Are You Team Cain or Team Abel?

Will Smith, have you no shame?

Deadline New York has some totally tubular news for all those sexually-frustrated Twihard Christians out there that have been waiting their entire lives for a more relatable version of the story of Cain and Abel (read: with vampires):

EXCLUSIVE: Will Smith has attached himself to star in and produce The Legend Of Cain, an epic re-telling of the Biblical sibling tale, this time with a vampiric twist. Smith will play Cain, the original Bad Boy, and he will produce with Overbrook Entertainment partners Jada Pinkett Smith (his wife), James Lassiter, and Ken Stovitz. The script was written by Caleeb Pinkett and Dan Knauf, with Andrea Berloff revising. No studio or director yet for the Overbrook project.

Hmmmm...time to develop some CGI ab software so Mr. Scientologist doesn't disappoint the built-in audience for this historic adaptation of the Book of Vampires and I can become an overnight millionaire with my finger in the Biblical pie.

Any talented (and preferably sexy) programmers out there willing to work for Snausages?

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The Bible: The First Corporation?

Much like the corporation is a faceless legal entity that conveniently takes all the blame for the actions of the greedy, shady humans that run it, the Bible readily absorbs blame whenever anyone wants to be an asshole.

Now THIS Is a Movement I Can Get Behind!

(photo courtesy Goodtime Charlie archives)

Students belonging to the group Atheist Agenda are offering porn in exchange for Bibles at the Student Center at the University of Texas-San Antonio, of all places. This has been going on since 2005, but I must have forgotten about it.

Did you, too? If so, more here.

Now, I don't have much use for porn, since my available sexual partners are so numerous they have splintered into factions, but if you ask me, that's a pretty fair trade. Hell, it might even get me to start collecting those stupid Bibles people plant in motel rooms, trying to scoop you up and drop you right into the gnashing teeth of the Lord when you're at your weakest, about to pay for porn in a depressing and filthy room somewhere...

Speaking of porn...again...still...it appears there was a study of pay-porn sites that shows red states are much bigger fans of the sinful stuff than their bluer counterparts. Surprised?

Also, in sexual news today, another Republican hatemonger was busted with a double whammy--getting a DUI while taking a man home from a gay club for sex. And let's keep in mind that link is from FoxNews...

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Chuck Norris Doesn't Run Wild...

Chuck Norris gets bitch-slapped by the eloquent Chris Kelly and probably doesn't even understand it:

Chuck Norris Says Obama Wants Mary to Abort Jesus

It's a well-known fact that Chuck Norris could kick the shit out of the Council of Ephesus, so when he has somehting to say about the Blessed Virgin Mary, I, for one, listen:

Lastly, as we near the eve of another Christmas, I wonder: What would have happened if Mother Mary had been covered by Obamacare? What if that young, poor and uninsured teenage woman had been provided the federal funds (via Obamacare) and facilities (via Planned Parenthood, etc.) to avoid the ridicule, ostracizing, persecution and possible stoning because of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy? Imagine all the great souls who could have been erased from history and the influence of mankind if their parents had been as progressive as Washington's wise men and women! Will Obamacare morph into Herodcare for the unborn?

He makes a powerful case, especially the last part, where health insurance reform leads to the Massacre of the Innocents. I'd get to the threat of Obama repeating the excesses of Herod the Great by pointing out they both like occupying the Middle East, but I understand Chuck's logic, too. Teach a man to fish and you've fed him for a lifetime. Subsidize his co-pay; he will commit genocide.

Here's where I get off board, and where Chuck Norris has made a potentially serious mistake. It's not that his slippery slope argument is sub-moronic. And it's not that he doesn't understand the moral difference between providing access to something -- lets say safe, legal abortion -- and ordering it. (If making something available was the same as doing it yourself, then arms makers would be responsible for gun homicides, and we know that's not true.)

My problem is with his misunderstanding of Mary, Stella Maris, Queen of Heaven, mother of mercy, sweetness and hope, bearer of light, mediator and co-redeemer. He seems to think of her as kind of a clueless, sloppy slut.

You know how women are. Don't get Chuck started.

The Mary in Chuck's example might carry Jesus to term or she might not. What does she care? The only thing that could make her give birth to God is if we make the alternative even more inconvenient.

Now, I enjoy misogyny as much as the next guy. I was in a fraternity. So Chuck Norris can imply whatever he wants about theoretical women in general, and how they'll have all the abortions they possibly can, if they're just lying around. And what rankles me isn't that -- to get at women in general -- he's taking a casual dump on the Mother of Our Savior. What bothers me is that Chuck Norris is a board member of the National COuncil on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools and he understands the Bible like a turtle humping a shoe.

You can't use Mary as an example of a woman considering an abortion, because the Mary that could make the mistake of aborting our Savior wouldn't be Mary. And if she weren't Mary, Theotokos, immaculate treasure of virginity, spiritual paradise of the second Adam, then Jesus wouldn't be Jesus. She'd just be a woman, and he'd be a lunatic. It's an analogy that isn't just ignorant; it's actually blasphemous.

The nature of Mary, her threefold perfection -- disposition, sanctification and ends -- of which the second perfection excels the first and the third the second, is evidence of the divinity of Jesus. You simply can't use her in abortion hypotheticals, because then she'd just be some yutz.

You can't ask "What if Mary chose wrong?" It's like saying, "Imagine you're Superman, but you don't have any superpowers." Or, "What if you were invisible, but everyone could see you." It doesn't work as an example. It cancels itself out.

Mary, Conqueror of Sin, workshop of the union of Christ's two natures, marketplace of the saving exchange, bridal chamber in which the Word was wedded to the flesh, was incapable of making a mistake.

Which, by the way, is not the same as not having a choice.

She has no place, even anecdotally, in this debate. Here case is by definition atypical. Even Chuck Norris should be able to process that.

There's got to be a simpler way to insult women and deprive them of their reproductive rights.

If you want to put the Bible in schools but you think Mary might have aborted Jesus, if she didn't have to pay for it, you don't get to talk anymore. You are disinvited from an opinion on theology. You don't get to put toilet paper in the boys' room.

You're not a Christian. You're just an asshole. We get that a lot.


[the link to the original Huffington Post column, reprinted here in full]

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I Know Now Why You Cry

I saw Terminator Salvation this past weekend.

Let us forget Christian Bale's distractingly-awful growl-speak. Let us forget his widely-disseminated tirade against the movie's director of photography. Let us forget McG's atrocious track record. Let us forget the previous installment in the Terminator franchise.

I went to see the movie, despite the onboard warning siren--and on one of my two days off in the last three weeks, no less--because I am kind of in love with the mythology of the Terminator story.

Man v. Machine. Good v. Evil. Time travel. Robots. Judgment Day. Penance. Indomitable will. Chosen Ones.


The Terminator movies--the first two, anyway--are great action movies with endearing-yet-effective special effects and strong characters; they are also as close to the Bible (as far as story goes) as you can get in the movie business, in this day and age, and not doom yourself to the pseudo hell that is a Red-State Netflix shipping center.

This engrossing grander-than-thou-yet-you-are-still-somehow-integral-to-the-solution myth that both the Bible and the Terminator series propagate, this seemingly instinctive moral/emotional core of socialized humanity, this 'our fate is what we make it' life-lesson, has recently been ignorantly devoured, shat out, and finger-painted across the big screen by a vapid faux-fanboy who goes by McG, King of the Douchebags.

There is a joke in the film industry that goes like this:

"We'll fix it in post."

It is the easiest way to pass the buck and let somebody else fix your mistakes so you can just keep chugging along. Well, Mr. McG, there is at least one thing that is IMPOSSIBLE to fix in post--story. Busted!

The franchise, sadly, has now been sullied beyond redemption and I genuinely hope the powers that be choose to halt pre-production on the already-in-the-works fifth installment (again with McG at the helm, despite atrocious reviews and lackluster box-office receipts) for whatever reason they choose--financial prudence, artistic integrity, boredom, death, distraction by images of Meghan Fox...choose your poison, gentlemen--I'll be right there to guide it down your gullet, if you could just sign this pesky legal document first...


It was bad enough that in Terminator and T2--easily the best of the four Terminator movies--the time travel gimmick (among other things) never really held any water:

So let's see...John Connor sent someone back in time to fuck his mother and be his own father...but how did he exist if he hadn't yet sent somebody back in time? Are we in the middle of an endless circle? If it's an endless circle...then who cares what happens?

And then Mr. Connor had to send back a hijacked Terminator to protect himself from a better Terminator...why didn't he just send back the whole army and destroy SkyNet?

Why didn't SkyNet simply send an army of T1000s to eliminate the young John Connor, instead of just one?

Why did none of these uber-advanced Terminators have onboard weaponry? Laser beams? Guns? Did the computers not realize this would help?

How could humanity ever actually hope to survive against ruthless, computer-accurate, relentless killing machines in control of the infrastructure of the entire globe, even if they really wanted it real bad-like?

As an audience, we forgave these gray areas, these troubling questions, because, ultimately, the movies were so fucking kick-ass it didn't matter; you didn't think about such things in the theater--you only thought about them later on, lying awake at night, alone with your thoughts, your mind racing, trying to make sense of it all, trying to work out the proof.

T2, as it played, simply became a battle between two robots--one good, one evil--over the fate of the prodigal son, the savior and future heart and soul of humanity--John Connor.

As such, the otherwise-high concepts became accessibly low-tech--fistfights, car chases, gunshots, metal-fisted punches, etc. It was not all that different from Die Hard or Rambo, which shared the unbelievability factor--you knew no man alive could live through such an affair, survive such blows, such wounds; no enemy alive would be so inaccurate with a gun, etc. You just didn't care.

Terminator Salvation has sadly blown the lid off such audience concessions.

This movie was like the worst combination of Terminator, Back to the Future, Empire Strikes Back, Road Warrior, and Total Recall imaginable--there was not a single scene in this movie that did not make me either cringe or voice objection on a matter of complete factual idiocy or glaring internalized plot/character contradiction.


But let's not jump to conclusions here, folks. Maybe I'm just an idiot. Maybe there is a rational explanation for the rampant flaws in this movie.

I put it to you, McG--


Ten concerns of mine with which you must deal:

1. Okay, so, the machines are so fucking bloodthirsty and vicious and invincible that there's only like a hundred people left in the United States and they don't venture out at night, live in caves underneath abandoned 7-11s, avoid playing the radio, etc, but John Connor can shoot flares into the sky and engage in a prolonged hail-of-gunfire-and-explosives firefight with Marcus Wright and NOT ONE Terminator or drone or enemy aircraft or anything will even come by to sniff around or drop an atomic bomb? Beyond that, NOT ONE character involved in this affair even voices concern about giving away the position of their resistance unit's headquarters? That is just too ridiculous.

2. How does everyone have batteries to listen to radios? Did the computers/robots program their nuclear bombs to avoid destroying all the battery warehouses / convenience stores? Come to think of it, how are there cars and gasoline trucks and airplane hangars and entire Air Force fleets left? Was there a total fucking nuclear holocaust or not?

3. The Terminators are nearly invincible. SkyNet manufactures easily a dozen a day in their Silicon Valley factory, and yet we see less than a dozen in the entire movie. Why is their headquarters not crawling with them? Why do they not roam the plains of our fair nation? Why are they so easily beaten by children? Why do they never follow their primary target when he needs a breather? (ie, the scene toward the end, when the Arnold Terminator, sans skin, fails to follow John Connor through the hole in the wall for a good ten minutes of really shitty exposition)

4. So, the obligatory Sexy Asian Chick Who Kind-of Kicks Ass But Ultimately Needs a Man/Robot to Save Her from Being Gang-Raped has somehow managed to thus far avoid her otherwise immediately-post-holocaust fate of becoming a brutalized sex slave to all the dudes left on Earth. Okay, I'm with you, maybe she got lucky, but...after we witness one in what I can only imagine to be a series of close calls...she immediately falls in love with her savior/half-Terminator Sam Worthington and makes the cheesiest move on him ("I'm cold...") and then actually utters this line: "It's so hard to find a good man these days..."???
Gag me with a Terminator dick and blow my head off, Regis!

5. Why does the Arnold Terminator not melt in the molten metal flow that envelops him in the Terminator assembly room? It was enough to eliminate him and the T1000 in T2, yet the clunky, Bret Rattner-esque 'homage' of lava and liquid nitrogen both fail to destroy the Arnold in this one? Does not compute.

6. Why is this movie so much like Empire Strikes Back? The new Star Trek stole a lot from Star Wars, now Terminator Salvation borrows heavily from the second installment in the trilogy. Darth Vader leads Luke into a trap, letting him get into the Death Star too easily; SkyNet leads John Connor into a trap, letting him get into their headquarters too easily. In both, 'Our Hero' escapes, but barely. In Empire, it is believable; in Terminator Salvation, it is ridiculous.

7. John Connor knows the Terminators well--he's known them since he was a kid, after all. He knows that they can be good, if programmed properly. Yet he cannot understand that Marcus Wright could be good, could be unaware, could be a human half-transformed? He doesn't even think to ask about his earlier human existence? No time! More action scenes!
Mr. Connor also knows that punching a Terminator would do nothing but break your hand--and yet he must punch a Terminator's face at least three times in this movie. Not only does his hand never break, but Mr. Connor never seems to learn the lesson he already knew--a fucking BULLET, a fucking MISSILE, a fucking LAVA FLOW, and, yes, also a punch, will not stop this futuristic killer robot. And yet he tries, instead of searching quickly for a better weapon, instead of running away a bit sooner...

8. Apparently, nothing will stop John Connor, either. Not vicious robotic snakes in the river that greatly outnumber him, not multiple Terminators throwing him against metal walls, not bullets to the torso, not a metal pole as wide as his heart puncturing said heart... Really?

9. And enough with the goddamn confused Christ analogies already. How many resurrections must we witness? How many times must these robots die for our sins? Does every movie have to end with a robot giving his 'life' for mankind? Spare me.

Also, who above the age of 4 doesn't realize that a heart transplant is not an easy thing to do, especially with one doctor--of questionable skill/education, of questionable identity (who is she, other than a pregnant woman who kisses John Connor? Why should I give a shit about her when she moons for the camera?), who may or may not be pregnant with somebody's baby or a robot or a snake or something--who is forced to perform the surgery off-the-cuff in the middle of a DESERT?!!
Oh, but don't worry, Mr. Hissy-Fit, Mr. Picky-with-the-Details--the Terminators can't find humans if they're underneath a desert-camouflage net and it doesn't matter what blood type a heart-donor is and of course a self-aware computer trying to eliminate the human race with nuclear bombs would fail to destroy extravagant heart-transplant machinery only found in major hospitals in the largest cities...these things don't matter in McG's world! All that matters is the half-robot man gives his life for John Connor--isn't it awesome?! Jesus is saved! Humanity is saved! Carry on! Buy the DVD, too!

10. The opening sequence in the prison, between Sam Worthington and Helena Bonham Carter, was the worst fucking piece of trash I've seen on the silver screen in a looooooong time. For those of you who haven't seen it, I will summarize:

Sam Worthington: "I won't sign that paper. Because of me people died--I must be destroyed. Wait--I change my mind--I'll do it for a cancer-soaked kiss. Hmm--so that's what death tastes like. Let's move! Huh, now it's the future and I am suddenly in a position to redeem my entire existence..."

Helena Bonham Carter: "Do it. Please. It will be good for stuff. No? Shit. Yes? Great. I will return later on in the movie, to tell you what a fool you were to trust me--look how scary and untrustworthy I looked! Btw, I died of cancer, which is totally irrelevant. Anyway, back to the stupid action sequence where it took Arnold ten minutes to find Christian Bale after he climbed through a hole in the wall..."

Okay, enough bitching for now--I'm bringing myself down.

Let's just raise a glass to the gods of culture, entertainment, and knowledge, and hope one of McG's assistants (poor souls) has the courage to respond in his honor.

Until then, stay cool, Planet Earth!


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