark throw down. But overall a neat comic book movie. They did address something that bugged me about the first movie. The fact that Tony Stark, masking his guilt over building weapons just build another weapon under the guise of “for our protection”. They, never solved that one, but at least they acknowledged the contradiction.
Plus, my Boo and I loved the comic book Easter eggs throughout.
:[ Speaking of movie reviews, here is my analysis of the movie “Avatar”. CLICK HERE and enjoy. Or don’t.
:[ So, I decided to take a look at the new C2E2 convention that happened at McCormack Place last month. I checked it out with my buddy Cuba and was very impressed with the event. It was more comic book-centric than other cons. That bugged the Cuba though. So, we went to the only movie panel which was the Star Wars Something-or-Other, (I forget), where Steve Sansweet tells us a bunch of stuff we already know. I wanted to go to the mic and ask, “Mr. Sansweet, I don’t mean to be rude but when are you going to tell us something we don’t know?”
We know about the TV Series, Star Wars in Concert, and the 501st Troop that always show up at these functions. We have Internet. Anyways. But we did catch a cool talke with Michael Uslan, producer of all the modern Batman movies and his tale of how he did it. That was cool.
Then, suddenly I was tasked with taking my Boo there the next day! Alas, it will forever break my heart that we did not make it to see Jeff Smith, creator of Bone, one of Char’s favorite series, by mere minutes, MINUTES! I will always rue that day. So, we called for a lift home and I waited until the last minute to buy my Batman action figure. Next year, I promise.
:[ Seriously, drivers, STOP means stop! That is what the great big, huge RED, octagonal sign with the great big, huge white letters means on this planet, STOP!
It has gotten so bad that now they are coming with big, fucking, huge RED FLASHING LIGHTS! How stupid are you to not know what STOP means?
:[ From the “This Just In” File: I guess they are tearing down Mitt Romney’s childhood home in Detroit to make way for property development. I guess a bunch of condemned homes are being razed for public development. But man, did you see the house he grew up in? Sheesh, I don’t know a single Indian that wouldn’t want that for a house to grow up in. And they make such a big deal about razing it. Poor, Mitt Romney, he’ll just have to dry his tears and his silk bed sheets in his palatial estate in Massachusetts.
:[ Last Item of the Month: Seriously, people, we need to stop adding vampires and zombies to other works of fiction. I get it, it’s funny to read “Jane Slayre”, “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”, “Little Women and Werewolves” and the like because we are all of us smart enough to appreciate literary satire. But, come on. We need to stop the trend of adding zombies, vampires, and werewolves to famous works of literature, today. Are we that creatively bankrupt that we cash in on the trend of lazy writing? Really.
That will do it for this month.
Look like the reduction to 15 items in this month’s episode brought it in on deadline. Hazzah! I just barely made it.
But before I go for this month. I know what it is like to have a loved one in the hospital. I hate seeing someone I love in pain and I know that many are in the same situation. So, you all have my thoughts and best wishes for whomever you have in the hospital right now and I wish them the speediest of recoveries.
Until Next Time, “I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control everything really are.”
© 2010 Ernest M. Whiteman III
