Sony Pulled "The Interview" Because Hackers and Terror And Whevs, Oh My!

It's got handsome and offbeat James Franco and awkwardly lovable-ish funny Seth Rogan going for it, so why wouldn't Sony just Run, run, run with a politically-themed comedy that sort of implies that journalists could maybe sometimes be hired killers of tinpot dictators in a country that might even rhyme with "Snorth Berea?"

Oh. Sony. Were you even looking for a great excuse to dump an unfunny dog of a movie on a miracle that even the engineers of Springtime for Hitler wouldn't have hoped for?

See, in the parlance, even bad publicity is good publicity, and the bad publicity for movies like The Last Temptation of Christ can pay off if a studio braves the negative attention to make the movie a kind of martyred piece. Admit it can't get a good clean hearing--revel in it. Show it proudly, and let the reubens funnel in. Which would be ever so great if it was any good. Or hustle it into,say, Netflix's queue  of instant movies.

But if it really sucks? Which would make burying it for controversy's sake a nice clean break with reality? What does that contract with Messrs  Franco and Rogen even look like?

Addendum: It seems like the North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is very thin-skinned. It behooves a dictator to have more of a crust about such things--his old man did.

NASA is "All About that Space"

In a darn fine parody of Meghan Trainor's "All About that Base", NASA is bringing space travel back. No, this is sublime.

Hey, Ray? Whaddyasay?

It's something to see.

I take Oceans for Granted

I was about 8 years old the first time I dipped my toes in the surf at Ocean City, NJ. I was something like 32 when I floated my body on the warm, sweet water of the Mediterranean. To me, the idea of coming out to an ocean and flipping my shoes off and getting in there isn't a big deal. I'm able-bodied and car-possessing and I swim like anything. I was ten and learnt how to really do laps in a rec center public pool. My folks took us with hoagies and sodas on ice up to Lake Nockamixon to get some really quality pool time in from the time I was ten to teenage. My dad is a good diver--although he can't see shit in water since he can't wear his glasses--same as me. I am naturally buoyant, what I find hard to do is get under the water. I float like an Ivory Soap--good clean fat quantity, me.

When I am by an ocean, I feel at home. My ancestors were probably North Sea fishermen. I've long thought my body was fat to keep myself buoyant in North Sea Water so I could survive a dunking and live to produce another generation of floating fisherfolk. 

The idea that anyone might live just so close to water and never be swimming seems tragic to me in a way. I read Elaine Morgan regarding aquatic apes and decided it made sense.

To me, seaside is Mecca. Visiting the ocean is necessary. I love being on and in the water. I am both delighted a century-old lady got a chance to see the ocean, and sad this is probably her first and last time.

Sting and Lady Gaga--King of Pain

You all probably realized I love the hell out of Lady Gaga, but I also love Sting, like I can not adequately express. Coming across these two on Youtube  made my evening, people. Made it.

Knowing that Robert Downey Jr. who in roles like Tony Stark and Sherlock Holmes and Chaplin pretty much comes off as totally brilliant, himself, and not just playing brilliant people, is also a really good singer, is a nice lagniappe to a fun Youtube indulgence. Also, for some crazy reason I dig hearing Tom Hiddleston rap.

Bill Cosby is a Problem

I'm from Philadelphia and Bill Cosby is a huge part of my experience. "Fat Albert" was as much a part of my childhood as "Super Friends" or "American Bandstand". I saw the HBO specials and I watched "The Cosby Show". I grew up with "Picture Pages" and in a world where comedians found having a Bill Cosby impression up their sleeve de rigeur.

In a way, I have not ever not known of Bill Cosby and liked him as a kind of father/teacher figure. He has been a person who succeeded in my city, a person who attained his goals mentally and intellectually. A smart man. A funny, successful actor. A pillar of our regional community. A supporter of athletics and learning.

His delivery as a comedian and ability as a storyteller influenced me a lot. He did not need to use blue language, because he could make a sound or a facial expression that said a thousand things more than a bad word would.

But I believe women. I do. I have to. Women are abused by rich men and poor men, by nice men and mean men. It's always their word against the other person. But when there are so many women, fifteen, now, that have come forward, it really becomes difficult not to see a pattern, and a bad one. Fatherly, professorial, funny, gentle, interested, gallant, Bill Cosby, who I have liked for all my life, did bad things to women. I liked him, and he was not a good person to those women. He is a person who I felt so sorry for when his son was murdered, and whose wife I wanted to cape for when people questioned her for thinking out loud whether racism killed her boy--

People gave her grief for wondering if racism was why her child was victimized. They seriously did. People with no authority at all wanted to question her lived experience as an educated aware black woman with a dead son. And I would still hit anyone who wanted to grief her for that line of thought.

But I can't stand up for Bill Cosby Himself. After hearing all the stories, I can't. I believe women. so I can't. I can't see how this many women are liars, and their stories are so similar, and plausible.

And I have all the shade for Don Lemon, who seriously asked a victim why she didn't bite an irrumator on his cock for violating her mouth. Because there is no instinct for a drunk and drugged person to do that? Because hard dicks are actually hard? Because when it's shoved in, you open so you can breathe and not feel sick or gagged? Because she did not want a tall, athletic man to smack her teeth in?

I hate like hell to totally understand that this shit was okay with the network PTB--but that's what I think happened. They understood Bill Cosby was a sexual sadist liability, and they were making a shit-ton of money. And that money made the bad stuff ok.

They did not get it is never ok. It is never okay to accept that your star is a rapist and let him go ahead and keep raping. I mean seriously? WTF?

I think "The Collector" is required watching.

I'd never even heard of this movie, which is probably ridiculous, and everyone else already knows about it. I only caught it today on some antenna-based movie station, which probably had it as a "horror" genre film in line with the coming Halloween holiday--which falls short of its meaning. But this tense, well-acted, psychological thriller starring Terence Stamp ("Kneel before Zod!) and Samantha Eggar actually is a brutal story about a Nice Guy who kidnaps a woman and basically works through so many dynamics of misogyny and abuse that it is practically a handbook of what fucks woman-blaming Manboys be.

This might not be a movie for everyone. It represents a stalker and kidnapper who has isolated a target and cut her off from everything, controlling her behavior--not always through violence, but sometimes through manipulation and even seeming pleasant at times. Such a stalker! He buys art books, makes tea, buys toiletries! He provides a place for his victim to stay and proclaims he's a gentleman and pretends he's above violence, but the drama between his need to control and her desire to be free is tense and real.

The title comes from his hobby of collecting butterflies. There is a deep scene where he shows his victim his collection, and she comes to the realization that she has been collected, like a thing to be had, dead, just like they are.

I'm not going to give away all that unfolds, but it is grim and sad and still and all, compelling and revealing. I'll admit I was rooting for a way for a happy ending to somehow come out of it.

Spoiler alert--no, watch the movie. The movie and the novel, by John Fowles, are available at Amazon. And probably elsewhere if you skulk about more than I did.

The NFL Feels Like Rihanna is a Problem

So, just looking at the recent maneuver by the NFL in a part of their "message-control" to actually decide that running with Rihanna's music is an unfortunate reminder that their most recent scandal has to do with domestic abuse--how sad are these people?

You know, refusing to partner with a domestic violence victim because of how it looks is a little like saying, well--isn't she to blame, a little, if associating with her made us look worse?

When the NFL, after all, seems to have the problem with not knowing what to do with employees who batter spouses and children. They have an issue with batterers, so, why should they penalize someone who has suffered some abuse?

It is because it looks bad? Is it because it makes them feel bad to consider what she suffered is just so much like what Janay Rice's face must have looked like, and, well--it makes them look bad?

There's a terrible ironic analogy to make here.

Anyone want to guess how many battered people don't leave their homes, or wear long sleeves, or make excuses for their injuries, all on account of how someone who excuses violence wants to manage them because they don't want to look bad? How many people out there are trying to make themselves invisible, so as not to compromise their abuser in order to not catch any worse treatment?  Excising Rihanna like she did something is like saying victims shouldn't be seen because they are a reminder of what can happen, and who wants or needs to talk about that? (I mean, except for people who might need to open up about their abuse or seek help or whatever.)

The NFL is revealing some scary attitudes about the degree to which opinion and image takes precedence over people. I haven't been a fan since I started getting the feeling that players were getting bad effects from head trauma (I was a fan of McMahon--he was a sharp character on and off the field at one time and was pretty ecstatic that he came to back-up QB for the Eagles for awhile) and the like and the industry was cleaning it up (I feel the same way--in spades--regarding the short lives of professional wrestlers). But understanding that this spin control, money over humanity, extends to families and violence, and colors even little things like wrongfooting a performer because of her history in this unfortunate way--makes me think the business is sick.

They have a lot of wrong-headedness to sort out. But victim-blaming, even if accidentally, means they aren't yet actually seeing the real problem that they have.

The November Man: A Netflix find I watched In the Theater

I have a soft spot in my heart for action movies--I have watched and enjoyed (because of my ability to post-phone criticism) openly illogical and over-the-top shoot-em-ups like all three Expendables movies, because I grew up watching Rambo and Commando and all the Steven Seagal movies and the Chuck Norris Missing in Action movies, and so, so much more. I viewed them as a nice break from the teen slasher movies.  So I am forgiving of mindless action flicks. The November Man isn't technically an action film, but it isn't exactly the post-Cold War thriller it wants to be.

If I judged it on action movie terms, it is too slow-paced and has unnecessary character details. If I judged it as a spy thriller, well, it has some plot holes that are just awkward, and the movie has a real dilemma because it has at least one scene where an actual atrocity is committed by the Pierce Brosnan character (who we're supposed to sort of like, I guess) in order to shame his former protégé-turned-assailant about his inhumanity. He slices an innocent young lady's leg, after having held a gun on her.

Let that sink in: This movie has a female character who exists just so that the main character can brutalize her to prove a point in a very dumb way to another male character, because...

Uh, no movie. I will not play along with that. There is no "why" other than convenience.  We are never told what happens with her by the way--spoiler alert! Because technically, why should we care what happens to her so long as the lesson is learned!

I don't want to give away too much of the twists. Brosnan is good, he always is, here in a kind of "past-it and jaded, being a spy was never like "Bond" anyway", sort of way. Bill Smitrovich is impressive, and his character is not a good one. But he still owned it.

The acting is not any of the problem here. It's the story and the framing.

 Some of what happens makes no logical sense--and I have to be snotty--really? The movie has one of those awful "dude walking away from exploding car" cliché scenes--yawn. Car chases and the necessary accidents exist in a world where, apparently, cops and emergency vehicles don't.  Surveillance drones just fling about over major cities like no one would notice. Women seem to exist to be victims. Cats walk through walls. Being suspected of being semi-traitorous does not get you at least a suspension from a managerial position at a spy agency (well, I presume that shouldn't be true...). People just punch up intimate data about other people via a password over their phones or laptops (I'm not saying it's impossible, but it's bordering Snowden territory--way-too-easy.) The machina is all too deus-like for my taste.

This is a movie I'd have appreciated as a Netflix find for having some psychological drama and good acting, but on the whole, as a first-run viewing, it isn't great. Interesting and watchable--but not great.

Joan Rivers, You Tremendous Tramp.

She wasn't perfect and even said horrible things, terrible things, things that could even get you kicked off of television in some eras (that she lived through), but the thing of it is, she survived and already earned a lot of respect. Let's be honest, some of the dumb shit she said that other people would find objectionable could have been said by Don Rickles or Jackie Mason, and who would care?

I liked Joan Rivers for her potty-mouthed self. She wasn't full of shit. She said what she thought. Her face was an amazing thing. I admired her weird agelessness. She didn't seem to be striving for youth--just not looking old. If I look at today's fashion, her ongepotchket jewelry collection has made today's statement necklaces look reasonable.

I loved Heidi Abromowitz. You know--the tramp stereotype in Joan Rivers' hands got played out to where she was saying "Wouldn't you?" The best joke I got from her re: Heidi, was that being told you looked like a tramp was wonderful--because who could sell themselves, an ugly yenta? No. To be a successful tramp was to be a beautiful thing. She tried at being that beautiful, and feminine, and vicious. You (a woman) could marry being feminine and joking. You could be mean. You could talk--because can we talk?

Can we talk about Joan Rivers, as a pioneer, and somehow divorce her life from later ugly comments, that were not her at her greatest? Because she started in theater kissing Barbra Streisand and like me, she loved dogs and a good steak. She was an 81 year old person when she died, and maybe her face didn't say "Grandma"--but she was the kind of grandma  you might have forgiven her sometimes bullshit attitudes to respect the blazing trail she made for others.

Rest in power, comedy Queen. You were tacky and loud at times, but you were a survivor. And your act might have warmed up for a lot of others once, but is hard to follow, now.

A little spark of madness...

It's very sad news to hear that Robin William's spark is extinguished. I've been a fan since Mork told Richie Cunningham he was "humdrum". Comedy is a function of observation and empathy--Robin Williams as an actor and comedian was a fountain of creativity and energy and made humor out of anything at all. There's something about the chaotic invention Williams was capable of--best seen in his stand-up act--that let you know that at his best, he was all perception and feeling.

And possibly also at his worst. It's a funny gift--perception. It cuts both ways, and if his humor and the joy he could produce were products of it, depression was its shadow. Humor is a fuckfinger at fate. It's our primate survival instinct longing to fling poo at the Reaper playing keepsies with our marbles and always winning. We joke about shit that scares us, and at the base of many a joke, there's a little darkness: the black behind the mirror we hold up to capture what we see.

He was a touching old soul as an actor and a fierce thing on the comedy stage. I'm not much for weepies like Patch Adams or whatever, and I guess I missed him in Disney's Aladdin because I miss a lot of Disney. But Moscow on the Hudson and The Birdcage were movies that I could pretty much always watch again. His turn in The World According to Garp outdid the material (Hi, my pseudonym is Vixen, I'm a literature major, and I do not care for John Irving--A Prayer for Owen Meany was the most pointless shit I ever read next to Jonathan Livingston Seagull. If you ever wanted to admit that yourself-go on. Your welcome.)

As a person though? You know, I think I grieve for dead comedians because there's something like a confessional about their art. It provides so many snap-shots of their minds in motion that even if you don't know a person, you feel like "I've seen his act--I know him." But one of the things I really associate Williams with is giving. His art was also about generosity of spirit. I always think of his work with Comic Relief USA and the USO, and the countless little things for Make a Wish, and all these other worthy causes. His generosity of spirit was real.

Depression is a serious disease. When the rope, the bottle, the razor, look like a life raft out of the constant hell one's mind is producing, humor flies out the window, and the brightest light has a shade drawn. What a noble mind was here o'erthrown! If you've an idea what it's like, you don't ask how he could have done it, you are grateful he held on to produce the work he had and mourn with his family and friends because it's all you can do. It's a very sad thing.

Netflix finds: Byzantium

Deep down, I think I always wanted a feminist vampire story where women were vampires and Dracula could fuck himself. Where vampires weren't  magically titled or fabulously rich, but just lived as folks do. This is what Byzantium is like.
Gemma Atherton owns as the mother/older sister "Clara" and Saoirse Ronan is luminous "Ella". It's a two hundred year old tragedy/love story. It's off-beat, and that is what is good about it. I totally recommend it.

Jukebox: Al Green How Can You Mend?

Okay--I like this that much more than the BeeGees version, not to knock them but? Um, Al Green. SO, Uh, enjoy.

May the Fourth Be With You!

This is kind of a significant holiday in my mind, even if it isn't a national holiday. (My sort of drunk neighbors across the street celebrated Derby Day, because it involved Bourbon beverages and because they could not wait for Cinco de Mayo, also known as the day we venerate fermented agave products. They may have not known what to drink for Fourth Day, but the answer is, whatever, so long as the force is with you. I have the force with me, because I Drink, or Drink Not--there is no Dry.)

The reason I like remembering Star Wars in a holiday sort of way, though, is because it was, yea, verily, the movie they now call Episode Four that was the first movie I ever saw in a theater. Oh my, yes. My cousin Joan took me to the Crest theater which was one of those old-timey affairs with one, count'em, one screen.  If you had to pick one movie to be your first in-a-theater movie though, you could have done far worse.  I was a little kid, so every image imprinted on my impressionable brain, and a lot of things were decided.

Leia was awesome, because she knew what she was doing and was like, the leader of the rebels, which naturally made her the hero of the movie, thank you very much.

Luke Skywalker was awkward and was very lucky to run into Obi-Wan Kenobi, or he would have been totally stuck shooting wamp-rats and watching his toenails grow.

I totally decided things about what is a cute boy because Han Solo.

And the scene where they ended up in the trash compactor has given me anxiety to this day--not because the walls were closing in. Oh, no. I am a person who would be at home in a straitjacket--give me hugs or give me agoraphobia (hashtag, TMI). It was the dirtiness that bugged me. It was wet and there was squishy bits. I to this day do not like being in close contact with squishy dirty things.

I also think it isn't surprising that I saw Obi-Wan as a grandfatherly figure and thought his death was terribly sad from Luke's POV. But it wasn't until I was older that the destruction of Alderaan seemed like the enormity that it actually was.  And now this is, to me, about as symbolic of the badness of the Dark Side as the corruption of Anakin and the slaughter of the Younglings--the Dark Side brings destructive senseless shit.

I think you understand why anyone would want to be a Jedi when you are young, but you don't get the Dark Side and why it sucks so hard but still appeals to some, until you get older. In other words, Star Wars has been a big part of the prism I view my reality through.

Mind screw--Young Dick Nixon

He was kind of pretty back in the day. That's a mess, right?I don't care. Young Dick was a piece.

John Pinette-RIP.

I don't even know where to begin--I loved John Pinette and his act so much. He was a kind and self-deprecating comedian whose co-optation of other dialects was always respectful. He was a big man with a great heart. I will miss this guy so much. I listened to his stuff over and over.

Bush's Painting and Putin's Dogs

I think the reason that people talk about the paintings of former President George W. Bush is because we think this is a less controversial topic than his presidency, and might well wonder what might have been if he took up a brush some time before deciding to go into politics. With the unveiling of portraits of world figures, however, the politician and the painter collide.

I find the portrait of Putin to be interesting because Bush has the simple, unfussy style that might come from having taken up art late in life. But in the asymmetry of the face of Vladimir Putin, one wonders if this is a deliberate choice of the artist? Is it possible the painter, Bush, has the ability to "do nuance" that the politician did not?  The observer looks at one face, two faces look back. Not a bad rendering, one might say, of a figure into whose soul one might have supposed to look--and who had yet deeper, more opaque layers, no?

But I find the observation that Putin had a kind of one-upsmanship about his dogs versus the former president's kind of absurd and yet very real. All this shirtless horse-riding and wild animal business suggests an affinity for an idealized hyper-masculinism, so "My dogs are bigger than yours"--as if the size of one's dog is an extension of one's, um, virility? Fits Putin's image So. Much.

(No endorsement of Bush or any of his political works intended, mind you.)

David Brenner RIP

He was a stand-up legend from Philadelphia.

I think he might have been a bigger deal in the Carson era of the Tonight Show and never got that kind of Seinfeld/Cosby kind of fame, but he was awfully good. And a pretty fine example of the Philadelphia dialect as spoken. 

Celebrities for Your Consumption?

There is, obviously, a fascination with celebrity and carnivorous consumption on this humble blog, so naturally, this little site that promises to one day make literally taking a bite out of your favorite celebrities a reality has piqued my interest. There is a tongue-in-cheek quality to it that makes me suspect that this is actually a riff on our consumption of celebrity culture (seriously:

The Franco salami must be smoky, sexy, and smooth. Franco's meat will pair with lean, strong venison. Sharp Tellicherry peppercorns and caramelized onions provide Franco's underlying flavors, complemented by a charming hint of lavender. The Franco salami’s taste will be arrogant, distinctive, and completely undeniable.

 as opposed to a real dystopian cannibalism-fetish wish-fulfilment scheme--but I have been wrong about things before.

As it is, the more technical details of thing lend themselves to the suggestion of this being a hoax--like the still cost-prohibitive nature of vatted meat production on any kind of retail scale. Also, celebrities would naturally be circumpect about offering up even a trifling sample of their genetic meterial because of what might be done with it--if charcuterie itself were not outre enough. For one thing, in a world where celebrity-stalkers is a very real thing, and paparazzi and disturbing fan letters alone can give one sleepless nights, who wants to run the risk that some odd person out there develops a real taste for you and decides they would settle for nothing less than a chip off the original block, as it were?   For those who would go through with it, imagine the negotiations for licensing rights for name, image, and protection of said meat? And given what the likely final consimer price would be, naturally a demand for authentication that one was genuinely getting a Bieberburger or whatever could lead to some disputes as to the actual % of Biebermeat vs lamb or just some average mere human vatted muscle tissue. The headaches of this being a real thing abound.

So nearly plausible, but just a bit...off.

Harold Ramis, RIP

I think you probably know Egon Spengler was my favorite Ghostbuster. Basically, if I was to reference any of the really awesome comedic films that impacted my formative years and sense of humor today, well, Harold Ramis was a part of them or influenced the people that made them. That is an awesome legacy.  Ramis was an awesome talent who wasn't just funny himself, he made other people funny and made some careers. And damn funny movies. His influence was felt in subversive sarcasm and tables turning on middling bourgois status quo to suggest the status was more FUBAR. And his humor was nasty sometimes but never mean. If that makes sense. He was one of a kind.

I am Avowedly Hateful of This Olympics

Obviously, the big issue for me is the criminalization of homosexuality by the Putin government.


This is some heartbreaking stuff.

But did you know that Sochi was the site of a massacre about a hundred and fifty years ago? And that people were massively relocated to make this Olympic village happen? And that the previous residents couldn't even take their animals, so the very tame and amiable strays that are now alleged to be relocated also but are probably being killed, were pets?

I can have a giggle about the shambolic clusterfuckery  of the Potemkin-1st worldliness that is being fronted, here, but seriously, even the threat to the athletes from bad courses and accomodations is nothing compared to the human rights and animal rights abuses on display here.  Even the possibilty of terrorism is less disturbing to me.

I just can't say anything but "Screw this noise."

You know--Screw Woody Allen

I know, in my heart, I think Woody Allen is a comedic genius and has even made some good movies. But seriously, fuck him.



I get it. Woody is an intellectual and an aesthete and why are we even talking about whether he fucked his own children? I dunno. Because comedy is easy, and if anyone was ever motivated to call him out on fucking them, well, that is hard--for the victims.

I like some of his movies and well, that is how it is. But what I think about all this is--Allen's children hate him. For some reason. I am going to believe them because kissing his ass would have been 100% better for them. But they can't. And I am bound to hear out victims. And I hear them. He had his benefit of the doubt his whole life. When I read what Dylan says, I don't disbelieve her.

He isn't shit to me,  now. Even if Deconstructing Harry was awesome in my book, I dunno. I don't think he has a good answer to this.

It shouldn't be so. But I do believe it because listening to victims and believing is necessary because why else would anyone come forward?

I cannot say her story is bullshit.  And I think he has always shunned answers because he has no good ones. So, I can't even think like my admiration for anything he's done artistically is any equal to his other ethical deficits.

Today's Refrigerators Are Too Smart By Half

You know, they put computers in everything these days. Even the iceboxes:

Security researchers at Proofpoint have uncovered the very first wide-scale hack that involved television sets and at least one refrigerator. Yes, a fridge. 

This is being hailed as the first home appliance "botnet" and the first cyberattack from the Internet of Things. 

A botnet is a series of computers that seem to be ordinary computers functioning in people's homes and businesses, but are really secretly controlled by hackers. TheInternet of Things is a new term in the tech industry that refers to a concept where every device in your house gets its own computer chip, software, and connection to the Internet: your fridge, thermostat, smart water meter, door locks, etc. To a hacker, they all become computers that can be hacked and controlled.

Fine. I'll get the new MacAfee for Fridges.  What I'm holding out for, though, is a fridge that senses when there is nothing inside it and calls out for takeaway.