Wanted: Class.

Wanted mates Fight Club’s masculine, angst-marinated cubicle cuckold with the pseudo-mysticism of the domesticated oracle of the Matrix.  The “oracle” happens to be a Golden Loom (patent pending?) with an under glow that may impress some import tuners.  That’s right, a golden loom.  I’m not making it up.  In the case of racing, an LED lit chassis must somehow increase horsepower, and in movies it increases the mystique of the mundane.

Anyway, this Loom communicates targets via binary.  Gee, a Golden Typewriter sure would be a lot easier.  If a hit were to be put on Perez Hilton, the loom with have to spit out:

0101000001100101011100100110010101

11101000100000010010000110100101101

100011101000110111101101110″.

That’s a lot of thread for a bloated queen.

Enough about the prolix communication of Mystical Looms, what about the characters?

They speak in a binary of sorts as well.  We’ll let the 0s be represented by a word that rhymes with motherclucker, and the 1s be represented by that most linguistically utilitarian profanity, the scatological s-word.  The profanities are punctuated with screams of pain and–as my grandpa likes to say–long meaningful looks.

Angelina Jolie’s most profound line is “No.”  Most of the time she remains silent, coolly eying the camera with her Cleopatra eyes and asp-like arms.  Perhaps her mind is elsewhere, rolling the philanthropic dice on a new developing country to add to her brood.  There is a nice scene that briefly shows the Northern border of her derriere, but I was too distracted by the hemoglobe’d roadmap of veins slithering down her arms.  Note:  Anything that male professional bodybuilders strive for–in this case vascularity–IS NOT FREAKING ATTRACTIVE.  Madonna, I’m looking at you too.  (As a side note, maybe she and A-rod have the same supplier?  ((As a double side note, if A-Rod does take too many steroids he may need a new nickname)) (That’s right: embedded and adjacent parenthesis.  Live with it.)

Our Hero, James McAvoy, is a typical modern man.  He is a gelding unwilling to buck off a boss who rides him at work, and ignores his girlfriend riding the stallion next door.  Of course, in a Hollywood summer movie appealing to sweaty testosterone, these are Bad Things™.  It would be nice if a movie recognized the quiet courage it takes to endlessly take shit from a boss or the self-discipline to not paint your girl’s face black and blue.

Not that this character would be the Poster Boy for such a paradigm shift (oh no he di’n't!).  He’s really just a whiny bitch.

We are supposed to feel sorry for our hero.  I never do.  He alternates between being a flaccid pill-popper and screaming sissy.  Most of the first half of the movie is comprised of the holy trinity of his: squealing in varying degrees of pitch, stringing together curses, and asking questions that have no answers.  Not exactly someone I root for.  Most hero movies rely on the archetype of the inverted-Kafka-metamorphosis.  To start, our hero is a scurrying giant cockroach.  He is supposed to have moments of humanity that pierce through the miasma of mediocrity that entombs him.  We are supposed cheer as the hero  begins to awaken and see the shadows on the wall.  He leaves the safe cave for an exciting and violent world of unquestionable killings and promised glory.  Hmm, blindly killing people based on faith in a mystical being – as interpreted by a hierarchical organization.  A better movie would examine this concept more closely.  Wanted brushes it away with Angelina Jolie’s cheery anecdote about watching her father being burned alive because she did not perform an assassination.  TMartyrdom is again hinted at when mice are strapped with explosives in the film’s deus ex machina.

We’re supposed to find it satisfying that McAvoy breaks his best friends nose and kisses Jolie in front of his girlfriend.  Our eyes be brimming with pride as he becomes an army of one, shooting scores of nameless lackeys, ugly igors, mean-looking & bald minorities, and rich cigar-smoking-whities (I guess assassins aren’t patient enough for emphysema or lung cancer eventually expunging their targets).  There’s the typical montage–I’d love to have royalties to the song, “Eye of the Tiger”–of our hero training hard, getting beatup, and reading books.  There is much growth and yet none at all.  He still is manipulated; still being used.  Learning how to kill people better is kind of like learning how to do a blackflip – a nice trick at cocktail parties.

There is also the idea that fallible man can corrupt and modify the word of god (loom).  Morgan Freeman plays the his typical wise-old-man with a gleam in his eye.  Apparently he is the only one who bothers to interpret the Loom’s binary threading.  The profanity sodden dialogue even seeps into his speech, where he reverts the blaxploitation of the 70s, politely asking his henchmen to, “Shoot this muthafuckah.”  An audience of cloned Samuel L. Jacksons (horror movie concept?) may grin at this, but the rest of us will blush.  Freeman is the freaking guy whose sanguine narration anthromorphized emperor penguins.

In the end, this movie propagates colored cheeks.  We blush over Angelina’s robotic performance.  We squirm during Freeman’s Tourette’s.   We feel awkward at the director’s primary obsession with exploding human heads, secondary obsession with exploding mice, and tertiary obsession with explosive language.

If you pray before the alter of Dionysian savagry, then go see this movie.  If you like a dollop of reason and a pinch of taste mixed within your summer blockbuster stew, skip it.

3/8 Exploding Heads.

Obama: Crypto-spy or Great Black Hope?

What is there left to question about Barack Obama?  Is he a puppet of black militantism, set to purge whitey?  Is he a highly-trained terrorist cell on the precipice of infiltrating our country’s highest office?

Before I write what he isn’t, here’s what he is:

He is a man.  He is a man running for President of the United States of America.  He is a man who encountered different religious beliefs and international living during an unconventional upbringing.  He is not just great speaker – he is a great public orator.  He gives many Americans hope.  He is a man that chose to befriend and respect Reverend Jeremiah Wright in his private life for two decades. He discarded Wright after two months of public controversy.  He is slight of frame and has big ears.  He is a man not very good at bowling, but good at basketball.   A public servant for 12 years, in national politics for four.

Oh yeah, he’s black.

The consequence of this cannot be overstated.  Fifty years ago, as a country, we told blacks to sit in the back of the bus, drink from a different fountain, trust in the faulty axiom that separate can be equal.  We quietly exhaled at the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and publicly exalted the assassination of Malcolm X.  150 year ago, blacks were a commodity.

All that being written, I tend to be bearish on the negative dividends of his blackness.

America’s racism has ebbed over the years.  What racism remains is more concerned with the ghetto-revolutionary inner-city proletariat.  Longhand for gangbanga.  That is to say America shifted its distaste from race to a culture.  A spoken tone heavy on bass and light on pronouns will illicit silent “tsk tsks” and nervous eye movement – whether white, back, or some shade of mauve.  Every once in a while a white ghetto lamb will be put on the mountainside, condemned as a wiggah.  The ivory shepherds will shake their heads with frustrated questions in their eyes.  Why would a child of privlidge abandon educated homogenity and embrace the gutter?

Contemporary America’s subdued racism has its doubts about blacks, to be sure.  BUT, if a black man knows how to adopt the Midwestern neutral accent, be highly educated, and avoid any black self-reference, they can be viewed as “turning out okay” despite their race.

Thus the Reverend Wright shenaniganry.  It suggested that Obama may be the well-cloaked (in a Muslim Hijab?) angry black man liberals were afraid of and right-wingers were hoping for.

Here’s a secret, America: Every black man is angry.  They probably should be.  If Black Men weren’t ever angry, I’d still be Massa Sean, long in words and short in temper.  So don’t be afraid of Black Anger, its a necessary survival technique – one that we created.

Besides, there’s little question that McCain is an Angry White Man.  Consider what is more scary in cause and consequence:  An angry black man, or an angry white man?

He has an Islamic-quasi-muslimishesque name.

Consider the names of Presidents from the past 60 years:

• Harry Truman
• Dwight Eisenhower
• John Kennedy Jr.
• Lyndon Johnson
• Richard Nixon
• Gerald Ford
• Jimmy Carter
  
• Ronald Reagan
• George Bush
• William J. Clinton
  
• George W. Bush

Middle America doesn’t have a crumb of white-bread tradition to nibble upon with his name.  Barack–aside from being a fertile ground for musically inclined punsters (Baroque, hiyo!)–raises the hackles of islamophobes. Hussein sends the xenophobe sirens a’wailin’. Obama reinforces the previous two responses. Would he be more palatable if his names were as mixed as his races?  Ponder Jonathan Obama or Barack Smith, or even Barack Johnny Joe Jimmy Obama.

If we were destined to adhere to the ideas associated with our names, Hookers would have an endless stream of customers (Johns), there would be an Ironworker (Smiths) on every corner, and everybody named Richard would be a jerk (Di…you get the idea).  Well, that last one may be true if we look at the Presidential precedent.  A name is not a destiny.  Chihuahuas draped on the arms of blonds are named Mr. Big, one of the greatest NBA players of all time answered to Tiny, thousands of road-killed pets eulogies begin with the words, “Lucky was a great pet…”

The topic of this post had an either or implication.  The answer is neither.  America, you may rest easy that Obama is not lustily eyeing the Presidency.  He will not be, as the Karl Rove of a previous era famously said, “…an old black ram tupping your white [house] ewe.”

Going bonkers over “Going Green.”

This little phrase is so ubiquitous, the only thing going green are the sayers’ moldy left hemispheres. The robotic uttering of the same cliché is not the mantra of kinetic people, but the glassy-eyed utterance of those too lazy to act, too proud to stay quiet.

The individuals preaching the value of green should be aware their favorite rallying cry was co-opted by advertising agencies months ago.

Computer manufacturers are going green. They overlook the thousands of Africans and South Americans solemnly placing obsolete carcasses on pyres, grave-robbing gold and silicon from the ashes. Its hard to hear their phlegm-sodden coughs over the cheery green music accompanying whimsical cartoons on said advertisements.

BP Oil was ahead of the game feigning altruism and marketable ethics. Adding the color green to your company’s logo doesn’t quite make up for the, oh, millions of gallons of oil transported under your stewardship. For bonus points, guess the color of all the text on bp.com?

Motor companies are going green. Presumably we should applaud their machines emitting tons less carbon dioxide per year. Ford was savy enough to include the king of green, Kermit, decked out in hiking gear, presumably munching on organic granola and rocking Birkenstocks.

The net negative affect of this feel-good bombardment is a complacency of action and an abundance of talk. Maybe every last person needs to create compost piles, flush only when its brown, ride a bicycle everywhere, only eat kosher vegan organic trade free raw steroid free pesticide free food. Maybe not. However, if a person does believe in such a lifestyle, they are being (perhaps unknowingly) intellectually dishonest by driving a Ford Explorer to the farthest away BP with an iBook resting on the empty passenger seat.

Companies aren’t necessarily to blame for this – their objective is to make money, and I won’t shed many tears when they snooker idealists with deep pockets along the way. When the average Joe starts regurgitating these ad campaigns, however, and believing they are somehow doing the world a favor by preaching the emptiness that is “going green“, that is when the virus of very public and ego-based assistance begins to mutate and spread.

Its great to want to be a do-goodin’ idealist. Just make sure to not forget about the “do” part.