So recently, I have been entertaining and informing myself about marijuana. The relevant book is Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire, in which it consumes a chapter (see also the transcript of a lecture he gave at Berkeley). We’ve also been watching the Showtime comedy Weeds, in large doses. And there’s an article in the New York Times by David Samuels on Prop 420 in California.

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Janet

Normally incapable of making decisions for myself, I usually turn to critics to tell me what to think about things I haven’t experienced yet. My only real dilemma now is trying to figure out which critics to listen to. Oh, how I wish someone would start reviewing film critics, so that I can know what to think about their reviews before I even read them. Eventually, I hope to never have to experience anything for myself again.

Okay, fine, seeing a movie in a theater is growing increasingly expensive, and I can see how people might want advice before slapping down ten or twelve bucks to see something that they might find spectacularly uninteresting or outright horrible. The theater experience is nice and all, but it’s ridiculous to pay just as much (or often more) to see a film once as it is to just wait a few months and actually buy the damn thing on DVD. If you have a Netflix account, then it’s even cheaper. (I’m working up a post on how DVDs and the internet are breaking the current model studios have, but that’s for another time.) But film critics are the fucking worst.

While claiming to hate formulaic blockbusters, critics are even less open toward films that don’t follow the traditional storytelling formula. They can bitch all they want about lack of originality, but it means little when that originality comes along and they hate it for not respecting the expectable boundaries they’ve grown to feel cinema should have. It seems they’ve conflated “palatable” with “good”, and that’s a really inaccurate perspective to have.

Southland Tales seems to have received a large number of unfavorable or condemning reviews. As of this writing, it has 35% on RottenTomatoes, with 41% among the “Cream of the Crop”, and if you’re lazy enough (and, shit, we all are, or film reviewers would be out of jobs), you can check the numbers, dismiss it, and move on. But if you actually read the individual reviews themselves, it becomes clear that we’re getting our opinions from abject fucking morons.

Let’s take ol’ Rodge-Podge Ebert, one of the “Cream of the Crop” reviewers and unfortunately a household name:

“A Schwarzeneggerian actor, related to a political dynasty, has been kidnapped, replaced with a double, and — I give up. A plot synopsis would require that the movie have a plot.”

Hey, Roger: Note that the movie is called Southland Tales, not Southland Tale. LEARN TO UNDERSTAND MORE THAN A SINGLE, PAINFULLY-CLEAR PLOT THREAD. This may require maybe READING A MOTHERFUCKING BOOK SOMETIME, WHEREIN MULTIPLE INTERRELATED PLOT THREADS ARE COMMON.

Then we have informative snippets — again from the “Cream of the Crop” critics — like:

Spending $12 and 2 1/2 hours (30 minutes less than the Cannes cut) on something as aggressively bad as Southland Tales is not something I can recommend with a clear conscience.

Well, that sure the fuck is informative. Replace “Southland Tales” with basically anything else, and take out the specific and equally uninformative Cannes reference, and it could describe it just as well. So this Lou Lumenick is effectively useless, though that’s not entirely unexpected for the New York Post.

Moving on:

By the time the movie rolls into its third hour, it’s exhausted most of its comic energy, leaving you disoriented and unable to remember much of what you just saw.

Hey, you might want to ditch that PDA and learn how to use your temporal lobe again, if you’re having that much of a problem storing short-term memories.

Even the positive reviews seem like they were scrawled on padded cell walls by aggressively stupid chuckleheads. The fact that the movie seems to be actively and intentionally seeking unfavorable reviews is no excuse, and doesn’t detract from my point that film critics aren’t to be trusted. Don’t even take my word for how incredible the movie is — and it is, in fact, one of my favorite movies, but I’m not going to spurt all over it to you to try to convince you — just don’t not see it just because a bunch of film critic douchebags think it’s not good.

Jabberwock

(CAUTION: RIFE WITH SPOILERS) I’ll be tucking most of the review behind the fold, so that anyone who hasn’t seen the movie yet and is planning to won’t end up accidentally skimming, on their way scrolling down the page to other content, any of the extremely predictable or else unpredictable but totally arbitrary plot contrivances I’ll be mentioning.

On its surface, it’s a really, really pretty film. All the visual elements are very appealing (aside from this really stupid and needless effect near the end, and Cillian Murphy’s ghastly, waxy doll face), and the cinematography, while not necessarily groundbreaking, conveyed all the space is empty, sun is warm, death is scary whatever you’d expect.

The science veers a little toward goofy at times (just like in The Core (*shudder, light retch*), the solution is “I know! Let’s blow it up!” which just seems kinda silly when dealing with the sun), but it’s all generally plausible and I’m willing to give it to them and let my disbelief dangle a little. I’ll even allow the idea of sending humans instead of just letting robots take care of it. I’m even willing to grant them the whole “artificial gravity” thing, which is something particularly annoying in scifi films.

The problem is that Alex Garland extrapolated this “suspension of disbelief” requirement throughout the film as a whole. Not only does he expect you to grant him the somewhat sketchy theoretical science, but nearly every element of the plot relies on the audience’s ability to swallow one link after another in a chain of completely contrived events and character actions. From characters’ decisions to the ship’s very design, the whole movie seems to be one enormous contrivance for the express purpose of killing people off.

Let’s start at the beginning, as it serves as an ironic layup for the ridiculousness to follow. About ten minutes into the film, the crew discovers that the first attempt at this same project, the Icarus I, wasn’t actually destroyed, but is instead in orbit around the sun. They have a meeting to discuss their options: Do they adjust course to intercept the first Icarus, which would give them a second warhead in case they fuck up the first time, or do they continue along, get the mission over with, and not risk the potential hazards of deviation? At first, someone suggests a democratic vote, and then someone else goes into this whole thing about “no, we’re scientists, dammit, and we’re going to think like scientists. We’re going to get all the information, and we’re going to make an informed decision, because we’re scientists.” Which is all fine and everything (though, the scifi movie cliché way it was all phrased made me giggle a little), except for the fact that for the rest of the movie, everyone goes around making the absolute dumbest fucking decisions imaginable.

(Profoundly retarded spoilers after the fold.)
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Jabberwock

This isn’t technically a review, as the film in question has yet to be released, but even having only seen the preview, I feel comfortable condemning the upcoming homophobic, obligatory-until-his- increasingly-unfunny-career- finally,-finally-dies Adam Sandler summer “comedy” I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry without even needing to see it.

The rough synopsis I was able to gather from the preview runs as follows: There are two straight roommates, Chuck and Larry, who want the benefits of domestic partnership without actually having to be gay. Their domestic partnership is challenged by the government, as there are doubts about the authenticity of their claims about their homosexuality. Adam Sandler’s character (it doesn’t matter which one he plays as they’re both the stereotyped White Male Character always playing the lead in these shitheaded films) lusts after the woman investigating their partnership, but he’s tormented by the fact that he can’t actually pursue her. HILARITY ENSUES.

This whole thing is awful on so many levels. Right out of the gate with the general premise, they play into the conservative anti-gay-marriage argument about how “but… but… but… ANY two guys could get the benefits of a domestic partnership regardless of whether they were truly gay”, reinforcing the outright fucking retarded fears of conservatives and people who are “on the fence” about gay marriage. I can only imagine how many morons there are out there who’ll watch this, think “OH MY GOD, IT’S REALLY POSSIBLE” and then vote against gay marriage initiatives because of this potential “problem”. Of course, nobody seems to give half a shit about the number of straight people who get married and aren’t actually in love. Two roommates in possession of different sets of genitals could just as easily get married for the benefits without wanting anything to do with each other beyond that.

Then there’s the idea of the state investigating someone’s partnership because of the validity of their homosexuality, which is completely ridiculous. Apparently the sentiment of the filmmakers seems to be that this should be part of any domestic partnership law, that the state should be able to challenge you whenever it feels you’re not being gay enough. Which is a sentiment that, if it doesn’t already exist in the public, I’m sure this movie will help to propagate. How many marriages are subject to the same level of scrutiny? How many people are investigated for not being straight enough? Can your marriage be revoked by the government if you’re not fucking your wife or husband often enough, or if you have sex with other people, or if you have sex with — *gasp* — someone who has genitals that match your very own!?

Homosexuality itself is twisted into a grotesquerie, seemingly written with a total obliviousness to human sexuality in general. According to the film, men who are sexually and emotionally attracted to other men can ONLY be attracted to other men. Any attraction to women at all somehow indicates one isn’t really gay but just pretending. Apparently, the writers of this movie have never heard of, erm, bisexuals. Also illustrative of a complete lack of understanding of human sexuality is the notion that polyamory isn’t compatible with marriage-like relationships, and that either partner having sex with anyone else would render the partnership invalid. There are plenty of heterosexual marriages where, if one partner wanted to have sex with someone else, the other partner would be okay with it. So why couldn’t the same attitudes be present in a homosexual marriage or domestic partnership? Apparently, the writers have never heard of open relationships, either.

I have no intention of ever actually seeing this film. I abhor the attitudes present in the writing, which will inevitably scoot their way through the dusty air of darkened theaters into the heads of many idiot viewers. Sure, nobody’s going to force anyone who doesn’t want to see it to watch this film, but that’s sort of a specious argument in this case. The kinds of people who are likely to watch this film are exactly the ones who shouldn’t, as their prejudices and dipshit perspectives will only be reinforced by the nightmarish, Orwellian “The Great Eye of America should be in the bedroom of every homosexual couple” world depicted. They will be influenced to oppose gay marriage and domestic partnership legislation because of fears of sham-marriage scams that already take place every day with straight marriages.

This is a movie that should never see the light of a film projector. It’s yet another arbitrary, lowest-common-denominator, turdlike stream of celluloid shitting out of the leviathan anus of modern production companies, bloated from the gluttonous symbiotic feeding relationship they’ve developed with sheeplike viewers who’ll feed the monster dollars to eat up nearly anything that it’ll shit back out without any consideration paid to the message endorsed.

Then again, perhaps it’ll all turn out to be a totally ironic and intelligent take on the entire fascist concept. Wait, no… no it won’t.

Jabberwock

The Movie

Though many claim the number of villains in this film detracted from the overall composition and convoluted the plot, I’m inclined to disagree. I’d have preferred if they’d added at least one more, even, if it meant trimming down all the immature, needless, melodramatic quarreling between Peter and Mary Jane. These scenes were like what middle schoolers scrawl in their diaries about what they feel human emotional interactions are supposed to be like.

Three times in the movie, Mary Jane erupts at Peter because of his attempts to illustrate why he feels he can sympathize with what she’s going through by relating her experiences to his own. Even though she’s fully justified the third time, the first two are roughly the equivalent of: “Ow, goddammit, I broke my leg! Holy shit, does that ever hurt! Peter, I could use some emotional support, here!” “You’re going to be okay, trust me. I broke my leg once, and it healed up pretty quickly. Hurts a lot when it first breaks, but after they get you set up with a cast, you’ll be fine.” “IT’S ALWAYS ABOUT YOU, ISN’T IT? THIS ISN’T ABOUT YOU, PETER, IT’S ABOUT ME, AND UNTIL YOU CAN UNDERSTAND THAT, I’M NOT SURE WHERE I STAND WITH YOU!” Only, instead of her actually mentioning breaking her leg to him, she hides it from him and expects him to figure out how to comfort her, telling him only “I feel bad, you have no idea what it’s like”. Seriously. I’m not kidding. It’s just like that.

Given the caliber of the writing, it’s no surprise that lack of substance was padded out with sheer quantity. While the number of characters did indeed detract a little from the individual character development for each, again examining the quality of writing I’m not really sure if getting rid of one or two would’ve made things any better. Likely, you’d have wound up with a bunch of scenes where Eddie Brock and Peter have dinner together to have a big, melodramatic discussion about the fact that Peter doesn’t seem to care enough about Eddie’s career, or where the Sandman sings at Spider-Man in the jazz club to explain about his sick daughter.

Speaking of singing: I’ve enjoyed Kirsten Dunst in many things, especially Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Though she’s no Michael Caine or anything, her acting skills are definitely worthy of the screen. Unfortunately, I can’t say the same for her singing voice. It’s not that she’s necessarily bad at it, it’s just that she’s mediocre to an extent that it brings nothing to the film to have her sing. One can only wonder why they devoted so much screen time to it — she either has an agent who adores her, or an agent who has a deep, salty hatred for all film audiences everywhere. While needlessly wading through her earlier musical number (yes, there are more than one) as the film laboriously churned itself into running through an overlong and needlessly expository introduction that triggered the “I’m going to dislike this film” sensor way too early, I almost felt embarrassed for every person sitting in the theater, myself included, likely drawn into a kind of empathy with them through our undoubtedly synchronized series of winces. This is all after a far too lengthy opening credits sequence that needlessly summarized, in clips playing in frames in the webbing, everything that happened in the last two movies.

The soundtrack was heavy-handed and at times nearly absurd. During a scene where Peter triumphantly retrieves his suit from a luggage chest, I found myself incapable of determining whether the music sounded more like an African adventure or high-school graduation. Honestly, I expected more from Christopher Young, especially with such original soundtrack classics under his belt as Urban Legend, Hellraiser: Resurrection, The Core, The Grudge, Beauty Shop, and Ghost Rider. Someone needs to tell him that NOT EVERY SECOND OF THE FILM NEEDS TO HAVE MUSIC PLAYING, and that often, the contrasts between the presence and absence of music can have just as much impact as the musical composition in itself.

Peter becomes unintentionally hilarious after exposure to the black suit. He just gets so. Fucking. Emo. It’s like the black ooze was grease squeezed out of Morrissey’s hair after a bukakke fest with My Chemical Romance. Quoting Janet’s reaction in the theater, “my god! He’s become Fallout-of-windows Boy!” We couldn’t help but snicker whenever we saw his goofy eye liner. Another hilarious (though non emo-specific) scene is when he approaches Mary Jane on this bridge with a bouquet of flowers and tells her, “here, peonies” with an inflection that makes it sound like he’s saying “here, pee on these”.

The absolute cheesiest part, though – and I’m not sure if Sam Raimi did this ironically – is when Peter is swinging toward the final battle, and he briefly lands on a rooftop in front of an American flag the size of a goddamned skyscraper. That this happens nearly immediately after the “Peter graduates from high school” part of the soundtrack isn’t much help. The formulaic, telegraphed ending is nearly as cheesy, but this scene manages to narrow it out of the top spot simply with superfluous patriotism. It’s not like the Sandman was Osama Bin Laden, or Venom was reincarnated Hitler (though maybe Marvel can pull out a “What If…?” where they actually are), and it doesn’t necessarily matter that this is taking place in America, or that Peter Parker is an American citizen. It’s just goofy.

In all, it’s mostly a failure, topping off what had been until this a fantastic series with an empty, overblown shell of a film. I guess you can’t really expect much subtlety or nuance from an action film, but given the quality of the previous two, you know you can expect more than this. While it wasn’t entirely unenjoyable, to claim this movie was a disappointment would be one of the best things I could say about it.

Game review below the fold.
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Jabberwock

As reader Tim brought to my attention in the comments on Here, Kitty Kitty, there exists a compilation of nine short films ironically based on the works of Jack T. Chick, and it’s available for purchase on DVD. Obviously, I couldn’t resist, and I bought a copy as soon as I found out about it. I advise you all to do the same.

There are nine different Tract-inspired films, each roughly ten minutes in length: Bewitched?, La Princesita, Doom Town, Titanic, Angels?, Wounded Children, Party Girl, Cleo, and Somebody Goofed. The scripts follow the Tracts nearly verbatim, and the shots often replicate the panel layouts almost precisely. Of course, they’re all deliberately campy and melodramatic in such a way that emphasizes the absurdity of the Tracts themselves, and the result is hilarious. I strongly recommend this to everyone who enjoys the Chick Dissections.

There’s implication on the website that they’re working on a sequel. I’m feeling somewhat inspired and might consider trying to film a Tract myself, but I’m not yet sure which one it would be.

Anyway, see it.

Jabberwock

While it’s no question the games for this system will be unparalleled in their realism (er, well, except by those released for the XBox 360), and will likely be a great deal of fun, and one can justifiably have a lot of faith in the quality of the continuations of beloved series (Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, etc), Sony’s approach with this system is deplorable, and I can only hope they find themselves toppled from their throne with this generation of consoles. If not, one can only imagine the level to which their hubris will ascend for the next generation.

The greatest sin is this: There was no reason for them to jam Blu-Ray into this machine, other than to force fans of the console to choose Blu-Ray over HD-DVD. Given Sony’s history with installing Rootkits and other fun, malicious, non-consensual goodies all in the name of “copyright protection”, one can only imagine what sinister horrors are lurking on the underside of a Blu-Ray disc. Plus, the drive itself, from what I’ve read, added over two hundred dollars to the retail price of the machine at its release price. Considering this bumped the price from what is expected and typical for new consoles up into unprecedented territory with very little added benefit, it was an unnecessary “enhancement”. Not to mention the limitations it imposed on production numbers.

They’ll play this up, by the way, to be some kind of huge deal for you, the consumer. In fact, you can probably read above something along the lines of “A standalone Blu-Ray player would probably cost $1,000!” But considering you’re being railroaded in to “choosing” Blu-Ray, the fact that they’re guaranteeing themselves Blu-Ray customers more than makes up for whatever reductions in retail price for a Blu-Ray player they may be making.

I don’t expect this will sway any of the die-hard fans from camping out at their local electronics retailers, or spending twice as much for the system via various auctioning sites, but anyone on the fence should reconsider buying this system, at least initially. Wait until the price drops in about six months and get it then. The initial impact in demand will perhaps send a message to Sony that they should maybe reconsider the assumption that their customers will eagerly eat from right out of their hands whatever they feel like feeding them.

Get your kid a Wii if they want a console for Christmas. They’re not going to hate you for it, and if they do or you genuinely fear they might, then perhaps you need to consider the kind of person you’ve been raising them to be.

Jabberwock

Many may not know this, but this film wasn’t even originally based on Asimov’s I, Robot. It was instead based on a script called Hardwired, written by Jeff Vintar. The studios acquired the rights to Asimov’s stuff afterward, and altered the script and title to include some sparse elements – mostly names and the concept of “Three Laws Safe” – from the book.

The film itself bears almost no resemblance to the book beyond the superficial, and seems to exhibit almost the reverse of Asimov’s intentions. The people involved with this movie took an interesting concept of a future with implementation of Artificial Intelligence in humanoid machines, and turned it into yet another “HOLY CRAP FEAR ROBOTS!!!111!ONEONESIETE” story that’s been done a thousand times before, most of them in much more interesting and creative ways. Hooray for fortifying our society’s already overdeveloped phobia of technology!

A disappointment. Of course, I’m not really sure if I expected much more from it. Maybe someday Hollywood will be able to cinematize a novel and not completely ruin it on its way to the screen, like it was passed through the digestive system of some bloated, corporate, pander-to-the-lowest-common-denominator monster. Then again, maybe someday kangaroos will colonize the moon, and we’ll figure out a way to convert cancer into solid gold tablets of pure magic.

Buy a book instead. After all, your DVD player might eat you!

*****

One quick thing about Three Laws Safe: The hardest part about implementing such a thing would be getting robots to understand what, exactly, constitutes “harm” with regard to humans. What if they, for instance, try to change our batteries? Or weld our parts back on? Oil us?

Jabberwock

And we’re back. Sorry for the extended break–we had some issues with the installation of internet access and such.

Since the last installation, it looks like John has released another list of fifty more songs to add to his goofy little “conservative rock” kick. And it looks like that one is even worse.

Also, Pete Townshend, classic rock’s favorite pervert, has written a response regarding the inclusion of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” in the original list.

Anyway, I have lost time for which to make up, so on to the next installment.

21. “Heroes,” by David Bowie.

A Cold War love song about a man and a woman divided by the Berlin Wall. No moral equivalence here: “I can remember / Standing / By the wall / And the guns / Shot above our heads / And we kissed / As though nothing could fall / And the shame / Was on the other side / Oh we can beat them / For ever and ever.”

“And the shame was on the other side” doesn’t necessarily imply blame either way, really. This couple could’ve been living on either side. The wall did in fact have two sides, you know…

In any event, this is again with the same silly “liberals weren’t happy when the Berlin Wall fell” bullshit that’s becoming a recurring theme throughout this list. It’s only a conservative ideal to be happy at the overthrow of a fascist regime. Awww, why’d you have to go and topple the Third Reich?

22. “Red Barchetta,” by Rush.

In a time of “the Motor Law,” presumably legislated by green extremists, the singer describes family reunion and the thrill of driving a fast car — an act that is his “weekly crime.”

Wow, it turns out many Philip K. Dick stories are conservative stories because they, too, depict dystopian futures with fascist laws.

“[P]resumably,” John, let’s go with that. This entire list seems to operate on presumption, of a particularly ridiculous and fallacious nature: Liberals love fascist regimes, and are disappointed and upset when those regimes are overthrown; liberals hate vehicular transportation; liberals are authoritarian, and conservatives never try to make laws banning personal freedom. (Pssst: the Republican Party–which comprises the vast majority of conservatism–is on the whole not Libertarian, John!)

I’m sure I’m not the only liberal who likes cars or finds them useful. But there’s a social responsibility that goes along with it, and given that motor vehicles consume a very limited resource, and that they do, in fact, expel waste products that are detrimental to the environment, it’s the kind of situation where one can’t leave “good enough” alone. Improvements can be made, and it’s insanely short-sighted and irresponsible not to strive toward those improvements, and just plain stupid to actively petition against them. “Showing concern for the environment? Why, that’s a terrible thing! What kind of a liberal monster would ever even consider worrying about rising global temperatures that may very well wipe out massive clumps of the human race?”

23. “Brick,” by Ben Folds Five.

Written from the perspective of a man who takes his young girlfriend to an abortion clinic, this song describes the emotional scars of “reproductive freedom”: “Now she’s feeling more alone / Than she ever has before. . . . As weeks went by / It showed that she was not fine.”

Nobody ever said abortion was a fairytale romp through candy cane forests and gumdrop rivers, where it rains Skittles and everybody shits lollipops. Nobody ever said that women who use abortion as a primary method of birth control were to be venerated and idolized.

What? You mean, there are situations that have emotional complexity? Buh-whah?

Hey, hey, hey… I know! Why doesn’t Rush write a song about a young girl visiting her uncle’s farm after The Abortion Law was passed, where he has his own little abortion clinic under a tarp in the barn?

24. “Der Kommissar,” by After the Fire.

On the misery of East German life: “Don’t turn around, uh-oh / Der Kommissar’s in town, uh-oh / He’s got the power / And you’re so weak / And your frustration / Will not let you speak.” Also a hit song for Falco, who wrote it.

Liberals <3 Fascism!

25. “The Battle of Evermore,” by Led Zeppelin.

The lyrics are straight out of Robert Plant’s Middle Earth period — there are lines about “ring wraiths” and “magic runes” — but for a song released in 1971, it’s hard to miss the Cold War metaphor: “The tyrant’s face is red.”

Wait a second, what? You’ve never heard that expression before? “Boy, is my face red,” someone would say, after doing something embarrassing, like accidentally urinating into their own sock drawer or making a list of fifty conservative rock songs that have very non-specific, vague interpretations of seemingly forced references or something. What, John, are you going to include the Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” because it has the line “I see a red door and I want it painted black”? I’m not saying that there isn’t necessarily a metaphor, but there could very well not be, given that that’s an extremely common expression having nothing to do with Communism.

Anyway, according to Tolkien himself, Middle Earth was a very, very, very ancient Europe, and apparently we’re now living in the… what, Fifth Age? Seventh Age? Something like that. But, yeah, the books themselves have a World War II/World War I metaphor–that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re conservative books.

26. “Capitalism,” by Oingo Boingo.

“There’s nothing wrong with Capitalism / There’s nothing wrong with free enterprise. . . . You’re just a middle class, socialist brat / From a suburban family and you never really had to work.”

What’s wrong with Capitalism is that it operates on the assumption that hard work will always result in proportional reward, and that is demonstrably not the case. If there truly were nothing wrong with Capitalism, for instance, Ford wouldn’t have had to lay off a quarter of their workforce within the last year. And we wouldn’t have antitrust laws and the like that try to limit the extremely detrimental-to-business-and-consumers-alike effects of pure Capitalism.

By the way, it’s just as wrong/insane/idealistic/whatever to believe that pure Capitalism is good and would work flawlessly as it is to believe that pure Communism is good and would work flawlessly.

Though this song, of course, is more about the types of people who attach themselves to trendy causes because they’re trendy and not because they actually care. I know some Nader supporters like that. Not all corporate products are evil, people!

Despite the fact that many of the lyrics in this do, in fact, come the closest so far to having a conservative message, the song itself bashes hypocrisy more than it does, say, socialists. That is, it’s pretty jackassy for upper-middle-class kids living in suburban mansions with their parents to claim to be all socialist or to understand the plight of the working class and such.

Which is why very few frat-boy-from-rich-family politicians are at all convincing when they talk about being “for the working class”.

27. “Obvious Song,” by Joe Jackson.

For property rights and economic development, and against liberal hypocrisy: “There was a man in the jungle / Trying to make ends meet / Found himself one day with an axe in his hand / When a voice said ‘Buddy can you spare that tree / We gotta save the world — starting with your land’ / It was a rock ’n’ roll millionaire from the USA / Doing three to the gallon in a big white car / And he sang and he sang ’til he polluted the air / And he blew a lot of smoke from a Cuban cigar.”

Wait a second, so now liberals are the ones driving gas-guzzling automobiles? But I thought… with that Rush song a few songs back… I… mruph. “[H]ypocrisy,” huh?

He makes it sound like these fat, arrogant, rock star liberals are just running around wanting to take the rainforests away from these poor rainforest landowners and not, y’know, multinational corporations.

28. “Janie’s Got a Gun,” by Aerosmith.

How the right to bear arms can protect women from sexual predators: “What did her daddy do? / It’s Janie’s last I.O.U. / She had to take him down easy / And put a bullet in his brain / She said ’cause nobody believes me / The man was such a sleaze / He ain’t never gonna be the same.”

This is a song about incestual rape, actually. She could’ve just as easily slit his throat in his sleep, or poisoned him covertly over the course of a week, but that wouldn’t have made as catchy or dramatic a song. It’s also more about how people ignore domestic abuse, and either don’t believe or in some cases even blame the victim. She wouldn’t have had to have killed him if people would’ve listened to her. In fact, this seems more like a criticism of law enforcement.

There are plenty of pro-firearm liberals. There’s truth to the cliche, oversimplified bumper-sticker-slogan “if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns”. But, like with most things, there must be the necessary safeguards in place to prevent really horrible things from happening. There need to be limits. We don’t give driver’s licenses to blind people, and we shouldn’t sell guns to crazy people. It’s not rocket science, and it isn’t too much to ask for there to be background checks to ensure we aren’t handing over a couple M1911A1s to Rodney Rapist or Suzie Suicide.

This seems to be a recurring theme, this “personal freedom without the associated responsibility” thing. That’s much more dangerous an idealism than just about anything us lefties have thought up. “I want to make as much money as I possibly can, but without the social responsibility to the people who get fucked over in the process. I want to have a gun, but I don’t want to have to deal with anyone making sure I’m not going to walk directly over to the nearest elementary school and open fire. I want to drive my Hummer2 as much as I want, wherever I want, but I don’t want to even be reminded of environmental responsibility.” This entire perspective/ideology seems to appeal to people who want to be children forever.

29. “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” by Iron Maiden.

A heavy-metal classic inspired by a literary classic. How many other rock songs quote directly from Samuel Taylor Coleridge?

Albatross!

So, wait, why is this a conservative song? Because it’s a literary classic? I don’t get it.

30. “You Can’t Be Too Strong,” by Graham Parker.

Although it’s not explicitly pro-life, this tune describes the horror of abortion with bracing honesty: “Did they tear it out with talons of steel, and give you a shot so that you wouldn’t feel?”

(See also: 23. “Brick,” by Ben Folds Five) I wonder how many songs have been written about families that get all fucked up because the mother didn’t decide to get an abortion? Or the people who regret it? Or the thousands of other alternative scenarios that could take place? There’s an emotional impact either way; stop oversimplifying such a complex and soul-wrenching issue into “BABY KILLER!”

Next installment: 31-40, now out of 100!

Jabberwock

So, it turns out that Amanda from Pandagon has also done a breakdown of a random sampling of the Top Fifty. So check that out, if you haven’t already.

Jonathan Swift has put up his own personal (and quite funny) version of the list. I’d have included Pink Floyd’s anti-immigration, anti-gay-marriage-rights, anti-marijuana-legalization, pro-Second Amendment ballad “In the Flesh”:

Are there any queers in the theater tonight? / Get ‘em up against the wall. / There’s one in the spotlight, now he don’t look right to me. / Get ‘im up against the wall. / That one looks Jewish! / That one’s a coon! / Who let all this riff-raff into the room? / There’s one smoking a joint! / And another one’s got spots! / If I had my way, I’d have all of you shot!

But that’s just me. Anyway, on to songs 11 to 20:

11. “The Trees,” by Rush.

Before there was Rush Limbaugh, there was Rush, a Canadian band whose lyrics are often libertarian. What happens in a forest when equal rights become equal outcomes? “The trees are all kept equal / By hatchet, axe, and saw.”

Ah, Ayn Rand: Noblest and most socially responsible of all philosophers. I heard a great critique of Objectivism about five years ago, went something like: “If Ayn Rand was being raped, would she scream for help?”

It’s not that Libertarianism is bad, it’s that this particular kind of it is–this Ayn Randish, “every man for himself” bullshit idealism. So what’s wrong with this kind of Libertarianism? I’ll let Zompist provide the in-depth answer to that one.

I suppose if one applies the metaphor a little more literally, this could also be taken to VERY conservative extremes, in a “don’t hate us because our race/religion/etc. is better than yours” way.

The thing is, one could just as easily approach this song from a Harrison Bergeron (by Kurt Vonnegut) perspective, and interpret it as referring to individuals’ talents, abilities, intelligence, etc. Why does it have to always be about money and taxes? It takes a bit of a stretch of the metaphor to say “Oaks are the ones with more money, and Maples are the poor”.

Or, hell, I could even see this song applied to the “Evolution vs. Creationism” debate: The Oaks are professors and scientists who have gathered and repeatedly tested data and have a lot to stand on, whereas the Maples are proponents of creationism, bitching because their hypotheses aren’t seeing the light of day.

12. “Neighborhood Bully,” by Bob Dylan.

A pro-Israel song released in 1983, two years after the bombing of Iraq’s nuclear reactor, this ironic number could be a theme song for the Bush Doctrine: “He destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad / The bombs were meant for him / He was supposed to feel bad / He’s the neighborhood bully.”

On first reading, I mentally displaced a word and thought he said “this number” could be “an ironic theme song” for the Bush Administration, and it threw me. First, because with the song itself being ironic, I had to work through a kind of double-negative irony, and second because it would mean a conservative was using the term “irony” in an appropriate context, when usually the concept is about as foreign to them as Jacques Derrida giving a lecture on women’s equality in alternating Cantonese, Finnish and Aramaic to a colony of Martians.

In actuality, he says it’s “an ironic number” that “could be a theme song”, which is, well, wrong. I suppose it could work, if there was even a tiny scrap of evidence justifying the original intentions for going to war in Iraq. And don’t give me that bullshit about Poor Baby Bush, world out to get him. “What he gets he must pay for,” my ass. Has that mouthfuck ever had to suffer the consequences of any of his actions or decisions?

The lyrics, in their entirety, can be found here, by the way. I’m really not seeing “theme song for Bush” in there, and I think Dylan himself would agree.

Anyway, in my initial confusion, I started thinking about other ironic theme songs for the Bush Administration. Something more along the lines of, say, “Believe It or Not”, the theme song for “The Greatest American Hero”. Though, there are lines that are disturbingly fitting in a completely unironic way: “Suddenly I’m up on top of the world / it should’ve been somebody else,” for instance.

13. “My City Was Gone,” by The Pretenders.

Virtually every conservative knows the bass line, which supplies the theme music for Limbaugh’s radio show. But the lyrics also display a Jane Jacobs sensibility against central planning and a conservative’s dissatisfaction with rapid change: “I went back to Ohio / But my pretty countryside / Had been paved down the middle / By a government that had no pride.”

Wait a minute, this doesn’t make sense. Why would conservatives complain about a government that favors business over the environment?

“Sensibility against central planning”? What, like local governments never do shitty things? You know, larger government is better if for no other reason than the fact that, as easy as it is for organizations or wealthy individuals or groups to put local/state politicians in their pockets, it’s far more difficult to buy out the entire federal government. Now, I’ll concede that if one succeeds, the problem is much larger than it would be on a local level. But I digress.

Anyway, I can’t say for sure, but looking at the lyrics, I’m not seeing any references to “central planning”. In fact, the only direct reference to government at all is just that: “government”. This could technically even refer to the schoolboard, for fuck’s sake.

And she’s not so much talking about “rapid change” as she is talking about “changes that destroy things”. See, this is another completely arbitrary conservative fear: that things will not always be the same. Chances are, they’ll get better, but then they’d be different, and different is bad! There’s no utility to it, or applicability to reality–much llike many other facets of conservative ideology.

What would John say about global warming, a relatively slow-moving change (compared to bulldozing a city and putting in a mall) that’s linked conclusively to human-produced carbon in the atmosphere, which could be curbed but isn’t by the same prideless conservative government that, as described in the song, sides with business over the environment? Speaking of cities being gone… *cough* New Orleans *cough*

14. “Right Here, Right Now,” by Jesus Jones.

The words are vague, but they’re also about the fall of Communism and the end of the Cold War: “I was alive and I waited for this. . . . Watching the world wake up from history.”

And no liberals were at all happy that the Berlin Wall came down. There’s no such thing as a liberal! There are only Republicans and Communists!

And again, Communism as exhibited by Russia, China, et al is not the same as the economic philosophy. But Saddam wasn’t a Communist, yet Saddam committed similar atrocities to those perpetrated by the Communist regimes. But how could he, if it’s Communism that causes them? !?!?!?!?!

But we’ve already been through this.

15. “I Fought the Law,” by The Crickets.

The original law-and-order classic, made famous in 1965 by The Bobby Fuller Four and covered by just about everyone since then.

This song is absolutely in no way about rebellion.

Oh, right, and liberals don’t give a shit at all about punishing people for their crimes.

16. “Get Over It,” by The Eagles.

Against the culture of grievance: “The big, bad world doesn’t owe you a thing.” There’s also this nice line: “I’d like to find your inner child and kick its little ass.”

If the big, bad world doesn’t owe anyone a thing, then why do conservatives fuckin’ spend so much time bitching about the estate tax? Why do only poor people have to work to earn money? Heirs and heiresses should have to suffer the same fate, yet when they bitch about their poor, unfair lot in life, it’s seen as working for economic justice!

Fuck that. Whiny conservatives are worlds worse than even the whiniest of liberals, because at least the goddamned liberals have something to whine about more than “you mean I only get two of my daddy’s yachts!? That’s not fair! Death tax! Death tax! Rabble! Rabblerabble!”

17. “Stay Together for the Kids,” by Blink 182.

A eulogy for family values by an alt-rock band whose members were raised in a generation without enough of them: “So here’s your holiday / Hope you enjoy it this time / You gave it all away. . . . It’s not right.”

Yeah, your husband might beat the shit out of you, but you’d better stay together for the kids. Otherwise, the value of your family values is suspect. And if your spouse repeatedly cheats on you and humiliates you, that’s totally better for the kids than getting a divorce and ending an unhealthy relationship. Teaching your kids that they can change shitty situations in their lives is a horrible lesson! It’s better to instill in them a deep sense of shame for even considering the notion that they deserve better than to be treated in a degrading way.

Speaking as the child of now divorced parents who are much healthier, happier people apart from each other, I say fuck that.

18. “Cult of Personality,” by Living Colour.

A hard-rocking critique of state power, whacking Mussolini, Stalin, and even JFK: “I exploit you, still you love me / I tell you one and one makes three / I’m the cult of personality.”

Heh, wasn’t that phrase tossed around a bit in the last election? “Cult of personality”? Considering that one of the most important attributes possessed by Bush, according to the conservative voting constituency, was that he was the guy with whom they’d rather drink a beer, I don’t think there’s a lot of ground to stand on for using the term to criticize others.

Speaking of telling people that one and one makes three, what about all the misinformation that led us into war? What about when Bush called U.S. government bonds “worthless I.O.U.s” while trying to convince Americans to support his bullshit Social Security “fix”? Who the fuck is lying to whom, here?

Fortunately, it seems Bush is finally overreaching his ability to slick people over with his winning “down home country boy” bullshit pseudo-cowboy feigned charm.

19. “Kicks,” by Paul Revere and the Raiders.

An anti-drug song that is also anti-utopian: “Well, you think you’re gonna find yourself a little piece of paradise / But it ain’t happened yet, so girl you better think twice.”

Oh, heaven forbid humanity ever achieves utopia! What kind of liberal savage could ever hope for such a thing? (Which, of course, begs the question: Are conservatives actively working toward dystopia?)

And, wait a second, so now we’re not taking the book of Genesis literally? Will you people make up your fucking minds already?

20. “Rock the Casbah,” by The Clash.

After 9/11, American radio stations were urged not to play this 1982 song, one of the biggest hits by a seminal punk band, because it was seen as too provocative. Meanwhile, British Forces Broadcasting Service (the radio station for British troops serving in Iraq) has said that this is one of its most requested tunes.

I agree that banning (even if only through “urging”) songs is silly, especially considering the media coverage at the time: Would it really have mattered if we were reminded about the attack from a subtly tangible connection to a song’s theme or a particular interpretation of lyrics, or from being perpetually bombarded with the same two minutes of footage of explosions and falling towers dumped at us from everything capable of broadcasting video?

Though, I’m not exactly sure we should be using the tastes of troops in Iraq to determine the value of songs on our radio stations. (”We don’t need no water, let the motherfucker burn.” *shudder*)

In any event, if salivating over the idea of “Rocking” the “Casbah” is considered a conservative ideal, count me the fuck out.

Thus ends another installment of the Hip Conservative Fifty. 21 to 30 in the near future.

Jabberwock

In which I do a song-by-song breakdown of the National Review’s list of the top fifty conservative rock songs of all time, ten songs at a time.

I’ll start with the writer’s own introduction:

Rockin’ the Right
by JOHN J. MILLER of National Review

On first glance, rock ‘n’ roll music isn’t very conservative. It doesn’t fare much better on second or third glance (or listen), either. Neil Young has a new song called “Let’s Impeach the President.” Last year, the Rolling Stones made news with “Sweet Neo Con,” another anti-Bush ditty. For conservatives who enjoy rock, it isn’t hard to agree with the opinion Johnny Cash expressed in “The One on the Right Is on the Left”: “Don’t go mixin’ politics with the folk songs of our land / Just work on harmony and diction / Play your banjo well / And if you have political convictions, keep them to yourself.” In other words: Shut up and sing.

Nobody but rock stars have ever mixed politics with art. Any kind of art should have no meaning or message whatsoever, but should just sort of have words, a tune, or general imagery. Subjects like admiring shoelaces, putting hats on hooks, sleeping and bananas are preferred, as long as metaphoric use is avoided.

Also, if this is how you feel, then why politicize rock songs with very stretched interpretations to fit with a conservative message? But whatever.

But some rock songs really are conservative — and there are more of them than you might think. Last year, I asked readers of National Review Online to nominate conservative rock songs. Hundreds of suggestions poured in. I’ve sifted through them all, downloaded scores of mp3s, and puzzled over a lot of lyrics. What follows is a list of the 50 greatest conservative rock songs of all time, as determined by me and a few others. The result is of course arbitrary, though we did apply a handful of criteria.

I guess some rock songs really are conservative, for very small values of “some”. Though, I suppose if Charlie Manson can interpret that an entire Beatles album was a message directed at him from angels, anyone can interpret lyrics as supporting any viewpoint or message. …You win this round, Mr. Miller.

What makes a great conservative rock song? The lyrics must convey a conservative idea or sentiment, such as skepticism of government or support for traditional values. And, to be sure, it must be a great rock song. We’re biased in favor of songs that are already popular, but have tossed in a few little-known gems. In several cases, the musicians are outspoken liberals. Others are notorious libertines. For the purposes of this list, however, we don’t hold any of this against them. Finally, it would have been easy to include half a dozen songs by both the Kinks and Rush, but we’ve made an effort to cast a wide net. Who ever said diversity isn’t a conservative principle?

Who ever said? The National Review did, actually, back when it opposed the Civil Rights movement.

Right, because liberals aren’t at all skeptical of the government, especially over the last six years. Good thing we have these conservatives around to champion the idea of questioning authority!

So here are NR’s top 50 conservative rock songs of all time. Go ahead and quibble with the rankings, complain about what we put on, and send us outraged letters and e-mails about what we left off. In the end, though, we hope you’ll admit that it’s a pretty cool playlist for your iPod.

1. “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” by The Who.

The conservative movement is full of disillusioned revolutionaries; this could be their theme song, an oath that swears off naive idealism once and for all. “There’s nothing in the streets / Looks any different to me / And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye. . . . Meet the new boss / Same as the old boss.” The instantly recognizable synthesizer intro, Pete Townshend’s ringing guitar, Keith Moon’s pounding drums, and Roger Daltrey’s wailing vocals make this one of the most explosive rock anthems ever recorded — the best number by a big band, and a classic for conservatives.

Are you kidding me? If anything, this is an anthem against politics in general, addressing how whichever party is in power, they’re all politicians and not much ever really changes. I also like how he uses a “. . .” to skip right over the line: “And the parting on the left / Is now parting on the right”.

“[S]wears off naive idealism”, pfft. Which perspective is it, again, that thinks that all it takes to get teenagers to stop fucking is to tell them “don’t have sex”? Which perspective thinks that laws banning gay marriage will stop anal sex? Which perspective–conservative or liberal–wants to make laws that are based on the premise that humans are capable of perfect emotional and physiological self-control? This isn’t even “idealism”, it’s just completely out of touch with reality.

In any event, it takes about as much cognitive dissonance as the human mind is capable of producing to consider this song in any way “conservative”.

2. “Taxman,” by The Beatles.

A George Harrison masterpiece with a famous guitar riff (which was actually played by Paul McCartney): “If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street / If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat / If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat / If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.” The song closes with a humorous jab at death taxes: “Now my advice for those who die / Declare the pennies on your eyes.”

This one’s probably the biggest surprise on this list. Conservatives! Hating taxes! Well, I’ll be! And it’s number two on the list? Certainly there must have been a mistake!

Nobody likes taxes, but some of us are capable of coming to terms with notion of social responsibility. A lot of things in life suck, and if the worst you’ve got to whine about is taxes, consider yourself lucky. I wonder what the world would be like if conservatives turned their massive anti-tax attention and energy toward the multitude of things in this world that are far, far worse than taxes.

And, oh, yes, the “death tax” is such a horrible, horrible thing, because–gasp–heaven fuckin’ forbid we try to prevent the perpetuation of a permanent aristocracy! Why, it’s a direct affront to Paris Hilton (Long Live Paris Hilton) and Ivanka Trump (Long Live Ivanka Trump)!

3. “Sympathy for the Devil,” by The Rolling Stones.

Don’t be misled by the title; this song is The Screwtape Letters of rock. The devil is a tempter who leans hard on moral relativism — he will try to make you think that “every cop is a criminal / And all the sinners saints.” What’s more, he is the sinister inspiration for the cruelties of Bolshevism: “I stuck around St. Petersburg / When I saw it was a time for a change / Killed the czar and his ministers / Anastasia screamed in vain.”

Yeah, ’cause the Rolling Stones are totally a conservative band.

So what he’s saying is… we ought to filter the world into black and white moral absolutes, and questioning authority in any way is to be avoided. Got it. And, of course, the typical conservative brand of moral absolutism doesn’t really adopt a utilitarian perspective of harm and benefit; “moral” is “whatever makes me feel like the world is right”, and “immoral” is “anything I think is icky or bad”. So, for instance, it’s “moral” to cut taxes in the middle of a war, resulting in (among many other things) lack of funding for equipment for our troops, but it’s “immoral” for a man to fall in love with another man, even though it’s not hurting anyone else, let alone resulting in the exacerbation of injury of hundreds or thousands of soldiers.

It must be so, so easy to just walk through life knowing exactly what’s bad and exactly what’s good. Gosh… I wish I could have such a firm grasp of the difference between good and evil!

4. “Sweet Home Alabama,” by Lynyrd Skynyrd.

A tribute to the region of America that liberals love to loathe, taking a shot at Neil Young’s Canadian arrogance along the way: “A Southern man don’t need him around anyhow.”

I’ll let the Rude Pundit handle this one. When you politicize this song, it sure is a great one if you’re a racist! Other than that, it’s okay.

5. “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” by The Beach Boys.
Pro-abstinence and pro-marriage: “Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true / Baby then there wouldn’t be a single thing we couldn’t do / We could be married / And then we’d be happy.”

Meh. I’m not sure if one could really consider “pro-marriage” to be a “conservative” ideal. There are plenty of married liberals. In fact, there’d be a lot more if gay marriage were legal. In fact, I’d say that there are quite a number of liberals who are pro-marriage.

With regard to abstinence: Wouldn’t it be nice if kids emotions / weren’t addled by floods of hormones / and wouldn’t it be nice if everybody / didn’t have impulses of their own

Talk about idealism. Yeah, wouldn’t it be nice? Wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have teen pregnancies? Wouldn’t it be nice if we weren’t mammals and were, thus, unaffected by sexual desires? Wouldn’t it be nice if we weren’t comprised of meat and chemicals and electricity and could think logically without all the weird organic interactions? Wouldn’t it be nice if candy and blowjobs grew on houseplants, and people shat rainbows that smelled like chocolate and raspberry? Wouldn’t it be nice if people could get the same sensations and pleasures from not having sex?

6. “Gloria,” by U2.

Just because a rock song is about faith doesn’t mean that it’s conservative. But what about a rock song that’s about faith and whose chorus is in Latin? That’s beautifully reactionary: “Gloria / In te domine / Gloria / Exultate.”

Them damned lib’rul elitists certainly don’t know or appreciate Latin, that’s for damned sure!

As secular as I try to be, I have a profound appreciation for religious music. And, uh, by the way, there are plenty of liberals who believe in God. They just believe in the kind and loving version of Jesus–the one who cared about the poor–and not the vindictive one who hated gays.

7. “Revolution,” by The Beatles.

“You say you want a revolution / Well you know / We all want to change the world . . . Don’t you know you can count me out?” What’s more, Communism isn’t even cool: “If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao / You ain’t going to make it with anyone anyhow.” (Someone tell the Che Guevara crowd.)

Change is bad, and is to be avoided at all costs.

No, John, fascism isn’t cool. The ideals of Communism as a philosophy aspire toward the same utopian goals as any other political or economic philosophy. Anything can become corrupted. Put Capitalism into the same hands and you’ll have the same result. Communism just happens to be more prone to corruption. But it’s the corruption that’s the problem.

The problem with the conservative perspective on Communism is that atrocities committed by fascist regimes in countries that claim to employ a “Communist” economic policy are conflated with Communism itself. It’s not the economic philosophy that’s causing the murders and executions–and I defy anyone to find instructions for these things in the Communist Manifesto–it’s the fascist regime itself. One could just as easily establish a country with a Capitalist economic philosophy and murder people en masse.

If you can’t tell the difference, stay the fuck out of political discourse.

8. “Bodies,” by The Sex Pistols.

Violent and vulgar, but also a searing anti-abortion anthem by the quintessential punk band: “It’s not an animal / It’s an abortion.”

Nobody likes abortion. It’s a difficult decision, and people are often haunted by The Baby That Might Have Been. But sometimes people have no other choice.

Conservatives are too focused on the notion that women have abortions, and completely ignore why women have abortions. From the studies I’ve seen, it’s usually due to financial unsurety. Even going through a pregnancy can be enough to impoverish a family. Sometimes it’s done “for the greater good”, for lack of a better term. You’d think that people so willing to send troops into a war overseas would understand that.

9. “Don’t Tread on Me,” by Metallica.
A head-banging tribute to the doctrine of peace through strength, written in response to the first Gulf War: “So be it / Threaten no more / To secure peace is to prepare for war.”

Oh, yes, Metallica: Champions of liberty and justice for all, and warriors for the working man. Which is why Lars has to sue his fans–families deep in credit card debt with two incomes who can barely afford to eat and pay the bills, let alone spend twenty bucks on a CD, but still want to be able to listen to music to try to escape the crushing feeling that has become living–so that he can gold-plate his swimming pool and so the group’s record company’s executives can hoard even more money they don’t deserve that they’ve milked from the people who actually have talent. But I digress.

I’m not really sure if I’d call the line “to secure peace is to prepare for war” a tribute to the doctrine of peace through strength. But whatever. Hooray for nationalism, or something.

10. “20th Century Man,” by The Kinks.

“You keep all your smart modern writers / Give me William Shakespeare / You keep all your smart modern painters / I’ll take Rembrandt, Titian, da Vinci, and Gainsborough. . . . I was born in a welfare state / Ruled by bureaucracy / Controlled by civil servants / And people dressed in grey / Got no privacy got no liberty / ’Cause the 20th-century people / Took it all away from me.”

Wait, this is supposed to be a conservative song? “Got no privacy got no liberty”? Um, NSA wiretaps? Trying to criminalize butt-sex? An FBI task force to try to get rid of “obscene” material from the Internet? Fuck, people can’t even enjoy TV shows in the privacy of their own homes because of conservative fundamentalists protesting and calling the networks. Who cares if there was anyone who enjoyed, say, “The Book of Daniel”? They don’t get to! They don’t have that right, because it makes ME mad that such a show exists! Even though I don’t actually watch it and would never have heard about it unless someone else told me to be outraged!

Yet, right, these are all crimes of the liberals, out to take away everyone’s freedom and privacy! This song isn’t a criticism of government and bureaucracy in general at all!

(Some of the other lyrics: “Don’t wanna get myself shot down / By some trigger happy policeman” (I thought in one of the songs mentioned above that it was wrong to question authority); “The wonderful world of technology, Napalm hydrogen bombs biological warfare”.)

And no liberals–especially none-a them damned college-goin’ or book-learnin’ elitists–have any appreciation for Rembrandt or Shakespeare or daVinci.

This whole endeavor smacks of a desperate attempt to seem cool, when the fact is that most music–specifically rock–just isn’t conservative. Most art isn’t conservative. And trying to twist interpretations to make it seem otherwise just seems pathetic and artificial, and a little desperate.

Ten more songs in a future update. Stay tuned.

Jabberwock

In the popular imagination, the composer John Cage is linked with Freedom and composer Xenakis with form. I believe that this largely stems from their respective manifestos. Formalized Music by Xenakis deals with mathematical models for the creation of sound and is filled with undecipherable equations. By contrast, the main theme of Cage’s book, Silence, is the mantra “everyone can create music.”

Generations of musicians have found inspiration from Silence. Blue Gene Tyranny remarked that that he and his contemporaries read it like the bible. The most common reading of this book is one of freedom. This is backed up in some of Cage’s work, especially later endeavors like the musiCircus in which hundreds of musicians play all at the same time without listening to each other.

In Silence, Cage raises the point that anything can be music. What, then, differentiates music from non music? Something, by this logic, is music if the composer says it is music. Therefore, even 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence can be music. But how does a composer say something is music? Of course, he or she declares it by writing a score. But how does one indicate the borders of silent musical piece? When does it begin? When does it end? The composer, therefore, relies on the form.

Cage’s interest in form goes back to his very early works, including the Constructions in Metal and the Square Root pieces. This interest stays with him even when he turns to chance operations as his primary means for generating sounds. Pieces like Fontana Mix allow total choice of sound production to the performer, but the score imposes a form. Cage’s interest in form is made directly obvious in his Lecture on Nothing. A whole section of the lecture does nothing but outline the form. The lecture itself is form without meaningful content.

Cage, then, relies on form as the most important principle in his pieces. His use of chance operations and even silence show that form is the fundamental building block of music. However, when students want to study form, they turn away from Cage and his reputation for freedom and turn to the more restrictive-seeming composer, Xenakis, whose book, Formalized Music, has pages and pages of mathematical formulas, explanations of stochastic theory, and seeks to translate music into mathematics or vice versa. Xenakis uses formulas to generate material and is widely seen as more rigorous than Cage. However, this perception is in error.

In his piece Horos, Xenakis uses cellular autonoma to generate pitch material. However, he uses it for only part of the time and he uses the generated autonoma out of order. In all his pieces, he makes extensive use of bricolage: he fits things together using his taste inventing and improvising as he goes. Indeed, this is how composers usually work. However, it is not mathematically rigorous, instead relying on unquantifiables like aesthetics and taste. This is directly opposed to the philosophy of Cage who makes no use of taste whatsoever in his later works and simply accepts the outcome of his chance operations.

There are those music students who reject the work of Cage as a charlatan and instead turn to the perceived rigor of Xenakis. However, Xenakis’ best known invention is stochastic music. In this music he (sometimes, when not using bricolage) uses stochastic formulas to determine density and pitches, etc. However, stochastic formulas determine probability and chance. What is the difference between using a chance operation to pick notes and using stochastic formulas to pick notes and densities? In Cage’s version, you spend a lot more time casting the iChing and in Xenakis’ version, you spend a lot more time computing formulas. Both, however, are the use of chance, although Xenakis’ use is more abstracted.

Therefore, both composers are making extensive use of chance, but the more rigorous composer is Cage, who is also the composer more interested in form. When these composers are placed in opposition, however, it is Cage who is cast as the free-wheeling, anything goes proponent of total freedom and Xenakis who is cast as being rigorous and obsessed with form. This can only be attributed to a difference in writing style and a difference in their followers. John Cage, the anarchist, wanted everyone to create music. Xenakis, the communist, wanted discipline. Cage has been taken up by all sorts of people, both inside and outside art music. Xenakis is firmly within the academy.

The biggest error, however, is not misattributing form, rigor and freedom, but rather placing the composers in binary opposition. The greatness of one does not diminish the greatness of the other, nor should students have to pick between them. I feel that this error stems from an even greater error and that is the general disregard of American composers.

(I started this review several weeks ago, and should have finished it and posted it then. Sorry for the delay.)

I was a little leery of this movie prior to seeing it, due to reports about how the subtle hints of Christian allegory in the novel were transformed into blatant, Aslan-nailed-to-a-cross-bearing-a-crown-of-thorns scenes and situations. It’s not that I have a problem with Christian imagery; it’s that it seemed it would be an unnecessary amplification.

As much as I probably should have, I didn’t read the book as a kid. I wanted to, but just never got around to it. Instead, I read it a couple weeks before seeing the movie. While there are a few situations similar to those depicted in the Bible as having happened to Jesus, it’s really not as astute an allegory as some would like it to seem. The whole “hero dies saving others/hero comes back to life after sacrifice to save the world” concept is prevalent in a lot of fiction, especially fantasy. To claim that every instance of this kind of thing happening is somehow a direct reference to Jesus, or should be viewed as such, is a little silly.

Which is part of why it irritated me so much when fundamentalists made such a big deal about this movie. Sure, Aslan is a godlike figure, but, then again, so is Neo in The Matrix. And while Aslan does sacrifice himself, he does it to save a single reformed traitor, and does so knowing full well that the ancient magic would not only bring him back from the dead, but destroy the stone table. It’s an extremely vague and generalized allegory for Christ, at best. But what’s particularly bothersome is that the Christians who championed the film as some kind of cultural triumph in the face of the purported “War Against Christmas” don’t in any way resemble the author of the book, C. S. Lewis. In fact, I think he’d be appalled by these self-righteous Pat Robertsonites, and baffled by how they can reconcile voting for neoconservative values with the message of Jesus. But I digress.

The movie itself is well-made, and for the most part true to the book. Alterations were made for dramatic effect (mostly with the wolves during the trip from the Beavers’ home to the stone table–the whole thing with the ice didn’t happen in the book, for instance), and there were digital seams on some of the CGI animals (though many were outstanding), but it was mostly what I’d seen in my head while reading the book.

There were a few problems, though, with character motivation and the depiction thereof. In the book, Edmund doesn’t simply betray his family out of a general self-interest–he does so because he desperately wants to eat more of the enchanted Turkish delight. This isn’t clear at all in the movie, and Edmund’s betrayal seems to imply that he’s just a complete and total asshole until his realization that he was working for the wrong side.

Like with Brokeback Mountain, the biggest problem was the soundtrack. This time, though, it was far too overwhelming. Instead of suggesting emotion, it took a knife, violently carved an emotion into a tree stump, dragged you over to it and bashed your head against it. The scene that stands out the most in this regard is when Edmund first encounters the “Queen”. The sleigh passes him and stops, and there’s this really heavy-handed, ominous string bit in the music. My response was less “ooh, something bad might happen” and more “okay, movie, I know what I’m supposed to be feeling, here, thanks.” That isn’t to say that the soundtrack was bad–it was excellent during the battle scenes. The effect was just extremely heavy-handed at times, and would’ve been much more effective if toned down a bit.

Speaking of battle scenes, these were very well-done, even if the fight lasted much longer than in the book. The imagery and soundtrack were fantastic. Janet was particularly moved by the scene with the eagles, and pointed out the resemblance to the opening scene depicting the bombing of England.

Though it wasn’t perfect, especially in the first half, it was a really enjoyable film overall, even to this twenty-two-year-old male who never read the book as a kid. Certainly not The Passion of the Kitty, in any event. I eagerly await the sequels.

B+

Jabberwock

Brokeback Mountain (2005, Director Ang Lee)

We saw the preview for Brokeback Mountain a couple months ago, and I’ll admit I was moved. In fact, Janet cried a little (again, this is just the preview), and she’s not fond of romantic movies.

I’m not sure how they managed this, but somehow the film itself was less moving than its preview. Truth told, I was a little bored. It’s not that I’m an insensitive person–I’ll admit that I cried a little at the end of Serenity, for instance, and that wasn’t the first or only movie–, it’s just that the film didn’t allow for much of an emotional connection.

I think a large part of the problem was the soundtrack. It had more of a “playful pets trying to find their way home” feel than a “forbidden love between cowboys in a homophobic society” feel. At the moments that were supposed to be more emotional and moving, the accompanying soundtrack seemed to say, “aww, the little kitten is going to get rained on while finding his way back to his family”. That’s not to say the music was bad; I liked it on its own, but it just seemed inappropriate to the subject.

Of course, the subject–other than the inclusion of the element of homosexuality–wasn’t anything new. In fact, for most of the film, it was pretty standard “forbidden romance with secret affair”-level stuff that we’ve all seen a few hundred dozen times in other romance films. It was good, but ultimately still just regular old drama.

Then there were the characters. Jack Twist, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, came across as annoyingly forceful and a little obsessive. He certainly didn’t care much about anyone but himself. The attitude was understandable when applied to his frigid southern-belle-of-the-county-fair bitch of a wife (Anne Hathaway) and her overblown-ego jerkoff parents, but it extended all the way to people he actually claimed to love. None of the actions he took in the film seemed to serve any other purpose or to work toward any other goal than fulfilling his own desires.

Heath Ledger’s character, Ennis Del Mar, was also annoyingly self-serving and cold, but not as irredeemably so as Twist. What surprised me about this film was that there seemed to be no kind of inner struggle in Twist or Del Mar over the choice between family and each other. Even Del Mar, the more appealing of the leads, came across as some kind of monster in relation to his family. Despite having brought two children into the world with a faithful, loving partner (Michelle Williams), he seemed willing to drop her–and his kids–like a used condom whenever the opportunity arose. Even if he wasn’t attracted to her at all and she was only a beard1, you’d think he’d have some feelings for her, or at least for his kids.

The entire emotional scope of most of the characters’ motivations and behaviors seemed oversimplified and grotesquely muted at its best moments and borderline silly at its worst.

While the makeup (and facial-hair growth) was done well enough to make everyone seem to age appropriately throughout the film, there was a moment near the end when a supposedly forty-something-year-old Del Mar and his daughter are talking in a trailer, and I thought to myself, “wait a minute–he’s only ten years older than she is”. Though, now I’m just nitpicking.

Overall, it was a bit of a disappointment. It was good, but not nearly as much as I’d expected. And there has to be something wrong when the preview moves someone to tears but the film itself does not.

1A pubic wig; slang for the heterosexual wife of a homosexual man who is trying to disguise his or her sexual orientation.

Jabberwock

Overview: Mari, a seventeen-year-old cleverly-disguised Down syndrome victim, and her friend Phyllis head to the city to see a concert for Mari’s birthday. However, they encounter a group of sadistic murderers who instruct them in a lesson in torture and death.

Directed By: Wes Craven, 1972.

The Case For: N/A

The Case Against: I have no idea how the fuck Wes Craven even found work after this. This movie is awful. I’m not talking about the torture scenes or anything like that; I’m talking about the fact that this movie had basically no real point or plot. It was like a menagerie of lamely done, twisted sexual fantasies ranging from watersports to humiliation to snuff as multicolored beads on the weakest string of a plot one could ever write. It’s almost like the entire movie exists for the semi-pornographic, full-frontal, bizarre rape fetish scenes.

Goddamn, is this awful.

Bullshit.

DVD packaging can be incredibly deceiving.

See, I didn’t buy this movie. I still live at home (hey, I’m only twenty, piss off) with my mom and today while she was shopping she noticed a movie that appeared from the cover and description on the back to be potentially entertaining and interesting. It states on the cover that it’s “written and directed by Wes Craven”, and he’s pretty well known for horror and suspense. Sure, the “Scream” series sucked boatloads of cock, but he’s done some… well… decent stuff.

Little did she know that for $12.99 (plus tax), she was purchasing what is without a doubt one of the worst movies that has ever been made.

Okay, here’s the description of the movie from the back of the packaging:

“Bold, powerful and starkly realistic, this chilling cinematic debut of horror master Wes Craven (Scream) is a shocking journey into the heart of evil. Written and directed with ‘almost unbearable dramatic tension’ (Chicago Sun-Times), The Last House on the Left will make you deadbolt your doors and frantically mutter: ‘It’s only a movie… it’s only a movie… it’s only a movie!”

Easy-going Mari Collingwood and her fun-loving friend Phyllis are on their way to a Bloodlust concert to celebrate Mari’s 17th birthday when three escaped convicts kidnap and torture them. But Mari and Phyllis are fighters, and although they are drugged and beaten into unconsciousness, stuffed into a car trunk and driven into the woods for even more brutality, they are still alive… but for how long?”

Chicago Sun-Times, you are WRONG! I will honestly never trust any quote that is taken from your publication EVER AGAIN. If a one-eyed mongoloid powdered his face with cocaine, pried out most of his teeth with a butter knife and then used a voice recognition program to write a review of a movie, I would trust that over any review you people publish without hesitation. At least you got the “almost unbearable” part right. Jesus H R Puffinstuff Christ was this awful. Roger Ebert gives it “*** 1/2! Well, fuck you, too, Rodge. This movie eats skinpipe from start to finish.

Actually, describing and mocking it will probably make it seem longer and fuller and richer than it really is, but don’t let yourself be fooled! It’s a shallow, horrible plotline festering with stupidity and sheer awfulness. And herpes. You heard me.

Basically, it all boils down to this:

It’s Mari’s seventeenth birthday. There are some irrelevant ducks in an irrelevant, filthy-looking pond somewhere. There is an irrelevant mailbox. An irrelevant old man pulls up, honks his irrelevant horn and plays with an irrelevant dog while irrelevantly commenting on her irrelevant popularity. She begins taking a shower, which is really only included in the movie to up the “Dude, tits! Awesome!” factor. Now, I know what a lot of you are probably thinking: “But there’s supposedly underage nudity! This movie can’t be that bad!” And that makes you a creepy pervert.

“Oh, shit, Larry, I think we’re swimming in concrete!”

The first song on the bizarrely-selected soundtrack begins playing (”And the roooooad leeeeeads to nowheeeere…” Just like the plot of this movie. Go figure.) and the opening credits and title appear. After some brief shots of boobies and having a random old postal employee call her “the prettiest piece [he's] ever seen” to her dog, it cuts to a brief conversation with her parents. Lord knows what the disturbing elderly postal employee starts doing to the dog after it cuts away.

There are several failed attempts at humor, worse than if someone figured out how to combine the Special Olympics and “Open Mic Night”, then Mari walks in and has a women’s lib argument with her parents about not wearing a bra. Oh, yeah… while Irish flute music plays in the background for some strange reason. I’m guessing this could possibly be, like, “Mari’s Theme” or something, but it seems incredibly out of place, and not in a Stanley Kubrick “surrealist”, “good” kind of way. It’s more a “Michael Flatley’s going to walk in and urinate on a leprechaun, then rape your mother” kind of way. She mentions something about sandpapering her nipples off, and she offends her dad by calling breasts “tits”. Then they all talk about Mari going to the Bloodlust concert and that it’s in a bad neighborhood, and her parents give her a “peace sign” necklace for her birthday. Yeah, here’s a shitty peace-sign necklace. Happy fucking birthday.

There’s a conversation about Mari’s friend Phyllis, the one from the bad neighborhood who’s going to take her to the Bloodlust concert, voiced over a series of scenes of Mari and Phyllis hanging out, with cuts to Mari’s parents talking to Phyllis. This part was edited by Billy Johnson, age 4, so it’s hard to figure out exactly what’s going on. According to the movie, Mari’s parents are talking to Phyllis and Mari telepathically or from the sky or through some kind of talking tree or something while the girls prance around on some rocks somewhere. The two then teleport back to Mari’s house for the duration of the conversation. I don’t know what the hell was going on, but after all the cutting and overlapping stopped, I ended up on the other side of the room wearing different clothes, popping my head in and out of a minivan, and my sunglasses kept appearing and disappearing from my face.

Phyllis provides us with this little gem while talking to Mari’s mom:

Phyllis: “Oh, my parents are in the iron and steel business.”

Mari’s Mom: “Iron and steel both together, how unusual!”

Phyllis: “Yeah, well, my mother irons and my father steals.” HA HA fuckin’ HA.

The girls talk about scoring pot and screwing the members of Bloodlust. Yay for drugged-up underage sluts! (Didn’t I download an MPEG with that title off of Kazaa once? ….Shit, I just typed that out loud, didn’t I?) Mari says it’d be “soft and gentle”. Yeah, the thought of fucking members of a band called “Bloodlust” definitely brings to mind images of silken bed sheets, erotic foreplay and feather-stroke-gentle touches. Her friend argues that “it’s Bloodlust, man… like they’re crazy, you know?” The acting in this movie is “blowjob from a cannibal” horrible.

The next scene is a montage of footage of the two girls having fun and getting drunk in the woods and on the rocks near this lake set to some awful, random 70’s guitar music. It sounds like someone is playing it by smacking it with the head of a fat, colicky baby. This is the part of the movie where you’re supposed to start liking the characters and developing emotional attachments. Key words: “supposed to”. Mari talks about how her breasts filled out and how she feels like a woman for the first time in her life (when was the last time you heard two guys talking about how their dicks got bigger, anyway?), and then throws some leaves in the air while shouting “Ron…nie… Johnson!” Nowhere is it explained who the fuck, exactly, “Ron… nie… Johnson!” is or why she’s cheering his name, but what the hell… “stupid” and “appealing” are synonyms, aren’t they? Man, I am SO starting to feel attached to these fucking stupid, horribly-acted shitbrains. I SURE HOPE NOTHING BAD HAPPENS TO THEM! BOY HOWDY WOULDN’T THAT BE A TRAGEDY.

Phyllis is driving her car, and Mari is messing around with the radio station. Phyllis begins driving wildly, and there’s some news thing on the radio about escaped convicted murderers and an animal-like woman kicking a dog to death. During the news report, it cuts to a scene of the escaped convicted murderers standing in the street in front of a store. One guy (Krug) apparently hooked his son (Junior) on heroin to control his behavior, and the other is a child-molesting weirdo (Weasel). The animal-like woman is… well… apparently just a random woman who looks like some kind of slutty Muppet cocaine addict that was stitched together by a thumbless third grader.

The son gets the woman a beer while she sits in the bathtub and they have a meaningless discussion about meaningless nothingness. The woman mentions she wants the alias “Agatha Greenwood”. This is completely unimportant and nothing in the duration of the movie references it. The son mentions he wants the alias “Frog”. I think “DUMB FUCKING COLON-HAUNTING TURDGHOST” would better suit him, along with most of the other characters in this movie, but hey, I’m not big-shit Wes Craven with his personal ass-wiping, platinum-plated, adolescent Vietnamese servant boys, now, am I?

Junior: “If I was a frog, I’d have my own lily pad. I could sit there all day long just RIBBIT RIBBIT. And I could do that, man, and nobody would bother me. And I’d watch the flies BZZZZZZ…”

Then he starts CROAKING LIKE A FROG, and she JOINS IN WITH HIM. Boy, I sure am fucking terrified now! *Sigh* I hate this movie so fucking much. Then the little walking enema starts nibbling on her chest and his dad walks in and tells him to back off. This entire scene has no importance at all, aside from displaying this movie’s potential for being incredibly stupid.

Ribbit, ribbit! I’m an idiot!

“And the award for ugliest woman 1972 goes to…”

Back to Mari and Phyllis. They get some ice cream. Yay. Oh, and a “Jackson Five”-esque ripoff band is playing in the background. The same goddamned riff. Over and over and over.

The woman (her name is Sadie, by the way) is getting the “pre-rape” shove-around in the hideout apartment hotel whatever-the-fuck-it is, and she tells Krug and Weasel that she’s “not putting out anymore until [she gets] a couple more chicks around here”. Goddamn, is the acting horrible. It’s like having a family of fire ants crawling up into, and gnawing away at the walls of, your urethra.

As an example, imagine the following lines read by a parrot swimming in a bucket of LSD, the biggest pothead in your high school, the pope, and a monkey carved out of a bar of soap.

Sadie: Let me up!

Krug: Forget it! You’ve got the cream of American manhood here. *(Dear god, what the fuck is “cream of American manhood” supposed to mean?”)

Weasel: Cream of American manhood, that’s good, Krug!

Krug: Shut up! And get away from my woman.

Weasel: Your woman!? I thought she was our woman!

Sadie: Just a minute, buzz off! I’m not neither of your’s woman! I am my own freakin’ woman!

Junior: That’s right, Krug.

Krug: You shut up. (to Sadie:) Hey, what have you been doing? Reading those creep women’s lib magazines while I’ve been up in the jug?

Sadie: Maybe.

Krug: Why don’t you just sit back and enjoy being inferior?

Sadie: Zoom off! You male chauvinist dog!

Weasel: Pig, Sadie.

Sadie: What?

Weasel: Male chauvinist pig.

Sadie: Okay. Male chauvinist pig!

Junior: She’s right, Krug!

Etc etc etc for the love of god why won’t it stop?

Back to the Fuckhead Brigade. Mari and Phyllis are walking around at night in the bad part of town. Of all people, they encounter Krug’s son, who had been banished from the Dipshit Lounge in the previous scene. They ask him where they can obtain some marijuana. There’s not a whole lot I can think of that’s smarter than asking a complete stranger in the seedy part of town where to nab some weed. Anyway, initially he says he doesn’t know, but then he remembers that Sadie wants another couple of girls to get forcibly reamed before she starts putting out. He calls them back and invites them up to the Hall of Bad Actors, where Krug and the others are chillin’ like villains.

The son locks the doors and the carnal carnival begins. Krug, Weasel and Sadie jump up and sprint across the room while Mari and Phyllis saunter calmly over to the door and barely make an effort to escape.

Fade to Mari’s parents setting up a “Happy Birthday Mari” banner in their house. They take a few moments to bask in the feeling of meaningless accomplishment. Hooray for them.

Back to the Rippity Rompity Raper Room. The harassment ensues. Pedophile Pete pulls out a knife when Phyllis threatens to scream. Krug tells her “If you make one peep…” but is cut off by a cut to Mari’s mother taking a cake out of the oven while piano music plays. Maybe that’s what he was threatening: “If you make one peep, Mari’s mother will take a cake out of the oven while “70’s-upped” ragtime piano music plays.” I’d be frightened, too.

The next scene is, as I mentioned, Mari’s mother taking a cake out of the oven. She and her husband do a shitty job of frosting it. Maybe that’s because they’re referencing what looks to be a bible. “Thou shalt frosteth the cake on the third day, and yea, it shall be good.” It looks like they did it with bowling balls strapped to their elbows. Keep in mind this isn’t the director’s cut. Why this utterly pointless scene was included in the movie is beyond my comprehension.

“Dammit, we screwed up! This cake isn’t holy at all!”

Another cut back to Mari and Phyllis. Now they’re pleading to be released. Well, Phyllis is pleading; Mari is standing across the room like she’s waiting for her friend to get done with her hair appointment or something. She’s standing four feet from the fucking door, why doesn’t she try to escape and get help? Because this movie sucks, that’s why.

Krug punches Phyllis in the stomach and then they gang-rape her. Mari stands and watches in what is apparently a random circulation of horror and disgust and worry and nervousness and confusion and surprise. She does this because her acting skills are horrible.

Cut back once more to yet another episode of “These Are the Days of Our Mari’s Parents’ Pointless Activities”. They’re drinking and kissing. Awwww. More piano music, but this time it’s that kind from a Lifetime movie where the rape-victim abused mother who has been shunned by her parents reunites with her starving, beaten, retarded child who’s been convicted and acquitted of murder.

After another < thirty seconds of this shit, we cut back to where Mari and Phyllis are, "early next morning..."

Okay, before I go any further, quick show of hands as to how many people are just utterly terrified by the "stark realism" and "almost unbearable dramatic tension"? Oh, nobody? Huh. What a shock.

The music that begins playing would be more appropriate in a movie called "Chuck E Cheese's Dancing Hillbilly Bears Go to the Roller Rink with the Dukes of Hazzard". However, for whatever idiot, coke-snort 1970's reason, they stuck it in the scene in this movie where Krug and the gang are carrying the rape-exhausted, passed-out bodies of Mari and Phyllis down the fire escape and out to their car to be stuffed in the trunk.

Finally a more relevant scene with Mari's parents. They're getting worried about Mari because she hasn't come home yet. Her mom wants to call the police, but her dad says that staying out is classic, and a girl's way of indicating she's �grown up". "Let her have a fling," he says. "She'll come home," he says. If only he knew... if only he knew. Um... sure. Anyway, they decide to wait it out a while and THEN call the police. I've pulled clusters of body hair and food crumbs out of my keyboard that have better parenting skills than these two.

Back to the ducks in the filthy shitpool. Seriously, it honestly cuts to the ducks. The next fifty seconds of movie is a montage of nature scenes accompanied by soft, calming instrumental music. Am I on my way to Fred Penner's place or something? What the fuck?

The music builds up and then changes into the goddamned Dukes of Hazzard hillbilly music again and it cuts to the Rapemobile driving through the woods. Sadie bounces on Krug's lap while the son drives, and someone starts a kazoo solo in the music.

Okay, here's what I find disturbing about this music: It was written FOR the movie. It wasn't just some random, cheap music they found that was the only stuff they could afford to use. It was WRITTEN FOR THE MOVIE. How do I know this? Because this is where the vocals start, "sung" by a man who apparently swallows handfuls of steel wool for a living.

This is what I can make out of them: "Weasel and Junior, Sadie and Krug... out for the day with the Collingwood brood... out for the day for some fresh air and sun... let's have some fun with those two lovely children that often the tuna they're done. (Verse 2 : EVERYBODY SING!) Weasel and Sadie, Junkie and Dad... worked in a harmony barbershop band... cut through the stylin; to silence the shame... Krugsie and nodes and this foolin' around and the get yourself out of this stain."

I really don't give enough of a shit to find the actual lyrics, but it's apparently about the Krug gang, which means that this incredibly out-of-place music was written for this movie.

After whatever deity oversees this miserable pathetic shithole of an excuse for reality shows mercy and the raspy singing stops, Sadie tells the group about Freud (pronounced "Frood") and how telephone poles aren't just telephone poles, they're phalluses (pronounced puh-hayluses). Perhaps the aforementioned god isn't so merciful.

Weasel, Sadie and Dad. (Not pictured: Junior)
Picture would have been centered, but WordPress, for whatever reason, adamantly refused to save the end center tag.

Back to Mari’s parents. Now there’s a police officer at their house, and he’s eating Mari’s birthday cake. HAR HAR A FAT STUPID COP! HOW ORIGINAL!

The Krug gang’s car breaks down on the road. They’re standing around trying to figure out what’s wrong with it and where they are. Sadie applies hairspray to her ugly fuzzball head.

Back to Mari’s house again. GODDAMMIT! WHY CAN’T THEY FUCKING COMPLETE a SCENE before they CUT to SOMETHING ELSE? MAYBE THIS WOULD WORK if I had SEVERE ATTENTION DEFICIT DISORDER. They basically finish off the last “Mari’s Parents” scene and we are introduced to Dipshit Police Officer #2. LET THE ROLLERCOASTER RIDE OF HUMOR BEGIN! WHOO BOY!

Durrrr…

After that 40-second scene, we’re back to the adventures of Krugford and Son, still trying to repair their broken vehicle. Krug goes to get the tool kit out of the trunk and is bitten by Phyllis. Looks like someone’s just begging for another raping. The camera cuts to the pedophile with the Q-Tip head and as he walks toward the camera and off to the right, it is revealed that they’re all standing right by Mari’s mailbox. Mari sees this and begins itching for escape. Er, wait, no… that’s just the pubic lice she picked up.

HOLY LIVING FUCK IT CUTS AGAIN! AFTER ANOTHER ~FORTY SECONDS! Back AGAIN to Mari’s FUCKING PARENTS. That’s it, I’m timing this one. I’ll bet it’s not even a minute long.

The cops walk out of the room, and then out of the doorway, telling Mari’s dad that she’s probably just letting off a little steam. The fat, piggly one nearly walks into a bush as an attempt at slapstick humor.

And we have TWENTY-ONE SECONDS, ladies and gentlemen. After TWENTY-ONE SECONDS it cuts back to Weasel and Sadie, Junkie and Dad dragging Mari and Phyllis through the woods.

Then it cuts again to the police. They drive right by the broken-down car. “Wanna go out and take a look?” “No, no… we’ve got more important things to do… that ain’t gonna find us Mari Collingwood.” Oh, no! They drove right by the car! They were SO CLOSE! The dramatics are killing me! Er, wait, no. That’s just the rusty piece of scrap metal I jabbed into my abdomen to counteract the pain of watching this shitty movie.

Meanwhile, in the woods, Weasel takes out his knife and, using psychological torture (they threaten to cut Mari if Phyllis doesn’t comply), they force Phyllis to piss her pants and then take them off. Now that I think about it, let’s time this scene.

They force them at knifepoint to fist-fight with each other. The whiny little junkie kid tells Krug to stop before he kills someone. Krug instructs the two girls to fuck each other. Oh, what’s that? Why, it’s the sound of even more misplaced music! The vocals sound like “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and the guitar sounds like “At Seventeen”.

Anyway, the group strips them down and they’re forced to fuck each other. I haven’t been THIS aroused since I saw that midget get hit by that bus. (Strangely, Phyllis seems totally cool with the whole ordeal, as if it happens to her, like, once a week or something and isn’t anything out of the ordinary.)

Hrmmm. I’ve got four minutes, twelve seconds. That’s about twelve times as long as the last scene I timed. I don’t know why, but something seems a little “off” about that. Y’know, Wes… just because there are tits in a scene, that doesn’t warrant special attention. Especially when said tits belong to two sobbing, terrified “teenagers” who are being forced at knifepoint to sexually violate each other.

To the police station! Here we see Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dipshit demonstrating their mad, wicked-l33t police sk1llz. Then back to the woods with Phyllis and Mari post-coitus.

Calm down, you tubby bitch.

Krug tells Weasel he’s going to get something to cut the “firewood”. Phyllis sees through this brilliant linguistic stealth-work and realizes that something is amiss. She convinces Weasel to let her put her clothes back on, then whispers to Mari she’s going to run away so that they’ll chase her and Mari can run and get help. Thus commences the oh-so-exciting series of “Chasing Phyllis” scenes. Mari tells Croaky McWhinebox that she thinks he shouldn’t be “Frog”, he should be “Willow” because he’s so beautiful, and blah blah blah. She gives him the shitty peace sign necklace she got from her parents and tells him she can get him a fix. They take off. Weasel and Sadie chase Phyllis some more. Meanwhile, the cops play checkers. (”It’s only a movie… it’s only a movie… it’s only a movie…” Riiight.) Another cop comes over the radio to tell them that Krug and the gang are in their area, and he describes their vehicle. They kick themselves in the ass (figuratively, of course. Fat Cop can’t even reach around to grab his own ass, and Dumbass Cop wouldn’t know which part of his body to aim for) when they realize that it was the same car they passed up near Mari’s house and take off back for her place.

You asked for more of Phyllis running while people chased her and We’re Going to Give It to You! FINALLY Sadie catches up with her, but Phyllis attacks her, calls her a “stupid dyke” and runs off. Then more of Phyllis being chased, while someone makes an annoying heartbeat sound on a drum. She ends up in a graveyard and eventually gets her shirt torn and red tempera paint sprayed onto it… er… uh… stabbed to death. Krug apparently has some kind of teleportation ability because he just shows up right in front of where she was running. How he located her and got there so fast is a complete mystery to me. Then Sadie plays with her intestines. (Awww, and I was getting so attached to her, too! Dammit, why’d she have to die?)

“Hey, maybe I can ask one of these white things for help!

So… uh… so she was stabbed, huh?

The cops’ car stops, but because Idiot Cop #2 forgot to fill it up with gas. HAR HAR COPS are STUPID and LAZY!

Mari keeps trying to convince Junior to help her get away. They’re caught by the others who apparently used their magical teleporting ability once again, and they inform her that Phyllis is dead, confirming such by showing her Phyllis’ severed hand.

The cops try to hitch a ride with Archie and Jughead: Beyond Thunderdome, but are completely unsuccessful. Boy is the suspense ever rising!

“Har har, we HATE cops!” shouts Mad Max: Beyond Jazzercise.

In the next scene, Mari gets Krug’s initials carved into her chest and is once again raped. Then we get the acoustic 1970’s “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” music while Mari throws up in the bushes and Krug and the gang pick at the dried blood on their hands. Then Mari slowly walks away, toward the water, and is repeatedly shot. Fortunately, because this stops the damned annoying music. At least now she’d be useful as the lid of a pet’s container.

“Hey, good rape guys. This one really went well. Go teamwork, huh?”

As proof of the complete absence of god, we are given another “Cops” scene, and this is the worst one in the film. They encounter a truck that’s carrying chickens and flag it down. Behind the wheel is an unwrapped mummy named Ada, and the two overly stupid police officers use their best persuading skills to try to get her to give them a ride. The fat, stupid cop actually counts on his fingers that 1) “Now, this is police business” and 2) “this is an emergency, you hear?” The way he stumbles over his lines, it sounds like he’s reading them off of a vibrator that he had an epileptic use a Sharpie to write them onto.

“I count stupid things on my fingers and can’t act!”

She finally agrees to let them ride on the roof because it’s the only place she has room. Then… get this… are you reading? I hope you’re reading… okay… the cops are on the roof… and Ada pulls forward and… okay, get this… the TRUCK STOPS… and they FALL… OFF… the ROOF. Isn’t that hilarious? No? Oh. You’re right. Sorry.

Anyway, Ada says they’re too heavy to ride because Fat Cop is too fat. Better luck next time, guys!

This has now become the wallpaper image in every one of my nightmares.

Krug and the others wash the blood off of themselves in the stream. There’s nothing more appealing than watching a bunch of shitty actors pretend to wash blood off of themselves. Hope they went upstream from where they just gave Mari some airholes.

Doc Collingwood is playing solitaire in the bedroom when his wife comes in and announces they have guests. Guess who they are? Why, it’s Krug and the gang! The tension is building!

Weasel cuts the cord to the TV. Krug explains that their car threw a rod and they needed to get a hold of a mechanic. Mrs. Collingwood tells them that there wouldn’t be any mechanics available for the duration of the day and invites them to stay the night. They accept the invitation and she shows all of them to their rooms, where they discover that they’re in Mari’s home. What are the odds???

It’s a good thing I can’t get enough of those cops, because there’s YET ANOTHER MEANINGLESS SCENE with them in it! Fat Cop offers to put his boot up Stupid Cop’s ass.

Back at the Collingwood residence, everyone but Froggie dines on spaghetti in a perfectly black room to the music of Kraftwerk. Kruggy and the Jets do a horrible job of both lying AND acting as they try to explain to Mari’s parents who they are and what they do.

Meanwhile, Frog has a bad dream that he’s watching “Last House on the Left” and a montage of previous footage is shown. He wakes up sobbing and screaming “I’m sorry!” (He should be, for making this goddamned horrible movie.) and Krug runs in and comforts him by telling him to shut up, and that he should have killed him down by the lake when he had the chance. Back in the dining room, Sadie and Weasel do a bad job of explaining it away.

Later, Krug, Sadie and Weasel are sitting on Mari’s bed getting drunk. Krug makes some commentary about the Collingwoods’ dinner utensils:

Krug: Tight-ass freakos… all their goddamned silverware… who do they think they are, anyway? People in China are eating with sticks. And these peeps got sixteen utensils for every pea on the plate.

People in China eat with what are called “chopsticks”, and they choose to use them. “People in Holland are wearing wooden shoes, and these fuckers walk around in their fancy-schmancy Nikes. Pricks.”

Junior pukes in the bathroom, even though he was the only one who didn’t eat Mari’s mom’s cooking. Mrs. Collingwood is awoken by the sound and heads into the bathroom, where she tries to help him out and in the process notices he’s wearing a peace sign necklace just like the one they gave Mari. Apparently it’s, like, “one of a kind” or something. He heads back to his room and Mari’s mom, now suspicious, heads into one of the bedrooms to sneak a peek inside of the Krug gang’s suitcase. She finds a bunch of bloody clothes and overhears them talking through the wall about killing her daughter and THAT GODDAMNED “And the road leads to nowhere” SONG STARTS FUCKING PLAYING AGAIN.

She wakes up her husband and they run out to the lake or river… body of water… thing… where they find Mari, totally dry in the grass and still moving around. Despite the fact that she has her eyes open and is moving her head, her “doctor” dad pronounces her dead. What the fuck? She’s MOVING AROUND. And, I mean, I’m no doctor or anything like Mari’s dad is supposed to be, but I’m pretty sure that means SHE’S NOT FUCKING DEAD, YOU MORONS.

*Sigh* Looks like we’re back to the magical land of less-than-30-second scenes again.

Weasel wakes up and “Doc” Collingwood and his wife are standing over him in medical attire. They put a chisel to his teeth and swing the hammer, but as soon as it hits, he wakes up. It was all just a dream. He gets up and puts on his shirt.

Dr. Collingwood heads into the basement to find some weapons. Apparently he’s going to bang a gun against a garbage can lid to try to ward them away with the noise.

Weasel heads into the hallway, only to find Mrs. C sipping a drink in the living room. She offers sexual favors to the “If Daniel Stern and Joe Pesci Mated”-looking prick and they head outside. Mari’s “dead” body is laying on the couch.

Dr. C starts setting up some traps throughout the house. Welcome to “Home Alone -1″. We’ve even got a Joe Pesci/Daniel Stern look-alike! The doors and windows get locked and secured, and the Doc sets up a trimmed electrical wire connected to a water-soaked carpet.

If they mated…

Down by the lake, Weasel asks Mrs. C to tie him up for the sex act she promised.

Back at the house, Doc C sprays some shaving cream on the floor. He’s not setting up a trap or anything… he just ritualistically shaves his floor once a week.

Are your floors… Skintimate?

The now restrained Weasel gets his apparently tiny dick (according to Mrs. C) caught on something and they have to work it out.

Doc C steals a supposedly asleep Krug’s gun, but it turns out Krug was really awake after all! Uh-oh! He’s on to him!

Back to the riverbed. Mrs. C offers to blow Weasel, despite his desire to “do [her] good and proper”. She asks him if he can do both, and he claims to be able to go five or six rounds if she so desires. Moments later, it’s “Ahhh, you bitch! I think I’m gonna cum!” I’m pretty sure there’s no “time jump” involved. Then she bites his dick off like a dog playing with a sock with a tennis ball inside of it.

“C’mon get it! C’mon, girl! Get it! Grrrr!”

Krug and Sadie are awoken by the sound of Weasel’s screams only to find Doc C standing over them with a shotgun. Krug pulls the plug out of the lamp and the doc shoots. Krug runs out into the hallway and slips on the shaving cream. Looks like all that floor-shaving has finally paid off! He makes it to the living room where he and Doc C get into a fist fight. Let’s see… a convicted felon vs. a middle-aged doctor… Well, needless to say, Krug beats the shit out of the doctor. He starts preparing to kill him when suddenly a shot rings out. Junior is holding a pistol in the doorway, pointing it at Krug. Krug takes some time to put his parenting skills to use to convince Junior to blow his own brains out, which buys Papa C enough time to escape. Krug hears a noise coming from the basement, grabs the doctor’s shotgun and investigates. He finds Doctor C heading up the basement stairs with a chainsaw, and is informed that the shotgun doesn’t have any more ammunition. Krug, in his infinite intelligence, apparently decides it’d be a good idea to try to hold the doctor at bay by closing the door and putting his back to it. Hey, chainsaws can’t cut through wood! Everybody knows that! Krug gets poked in the ass as the chainsaw cuts through the door and becomes privy to the flaw in his little plan.

Doc Collingwood cuts through the door and goes after Krug, who I guess STILL doesn’t realize that chainsaws can cut through wood, because he uses pieces of furniture to defend himself. He runs to the door with the electrically charged carpet in front of it and is electrocuted. Sadie runs into the room, gets freaked out, and runs outside where she encounters Mrs. Collingwood in the “blue-filter night”. They get into what is probably the least sexually appealing catfight ever. Sadie drops her knife, gets up and runs away… straight into the pool. What, she didn’t see it there? It’s a goddamned POOL, you idiot. Are you blind as well as retarded?

But chainsaws can’t cut through wooden doors!

Inside, the cops FINALLY show up, just as Doc is performing an improvisational operation on Krug, and blood is sprayed everywhere. They try to stop him but are unsuccessful. What a surprise, the idiot cops failed at something! Outside, Mrs. Collingwood finds Sadie’s knife and uses it to slit the dumb bitch’s throat as she tries to climb out of the pool. She heads back inside once the deed is done and reunites with her husband inside of their blood-soaked living room. Stupid Cop grabs the chainsaw and examines it as if he’s never seen any kind of “device” before. Freeze-frame on the Collingwoods and roll credits. Commence shitty “Dukes of Hazzard”-esque music as a totally inappropriate follow-up to the final scene. Press pistol firmly to temple. Pull trigger. Repeat if necessary.

And the road indeed led to nowhere.

Every so often, you come across a movie with the perfect combination of intelligent, entertaining writing, beautiful, artistic directing, and powerful, gripping, believable acting. “The Shining” had Stephen King’s writing, Stanley Kubrick’s directing, and Jack Nicholson’s acting. It’s probably one of the greatest movies ever. That perfect “triangle”, those three elements � writing, directing, and acting – all worked together in such a way as to make that film spectacular.

“The Last House on the Left”, however, is shit. Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit. I don’t care what Roger Ebert says. I don’t give a flying fuck what the Chicago Sun Times has to say about it. It wasn’t scary. It wasn’t terrifying. It was barely even entertaining, for fuck’s sake.

First, take a look at the writing, if there even actually was any. If you laid out a huge sheet of paper on the floor of an empty room, glued a magic marker to a rat’s belly and snipped at its tail with bolt cutters, you’d end up with something 4,000% better than the script for this movie. And a lot of rat bites. Probably rabies, too. On second thought, the whole “rat” thing isn’t such a good idea. The camera work wasn’t TOO bad, I guess, but then again, it doesn’t really take much to just point a camera at things like was done in this movie. In other words, it wasn’t bad in that it actually showed what was going on, but it wasn’t good in that you could probably mimic it by hooking up some motion sensors to a motorized tripod. The editing was apparently done by a ten-year-old with attention deficit disorder. I’ve seen music videos with longer scenes. The acting? There is no curse in Elvish, Entish or the tongues of men to appropriately describe the sheer awfulness of the “acting” skills behind Fat Cop and Stupid Cop. Their retarded attempts at slapstick humor should be considered crimes against nature. Overall, all of the actors should have all been swatted with a rolled-up newspaper every time they tried to speak.

I’d rather be fisted with those new “Hulk Hands” toys than have to watch this fucking movie again.

Plot: -10

Overall (Not an Average or Combined Score): -45

Jabberwock