The Unspoken Evil In the Housing Market, Country

(photo courtesy Sally Ryan/New York Times)

The New York Times printed an article today about the house next door to that of the Obamas (pictured above) being put on the market recently. It was an interesting article for many reasons, but hidden amidst the facts and figures is a phenomenon that is sadly not getting enough attention:

Very few people I know--college educated, with jobs--can afford to buy a house, regardless of record-low mortgage rates and falling home prices. Some of them have settled for overpriced condos, some have moved into farm country and face ridiculous commutes, most are prepared to stay in rental apartments far longer than previous generations ever did.

This is not healthy for our country, as we are now firmly on the path to becoming a two-class nation--working-poor renters and fabulously-wealthy landlords, the modern-day equivalent of ever-toiling serfs and their wealthy land-owning lords.


For Your Consideration:

The year is 1973. The house next to the Obamas, a beautiful 17-room mansion on the south side of Chicago, sells to a young couple for $35,000. The median household income for that year was $12,051; assuming they were average, the house cost 3 times their annual salary.

The year is now 2009. In 36 years, their house is now worth in the neighborhood of $1-3 million--an increase of between 28 and 85 times the original purchase price and a fabulously lucrative investment. In 2006 (the last year figures are available), the median household income was $58,407; the same house would now cost the new owner 17-51 times their annual salary.

[Also, keep in mind that the inflated 2006 figure reflects double-breadwinning households, which was not common in 1974, so the difference is even greater than it appears.]

And you wonder why so many people took out bad loans? They felt they deserved to live in a house, as hard-working, gainfully-employed couples--and they were right--but the market was such that there was actually no way they could afford to pay for one. Between greedy real estate developers, corrupt politicians, predatory bankers, insatiable real estate trusts, real estate speculation, and bidding wars, prices became artificially, unsustainably high. Wannabe homeowners forced their hand and they lost. Big time.

The Man: 9,941,994, Men: 0.


Meanwhile, the bleeding doesn't stop there, of course.

Real wages (adjusted for inflation) have remained stagnant since 1974, despite enormous increases in productivity and work hours. In other words, while costs have risen dramatically, you are making the same amount--or, in most cases, less--than your father did in 1974, when gas was $0.55 a gallon and a beer at a ballpark cost ten cents. A beer at a recent LA Dodger game set me back $12, or 1/12 of my daily take-home pay.

In the last 36 years, health care costs have skyrocketed, retirement benefits have dwindled or disappeared, and the cost of a private university education has gone from $10,000 a year to $32,000 a year (for public universities, costs have increased 37% in the last 10 years alone).


How are we supposed to live like this? How are intelligent people who have a soul--and, therefore, did not become shady bankers, selfish corporate executives, or lawyers--supposed to afford to buy a house somewhere that could be classified as 'non-bumblefuck?'

Homeowners’ equity fell to 41.4 percent of the total value of household real estate at the end of the first quarter of 2009. This percentage has decreased sharply since the end of 2005. It first fell below 50 in the fourth quarter of 2007 – marking the first time that homeowners’ mortgage debts exceeded their equity in their homes since 1945, when the Fed’s data begins.

(source: American Institute for Economic Research)

There you have it, folks--sixty-four years of 'progress' has resulted in a net-loss of equity. Thank you, corporate America, for shipping all the wealth not in your own pockets overseas.

Are we reaching a point where intelligent, rational people are going to start moving off the grid in droves and repopulate depressed rural areas in their quest for an affordable house? Will we all have to live in factories abandoned by 'patriotic' corporations who moved all their non-executive jobs to China? Where will all these newly-rural people work? How far will they have to drive to shop somewhere that isn't evil-incarnate WalMart? How are they supposed to afford to send their children to school?

Or, since everyone has a college degree these days (thanks, University of Phoenix!) and a diploma doesn't even guarantee a job at Starbucks, will people eventually stop sending their children to college?

I know that sounds crazy, or at least illogical, but if we look at the matter honestly, and perform a simple cost/benefit analysis, at some point the costs will outweigh the benefits. Who wants to graduate college $100,000 in debt, with an ever-dwindling prospect of gainful employment and the looming fear that they will need to locate another $750,000 just to buy a house in the city they grew up in?


It wasn't even 100 years ago that most intelligent, productive people got their education in the real world, unable to afford a college education. They got menial or entry-level jobs and worked their way up from there.

However, what with unemployed PhDs fighting each other over janitorial jobs these days, another, more exotic option is becoming increasingly enticing, and probably as useful:

Formerly an option only for wealthy members of the aristocracy, these days a high-school graduate could choose--instead of going to college--to live, frugally, in a string of major European cities over a four year period, immersing him/herself in language, culture, and the arts. This would not only provide a well-rounded liberal arts education and--shockingly, but truthfully--be cheaper than attending a 4-year American college, but it also comes with free, top-o-the-line health care! Invent a time machine and sign me up!

Time to dust off your Grand Tour brochures, travel agents!
(If the Internet didn't kill you all slowly...)


You may think this is all a joke. You may think these ideas are radical, ridiculous, and ill-informed. You may be right, you may be wrong, but the way I see it, this is the very real, human side of the matter, one that is rarely discussed in the media, or over the dinner table.

The exorbitant cost of a comfortable, quality life in the United States these days--now more unattainable than ever--is the dubious result of three main factors:

1. Decades of unnecessary, harmful real estate speculation by wealthy American freelance speculators, deep-pocketed real estate trusts, investment organizations, and corporations.
2. The insatiable hunger for profit that defines the modern corporation.
3. The fact that our government has failed to act on behalf of its less-moneyed-yet-vastly-more-numerous constituents, failed to step in with laws/oversight/restrictions, and is therefore complicit in allowing the situation to spiral out of control.

For all their blustery talk about America being the richest and most powerful nation on Earth, the rich and greedy oligopoly has created a country its own hard-working citizens can barely afford to live in.

What, may I ask, is the benefit of that, aside from the pieces of silver lining their pockets?

_

Where the Wild Things Are

Spike Jonze has been working on his latest movie, Where the Wild Things Are, since 2003. At this point, I've heard so many rumors about how bad it is, how awesome it is, that it's dead, that it's alive, the movie has taken shape in my mind as some sort of impossible, mythical task, with Jonze as Sisyphus.

I expected to forget all about Spike Jonze, gradually, as he edited and re-edited, shot and re-shot the movie behind closely-guarded doors, and slowly grow old. One day in my silver-fox old age, I would randomly hear about his passing, curiously read through the obituary, and hear tale of his "unfinished masterpiece," which some tearful friend or family member, of course, will say "probably killed him, sucked the life right out of him."


At this point, the similarities to Charlie Kaufman's directorial effort, Synecdoche, New York--about a director whose last play is a life-consuming spiral into the depths of his own mind--are startling, if also, thankfully, a bit premature.

You see, after numerous script difficulties, technical problems, battles with studio executives, cost over-runs, re-shoots, and rumors...Where the Wild Things Are is finally set to be released October 16, 2009--six years after Jonze signed onto the project.

Curious how Warner Brothers is approaching the marketing of this potentially mind-blowing/sleep-inducing art film that has almost no plot and actually made kids cry in a test screening? Dig into this:

Where the Wild Things Are seems sure to appeal to the sensibilities of a certain cohort of urban young adults — the type who read comic-book novels and wear skateboard sneakers; who might concur with a note I saw one day scrawled on a legal pad in Jonze’s office: “There is no difference between childhood and adulthood.”

Finding an audience beyond that demographic, though, may well pose a challenge to Warner’s marketing department, which is trying to position the movie as a family-friendly film for kids of all ages. They have adopted a broad-based strategy to lure children into the theater, buying advertising on Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network. They’ll also be making a special effort to reach what one executive described to me as “hip, tastemaker” kids: Ugg will be selling a special “Where the Wild Things Are” kids’ boot, and Urban Outfitters has a collection of “Where the Wild Things Are” T-shirts and shadow puppets. [emphasis mine]

(courtesy NYTimes.com)

Uggs, overpriced Urban Outfitter T-shirts, and shadow puppets? That's the extent of their guerilla advertising operation? Uggs? Really? The only I could think of more stupid than that would be shadow puppets.

Damn, those marketing dogs over at Warner Brothers are clueless. Just because some 12 year-old girl's wearing stopped-being-cool-years-ago boots with the title of a weird kids' movie stamped on them does not make anybody want to go see that movie. Some dorky kid playing with shadow puppets by himself in his room is not going to convince anyone to see that movie. People will go see the movie if it looks good.

What some people fail to understand, despite the fact that they are often well-paid professionals who studied marketing in college, is that name recognition and appeal are two very different things.


Commercials, newspaper ads, billboards, bus-shelters, decal-wrapped train cars, entire buildings painted like a poster, napkins at Starbucks, battery-operated toothbrushes shaped like the characters...studio marketing machines would rather spend $100 million to bully cultural weaklings into seeing a movie than spend that money to make the movie better, or to make three other movies that might be worth making, might earn them a dark-horse hit.

If the film business is a gamble--and it most certainly is--then you're better off throwing as many darts as you can at that board, rather than one really expensive one with a high risk of hitting the box office public like a big turd in the face.

But what do I know? I'm just a mook. See you at the theater. Maybe.

_

A turd by any other name would smell as shitty

Bernie Madoff does Lebanon!

Sort of:

The money disappeared, judicial authorities say, in a billion-dollar pyramid scheme that has riveted [Lebanon]. Its mastermind, a businessman named Salah Ezzedine, was charged with fraud on Saturday and is being called the “Lebanese Bernie Madoff" in local newspapers. Bankers say it is the biggest fraud of its kind this country has ever seen.

But the dollar figures have drawn less attention here than Mr. Ezzedine’s close links with Hezbollah, the militant Shiite movement. Many of the investors — mostly Shiites living in Beirut and southern villages like this one — say those party links were the reason they chose to risk their hard-earned savings with a man who offered 40 and 50 percent profits but never showed any paperwork.

(courtesy NYTimes.com)

The important thing to note here is that the bold and embarrassing financial crimes of Bernie Madoff and Salah Ezzedine share at least two fundamental similarities:

1. Victims risked money they couldn't afford to lose, greedy for the suspiciously high rates of return they were promised (40-50%? Come on, Lebanon...). This violates the first rule of gambling--never bet what you can't afford to lose. I feel no remorse for these victims who lost everything. They were stupid and greedy and paid the price. Lesson learned. Maybe instead of going on vacation this year, or eating, they can instead read through their religious text of choice and fill their stomachs with the fruit of divine wisdom.

2. Victims took it on faith--literally--that everything was kosher, that their money was safe because they invested it with an affable man who shared their religious beliefs.

I hope at least a few of the victims of both schemers take this as a sign that maybe faith isn't all it's cracked up to be. Religion offers no shelter from evil--indeed, religions shelter far more evil than they repel.


With that in mind, it is a sad truth that religion and politics are inescapably entwined. Religion is the opiate of the people, as Karl Marx wisely wrote. It is one of the major sources of power for the ruling class and enables it to dominate the political playing field despite being woefully outnumbered by the downtrodden. I would argue religion is the most powerful political weapon there is, the more-realistic equivalent of mass hypnosis.

If the people are cowed into obeying their ministers, be it out of fear or respect, and the ministers are in the pocket of the ruling party, then the rulers control the people. Those minorities whose beliefs stray from the party line are generally ignored until they are perceived as a threat, as an organization that might one day decide to put their own king in power, burn down parliament and instigate riots, or even just take control of the purse strings.

Pagans are burned at the stake, Christians are fed to lions, Jews are loaded into ovens, Muslims are wrongfully imprisoned, tortured, and killed in unnecessary wars...why?

Control. If you do not belong to the ruling religion and you are numerous, you are a dangerous faction operating outside of their control and you must be eliminated.

These days, fear among the ruling class is so pervasive that even irreligious intellectuals are being persecuted in the fashion of dangerously-popular religious minorities. These intellectuals, as always, are not drinking the Kool Aid--they are aware of all the bullshit that goes on in our government, all the bullshit corporations are able to get away with, and how deliberately misleading political leaders and corporate media are. They spread politically dangerous information, organize themselves into collectives and prepare to inform ignorant people of the truth by peacefully protesting corrupt political agendas, only to be either preemptively detained or immediately swarmed by riot police on-site and wrongfully imprisoned for days on end, with no charges brought, freed only when the G8/IMF/RNC gathering is over.

Yes, ruling fatcats, 'tis best to keep the people ignorant, fat, and gullible--but we know it is that double-edged sword of gullibility that is your Achilles heel, hence your too-strict control of information and free speech, hence our frequent attempts to inform.


Bringing it back to religion for a minute, it is important to note that Karl Marx was not the first to compare religion to opium, though he was certainly the most direct. Check out the following passage from the Marquis de Sade's 1797 novel, L'Histoire de Juliette:

Though nature lavishes much upon your people, their circumstances are strait. But this is not the effect of their laziness; this general paralysis has its source in your policy which, from maintaining the people in dependence, shuts them out from wealth; their ills are thus rendered beyond remedy, and the political state is in a situation no less grave than the civil government, since it must seek its strength in its very weakness. Your apprehension, Ferdinand, lest someone discover the things I have been telling you leads you to exile arts and talents from your realm. You fear the powerful eye of genius, that is why you encourage ignorance. This opium you feed your people, so that, drugged, they do not feel their hurts, inflicted by you. And that is why where you reign no establishments are to be found giving great men to the homeland; the rewards due knowledge are unknown here, and as there is neither honor nor profit in being wise, nobody seeks after wisdom.

I have studied your civil laws, they are good, but poorly enforced, and as a result they sink into ever further decay. And the consequences thereof? A man prefers to live amidst their corruption rather than plead for their reform, because he fears, and with reason, that this reform will engender infinitely more abuses than it will do away with; things are left as they are.

Left as they are, indeed. Sound eerily familiar to the situation we see today?

A Democratic majority in the California legislature can't pass a budget because the Republican minority refuses to cooperate, refuses to raise any taxes, and, unlike any other state in the country, a 2/3 majority is required to pass a budget.

When do 2/3 of politicians agree on anything other than going to war for no reason, lest they be scalped by illiterate, drunken Southern idiots?

Meanwhile, U.S. Senators are acting like children and doing everything they can to block change for the better, in the health care realm and every other realm you can imagine. Their plan is clearly to prevent ANY legislation from taking place, in order to claim in the next election that "Democrats are pussies who didn't do anything with a sitting President and a Congressional majority. Vote for me because I believe in God, I think your sons should die on foreign soil somewhere so my oil stocks will skyrocket, I will increase spending while cutting taxes, and I believe in God, dontcha know..."

Meanwhile, they are being picked off one-by-one in bigamist/nymphomaniac/pederast sex scandals, each more sordid than the one before. Praise Jesus!


Even OBAMA had to pretend to be religious in order to become president. Everyone I know cringed when he referred to God in one of his speeches (I can't remember which one, but it was in the heat of the race, when he clearly needed the stupid vote to carry him into office) because we viewed him as one of us--the first President in recent memory who is smart and capable and has no regard for the control-mechanism-bullshit that is religion.

Was he just posing? Was he serious? Were we wrong? We would all like to think we wouldn't, couldn't, pander to the masses as he did, but it's impossible to say. None of us have been so close to the presidency we could taste it. You know what they say about power, motherfucker--it corrupts.


The only fact available to us here is that the stupid people in America--who far outnumber the intelligent ones, obviously, sadly--will not vote for a President who is smart enough to realize religion is little more than a island of comfort in a sea of unanswered questions about our existence, little more than a tool of control exerted over weak minds, because not only does the fear of the unknown scare them nearly to death, but it would mean that they were wrong and dumb and have been wasting a lot of time in church.

As the Marquis said far more eloquently, all these people want to do is operate humbly, peacefully, within a system they never even care to understand--that is why they are so easily manipulated and why the world is the way it is these days.


Some day soon--hopefully in my lifetime, so I can have the pleasure of watching Rome burn--activist intellectuals will realize revolt is the only answer and act accordingly. Remember: we outnumber the people in charge!

Will we win? You never know. We can certainly give 'em a good fight, but we might wind up needing a meteor on our side, just to make sure of things. It'll be hard for any surviving enemies to care about interest rates, environmental raping, and corporate tax subsidies when Wall Street is rubble and a war-painted, pipe-smoking professor is bringing a sledgehammer down on their nuts.

_

Are You So Old You Should You Have Your Driver's License Revoked?

Then Lexus is the automobile manufacturer for you!

A car with a talking GPS that you can pre-program 200 destinations into online? I mean, a car your grandson can program 200 destinations into online? Wait a minute--the voice tells you where to go and if you still can't figure it out, an actual person will come on the line, politely neglect to tell you how stupid you are, and tell you how to get there in a loud, measured voice?

My crystal ball is getting cloudy. You know what that means...uh-oh, here we go...

I hear a deafening conversation taking place in the front seat of a pesky, dented, diaper-scented Cadillac about to be replaced by a Lexus with EnformTM eDestinationTM technology:

"Huh?"
"I said, 'WHERE ARE WE GOING?'"
"WE'RE GOING TO MABEL'S."
"Where does Mabel live?"
"Huh?"
"WHERE DOES MABEL LIVE?"
"I thought YOU knew!"
"I DON'T REMEMBER."
"Ask the car."
"What?"
"ASK THE CAR!"
"The car? THE CAR IS AN INANIMATE OBJECT!"
"CAR: TAKE US TO MABEL'S."

Nothing happens.

"I told you so."
"Well, maybe we should get one of those Lexuses. The Joneses have one and it does whatever they tell it to do."
"FUCK THE JONESES!"

Three hours later, they arrive at Mabel's house only two miles away.

Three weeks later, they trade in the Cadillac for a Lexus and promptly drive off a bridge when the calm voice at the helm says to continue straight ahead...

Thank you, Lexus!

_

Eight-year-olds, dude.

I may be behind the times--or off my memory meds again--but check out what I just found while in a Marquis de Sade internet k-hole:

(courtesy blogs.abcnews.com)

Wow. Nice. I love it when a silver-haired old pervert says LOL and uses 'your' incorrectly. It's a real turn on--makes me wanna go down to the junior high, get some kids drunk, and fuck some unsuspecting ass! Woo! Hypocritical Republican Roman Catholics rule!


In case you were curious, I found the above article while reading this gem.

_

Will the Real Jay Leno Please Stand Up?

It's unfortunate that Kanye West's first public appearance post-VMA-blunder happened to be an already-scheduled appearance on Jay Leno's new, for lack of a better word, show. Has that guy ever given a good interview?

I can think of about 10,000 people I'd rather hear coax a worthless apology (either you got class or you don't) out of Chicago's most arrogant rapper. Letterman? Conan? Jon Stewart? My mailman?

I would rather see Kanye interviewed by somebody impersonating Leno than by Leno himself. What does that say about a fella?

I'll tell ya what it says--it says that fella is broke. Not financially, of course, since he continues to make millions due to his traction with the Alzheimer's set, but charisma-wise, intelligence-wise, humor-wise--broke.

But you probably already know all this.

What you may not know, however, is how morally broke Jay Leno is. Read on...

The guy pulls down over $25 million a year and loves cars. He has anywhere from 50-100 of them, plus almost as many motorcycles. He keeps them in an airplane hangar he adorably refers to as his 'garage' and employs 3-5 full-time mechanics to keep his fleet running smoothly.

Bottom line: When Jay Leno sees a car he wants, he buys it.

Unless that car is a rarity worth $1.2 million and the 90-something owner not only suffers from dementia, but also has no intention of selling him the car.

In that instance, Mr. Leno will simply conspire to swindle the old man out of the car, with the eager assistance of the manager of the Manhattan garage where the car was stored for fifty years.

The story goes like this:

A 1931 Duesenberg, but not the one in question

Jay had been trying to buy the car for years. He stored some cars in the same Manhattan garage in which the other rich guy stored some of his. Every time he walked past it, he wanted it even more...but the old prick wouldn't sell!

Conveniently, the owner of the 1931 Duesenberg, an heir to the Macy's fortune (of course), was unknowingly behind on his payments, so one day the garage manager sent a letter of warning that said if he did not pay his bill, the car would be auctioned off.

The owner promptly sent a check for $20,000 and the garage manager sneakily credited the money to some other cars held in a different garage owned by the same company. He then auctioned off the car to the only invited bidder, Jay Leno, who paid a relatively meager $180,000 for the automotive gem--over $1 million less than it was worth.

The old man never realized what happened and quickly kicked the bucket. Once his heirs swooped in and discovered part of their expected inheritance missing, all hell broke loose. They found out about the sham auction and immediately sued Jay Leno, the manager of the garage, and the company that owns the garage.

Three days later, the manager of the garage drove out to his summer home, parked his pick-up truck in the driveway, and put a bullet in his brain.

Guilt's a bitch.

Unless you're Jay Leno, that is. In his world, nothing has changed. Doritos for breakfast, Doritos for lunch, tool out to Burbank in a million-dollar car your employees refurbished for you, read a bad monologue your writers wrote for you, poorly interview two guests, laugh at your own jokes more than anyone else ever does, jerk-off in the shower, cry about how you have no friends, sleep, repeat.

He probably doesn't even remember anything about the entire affair, Bush-White-House-style. He probably never even thought he was in the wrong, figured the car belonged to him because he could figure out a way to get it, to game the system.

I'm sure his lawyers will postpone the trial for years, then appeal for still more years, and finally have his accountant cut a check for some small settlement to the only heir still hanging on for the fight, American-justice-style.

Welcome to the world of the megarich assholes, Jay! You and Kanye will get along splendidly.


Don't believe me? Read this. I couldn't find the original article I read last year, but this explains enough...

_

Words to Live By

"And if there's anything I can do to help Taylor in the future or help anyone, I want to live this thing. It's hard sometimes, so."

--Kanye West

I'm sure by now you have all heard about Kanye West grabbing the microphone from some tween-wet-dream country singer and intimating that Beyonce should have won the award instead, so I will shy away from the facts of the matter and get right to the giblets:

Kanye has always been arrogant--I once watched him exit a custom gull-wing Mercedes sports car, walk the red carpet as his friend inched the car alongside him, then climb back behind the wheel and leave the party--and I doubt he has many friends aside from the eternally-wandering ghost of his deceased mother, but what exactly got into him Sunday night and made him unleash his inner asshole on the national stage like that?

Who's to say, really, but it might have been Hennessey:

West's appearance on Monday's prime-time premiere of "The Jay Leno Show" capped a 24-hour period that began Sunday evening with him strolling down the red carpet at New York's Radio City Music Hall while gulping from a bottle of Cognac.

Wow. I would respect that bottle-toting move if it hadn't resulted in such classlessness. Ballsy. I don't even think ole Jack would have tried that one in his heyday...

But any man who "[wants] to live this thing" needs to find a way to move on, to turn the tide back in your favor. As such, Kanye has since apologized several times, in multiple media, and for the most part blames it all on the death of his mother two years ago and not taking enough time off work (no mention of the cognac or his congenital prickishness). Classy once more.

The entertainment industry being the way it is, however, I'm sure it won't be long before the country darling takes him up on his vague, mumbling offer to "help [her] in the future or help anyone."

Methinks we should prepare to be bombarded in a fortnight's time by a nursery-rhyme-caliber country song about Twittering a cute boy, backed by some random beats Kanye steals from Daft Punk. Heal me, clueless music industry! Heal me! LOL!

_

Postapocalypse Now?

I realize it's no surprise to those of us 'in the know,' since we know everything, wink, wink, but for the rest of y'all, recognize:

A depressed relic of a mining community in Bumble, Kansas, is little more than a gasping ghost town full of toxic poor people crying for help. There is no work. There is nothing to do. Everybody in town wants to go anywhere else. The Earth may as well be salted.

Don't believe me? Peep this:

The Mayor of Treece

This is what the Mayor of Treece, Kansas, has to say:

Mayor Bill Blunk sees no reason for sugar-coating his opinion when asked to describe this town.

“It’s dead,” he said. “Wasted land.”

Almost anywhere else on the map, such bluntness could cost a politician re-election. But not here. Mr. Blunk has the near-unanimous support of the population, 140 people or so, who are perhaps singular among residents of municipalities in that they all want out of theirs.

“I’d be happy to go as anyone,” said Randall Barr, a retired sand company worker. “You can’t do anything with this land. What good is it?”

“My father was one of the last miners,” Glenda Powell said. “He died of cancer, and so did my mom — bad lungs. This has always been home, and I don’t know where we’d go, just a place where we can breathe.”

(courtesy NYTimes.com)

What the fuck? Is this the dust bowl? What year is this? Is the reanimated corpse of John Steinbeck crouching in the weeds over there, gleefully jotting notes for Grapes of Wrath 2: A Zombie Tale? Is this all part of some twisted, evil-mastermind/New-York-art gallery-director's plan to amass a treasure trove of fresh, achingly expressive black+white portraits of poor people to sell to rich people for a blushing profit?

But what shall become of the babbittry? Where are their Republican saviors on white horses, sworn to protect the rights of poor people everywhere to be poor enough and dumb enough to trust them implicitly and never revolt, but never so poor that they might organize and try something drastic?

It not being an election year, I suppose those jowly heroes are just too busy accepting bribes, lying with each breath, contaminating the environment, cheating on their wives and constituents, being hypocritical, and childishly impeding necessary change to care too much about 140 unemployed Kansans in a state they always win anyway.

The great Strom Thurmond's protege, GOP Congressman Joe Wilson

The people of Treece (which just sounds like some city-state in a Greek tragedy, doesn't it?) have naught to do but sit idly on their dilapidated porches chewing inedible objects, unsure of how to respond to the neglect:

What the F?! Never saw this horseshit coming. Thankfully, I'm in a position where, despite the fact that I am destitute and living in a veritable fire swamp, I can easily ignore it all, watch NASCAR, and somehow still pack on the pounds. It is even easier than I thought to turn a deaf ear to that small voice in the back of my stunted brain, shouting into the wind, 'wait--why aren't they doing anything, those capable, loving, God-fearing-when-convenient men and women in charge? They promised to look after me if I voted for them! Can't they get out here and kiss some babies, airlift in some powdered milk, distribute free toaster ovens, pose for a few triumphant photos, and make me feel less unhappy/guilty/greedy/fat?'

Well, come on, little voices in the back of the brains of Treecians--stop asking for so much. Let us give those tireless public servants the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it's not their fault. Maybe the Republicans could devote a few minutes of their time to defend the common man if that pesky colored fella wasn't wasting all their time trying to help the little man in the health care game, forcing them to fight tooth and nail for the sake of their obscenely wealthy, fearful financial base...


Which brings me to my point--perhaps without realizing it, we are living in a post-apocalyptic world, populated with near-neanderthals and ruled by untrustworthy, blood-sucking, survivalist assholes. Maybe it was a slow burn and we didn't even feel it, but here we are, suddenly realizing we just got off a ride, our minds reeling post-involuntary-extraction from the Matrix.

What the fuck is going on? How did we get here? After untold centuries of incessant labor, how is it we are not all able to finally just chill out, sleep in, spend our afternoons sitting in cafes philosophizing as our money effortlessly multiplies, and go home to write a hit play, then watch it in the national theater next week with our old college buddies and begin a torrid affair with the blossoming prima donna?

Why have we allowed ourselves to arrive at a point in time where I would rather live in the past than the future? When was the last time so many intelligent people felt this way? During the Plague? Why have we created a world inhabited by more sandwich artists than real artists?

Word to all you ostriches out there: shit sucks and it is not getting better. It's every man for himself. Primal shit. You want my advice, get yourself a piece of land, a tent, a couple hundred Bic lighters, some Cheetos, and an arsenal that would make Dick Cheney blush. When you see three flares in the night sky, it's time to storm the Bastille. It's the only way to enact any real change, for better or worse. Trust me.

Hey--before you go, I'll trade you 42 shiny things for that one little can of soup and that jerk mag in your backpack. Deal?

_

But whatever is a dandy to wear?

Embarrassed by your too-fancy hat in 'these economic times?'

As Michael Jackson would say, 'you are not alone.'

"...modesty has been a byword this recession, and baseball caps are no exception. Consumers are opting for Corollas over Cadillacs, Formica kitchen counters over granite and, it turns out, hats with traditional designs over garish ones."

(courtesy nytimes.com)

Sure, that makes total sense--the 10% decline in sales of garish hats must be because consumers "don't want to look too rich and fancy" in these Great Depressiony times. I mean, can you imagine the embarrassment if somebody realized you were wearing a brand-new $35 hat that was really ugly, rather than a brand-new $35 hat that was really plain?

My balls shrivel in fear of that day.

I wonder if anybody at New Era/NYTimes has considered the fact that the steep drop in sales might instead have something to do with people "buying less shit they don't need cuz they broke."

1 in 10 people in this country are fucking unemployed.

But, for the sake of argument, let's assume New York Times reporter Ken "Boring" Belson did his homework and the numbers don't lie--people are buying less-garish hats because they are poor.

Is this the first good news to come out of the financial crisis?

The hick in me is, for some reason, angered by this news. It almost makes him want to staple some hot-pink tassels onto a (traditional) Cubs hat and parade down the filthy, desolate sidewalks of Wall Street, preening himself in the smudged windowpanes of the once-mighty Goldman Sachs, making Indian battle cries, and waving a gun around.

There are, after all, some rights that are gloriously unalienable, you fucking terrorists.

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Asian Arnold?

Check out the rest of these cool movie posters from Ghana.

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Caption Contest #1

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High Hopes, Dashed

**Warning: A multitude of spoilers lie ahead. Proceed with caution.**

District 9 was a movie I wanted to see and expected to like--a rare occurrence these days--because I read somewhere that its story centered on an alien/human relationship that is seems, oddly, nobody had thought of before: aliens come to Earth and become our prisoners. That sounds to me like a fascinating concept rife with opportunity for social commentary, character exploration, and killer action.

Sadly, the whole shebang falls apart almost immediately. Rather than casting the aliens as peaceful and docile, which would render them easy victims, inspire compassion, and highlight their captors' senseless cruelty, first-time writer/director Neill Blomkamp instead chose to portray the aliens as powerful, temperamental, violent creatures who possess weapons humans are neither able to use nor understand.

Adding insult to injury, Blomkamp proceeded to make at least SEVEN other unforgivable mistakes:

1. For some reason, the aliens were allowed to bring their advanced weaponry with them as they were helicoptered out from their monstrous spaceship and placed in an internment camp, including a giant killer robot that must have taken a dedicated helicopter trip. Why on Earth would the South African military allow this to happen? Armed prisoners? Assuming they had their insane reasons, why did the aliens not use these weapons to escape? Why would they rather trade them to a Nigerian thug in a wheelchair for cans of cat food when they could simply point a laser cannon at his head and demand everything for free?

2. The alien known as Christopher--the one who wears a tattered red Michael Jackson vest so that we know who he is--leaves behind the fuel tube he has been working on for 20 years when the military bangs on the door to his friend's house. He then waltzes out of there and into his own house...why didn't he just take the fuel tube with him and hide it in the spaceship under his shack that nobody will notice until it takes off? Oh yeah, I know why--otherwise the protagonist, Wikus, wouldn't have been able to get his hands on it and kick the plot into gear.

3. On that note, when the highly-unlikable, bumbling idiot that is Wikus accidentally squirts himself in the face with the fuel tube, it begins trnasforming him into an alien--starting inexplicably with his hand. First off, why would the alien fuel have transformative properties? Advanced bio-technology aside, what possible use would this have had for them? And why does Wikus' hand change first, aside from the fact that this allowed him to fire their weapons and become a potential asset to the military contractor? It makes no sense.

4. Once Wikus teams up with Christopher and decides to invade MNU headquarters, he is able to gain access to secure levels of the building with his passcode, including the secret research floor he never knew about until he was dragged in the day before as a scientific experiment. Why would his passcode not have been deactivated when he became a vengeful mutant on the lam? Why would his code have ever gained him access to a room whose mere existence was clearly above his pay grade? Why would the building not have gone into lock-down when the first floor was blown out by a laser cannon? Oh yeah--because Wikus had to get in there to get the fuel tube and so that Christopher could become sad upon seeing the mutilated corpses of his comrades. This is a military facility conducting top-secret research on fucking ALIENS and yet it is easier to break into than your average bank.

5. Despite the fact that neither party ever speaks the other's language, the aliens and humans are able to verbally communicate without a problem. That is far-fetched, for sure, but I'll suspend my disbelief here and take for granted that in 20 years of study, talented linguists have not only pieced together an alien language and taught it all their nation's soldiers, but have also managed to teach English to 1.8 million alien. This being the case, however, why is it that we know absolutely nothing about where the aliens are from or how they wound up floating above Johannesburg in a spaceship? These are peaceful aliens, worker-drones, as we learn in a throwaway line at some point, and the language barrier has been removed, so...nothing? Not one shred of information has been gathered and presented to us during the opening montage of catch-me-up information or during the ensuing two hours?

6. When the supposedly-long-sought command module for the spaceship that has been floating above their city for 20 years rises out of the ground on national television, no military or scientific personnel rush to the scene to investigate and/or secure the ship. The only reason this might make a lick of sense is that, twenty years ago, when the command module separated itself from the mothership and descended to Earth at a snail's pace, nobody in Johannesburg was interested enough to pay attention to where it landed. In light of this continued disinterest in the spaceship on the part of people in the movie, why should anybody watching the movie give two shits about it? Why not just let it return to its home planet? Oh, wait--they did. Otherwise there'd be no sequel! LOL!!!

7. The aliens are not allowed to leave their camp, yet for some reason there are signs posted explicitly stating (in English) that aliens are not allowed to use bus benches or public bathrooms. Is this not implied by their not being allowed anywhere outside their camp? I have to imagine these signs are only included as part of a flaccid attempt to relate the aliens' struggle to that of back-of-the-bus blacks in America, South Africa, and elsewhere, but the attempt is a grave failure. The situation are not the same--the aliens were not looking for acceptance. The aliens were not looking to ride on the buses and shit in the human toilets. Similarly, any attempt to compare the alien plight to that of the Jews, the slumdwellers of Brazil or India, or the plight of...anybody anywhere falls flat because no Jew or slumdog or suburbanite has the strength to tear their tormentors limb from limb in a split second or the alien laser cannon to incinerate an entire battalion of troops. Those posters made for a killer advertising campaign, though, right? Right?


As a result of its numerous, fundamental flaws, all potential real-world parallels go out the window, nothing makes any sense, and we are left with merely a hollow action movie populated by cardboard characters for whom nobody is rooting. What then, I ask, is the point of this movie?

To those of you out there who think I am being too critical, have lost my "fun gene," that I am not approaching this movie with the right attitude, I have this to say:

I know suspension of disbelief is important in an action and/or sci-fi movie. I get that. Believe it or not, I brought that to the table on this one. I suspended my disbelief and accepted that an interstellar spaceship packed with over 1 million alien life forms came to a halt over Johannesburg and instead of its occupants being killed on-sight by a terrified global military force, they were methodically airlifted to safety in a nearby internment camp over approximately 100,000 helicopter trips. From this moment on, however, the story must make sense--and it doesn't.

Unfortunately, long before we are confronted by the who-cares image of Wikus as a full-blown alien crafting flowers out of metal for his bitch of a wife, we the audience have already come to terms with the fact that District 9 is not the groundbreaking, thinking-man's action movie it should have been, on par with Terminator, Aliens, Blade Runner, Star Wars, The Matrix, or Total Recall.

How disappointing. I suppose Neill Blomkamp can chalk it up to a rookie mistake, but Peter Jackson shoulda fuckin' better known better.

What's more disappointing? Neither of them will learn their lesson, everybody involved will reap millions, and an even-worse sequel will soon be inflicted upon the real-life, human worker drones that never learn their own lesson and propagate a self-destructive movie industry based purely on profits instead of merit.

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Saturday in LA

There's a homeless man outside, covered in carbuncles, walking an endless circle around our block, jabbering to whomever has a free ear and nothing better to do. He does this every day, never asking for money, but somehow always drunk or getting there.

I call him Barnacle Bill because I like to think of his face as the prow of a ship, content with its humble lot in life, wading through the muck day after day, doing as little as it takes to get by, patently unconcerned with trivial things like appearance, until the whole vessel suddenly falls to pieces one day, swallowed by the timeless sea, unacknowledged, relieved.

Like most fixtures in my neighborhood, Barnacle Bill is a lot friendlier since my girlfriend moved in and gave the fellas a little something to look at around these parts. He never used to say a word to me, but now he often interrupts his monologues to say 'Hi' as I walk past; I'd rather not think about what he says to my ladyfriend.

Even the workaholic bodega guy, Michael, has gotten friendlier. One day, Michael gave me $3 and change because he said his brother overcharged me for a bottle of vodka the day before; another time he gave me a bottle of Crown Royal and three Mexican Cokes for an IOU when my debit card wouldn't work. My girlfriend, meanwhile, not only gets handfuls of free Korean mystery candies and slightly lower prices, but also has her own private stash of Italian sodas.

Unwelcome friendliness is better than a knife to my throat, but in general I prefer to avoid the local flavor, to remain anonymous, despite my conceptual yearning for community. I suppose you have to draw the line somewhere, though--do I really want Barnacle Bill drinking a beer on my couch, in his pee-stained pants? Do I want to find out what goes on behind the curtain at the all-night Taco Psychic across the street?

I saw someone buy Barnacle Bill a beer from Michael's bodega once. I learned that Barnacle Bill only drinks good beer--Modelo--when somebody else is buying, some stir-crazy lonely soul angling for a sidewalk drinking buddy. On one such glorious evening, as she smoked on the fire escape above, Bill chatted up my girlfriend by trying to convince her that toucans live in the trees outside our building.


Phantom toucans aside, nature is everywhere out here, whether you want it or not. Confused fruit flies patrol the toaster oven, an alley cat minus a tail begs for male attention, and
the cockroach perched on my toothbrush shoots me daggers. Does he know something I don't?

Somewhere in the bowels of our building, a lap dog resumes its incessant barking and the shirtless Korean man in the building next door hocks his 400th loogie of the day. It's 7:30pm. "Welcome to the Wheel!"

There is comfort in regularity; there is also resignation.

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Not-So-Talented Cats Manage to Entertain Young Children

Well, what would YOU do with yourself if you were that ugly?

Further reading about the middling adventures of a clown and his cats

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What the fuck is this all about?

More importantly, what the fuck is that picture all about? Are only kissy-face teenage moms eligible for this program?

Is this some sort of uber-expensive, 'target demographic of one,' special-interest/family-sponsored advertising campaign/intervention to get Jamie Lynn Spears back to school or something?

Is aspiring Ross Perot Jeff Sessions behind all this malarcky?

Or is it that other Republican senator from Alabama, what's-his-face, the one who's always doodling, bored as hell, and never looks at the camera...Richard Shelby, that's his name.

[Confidential advice, pricks: throw in a free liposuction if you really want to lock it down.]

But, for now, world, I must impress upon you that this is mere hearsay--wait for Ms. Spears' rep to deny it and then you'll know it's true.

Developing story...

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The Problem with Republicans

Birthers, bankers, and ignorant health-care Hessians aside, the Republicans have a serious problem.

As many of you may have already heard, yesterday, Hillary Clinton compared Nigeria's corrupt elections with those of the United States in 2000. A bold move--and certainly an unexpected one--but not a claim wholly without merit.

The response back home:

"The Republicans eagerly jumped on [Clinton's] remarks last night, saying her trip had been full of gaffes and expressed hope she would go to Africa more often."

(courtesy guardian.co.uk)

During the eight long years George Bush was in power, his countless blunders and general stupidity left intelligent Americans shaking their heads, embarrassed by the actions of the ranking representative of our nation.

Don't believe we had a good reason to feel that way? For your consideration:



We knew we were stuck with a man we loathed, but it was salt in the wound every time he spoke in public. Our desire? To prevent him from ever going abroad; to prevent him from ever giving a speech. Silence was the only chance we had to assuage our embarrassment.

Now that, in their eyes, the tables are turned, what do the Republicans want? They want more.

Which brings us to the root of the problem:

Republicans seem only to view things politically, always searching for ammunition in an interminable war against their sworn enemies--their fellow legislators who favor informed discussion and governing over squabbling and graft.

They never react as humans, as Americans, as government officials; instead, they are Election Terminators programmed only to see RED in 2010 & 12. They hear Hillary Clinton said something that could be used against her and before they even stop to consider whether it is valid, they put on their best suit, take the Blackstone chopper to Fox studios, and put in campaign pit stop #5,004,337 in a career that consists of nothing but campaigning--for a position whose duties they never even attempt to fulfill.

The current Republican wet dream:

President Obama calls an emergency state meeting with the heads of Russia, wherein he throws his own feces at Dictator Putin and shouts for all to hear: "If you don't believe that our army is faggier and more communist than yours, then I challenge you to a war on two fronts--in the winter!" Obama immediately storms out into Red Square and is devoured on-camera by starving Russian peasants clothed in naught but layers of tattered Obama bumper stickers.

Sad but true. And you wonder why things are the way they are these days...

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"Sir, Step Away from the Weights. Slowly..."

Is it possible to arrest a man for doing too many steroids and lifting too many weights? Or can we at least put him under house-arrest so nobody has to look at his freak-show self and become gravely ill for the rest of their lives?

I mean, SHIT!

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What Is Going On Here?

Who wears a napkin and duct tape to the Grammys?

Jennifer Hudson, I guess.

Why? Is fashion.

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Sex Advice for Nerds

Tired of all them fly bitches all up on ya at Comic-Con? Can't even get down to the pharmacy for a new inhaler without fighting your way through a Berlin Wall of babes in heat? Ever wonder how you can guarantee zero female companionship?

Recognize:

1. Build a bed that looks like a Y-Wing fighter from Star Wars.
2. Sit back, relax, and watch every woman alive avoid you like a plague-ridden near-corpse hacking up a lung. Trust me--it works.

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Anyone Have Jason Bourne's Cell Number?

It cannot be mere coincidence that two years after renowned superhuman Jason Bourne hung up his balls to prance around town/have children with a saucy former Miami bartender, Europe has gone to shit.

Who's running things over there across the pond these days? Criminals, that's who:


- $15.5 million in jewelry and cash stolen from an ignorant Saudi princess visiting Italy with enough cash to buy the Pope

- $66 million in jewelry stolen in broad daylight from an unbelievably vulnerable London jewelry store that beat its own previous record of $37 million

- Russian woman pointlessly lobs coffee mug at bulletproof Mona Lisa in Paris

- Russian agents teach two Chechnyan activists a lesson; bodies found in trunk of car

Wherefore art thou so selfish, J-boy? Methinks it's high time for you to once again don the proverbial cape. Just make sure your will is in order before you leave American soil--it would kill me if any of your descendants ever had to work for a living.

Update: Bourne heeds call to arms, prepares to resume the good fight. In two years, when he is good and ready.

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Why Is Cameron Douglas So Ugly?

You know you're really something special when your freaky father or 92 year-old walking corpse of a grandfather are easier on the eyes.

No wonder the guy fell into the notoriously dead-end world of bath salts...

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Very Kind, Indeed!

After eight years of sleepless nights and near-constant regret, fortune has once again smiled upon Ma & Pa Clinton, as they recently discovered a nearly-impossible-to-locate-trust-me-they-tried Kenyan man's 2000 offer of 40 goats and 20 cows for their daughter's hand was still valid.

As elated as a Hollywood producer landing Johnny Depp for scale, President Aeternus Bill Clinton finally opened that dusty box of Cubans he's been saving since Chelsea's bittersweet sixteen and had a good long smoke with his incredulous Secret Service team.

"I bet Kim Jong-il is kicking himself now!" He laughed heartily, recalling his recent clandestine lobbying efforts in North Korea. "I told him 20 goats and a pirated Golden Girls collection was an insult, and lo and behold..."

The silver fox trailed off, unsure how to finish this sentence, a cocktail of emotions swirling beneath his regal facade.

"Well, I guess sometimes words just have their limit, my friends--and that's why the good Lord invented jazz."

And just like that, Bubba hefted his battered and bruised alto saxophone and fudged his way through some Coltrane.

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If Only Nora Ephron Was Gay

And for some reason followed 24/7 by a vigilant camera crew--I would have loved to watch footage of her hitting on her own sister in a Las Vegas mall.

While I'm wishing for things, can we also eliminate Michael, You've Got Mail, and Bewitched from the cinematic consciousness?

Thank you, Jeebus.

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The Perfect Movie?

Talk about a convergence of ideas:



Delicious cinematography, confused tweens, rebellion, escapism, VAMPIRES, John C. Reilly, Salma Hayek with a beard, that chick from 30 Rock, a wannabe Gollum...and biting comedy!!!
(excuse the pun)

Call me crazy, but I might actually go see this movie in the theater (in Week 9) while under the influence.

What? It looks hilarious! Troll 2, eat your heart out!

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As IF There Was a Virgin in 16th-Century Mexico...

It seems frightening, multi-millionaire screenwriter Joe Eszterhas has finally shaken his Showgirls curse and has a new project underway about the Virgin of Guadalupe.

While the story sounds boring beyond belief and the last person I would want to write any movie is a one-trick pony who found Jesus post-throat-cancer, I'll cut him a little slack in light of Flashdance and Basic Instinct.

After all, Paul Verhoeven followed up the Showgirls turd with the fabulous, widely-misunderstood satire Starship Troopers and then knocked it out of the park recently with Black Book--probably the only movie about WWII that I've ever enjoyed (well, besides his 1977 effort, Soldier of Orange).

But I suppose Verhoeven's oeuvre has always been far more diverse than Joey E. I guess we'll just have to hold our breath and see what happens. Start...now!

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Photos from the Front: Ed Whoredy

Finally, trailer-park beavers and douchedudes across Glendale can drink their bathtub-brewed chardonnay the way fashion fuckwad Christian Audigier wants them to--by putting money in the pockets of his ugly pants.

Not enough Ed Hardy in your life?
Try this. And this. And this. And this. And this...

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So THAT'S Why They Call It B.O...

For those of you not on the left coast, fyi, it's been hot as balls; an ideal time to seek refuge in the comforts of an ice-cold movie theater, 1920s-style.

Yet it's hard to recall a time when I was less inclined to venture out to a movie theater than this past weekend--and based on the precipitous drop in box office, it seems I wasn't alone.

But don't worry, folks--not only does notorious turdlet G.I.Joe open this Friday, but so does the long-awaited "adventures of the wishing rock," if the startlingly self-mocking poster I saw at the bus stop last night is to be believed.

Seriously?

William H. Macy, say it ain't so! I'm broke as hell, but I'll gladly sell my blood and give ya the dough til a better role comes along! You don't need this! Really! Your wife makes plenty of money on that shitty TV show anyway!


At this point, I'd rather see El Mariachi 6 starring Jack Black and Shia LaBeouf than anything else the egomaniacal Robert Rodriguez churns out at his sadly-highly-profitable, one-man movie studio...

The world doesn't need any more Steven Spielturds--one is more than enough.

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Well, Color Me Asleep!

Grey Gardens helmer Michael Sucsy will make his feature directorial debut on Goree Girls, with Jennifer Aniston headlining the true story of an all-female country band in a Texas prison in the 1940s. (courtesy Variety.com)

Jennifer Aniston in a period piece? Where she sings? Country music?

As hard as it is to imagine boring ole Jennifer Aniston doing anything that would send her to prison, it's somehow even more difficult to picture her as a musician. The closest I can come to it in my mind is her playing a boring, even-less-believable-as-a-musician version of Sheryl Crow, who is herself nearly unbelievable as a musician, despite her career.

In fact, that's probably how this whole project got started in the first place: a vehicle for Sheryl Crow. Then they discovered she can't act, so they racked their brains trying to think of an actress that looks like her.

Enter Aniston, a dead-ringer who really resonates with lonely, pissed-off women who would love to see a boring movie about a bunch of tough women playing boring music about how much men suck and how hard it is to be a woman sometimes--yet how rewarding it can be, too--in front of a prison full of other tough women, in the 1940s, when women were women.

Don't believe me? Well, check out the titles of Aniston's recent projects, which will tell you all you need to know about not only how the world perceives her, but also how she and her reps want the world to perceive her:

Derailed - The true story of her life after Brad. Or something like that.

The Break-Up - A movie about Vince Vaughn breaking up with her

Marley & Me - "In an attempt to stall Jennifer's 'biological clock', John gives her a puppy." Ouch. And she even plays herself? In a movie based on a book whose plot was clearly adapted from Clifford the Big Red Dog?

He's Just Not That Into You - The Brangelina story? The Vince Vaughn story? The John Mayer story? The Adam Duritz story?

Love Happens - If you wait long enough and lower your standards, grrrrl.

The Baster - Who needs a pesky penis when they have cooking utensils!

Getting Rid of Matthew - McConaughey?

The Divorce Party - Nothing wrong with being single, bitches! It's fun! Let's have a party! Men don't define us!

Pumas - I guess Cougars was already taken. LOL! So clever!


But, alright, back to this Goree Girls mess.

This project has been in development at DreamWorks for years, was based on a newspaper article, and has already chewed up and spit out at least two seasoned writers.

Shouldn't this be a sign that this movie wasn't meant to be?

Surely, Overnight Productions must have better projects in the pipeline...

Overnight has a November start set on the Darren Aronofsky-directed Black Swan, a ballet thriller developed at Universal that will star Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. And it will start production next year on the Jonathan Jakubowicz-directed Southbound, a border drama developed at Warner Bros. that will star Matthew McConaughey and Eva Mendes.

I guess not. Good luck to you, Overnight! I hope your company doesn't fold...overnight...because America is just not that into you...[snore]

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