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October 31, 2004

Flash Me Again

I know you're probably sick of election-based Flash cartoons, but trust me:

THIS ONE YOU MUST SEE!

The real voices of George W. and Gary Busey are featured.

(link via Luke Ford on Protocols)

Posted by LYT at 1:33 AM | Comments (2)

Bad Housekeeping

Ran out of the Xanax the other day, which means that I actually have the energy to leave my apartment more than once a day now. Went back to the gym, but took it slow and light -- seems to be paying off, as aching is minimal.

Still on the Paxil, and will be for at least 5 more days. Given that my diagnosis was essentially one of hypochondria, it's impossible to tell whether the side effects would be the same with a placebo or not, but they include dehydration, itchy eyes, and a complete sapping of the sex drive. I can still get emotionally and intellectually aroused, but the body can't back it up. I think there may be a correlation between arousal and tension. Of course there's also one between tension and depression. So you win some, you lose some. Which is better to lose? If I stay on this stuff, who knows -- maybe I'll actually start answering some of those spam emails. You know the ones I mean.

Friday night I went with a friend to a fetish ball, which is more or less like going to a huge club except that inside there are naked people spanking each other (chicks have to have electrical tape over their nipples, which I suspect is some kind of technicality to get around city rules regarding nudity at clubs that serve alcohol). Some good Halloween costumes on display, including an absolutely perfect replica of Nazi villain Kroenen from the Hellboy movie. Because of the Paxil, I wouldn't say I was exactly turned on by the proceedings, but they were fun to watch.

No non-alcoholic beer was available. I'm starting to feel some compassion for the non-drinkers I've tirelessly mocked over the years.

Despite the fact that I cleaned up my place for the party that no-one came to (and turned down the chance to see Shatner live on the Tonight Show, I might add), my guest on Friday was unimpressed, calling it disgusting. I don't think it's in me to measure up to her standards. She said I should put it to a vote on my message board.

I should've lived in the Victorian era, when bachelors had housekeepers.

Posted by LYT at 1:26 AM | Comments (3)

October 29, 2004

My California endorsements (like anyone cares)

Beyond president, there are a lot of other things to vote for.

SENATOR: Barbara Boxer. They say Kerry's the most liberal senator, but I think Boxer is. To me, of course, that's a GOOD thing.

REPRESENTATIVE, 31st district: Xavier Becerra. He always answers all of my letters to him, even when he disagrees, and he seldom does that.

MEMBER OF THE STATE ASSEMBLY, 42nd district: Paul Koretz. He's being challenged by a Republican actor, and we don't need another one of those!

JUDICIAL: It's hard as hell to find much information about judges online. The LA Weekly endorses Mildred Escobedo, Gus Gomez, Laura F. Priver, Daniel Zeke Zeidler, and Donna Groman. That's the best guidance I have, so I'm going with it.

PROPOSITIONS:

1A: Yes. Ensures local tax revenue goes to local stuff unless The Schwarz insists otherwise and gets 2/3 of the legislature to concur.

59: Yes. Makes public access to government documents easier.

60: Yes. The only thing this does is nullify 62 if that gets passed.

60A: No. Insists that the sale of state property go only toward paying off bonds

61: Yes. Bond to fund children's hospitals.

62: No. What this does is declare an open primary, in which all the parties participate in round one, but only the top two vote getters proceed to the general election, even if they're in the same party. This as opposed to the open primary we had once that was ruled unconstitutional, where all the parties were in round one, but the top vote-getter in each party made it to the finals. Prop 62 will marginalize third-parties, ensuring they never have a candidate in the final election.

64. No. Limits the ability to file unfair business lawsuits, so that they can only be filed on behalf of individuals.

65: No. Because even the people who wrote it are voting no on it now.

66: Yes. Limits the Three Strikes law, which I consider to be in itself a violation of the rule against double-jeopardy, as it in effect sentences you for crimes you've already been sentenced for. If single "strikes" against individual crimes aren't strong enough, let's deal with that. But I believe in judging each case on its own merits.

67: Yes. A few cents more on your phone bill funds emergency medical services and 911.

68: No. Again, its own backers have given up.

69: HELL NO. This allows collection of DNA samples not just from convicted felons, but from mere suspects as well.

70: No. Any law that could put in place 99-year permanent compacts strikes me as irresponsible and near-sighted.

71: Yes. Stem cell research funding. Christopher Reeve wanted you to vote for it; Mel Gibson wants you to vote against it.

72: No. Requires businesses with over 50 employees to pay employee health care. It's aimed at Wal-Mart, and I'd like to see Wal-Mart pay its employees' health care, but I don't think that every McDonalds and movie theater should have to; some businesses that size are not career professions, and have a high turnover. I'm okay with that.

COUNTY MEASURE A: NO ENDORSEMENT. Adding a 1/2 percentage point increase to the sales tax, with the proceeds to go to law enforcement. On the one hand, the sales tax is the most regressive tax there is, and calculating it mentally is a real fucking pain when it involves fractions of a percent -- going from 8.25% to 8.75% will be a bigger headache. On the other hand, we maybe could use more cops. On yet another hand, most interactions I've had with the LAPD have been negative, not because I was breaking any law but because they assumed I was. I don't know that I'll vote on this one.

COUNTY MEASURE O: Yes. If you like clean water, you'll vote yes too.

Posted by LYT at 4:19 PM | Comments (0)

"At last, we shall have revenge..."

The first STAR WARS: REVENGE OF THE SITH poster.

Posted by LYT at 3:45 PM | Comments (0)

October 28, 2004

One more review quick take

on the Mormon war movie Saints and Soldiers

Posted by LYT at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)

I Heart Huckabees review

This may run in Alaska if it opens there. Till then, enjoy it here:

Comedian Louis C.K. has a joke about seeing someone you don’t know...again, as if God has run out of extras in the production that is your life, so he’s doubling up. That’s the jumping off point for David O. Russell’s newest, in which he does his version of the kind of metaphysical head trips Charlie Kaufman normally lays on us. Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman), an environmental activist hoping to save the world through bad poetry, keeps seeing a mysterious African man (impressive newcomer Ger Duani), which leads him to seek out a pair of “existential detectives” (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin, so good as a team that it’s amazing no-one’s paired them up before) to unravel the mysteries of his life.

The detectives spy on Albert 24-7, looking to prove that everything in his life is connected, and they aren’t exactly inconspicuous, so they make his already tenuous job position worse. Albert’s been trying to make a deal with Target-like chain Huckabees to protect the local environment, but has seen his Open Spaces coalition get essentially co-opted by hotshot Huckabees executive Brad Stand (Jude Law). Meanwhile, the existential detectives are being shadowed by a longtime archrival, Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert), who preaches the philosophy that nothing is connected and nothing matters. Caught alongside Albert between the two philosophies is fireman Tommy Corn (Mark Wahlberg), who’s been shaken up since 9-11 and refuses to do anything that might directly or indirectly cause petroleum usage. Shania Twain and Naomi Watts are in there somewhere too.

The overall impression I got is that David O. Russell, like me, probably goes to cocktail parties and hears all kinds of cockamie philosophical spoutings from people who think they’re smarter than they are, and he’s decided to totally take the piss out of them. Nihilism and existentialism take the brunt of his comedic assault, but there’s a brief side detour to mock conservative Christians too. Those who find the film too confusing are missing the point -- there’s no philosophy here to “get,” just mockery of the folks who think there is.

Posted by LYT at 10:13 PM | Comments (2)

New Times reviews this week

Nazis. Jews. And a fat guy. All this and more in Prisoner of Paradise

It's called Saw, but does it also come and conquer?

Watch out for the Undertow

And a quick take on Hair Show

Posted by LYT at 10:10 PM | Comments (0)

Anchorage Press review of RAY

It was always apparent to viewers of “In Living Color” that Jim Carrey had the potential to be a major comedy star, but who would have thought Jamie Foxx would one day be the odds-on favorite to win an Oscar? In “Ray”, he achieves the monumentally difficult challenge of becoming legendary soul man Ray Charles (ne Robinson). Playing a real person in a biopic is tough enough, but one as ubiquitous as Ray? With some coaching from the real Ray Charles, who lived long enough to see a rough cut of the film, Foxx completely disappears into the role, embodying the great man so much so that one instantly forgets it’s Foxx up there. He plays the piano himself, and even sings some of the songs -- distinguishing between the lip-synched numbers and the live ones is nigh impossible.

Foxx’s performance makes the movie compelling, but most everything else about is by the numbers, with your standard childhood trauma, first big break when the usual headliner at a given venue suddenly becomes unable to perform at the last minute, first true love, fame and fortune, drugs, tearful fights with the wife, and let us never forget the obligatory scene in which a table gets overturned as a demonstration of irrational anger (does “anyone” do that in real life?). There’s also a running subplot, related to the childhood trauma, in which Ray occasionally imagines himself immersed in flowing water. Those scenes are silly and pretentious; the point is sufficiently made later, and the flick’s over two hours long.

Clifton Powell and Bokeem Woodbine are solid as Ray’s bandmates, and Curtis Armstrong and Warwick Davis turn up in some rather unexpected places. Still, it’s Foxx’s show all the way, and when it comes to the Oscar for Best Actor...(yeah I know it’s kinda lame to say this, but it’s true) he’s the right one, baby, uh-huh!

Posted by LYT at 10:04 PM | Comments (3)

Liberty and Documentaries for All

My article on the right-wing film fest I attended a few weeks ago is now online at CityBeat. I could have written five times as much, but I hope it gives you some sense of the thing.

CityBeat's website is quite tough to read, though, even tougher than this blog, and it strips out all boldfacing and italics. So click the [more] link below for an LYTrules-styled version. And if you're in L.A., just pick up a hard copy -- both it and the CityBeat online version feature photos of Michael Medved, Govindini Murty (who is a real stunner -- the Republican Party should make her a major spokesperson ASAP), and Jason Apuzzo.

Fight for Your Right

The first annual Liberty Film Festival shows that conservatives can make mediocre movies too.

One of the best “gotcha” moments in Michael Wilson’s documemtary Michael Moore Hates America occurs when Moore is being interviewed on MSNBC, and is asked if he’ll agree to sit down for an interview with Wilson. Moore responds, “I’m not in anybody else’s movies but my own.” Immediately, a list of film titles scrolls across the screen, naming several movies the notorious liberal documentarian has appeared in that do not bear his directing credit.

Interestingly, though, one of the titles listed is Fever Pitch, a 2001 short film in which actor-director Willard Morgan stalks his idol Moore, and fails to obtain much more than a brush-off. If that counts as one of Moore’s credits, then you can add virtually every film at the first annual Liberty Film Festival to the list as well. Billed as Los Angeles’ first conservative film festival, the Liberty Fest hosted the west coast premiere of Wilson’s film, in addition to many others that either took on Moore directly or aped his style, over the course of three days in early October (1st-3rd) at the Pacific Design Center in the heart of ultra-liberal West Hollywood, where even the cookie store around the corner boasts an autographed photo of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

“Ooh, ooh, are you a Protest Warrior?” The well-dressed woman is tugging at my sleeve, assuming that my unusual appearance (flag-colored hair and tattooed arm) marks me as one of the radical counter-protesters who infiltrate liberal marches before pulling out signs with slogans like “Leftists for Wesley Clark -- It’s okay, he only bombed white people.” Not long before that, a friend of Michael Medved’s had asked me, “So, are you voting for Kerry? I’m just kidding! Really, I’m just kidding!” Before the festival is over, I will be handed a free CD of Republican punk rock music, which features anti-Kerry songs by bands with names like The Ivy League and The Flipfloppers. Though the liner notes state that the disc “isn’t so much PRO-BUSH, as it is, PRO-FREEDOM [sic]” they also thank gay-bashing radio host Michael Savage, and Muslim-bashing website Little Green Footballs.

At any moment, I expect the handful of conservative bloggers who recognize me to point their fingers and screech a la Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but no. They extend to me the courtesy they fear they would not get at a similarly liberal film festival. The only such event that comes to my mind, however, is the Green Reel Festival I attended a couple of years back, which proved definitively that a whole weekend of didactic documentaries is a crushing bore no matter which side you’re on.

Not every film at the Liberty Fest was a didactic documentary, but many of them were. The Lionel Chetwynd-produced Celsius 41.11 is essentially a George W. Bush infomercial, while the Ronald Reagan hagiography In the Face of Evil showed that it doesn’t matter whether or not links are ever found between Osama and Saddam -- it’s enough to note that both represent “The Beast,” a force for evil throughout history that also includes every Soviet leader as well as Adolf Hitler. Produced by and starring KABC host Larry Elder, Carl and Sanora Bartels’ Michael and Me makes the case for gun ownership, ultimately declaring that gun control advocates are at best socialists and at worst fascists; and WMD: The Murderous Reign of Saddam Hussein combines compelling documentary footage from Iraqi director Jano Rosebiani with excessive 9-11 footage from American director Brad Maaske, implying a connection without much evidence.

Indeed, the festival invoked memories of the popular ‘90s sci-fi series Sliders, in which the protagonists would travel each week to a new parallel Earth in which history happened slightly differently. In this new reality, definitive links have been proven between Iraq and 9-11, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon are both sell-outs for signing treaties with the Soviets, Reagan’s SDI program that never worked (and still doesn’t) brought the USSR to its knees, and American universities are all in the hands of Maoists and Stalinists.

The intellectual disconnect can at times be staggering: Festival co-founder Govindini Murty condemns the movie business one moment because “the liberal agenda of Hollywood is to push the R-rated material,” then the next moment is advocating more personal films like The Passion of the Christ (that was a PG flick, right?). A few hours after a film entitled Brainwashing 101 declares that liberals are the real oppressors of free speech, Michael Medved is onstage proclaiming that Hollywood was much better under the censorious Hays Production code. Even a documentary about the success of Mel Gibson’s Jesus flick, Impact: The Passion of the Christ, can’t resist a cheap shot at Michael Moore, as film-maker Tim Chey travels to Columbine to discover that guns weren’t the issue in that school shooting -- it was all due to a lack of belief in Jesus Christ.

On a more amusing note, it’s interesting to see middle-aged conservatives -- who probably penalize their children for using bad language -- cheering the barrage of profanity from Penn Jillette in Michael Moore Hates America, or the date-rape jokes by Ann Coulter in Is It True What They Say About Ann? (a documentary that would have been better had it probed deeper and been feature-length.) The festival’s most utterly bizarre moment, however, comes on opening night from Foundation for Free Markets’ Paul Harberger, who extols the privatization of social security (big applause), school vouchers (big applause), low or no trade barriers (less applause), and a vision of a world in which all employees hail the free market (big applause again), then states that all these things already exist...in Chile! (dead silence.)

So were there any worthwhile cinematic achievements? Indeed yes. Michael Moore Hates America, despite its inflammatory title, actually turns out to be a balanced and open-minded piece in the style of the man it proclaims to despise; director Mike Wilson is equally appalled when he interviews right-wing convert David Horowitz and discovers that the ex-radical truly believes that liberals would love to assassinate him. Larry Elder’s film exhibits the same combination of good humor and politics that makes his unabashedly partisan radio show appeal to listeners on both sides, though its conclusion is a tad exclusionary. And Evan Moloney, of the website Brain-Terminal.com, shows a lot of potential -- with a dry, Jason Lee-like delivery, he takes his camera to left-wing events like a Bill Clinton book-signing or anti-war protest rally, and interviews the most insane people he can find; the results are inevitably amusing. Moloney’s Brainwashing 101, a short designed to promote a forthcoming feature, is aimed at defending conservative university students against rampant campus liberalism, but its target -- idiotic campus speech codes -- is worthy of contempt from both left and right.

Because of Academy Award qualifier screenings, it was tough for Murty and her husband Jason Apuzzo to find a good venue in the three months it took to get the festival together. With limited space outside the Pacific Design center screening room, there wasn’t much space for food, drink, or booths sponsored by sympathetic compadres. Water bottles were available for 50 cents, Melrose Larry Green peddled his new book Why the Clintons Belong in Prison, and fliers were available for the Libertarian Party, the La Jolla Institute, and the rather odd Free State Project, which hopes to “recruit 20,000+ liberty oriented people to move to New Hampshire. Once in New Hampshire, members will work within the political system to reduce the size and scope of government.” Next year, Murty and Apuzzo promise, they’ll do the festival earlier in the year and make it much bigger.

Posted by LYT at 2:05 AM | Comments (0)

An old enemy resurfaces

I'm not really one to bear a grudge for too long. The people you hate in high school are generally friendlier when you see them again ten years down the line, mellowed by age and bereft of those rushing hormones. And while there are people I've encountered in my life whom I'd prefer to avoid, I can't think of any with whom I have lingering bad blood.

Today, however, I was reminded of something.

Channel One.

To explain this notion briefly: A company called Whittle Communications makes money off of public high schools thusly -- give them a buttload of free audio-video equipment, in exchange for which they must show their students an in-house news program called Channel One, which lasts approximately twelve minutes and features two commercial breaks. These commercials make all of Whittle's money back and then some.

And the program itself, putting aside the issue of showing commercials to a captive audience of teens, is terrible. Newscasters talk down to their audience as if they were third graders. One example I remember sticks in my head, because it was the first day of Gulf War I: "Hi, I'm Mark Carter, and this is THE WHITE HOUSE. The president is inside, making DECISIONS." Well, duh-huh-huh.

We'd have to sit in silence and watch this crap, Burger King ads and all. I took to wearing earplugs during homeroom, but it was a loud-ass show. I wrote a sarcastic editorial for the school apper entitled "In Praise of Channel One," about how students needed the service because they're all idiots (note to readers: rednecks don't get sarcasm, ever).

But here's the other thing: Long before Fox News, Channel One had a very definite agenda. As I said, I was in high school during Gulf War I, and the protesters of that war were utterly marginalized and dismissed by the Whittle anchorpeople.

So why do I bring this up? Mainly because, after following a few links today, I found a survey that said America's teens, if given the vote, would choose George W. Bush. The source?

Why, my old nemesis, of course.

I consider this utterly meaningless, by the way. I'm not sure how they collected the votes (a cursory glance on the website didn't say), but I imagine it was done online. Which presupposes that the only ones who voted are (a) people who actually willingly watch Channel One and (b) care enough about it that, after homework and extra-curricular activities, they think it important to log onto the site and vote.

Given how awful Channel One is, I'm not surprised those kids who fall into the aforementioned categories voted the way they did.

Posted by LYT at 1:13 AM | Comments (2)

October 25, 2004

WOW! Eminem's new video!

This is amazing. Not just because the animation is state-of-the-art, or because Em's persona in this occasionally reminds me of Kevin Ford and his alter ego Skip Lotem, or even that he references the Rubberband Man, a.k.a. Eddie Steeples.

But the fact that it's a vehement anti-Bush war protest song. During Gulf War I we had several, but pop and rap have been holding back.

I wish this video would have come out sooner, but better late than never. Request it on TRL.

CLICK HERE TO SEE

Takes a long-ass time to download -- fugeddabout it on dial-up. But worth it.

UPDATE: That Quicktime link didn't work too well for me. Try HERE (dial-up options also available)

Posted by LYT at 7:37 PM | Comments (3)

My endorsement (local endorsements will come later)

I’ve been planning to write a post more or less like this for a long time, specifically to take on the charge that the left is full of “irrational” Bush hatred. We’ll get to that. With a week away from the election, it’s time for me to endorse, not that my endorsement means anything. Bear with me, this is a long post. We have the right to secret ballot, but I’ll tell you here and now where I’m leaning.

John Kerry.

I know I said I was going to back Peltier. I’ve flip-flopped, if you will. Kerry impressed me in the debates. The major reason to vote for Peltier would be to draw continued attention to his unjust imprisonment. But if a miracle happened, I voted for Peltier, and Peltier won, I’m not sure he’d have any clue what to do. This is something worth thinking about when voting for president.

I’ll break it down for you: There are basically three options in this race. Bush, Kerry, or third-party candidate. (Not voting and/or write in strike me as silly positions not worth discussing) Let’s examine them one by one.

1. Third Party Candidate. I loathe the two-party system. Really hate it. That and the electoral college are possibly the worst features of our so-called democracy. I’d love to see instant runoff voting become the law of the land. I’d also love to see all the candidates debate. During the California governor’s recall race, we got a great debate with all sides -- far-right Tom McClintock, far-left Peter Camejo, moderate major candidates Cruz Bustamante and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and opportunistic flip-flopper Arianna Huffington. Surprise! Many of my right-wing friends ended up with a lot of respect for Camejo, just as some of my left-wing friends respected McClintock.

And yet...even in that race, with 250 candidates, it boiled down to a two-party deal, with people accusing others of “spoiling” if they voted for anyone other than Bustamante or the Schwarz. I’m not sure America can deal with more than two parties. Even today, people accuse Ross Perot of stealing the ’92 election from Bush Sr.

So anyway, if you decide to vote third party, I ain’t mad at’cha. I respect it. But I don’t see anyone in that field I really want to be my president.

Peltier -- much respect to Peltier, the only real American running. I’m sure his environmental policy would be sound, but I haven’t actually heard his positions on anything else.

Nader -- Nader promised to keep building a viable third-party movement after 2000. Well, where is it? Seems to me like he’s been mostly absent, and resurfaced purely in order to piss off Democrats AND Greens. He never registered as a Green even when he was their candidate, and now he’s running without a party, talking about forming a new “Populist Party.” I don’t buy it. He’s done very little to show me that he cares about building a party, and he didn’t even enter the Green primary. Now Camejo is someone I would consider voting for, and he should have been the Green candidate, which leads me to...

Cobb -- Cobb is the Green candidate, despite the fact that it seems as though Camejo got more votes in the primaries. The nominating process, from what I’ve read, seems to have been a bit suspect here. Cobb himself is a non-entity. As a Green myself, I imagine he stands for some good things. But he has not put himself out there, and he needed to do so.

Badnarik -- I’m with the Libertarians on most social issues, but not on fiscal issues. A Libertarian president would be disastrous for the poor.

Peroutka -- nutjob right-wing theocrat. Enough said.

2. President Bush. Ah, George Dubya. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways (none of them irrational, I might add).

-Bush has never admitted a mistake, despite two prominent chances to do so. The first time, he said he wished he’d been given the question in advance. The second time, he ridiculed it as a trap to try to get him to admit Iraq went wrong, and said he wouldn’t do it. No, George, it isn’t a trap. Even I can think of answers he could have given that would not have lost him any support. The most obvious would be, “I’ll always wonder if maybe we didn’t do as much as we could have to prevent the events of September 11. I think about that every day, and I’m doing my damnedest to ensure that nothing like that ever happens again.”

Or he could point to something more minor, like, “I initially opposed the creation of the 9-11 commission, but I’m really glad that I changed my mind on that, because we’ve learned a lot from them.” No loss of face there either, I don’t think.

Finally, he could even have turned it into a joke. “Let’s put it this way: The next time I’m at home watching a ball game, I’m gonna think twice before reaching for the pretzels!” Get a laugh, boost the regular guy image.

Instead, this so-called conservative (generally meaning one who supports personal responsibility) won’t admit he did a damn thing wrong, even as he presides over a shitty economy, a quagmire overseas, and an insane attorney general enforcing all the wrong laws.

-John Ashcroft. On September 11, for a brief moment, I was glad we had Ashcroft. This guy, I thought, was a pugnacious, demented, humorless, pseudo-fascist son of a bitch, but by God we were gonna turn him loose on the bad guys, and there’d be hell to pay. Instead, he’s had people infiltrate peace protest groups, gone after medical marijuana and assisted suicide with a vengeance, failed to charge any of the prisoners in Guantanamo (some of whom have committed suicide), amended the PATRIOT act late at night after a draft had been approved in order to add more sweeping powers that few would have time to read up on, oh, and by the way, has not prosecuted a single terrorist under the PATRIOT act.

-Bush’s re-election campaign manager in the southwest is Ralph Reed, former head of the Christian coalition, an organization founded by Pat Robertson, who endorsed the belief that 9-11 was in part the fault of feminists, the ACLU, pagans, and abortion doctors. The Christian coalition’s goal is a theocratic government; to my knowledge, Reed has not disavowed any of their positions. It’s easy here in California to think that Republicans aren’t all religious nuts, but in the red states, a huge proportion of them are -- some 40%, I think. That’s Bush’s base, and he is one of them.

-Donald Rumsfeld. Anyone taken responsibility for Abu Ghraib yet? Any commanding officers been fired for allowing such things?

-“Moral Clarity” or, as I prefer to call it, willful ignorance. Conservatives love this concept, which states that we (the USA) are good, all countries who oppose us are bad, and there are no shades of gray in between. This helps explain a lot of conservative thought -- right-wingers don’t need to see evidence of an alliance between Saddam and Osama, because it’s sufficient that both are evil. This also explains the demonization of France; because they oppose us, they’re EVIL! Couldn’t possibly be a reasoned difference of opinion.

I’m not saying the USA is bad or evil; I don’t think it is. But I take the view that shading things in black and white only is the sign of a simplistic, immature mind.

-the “regular guy” myth. Bush is NOT just a regular guy, and he no longer drinks, so he would not have a beer with you. Bush has been handed high positions in businesses for years, among them Arbusto and the Texas Rangers, and failed at every one. As for his “folksy” southern accent -- ask yourself why it is that no-one else in his family has that accent? Bush is a Connecticut blueblood masquerading as a good ol’ boy, like the bad salsa in Pace Picante commercials that’s made in New York City.

-Bush wants to amend the constitution to ban gay marriage, only the second time an amendment would be added to preemptively bar freedoms rather than adding to them. The first time was Prohibition, and boy, we saw how that turned out.

-Fewer press conferences than any of his predecessors; those he does have are sometimes scripted.

-Though pollution has gone down under Bush, it’s due to programs put in place before he came into office. Since coming into office, he has reduced our obligations to cut down on pollution in the future, and had the gall to call it “Clear Skies.” He’s increased logging in forests and calls that “Healthy Forests.” He still thinks global warming is an unproven theory that needs to be studied more.

-380 tons of explosives missing from an ammo dump in Iraq that was left unguarded because we were busy securing the oil fields. One pound of similar explosive destroyed Pan Am flight 103. This stuff has been missing for (I think) 18 months; Condoleeza Rice apparently only learned of this last month, and the media has only picked up on it now. Good thing there weren’t really any WMDS, huh?

-Oh yeah, no WMDS. Also, less loose nuclear material has been secured since 9-11 than in the 2 years before. And many nuclear and chemical plants remain unguarded. Meanwhile, Bush wants new nukes. And a missile defense system that would have done nothing to prevent 9-11, nor would it stop any other non-state-based terrorism.

-Bush appointed an ambassador to France who couldn’t speak French.

-Also, and I realize this may smack of elitism: BUSH IS FUCKING INCOHERENT! Statesmen need to be able to articulate their case, and he just can’t. Ernest P. Worrell could communicate ideas to the nation better than president Bush. (“Hey Vern, we’re gonna smite Al Qaeda, KnowhutImean?”)

-Bush would most likely not have even won the election had a full statewide recount of Florida been allowed, rather than stopped in its tracks by a Supreme Court on which two judges should have excused themselves for having close family that worked for the Bush campaign.

-Bush ran as a moderate, promising to be a uniter and to have a humble foreign policy. Instead, his idea of diplomacy is to make demands, try to browbeat others into agreeing with him, ignore information to the contrary, then throw a snit fit when others disagree with you and proceed with your original plan anyway. That’s not how diplomacy works. Also, calling a narcissistic foreign leader “evil” and “a pygmy” in a public forum is pretty fucking stupid if you’re hoping to get him to negotiate away his nuclear weapons (Kim Jong-il deserves hatred, but that’s beside the point -- the game is called diplomacy).

-Bush has taken way more vacation days than he would allow you or I to take.

-Bush’s mockery of Death Row inmate Karla Faye Tucker pleading for her life

-Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, Goss, Frist, Ridge.

-Duct tape and plastic sheets as a means to survive WMD attack

-There’s more. But you get the idea. You may disagree with what I’ve said, but I don’t think you can call it irrational.

I know many people out there who are probably thinking, “Yeah, yeah, I don’t agree with Bush on most of that stuff either. But the ‘Islamomafascistoids’ are coming to kill us, and Bush ‘gets’ that this is a real war. Kerry doesn’t; he said it was a nuisance.”

First of all, Kerry didn’t say that. He said he’s not sure you can utterly defeat all terrorists, but you can beat it down until it’s only occasionally at a problem level, i.e. a nuisance.

Second, what sort of war are we talking about? Yes, Bush probably has more of a propensity to bomb countries. But Kerry has a track record of smartly fighting terror, having been instrumental in closing down BCCI, a bank that was a source of funding for many terrorists. Kerry ‘gets’ that there’s more to this than dropping bombs. Kerry knows the costs of war firsthand. And he also has a more nuanced thought process than Bush’s willful ignorance.

Which brings us to...

3. John Kerry. When Counterpunch and other far-left sites say there’s little difference between Kerry and Bush, what they usually mean is there’s little difference in their support of Israel. Pitiful. There are plenty of meaningful differences in other areas, and like it or not, Kerry is about as progressive a mainstream candidate as we are ever going to see.

A friend put it to me this way: As much as I may agree with Dennis Kucinich on the issues, do I really want him in charge if America is attacked? Frankly, no.

So Kerry campaigns as more of a moderate than you’d like. The Christian Right said the same thing about Bush in 2000.

Things to like about Kerry include:

-He’s mostly opposed to the death penalty, except for terrorists. This would be a huge step forward. He would likely appoint anti-death penalty judges.

-He’s opposed to nuclear weapons, in our hands or anyone else’s. Nuclear weapons, which by their very nature target civilians and the environment, are inherently war crimes in the making.

-He objected to the partial birth abortion ban because it didn’t include a provision for the procedure in cases where it might save the mother’s life.

-He knows that environmental damage is real, and that we need to take drastic steps to avoid catastrophe (read the current Rolling Stone interview with him -- he comes off very smart)

-He understands diplomacy.

-He’d be more effective at securing loose nuclear material.

-He believes in separation of church and state, and wouldn’t cut off foreign aid just because it might include family planning and abortion in the Third World.

-We might have a chance for something better than abstinence-only education in our schools

Oh, sure, as president, he’ll probably disappoint. They all do. But he would be so, so much better than the current travesty.

Posted by LYT at 5:51 PM | Comments (11)

Look whut the kid drug in

Interesting that I finally got to see GARDEN STATE today, at this moment...any sooner and I wouldn't have been on meds the way Zach Braff's character Largeman is.

GARDEN STATE is quite good, but it could have been great. It isn't quite there. A bit too all over the place, and I'm not sure Braff (who also directs) is entirely sure whether to go for easy caricature and quirkiness, or a profound statement about human relationships. For a director who acts in almost every frame of his own movie, he acquits himself well. The editing is a bit subpar, however -- more than once the cut to close-up from a medium shot doesn't seem to match, or possibly "crosses the line" (that's a film school term which would really take too damn long to explain, but the gist of it is there are certain places you shouldn't put the camera when cutting within a scene, and I think maybe Zach's people do it once or twice). It could work if it were consistently a deliberate choice, but it isn't. It only happens a couple times, which make things more jarring.

The movie reminds me a lot of a story I have in the works, but I won't detail that one here. Suffice it to say that Largeman is a Hollywood actor who returns home to New Jersey for his mom's funeral, to finally face his dad (Ian Holm, so convincingly American that I didn't recognize his voice at first) who also doubles as his psychiatrist and has had Largeman on multiple medications for most of his life, for reasons we will of course discover later.

Numbed by the pills, Largeman can't cry for his mom, or muster up much outrage that his best friend (Peter Sarsgaard) robs graves. But then he meets Sam (Natalie Portman), one of those spontaneous, quirky, freewheeling chicks who change the lives of everyone they meet.

Portman has her character absolutely down. I've known several girls like this over the years (not in the biblical sense, folks, but you should have figured that by now), and her way of talking, and screaming when she gets excited, and obsessing out loud over whether or not she's freaking Largeman out ring sooooo true. This is the best I've seen her since she was a kid.

Still, there's one drawback: She's Natalie Portman, world's most beautiful woman. She can't help her good genes, but she could insist on less make-up. In my experience, girls like Sam, while often good-looking, are good-looking in modest ways, in that they don't really care about make-up or looking good for others; they're too busy finger painting or diving into a stream fully clothed or making homemade jewelry to worry about immaculate lipstick and rouge. As director and star, Braff certainly has the prerogative to say, "If I have to make out with a chick onscreen, it's gonna be Natalie Portman." But as a storyteller, I think he should have the responsibility to present Sam honestly -- come to think of it, her hairdo's way too fancy as well. She really should have beads in there somewhere.

Natalie Portman, as you may or may not know, hates doing sex scenes. So there isn't one here. But she does wear a skimpy swimsuit.

Will it surprise you to learn that Braff's character learns to have feelings because of Natalie? And that just maybe his meds start to seem like a bad idea? Yeah, I'm not sure meds are a good idea myself. But I don't see Natalie coming to rescue me from them, so onward we go into Paxillation.

Tangentially related: I tried a non-alcoholic Beck's beer tonight, and it's pretty good. In that it actually tastes like beer. It'll have to do, for now anyway. Braff's character is on a shitload more meds, and he drinks beers. Dammit.

Posted by LYT at 1:15 AM | Comments (1)

October 24, 2004

What if you threw a party and nobody came?

Alas, not a hypothetical question.

Got a whole box o' wine here that ain't gonna drink itself. And I'm not allowed to drink.

Much love to JBL.

Posted by LYT at 3:10 AM | Comments (3)

October 22, 2004

Eminem bashes Bush

according to a poster at daily Kos, who leaked these lyrics from the new single "Mosh":

Rebel with a rebel yell, raise hell we gonna let em know

Stomp, push up, mush, fuck Bush, until they bring our troops home come on just . . .

Come along, follow me as I lead through the darkness

As I provide just enough spark, that we need to proceed

Carry on, give me hope, give me strength,

Come with me, and I won't stear you wrong

Put your faith and your trust as I guide us through the fog

Till the light, at the end, of the tunnel, we gonna fight,

We gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march through the swamp

We gonna mosh through the marsh, take us right through the doors, come on

Imagine it pouring, it's raining down on us,

Mosh pits outside the oval office

Someone's trying to tell us something, maybe this is God just saying

we're responsible for this monster, this coward, that we have empowered

This is Bin Laden, look at his head nodding,

How could we allow something like this, Without pumping our fist

Now this is our, final hour

Let me be the voice, and your strength, and your choice

Let me simplify the rhyme, just to amplify the noise

Try to amplify the times it, and multiply it by six

Teen million people are equal of this high pitch

Maybe we can reach Al Quaida through my speech

Let the President answer on high anarchy

Strap him with AK-47, let him go

Fight his own war, let him impress daddy that way

No more blood for oil, we got our own battles to fight on our soil

No more psychological warfare to trick us to think that we ain't loyal

If we don't serve our own country we're patronizing a hero

Look in his eyes, it's all lies, the stars and stripes

They've been swiped, washed out and wiped,

And Replaced with his own face, mosh now or die

If I get sniped tonight you'll know why, because I told you to fight

Posted by LYT at 8:25 PM | Comments (0)

Complete photos of the McFarlane Toys DRAGONS line

check em out HERE

Posted by LYT at 5:39 PM | Comments (1)

Calling all USC alumni

If you haven't already, check out http://usc.affinityengines.net. It's basically a version of friendster for SC alums. And the first few people to get 10 friends can win prizes, so get on there and add me!

Note: I'm pretty sure you have to have graduated.

Posted by LYT at 5:17 PM | Comments (0)

Party reminder for tomorrow

Don't forget my blog-a-versary/Controversy Cinema night is tomorrow. Because the movies are long, I am keeping to schedule regardless of who shows up when.

6PM - socialize, get boozed.

7PM - THE PASSION

9:05 PM - breather

10PM - FAHRENHEIT 9-11

midnight (if anyone's still around) - FAHRENEHIT 9-11 DVD extras.

RSVPs are a MUST! If you show up without warning, you'd best bring your own food and drink, because I'm only providing for people I know are coming.

You know my email. If you don't, RSVP under this post.

Posted by LYT at 3:34 PM | Comments (1)

One more review update

Those gay guys are surely full of Testosterone

Posted by LYT at 12:08 PM | Comments (0)

Review quick take...

...on the surprisingly noteworthy Dust Factory

I was convinced it'd be hideous. It's bad enough when a press screening turns out to be a radio station promo screening -- they're usually for hip-hop stations, with live DJs going "Everybody say hooooo!" and crap like that. Dust Factory did worse than that -- it was a RADIO DISNEY promo screening. I hated my life for a while.

But then...well, click the link.

Posted by LYT at 1:29 AM | Comments (0)

October 21, 2004

CityBeat review of Celsius 41.11

#Celsius 41.11: The Temperature at Which the Brain Begins to Die#

Talk about your short shelf lives! This documentary from first-time director Kevin Knoblock, produced by Lionel Chetwynd (DC 9/11: Time of Crisis) is explicitly designed to make the case for re-electing George W. Bush, and as such it’ll be totally useless in two weeks, one way or the other. Less a refutation of Michael Moore than an attempted undermining of “Anyone But Bush” logic, the movie’s not as skillfully made as Moore’s film either -- it’s more like those Robert Greenwald documentaries that seem to come out almost every week, assembled from available news footage and interviews with sympathetic talking heads.

Following some exploitational 9-11 footage, and some laughs at the expense of wacky war protestors, Al Sharpton yelling about something, and Howard Dean’s scream, we get interviews with the likes of Charles Krauthammer, who says the hatred for Bush is unprecedented; Fred Thompson, who claims that everyone studied the PATRIOT act carefully before voting on it; Fred Barnes, who dubs Bush “The Great Clarifier”; and Michael Medved, who tells John Kerry that you can’t be a hero and a war protestor (though he never explains why not).

If Knoblock expected his film to change minds, as Fahrenheit 9-11 seems to have done, he really should have added more humor, and even more crucially, some testimonials from ordinary people affected by world events. Certainly anyone who wants to hear Barnes or Medved can do so already by turning on the radio or TV.

Posted by LYT at 6:23 PM | Comments (4)

Citybeat/Anchorage Press review of Surviving Christmas

#Surviving Christmas#

In what surely must be a tremendous stretch, Ben Affleck plays a shallow, wealthy narcissist detached from reality who has a penchant for buying expensive diamonds to impress a shallow bimbo, who promptly breaks up with him right before the holidays. Desperate not to be alone, Affleck’s Drew Latham begins a rather frightening process of stalking even his most minor acquaintances in search of an invitation to Christmas dinner.

Ultimately ending up at his childhood home, Drew finds it occupied by the Valco family -- James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara, Christina Applegate, and Josh Zuckerman. It’s almost worth the price of admission to see Gandolfini whack Affleck in the head with a snow shovel, but things mostly go downhill from there. Drew bribes the Valcos to pretend to be his family over Christmas, and proceeds to maniacally force them to cater to his every infantilist whim.

At this point, if the film had moved into Stepfather territory, with Affleck turning homicidal every time his needs aren’t met, there could have been something to it -- a suicide joke very early on hints at a darkness that otherwise isn’t much in evidence. All too predictably, however, and against all logic, we’re expected to believe in Drew’s transformation from borderline nutjob to sensitive soul, and to accept Applegate’s character rapidly going from utter loathing of Drew to total adoration. All in all, Surviving Christmas is strictly for those who think the idea of Gandolfini looking uncomfortable in a Santa hat is the funniest thing ever. Count me out.

Posted by LYT at 6:21 PM | Comments (0)

October 20, 2004

Rent FAHRENEHEIT 9-11 for free!

That's right. if you can't come to my free showing, there are video stores across the land that will rent it free of charge, so you don't have endorse the director's cheeseburger habit with your hard-earned cash.

Interesting note -- I was looking at Michael Moore's DVD covers yesterday, and while he's never been a thin guy, it is astonishing how much weight he gains with each film. If you have a chance, take a side-by-side look at the cover images for ROGER AND ME, THE BIG ONE, BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, AND FAHRENHEIT 9-11 (CANADIAN BACON doesn't count -- that's actually John Candy on the cover).

Does his wife not nag him about this? Even Rush finally dropped some pounds (though the drugs probably helped with that).

Moore will be diagnosed with diabetes very soon, I'll wager.

Posted by LYT at 1:07 PM | Comments (0)

I don't like the drugs (but the drugs like me)

I've been having wheezing and shortness of breath issues for a few weeks now. Was finally persuaded to do something about it when some old friends noticed it, and when I actually felt daunted by a large set of stairs.

I have no health insurance, and thus go to the doctor nearest me, who's fairly cheap. Believe me when I say you don't wanna know the things I've asked him about in the past; suffice it to say that the first issue was essentially incurable, and the second mostly in my head.

He decides that the latest thing is in my head too, a result of the panic attacks I've had over the years. (This is part of why I drink as much as I do.) But to be sure, I get my chest X-rayed.

There's some scarring on my lungs, probably from a childhood sickness (I had croupe as an infant). But otherwise things are fine. My heart looks good too. The wheezing is purely an anxiety thing, it seems.

So now I'm prescribed Paxil (for panic disorder) and Xanax (relaxant). I dislike the idea of being "on" medication, and think that once I know it's in my head, I'll be okay. The doctor disagrees, and wants me to try these, on low dosages. If my breathing improves, I might accept that. Antidepressants like Paxil tend to have sexual side effects, but it's not like that's an issue right now.

Any of my readers on these? Got feedback?

Anyway, I can't drink while I take them. So tonight I finish of my Jack Daniels. Tomorrow I go on the meds. When my party comes around on Saturday, I will not be able to partake in wine. Lucky attendees may get to take the excess vino home.

Is that incentive enough?

Posted by LYT at 4:10 AM | Comments (11)

October 17, 2004

HAPPY BLOG-A-VERSARY! The best of the last year

Complete with all-new snide headlines like they have in them fancy magazines whut do end-of-year issues.

Don’t piss me off

Not one year before I was a film critic, I was mopping up piss in a movie theater restroom for $7.50 an hour. Boy, you know, it would've been real nice to say, "Hey boss, guess what? Unless you rescind the rule that says I have to mop up urine, I'm not going to do the rest of my job properly!"

Proof that my last name isn’t “Ford”

Personally, I could never keep kosher because I can't see worshipping a god who would deny us the pleasure of one of the most divine creations on earth, the cheeseburger.

It’s NOT a gas, gas, gas.

If you are a cell-phone user (and I am not, nor will I be until my career absolutely compels it), please don’t ever ever ever call me from the men’s room. I dunno, I just find it kind of disrespectful to be calling your little kid and being cute while someone’s making a loud gassy bowel movement about a foot away. I know new parenthood necessarily creates a slight desensitivty to bodily functions, but the non-parenting world does not share it.

Heh-heh, m, yeah, yeah! This rules!

Whether it’s the digital effects guys talking about their reference balls, or special make-up folks wondering whether to suck or tug, or whether particular fluids should bubble or spurt, there’s much for Freudians and Beavises to have a field day with. And if you aren’t familiar with the peculiar system of light size nomenclature that exists within the movie industry, try this soundbite for size: “You want me to kill the baby on the floor?”

Mohr Better Blues

Max is a lazy bastard who's given up on his blog, apparently. Probably pissed that I snubbed his birthday party to go to Canada. Yes, the truth is revealed -- only reason I went up north was to avoid buying Max a present. Now who's the master miser, eh Max?

What about a smoking cat?

Hmm, pets or lung pollution? Both things I avoid in women, so it’s hard to make a judgment.

All at sea

A movie I think should win Oscars is Master and Commander, for one simple reason: I watch that movie and think "I could not do this." I can make movies, and I feel sure I could direct your standard feature film. But short of taking actual ships out to war, I have no idea how the fuck you make a movie like this.

English people are wacky, part 1

Hard to imagine England having a holiday of thanks, for instance; a holiday spent complaining about the bloody weather seems more likely.

Consider the days we set of fireworks. Americans set them off to commemorate winning our country's freedom. English use them to blow up a scarecrow, commemorating the failure of a small group of rebels to blow up the government.

On In America:

I'm not sure I can entirely groove to the notion that an Irish Catholic family's problems are all solved as the result of a noble-savage-type black man dying for them. Hey, next time I'm grieving over a dead family member, I guess all I have to do is find a member of the Zulu nation with AIDS, so he can give me the proper catharsis and leave me all his money.

The L.A. Times should have hired him instead of that Carina chick

Reuben was disappointed in the Hulk movie because it didn't have enough Hulk in it. He's only 4, but his criticism is astute.

He'd love to see a movie-accurate toy of the Hulk that swings a tank around and jumps as high (proportionately) as the movie Hulk. He suggests that putting a baby kangaroo inside each Hulk action figure might achieve this, though he's not sure what to do with the kangaroo's ears.

Don’t worry, be somewhat happy

It's OK to be glad Saddam is captured. Really, it is. Doesn't make you a Republican, or a Bush-lover. I know you may hate the U.S. government, and it might be tempting to support any enemies of it, but fight that urge. Saddam's a bad guy. He's not the only bad guy, nor is he the most dangerous bad guy, but many people in Iraq and elsewhere are sleeping more soundly tonight knowing he's in custody as a criminal.

Will this ensure Bush's re-election? Not necessarily. We still have almost a year to go. If we find Osama during that year, Bush will be re-elected. That sucks, but if it's a choice between having dangerous terrorists in custody versus a president I despise, I know which one I'd take.

Moral murkiness

You can fall into the trap if you say the world's not better off with Saddam caught -- that just makes you look bad. As always, the question and answer are more complicated than yes/no.

Let me give you a hypothetical -- not quite analogous, but so be it:

Without a warrant, cops in riot gear break into a man's house looking for drugs. They find none, but in the process end up shooting the man in the head as he runs from them. Turns out later that that man raped and murdered his family ten years ago.

Is the world a better place with him dead? Probably. Do you want to set that sort of precedent for police behavior, though? Not I.

Gimli likes to drink, let’s take him to Tijuana

In the real world, I might say "Yeah, I'm gonna drive down the 5, park this side, walk across the border, then take a cab to TJ's main street where I'll get wasted."

-If I were a Tolkien character, here's what I'd say, even to a good friend: "I, Luke son of James, descendent of Thomp who settled in the Land of Virginia in the region known as Appalachia, shall board my trusty vehicle Fordmercurius, and ride like the wind down the Freeway of San Diegicus, also known as the Pentaway. Approaching the Border of Borderos that leads to the Land of Mexicador, I shall leave my steed, then on foot traverse the Path of Pathioninca until I reach the Taxicab of Thoreo-Hur, which will be in the hands of a Latino from the people of Latinerica. Under his guidance I shall reach the Street of Cheapwhore-Whiskeydrink, whereupon I shall look for the sign of the Prancing Pony and drink Elven Ale till my brain enters the Shadowlands."

Friends versus figures

But strangest of all is the case of my M.A.C. Beavis action figure. His talking base doesn't work at the touch of a button any more, but it does activate at random, throughout the day. I never know when I'm gonna hear, out of the blue, "This rules!" or "Shutup fartknocker!"

Reminds me a bit of life with my old room-mate Colin!

On May

You're obligated to watch a friend's film once out of courtesy -- I went on to watch it 3 more times.

Wait, what provoked this sentence?

Look, it's not like Wendy wants to give Peter a rim-job or anything -- IT'S JUST A KISS!

On Gigli

When the gangsta-rapping retarded kid played by Justin Bartha mentions that Baywatch makes his penis sneeze, you wonder if you've entered some parallel dimension where this stuff is actually comedy gold.

Inaccurate predictions for 2004

David Twohy's The Chronicles of Riddick will be a really good, dark-toned sci-fi flick. Unfortunately, audiences and critics just won't get it, and the "evil Star Wars trilogy" will not happen.

Meanwhile, the Garfield movie will suck balls, but it'll still make a fortune. Even I will go see it. The day after it sets a new weekend box office record, Peanuts: The Movie will be greenlit.

Howard Dean will totally school George Bush in the debates, but it won't affect his popularity at all -- the next day, pundits will fall all over themselves to explain how Dean was "mean-spirited." [wrong: Dean didn't get the nomination]

The Woods will make Agnes Bruckner famous, and start Lauren Birkell down that road. Several males will adopt Agnes' Woods outfit for the West Hollywood Halloween parade. None will be as convincing as Randy Ostrow. [may yet happen in 2005]

Rush Limbaugh will write a book about his battle with addiction. It'll do well at first, until everyone realizes it sucks.

Lucky McKee's next directorial project will feature a female protagonist in a horrific situation.

My living situation will be thoroughly different by year's end.

My Valentine's Day solo streak will once again remain unbroken. [this turned out to be wrong]

Mostly accurate predictions for 2004

Bush will say something stupid and/or indefensible in his State of the Union address, as he has done every year so far. When he is called on it, he won't respond, but various Fox News hosts will explain the ambiguous nature of the words he used.

The Olympics will happen somewhere. I forget where. There'll be some sort of controversy over whether U.S. networks should air them live or not, despite being in a different time zone. I will pay no attention at all to this.

North Korea will act like dicks. We'll ignore them, since they have nothing we want.

I'll finally quit talking about it and actually make a movie.

Ronald Reagan will die. Republicans will start a movement for Reagan to replace Ben Franklin on the $100 bill. Democrats will go out of their way to make phony speeches about how they actually thought Reagan was a great man.

Michael Moore's next movie will break opening weekend records for a documentary. Some of the facts in it will be dubious. There will be attempts on his life.

I will buy a bunch more McFarlane Toys.

No offense to [WWE wrestler] Zach [Gowen], but once the novelty of his one-legged skills wears off, he may be toast.

Generation gap

As great as many of my journalist friends are, there's always that little bit of disconnect, that moment when you want to put Metallica in the tape deck and they tell you, "That's not music," or when you mention that Layne Staley just died and they don't even know who you mean.

Entitle me this!

"Discrimination" is not the same thing as "not getting billions of dollars in grant money." If it is, I say the government is discriminating against LYTrules.com

Nutbag...That’s a scientific term

Dr. Ted Baehr notes with dismay that the vast majority of Christians do not have a biblical worldview.

Never does he consider the obvious -- that since the vast majority of those in his own faith disagree with his nutbag interpretation of the Bible, he' s most likely wrong.

If Karl Rove were replaced by Vince McMahon...

First Howard Dean yells like Ric Flair, now Al Franken bodyslams a nutty Lyndon LaRouche follower.

If these trends continue, what happens next? Some ideas, based on past wrestling storylines:

Jenna Bush breaks away from George and marries John Edwards. The two declare themsleves owners of the South and secede from the Union. Laura Bush responds by challenging Jenna to a "spanking match."

Meanwhile, John Kerry dons a Howard Dean mask and has sex with the corpse of Mary Jo Kopechne. Dean responds by forming an elite clique with Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich, who use steel chairs to attack anyone who dares try to take the nomination from Dean. Dean is actually banging Laura Bush behind the scenes, so the Secret Service and CIA rig everything so that Dean gets to hold onto the nomination for as long as he wants.

The Democratic Party and the Republican Party change names to the RAW party and the Smackdown Party. As always, they pretend to be competing while answering to the same corporate owners. Ralph Nader runs again, but you have to pay $10 a week to even hear what he has to say, since pay-per-view is the only way he can get on TV.

Mexico invades U.S. with an army solely consisting of colorfully masked men. However, they end up only fighting each other, and never getting matched up with actual American star players.

Canada begins to develop weapons of mass destruction, and becomes the most anti-American country in the world, at least until the U.S. "special enforcer" John Ashcroft goes up there and challenges the P.M. to a beer drinking contest. Right when it's about to start, Ashcroft sucker kicks the guy in the stomach, stuns him, and sends him to Guantanamo. John Kerry, in a surprise heel turn, becomes the new Canadian leader, after saying "I tried to be a nice guy, but you called me 'French looking.' Well, now I am! French looking to deliver an ass-whuppin!"

Commentator Rush Limbaugh dons a cowboy hat and insists on being called "Good Ol' R.L." He promptly suffers two strokes and has to kiss George Bush's ass in front of a horrified hometown crowd in Cape Girardeau.

Tony Blair accuses Bush of "besmirching" him.

Drunken bitching, part 1.

Bar didn't take credit cards either, They said the waitresses did, which would've been worth a damn if any such mythical creatures had materialized in our vicinity.

There’s the N-word again

Many people will take from this movie [The Passion of the Christ] whatever baggage they brought in. I could make a case that the film’s point is that religious nutbags are insensitive fuckheads who support the inhumane death penalty even when it’s clearly wrong.

Proof that things can change (we hope)

Other evidence that God dislikes Bush-haters : John Edwards dropping out. I really can't see myself saying "President Kerry," but who knows.

The guy who spent four hours voluntarily getting tattooed whines about pain

Yow. You know what's worse than a painful twisted ankle?

Having to drive a manual transmission vehicle with a twisted ankle on your clutch foot.

Left and Right cancel each other out...don’t they?

Conservatives often complain about affirmative action, on the grounds that reverse bias is no way to make up for prior bias, when in fact the ideal solution would be a lack of bias, or level playing field.

This is an argument not without merit. However, it suddenly changes when it comes to the media. Most reasonable-minded folks, even conservative ones, will, when pressed, admit that the Fox News channel tilts rightward. However, their corollary to that is the argument that such is okay: a "reverse-bias" is needed because other channels have a liberal bias.

What happened to the level playing field argument?

To put it another way, remember that post I had a month or so back about John Stossel teaching materials in the classroom? I opined that conservatives would be creeped out if, say, Ralph Nader teaching materials were in the classroom. A conservative reader opined that Ralph Nader was already in the classroom, and John Stossel was needed for balance.

See, to me, the solution would be to get Nader AND Stossel out of the classroom, and let the teacher teach. I guess I can be old fashioned in some rare instances.

Ha ha! You suck for not being an alcoholic! Oh wait, that’s a good thing.

Some advice for all of you: Be very careful when asking a Dogsauce brother to bartend. Al’s a big guy, but my tolerance level can be humbling, and I mix drinks in my own proportions, which are proportions I learned from Rick “The Finger” Barrs. Al ended up slouched outside against the wall for a time, unable to rise, where I joined him briefly after the heavy amounts of beer mixed with raw vegetables made swallowing difficult for me (does that happen to anyone else in similar combos?). I literally was not able to swallow beer for a while, and had to cough it back up. So I appropriated Al’s 7up, lubed up my throat again and got back to it. Al later went inside and slept for about an hour, during which time his unconsciousness was duly mocked.

Drunken bitching, part 2.

On the way out, I run into the same homeless guy, still wanting beer money. I remind him I gave him a buck. "Yeah, for a can," he says, "Nigga needs a forty."

Best domain name ever

The following email comes from "avouch@ripped-off-my-tits.com":

"Good evening.

It never occurs to some politicians that Lincoln is worth imitating as well as quoting.

God Bless America

The in-your-face attitude, the disrespect shown to hypocritical propriety, the non-conformity...it can be easy to forget sometimes, but this is one of the few countries founded by vehement nonconformists. Rebellion and individuality are traits so endemic to our culture that both sides of the political aisle pay lip service to the notion even when their actions don't actually support it.

Irish education

The teacher was a short and skinny power-tripping young woman named Mrs. Toolan, who, among other things, told us that the stars couldn't be boiling hot because they're too far away from the sun.

How many posts sounded like this one?

I got to the party an hour early and ordered a drink. It was too expensive, but I bought it anyway. Why doesn’t Cathy Seipp buy me drinks? I’m LYT, dammit.

I wore a T-shirt that said {wrestling catchphrase and/or obnoxious left-wing political statement}. The homeless people on the street liked it, but {Republican-voting journalist} did not. Fuck him/her.

Finally, other people started showing up. Cathy Seipp told me {helpful statement designed to improve social skills and standing}. I responded {smart-ass remark denigrating anyone’s opinion that isn’t my own}.

Martin Devon was in attendance, and since he’s fair-minded for a right-winger, I pointed out to him that he surely must agree with me on {something liberal}. He politely demurred. I drank more Jack Daniels

Uh-oh, my Mexican readers might be mad about this...

Pennies are the Mexicans of the currency world. The big bad corporate [vending] machines won't accept them, and the average passerby will ignore one if he sees it on the street. But get a whole lot of them together, and you've got some purchasing power, by golly. I read somewhere that several millions of dollars worth of pennies are dropped on the streets every day.

Life lessons learned in Las Vegas

1.If you break down on the way to Vegas, go the fuck home (based on what the tow truck guys and mechanics told us, many people break down and junk their cars, hence the extortion prices to "donate" them).

2. Don't order margaritas at casino bars unless they're a buck.

Gaze into your future, Republicans, and tremble

If we had a president who is as far to the left as Bush is to the right, he would have done the following things:

-Declared Israel in material breach of the U.N. resolution barring possession of nuclear weapons by Middle Eastern states. Began a war, and consulted heavily with France, Russia, and Germany on how to install a socialist government that would do whatever Vladimir Putin tells it to do, including the elimination of the Jewish religion from public life. Renamed bagels "freedom donuts."

-Given federal funding to the Nation of Islam, Church of Scientology, PETA, and the Madalyn Murray O'Hair foundation. Denied it to any organization that allowed open expression of Christianity. As a consolation prize, made a public speech declaring that Christianity is a religion of peace.

-Introduced the following acts: The "Meat is Tasty" act, to promote a vegan lifestyle; The "More Profits for Businessmen" act that would in fact cut CEO salaries in half; The "I Love Jesus" act, making it legal to bulldoze churches; and the "No Gun Left Behind" act, which would confiscate the guns from all Americans except Arabs who could show that they need guns because of their religion.

-Made Jerry Springer the Attorney General, because he knows how to break up fights.

-Given one press conference a year, and insisted in talking in Ebonics at each.

-Passed legislation banning cigarettes from everywhere unless they're filled with pot, in which case smoking would be encouraged, especially by drivers and airline pilots.

-Banned the death penalty for all crimes except the killing of an animal, which would be penalized by torture and mandatory cannibalism.

-Released all prisoners of color. Forcibly branded a swastika into the forehead of the remaining caucasians. Insisted that black-on-black crime is still "an unproven theory." Hire all the released criminals to corporate jobs after firing all the fully-qualified white guys.

-Petitioned for membership in the E.U., and allowed the United Nations veto power over all our domestic policies.

-Hired Pat Robertson as Secretary of State, and blackmailed him into publicly agreeing with everything the president says.

-Established a federal Department of Homosexuality, to be overseen by Barbra Streisand.

A philosophy of criticism

I don't believe my opinion is somehow intrinsically better than yours. I do believe that my degree in film means something. I also think that arbitrary grading systems are stupid, and a well articulated opinion beats any sort of letter or numerical grade any day. Make your case on the merits, not on some silly scale.

I also think plain speaking beats pretentious analysis any day.

The truth about my writing skills

I've made a living from writing. I assume this means I'm good at it. Even looking at the worst script I've ever written (a proposed episode for a half-hour softcore porno about an invisible man; not my concept, I assure you, but it was very nearly my first script sale), I find it entertaining (albeit naive -- virgins really shouldn't write porn).

The most controversial thing written on this website ever, judging by the feedback

The first Shrek had super-detailed, hard-to-find tie-in action figures from McFarlane Toys. The sequel has mass-produced, bland-looking neon things packed with accessories that literally stink.

An apt analogy when it comes to comparing the films themselves.

Hey, if the old dead guy can get credit for doing something similar...

MR. KIM JONG-IL, OPEN YOUR GATES! MR. KIM JONG-IL, PAVE OVER THAT DEMILITARIZED ZONE!

There. Now I guess if it actually happens, I get to claim credit for it.

Musique Non-Stop

THE BAD: INXS are planning a major comeback, with a new lead singer who will be determined by a TV reality show produced by Mark Burnett.

THE GOOD: Creed broke up!

Homosexual Refreshments, part 1.

Was disappointed to see that even though Fanta and Sprite have their own merchandise lines, there is not one product with the Diet Coke logo on it. Diet Coke rules. I say that because I'm totally gay.

Done and Dunning

Douglas thinks the f-word is used too much in UNTIL THE NIGHT. He came to this conclusion after talking to a 68-year-old audience member who expressed the same sentiment. Douglas himself is fond of describing others as fuckers, but any attempts to point out the irony of such fell on deaf ears.

Homosexual Refreshments, part 2.

Wine was free, but nothing else was, except the little plastic Hollywood Reporter fake ice cubes that light up in different colors. For folks whose drinks aren't gay enough.

If Kerry loses the election, it’ll be because he didn’t heed this advice:

Look, John, we all know Democrats have to deal with Barbra Streisand. It's their cross to bear.

But it would really be a good idea not to invite Ben Affleck to be a spokesman for the cause next time around. If he won't take no for an answer, just point off into the distance and say, "Look! Hot Latina ass!"

And if that fails, offer to take him on a shopping trip for red leather in WeHo if he'll leave you alone.

Warning: I’m a dumbass AND a dick!

2. When I am at a party, chances are I'm anywhere from partially buzzed to totally trashed. This affects comprehension, and at times may make me more inclined to insult you.

3. The degree to which you remember me is in no way proportional to the degree to which I'll remember you. I've got fucking rainbow hair, and my initials tattooed on my arm. Odds are you don't.

The immensely exciting saga of Max’s fridge

Max and I carried it down the stairs and onto the front lawn. As we were carrying it to my car, his shitty, hole-filled, loose-elastic, thrift-store shorts dropped down around his ankles for the whole neighborhood to see.

I wish all of you could have been there.

Naturally, I immediately set the freezer down and pleasured him. Honestly, what other choice did I have?

Parents just don’t understand

"Oh wow, Rick James died."

"Who's Rick James?"

"One of the most famous funk singers of all time."

"What band was he in?"

"His own."

"Oh. How old was he?"

"56. He lived a wild life."

"Well, that explains it."

"MC Hammer used one of his songs for 'U Can't Touch This'"

"Never 'eard of him." (in slightly facetious Northern UK accent she regularly affects for that phrase alone)

Yeah, but Fox News makes a fortune doing it...

Tough to have a meaningful debate when someone else is telling you what you believe and then arguing with that instead of figuring out what you actually believe, but it's not like we'd convince each other anyway.

Critics with no imagination

An ad for YU-GI-OH in today's L.A. Times features a single quote: "The perfect movie for Yu-Gi-Oh fans!"

This just in: ISHTAR's the perfect movie for ISHTAR fans.

A philosophy to live by

So many people, so many times, told me that if I wanted to have a girlfriend/career/happy life/whatever, I should get a normal haircut, stop wearing black, quit buying toys, give up watching wrestling, and so forth. And no lie, by refusing that advice at every turn, I did take a painful path. And I won't deceive the kids, there is a lot of pain involved in being that different in your interests and appearance, BUT...at the end of all that, if you hang in there enough, those things that put people off eventually do become the things that amuse and interest people about you later on.

English people are wacky, part 2.

If you think American liberals are reluctant to embrace the flag, well, that's nothing compared to the way English liberals (liberals, mind, not radical revolutionaries) see their flag. I was told I looked like a member of the National Front, a fascist/racist fringe group. The fact that I have tattoos sealed the comparison. I tried an American political tactic of arguing via pithy soundbite -- "I thought this was the UNITED kingdom, not the DIVIDED kingdom" -- but the retort I got was "That's what the National Front would say!"

Posted by LYT at 1:38 PM | Comments (5)

October 16, 2004

It was a very good year

These last 365 days, I mean. Tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of the day "LYTrules.com" became an official domain.

Though the world has gotten worse in many ways, the second year of this site has brought me many great things. Unlike the first year, none of my friends died and I did manage to get laid once; I also had a Valnentine's Day date for the first time ever (had nothing to do with my getting laid, though!). Whereas I used to have to bribe, beg, and browbeat friends into linking this site, I now get linked by complete strangers. This year I got a record number of hits for my set reports from THE WOODS (now due to open in spring sometime), and a record number of comments for, of all things, SHREK 2.

In the past year, this site has seen several new "regulars" become part of our online community, and even had its own mini-feud going on at one point. I've leared how to post pictures in the blog, which makes it more fun. I've been looking over the past year's worth of posts, and we've had some great ones, if I do say so myself -- the WOODS set reports, Matt's battleship voyage, the discussion over FAHRENHEIT 9-11, my viewing of THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST alongside B-1 Bob Dornan, the LYT parody contest, and many more.

Tomorrow I'll do my highlight piece; like last year, a collection of my favorite quotes from the online journal. It struck me reading them that there's been a more consistent comedic tone to it all this year, even on deeply serious political issues.

As a celebration, I'm going to have a small get-together on Saturday, where I'll be screening THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST followed by FAHRENHEIT 9-11 (and time permitting, the DVD extras on the latter). Email me if you'd like to come. We'll have bread and wine for Jesus' flick; Twinkies for Michael Moore's. There might just be some special giveaways too.

It would be a cliche and a lie to say that all of you make this site happen, because I'd still do it even if nobody were reading. But you do make it better, and you make me better. What started as a small piece of shameless self-promotion is now actually meaning things to other people, which is mind-blowing.

I know there's still no flash game. I don't think one will ever be completed by the original animator, but if anyone out there would like to try and make one, please do. I'll help in any way I can.

Posted by LYT at 4:43 PM | Comments (0)

October 15, 2004

Jon Stewart on Crossfire

Wow.

This is something that has to be seen. Jon rips the Crossfire guys a new asshole for not doing their job. Really.

CLICK HERE

Thanks to Ken Layne for the heads-up

Posted by LYT at 11:27 PM | Comments (4)

October 14, 2004

Complicated solutions

In an attempt to stop comments spam on older posts, I have decided that I'm going to close most of the older posts to comments. After a certain period of time, no-one adds useful comments to older entries, and even if they do I'm the only one who sees them.

I'd like reader input on this, since you folks are the ones who comment -- how far back/recent should I close off entries? I'm thinking on any posts more than two months old, but am open to suggestions if anyone vehemently disagrees with that for any reason.

If people really really want to speak up on older, closed-off posts, the message board will still be there.

Posted by LYT at 4:40 PM | Comments (9)

REVIEW UPDATE

Team America...Fuck Yeah!

Quick take on Bright Leaves

Anchorage Press quick take on TAXI:

Acting doesn't drive 'Taxi'

Putting Jimmy Fallon in a movie automatically negates his principle shtick of breaking character and cracking up at his own jokes. Deprived of that, he turns into a hybrid of the worst attributes of previous SNL vets - the silly falsetto singing of Adam Sandler, the goofy mugging of Chris Kattan, and the egomania of Mike Myers.

In Taxi, he plays the world's worst cop, a man who not only can't hold onto his own firearm, but can't even drive a car. So when he takes a taxi to a bank robbery, and encounters would-be NASCAR driver Queen Latifah, wackiness ensues. As it turns out they're the only two who get a good look at the crooks, who are led by supermodel Gisele Bundchen.

Bundchen can't act, but since Fallon and Latifah can't either, that's not a problem. Not the major one, anyway. Based on a trilogy of Luc Besson-produced French flicks (as yet unavailable in the U.S.), Tim Story's remake features some not-bad action sequences - the opening bit with a daredevil delivery cyclist is very nicely staged - but lots of character business that just isn't worth watching. The fact that a sleazy character is named after Supreme Court Justice Scalia is funnier than any of the dialogue, mainly because it's such a gratuitous cheap shot. Story's set to do the Fantastic Four movie next, so there's hope for some good comic book action there, but the actors will be on their own.

Posted by LYT at 4:15 PM | Comments (1)

And the new host of the Oscars is...

CLICK HERE to find out. I'm quite happy about this, though I suspect others will not be, especially after it happens.

Posted by LYT at 2:15 PM | Comments (0)

Amusing Bush cartoon that has conservatives all pissy

A li'l old Jewish lady kicks ass on the current administration in this funny flash toon, designed to get out the young Jewish vote.

Posted by LYT at 3:03 AM | Comments (1)

Love old Nintendo stuff? Hate Bush? Check this out!

Battle the Bush administration with Hulk Hogan, He-Man, Mr. T and more in this 8-bit Nintendo style game. Learn a few anti-Bush stats too.

The bit with Bush Sr. and Bar is worth it.

Posted by LYT at 2:14 AM | Comments (1)

October 13, 2004

Whatever I FEEL LIKE I wanna listen to! Gosh!

The NAPOLEON DYNAMITE soundtrack has finally been released, only three months or so after the movie.

That's the good news. The bad news is it isn't complete.

It's still a fun soundtrack, mixing John Swihart's unique bargain-basement synth score with songs and quotable dialogue, even a couple of exchanges that got cut from the movie, including one where Napoleon is challenged to a fight and boasts of his illegal government ninja skills. The Jamiroquai dance number, "Forever Young," and "The Promise" are here.

Here's what's missing:

The Backstreet Boys' "Larger Than Life" (obvious, really)

The opening credits' Jack White song

Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time," replaced by a Sparklemotion cover version. It's an okay cover, certainly better than Unkle Kracker's sore throat version in CLOCKSTOPPERS.

Most egregiously: The closing montage score, easily one of the most noticeable bits of music in the film, that plays while every character gets their happy ending. Instead we get an "Alternate Ending Montage" that's good but was clearly cut because it's way too downbeat.

Songs added that I don't recall being in the film:

"I Want Candy" (used in the trailer but not the movie), "Every Moment" by Rogue Wave," "Design" by Fiction Company, "Sometimes You Gotta Make it Alone" by Money Mark, "Solamente Una Vez" by Trio Los Panchos, and "Only You" by Yaz.

Weird typo: The dialogue snippet "A skit by Pedro Sanchez" is written "Ask it by Pedro." in the track listing.

And an interesting fact: The A-Team theme, which appears here in a longer version than in the film, is not the original TV show version, but is actually performed by score composer John Swihart.

There's a hidden bonus track, too -- it consists of almost the complete audio of the epilogue scene that was added, post-credits, to the film about a month after release, beginning with Kip's karaoke number and ending with Napoleon going "Lucky!"

TEAM AMERICA soundtrack comes out November 2. Trust me, you're gonna want that one.

Posted by LYT at 12:37 PM | Comments (1)

Presidential Debate Drinking Game (Updated with reaction)

Take a drink any time you hear any of the following:

BUSH:

"hard work"

"9-11 changed everything"

"Clinton"

"most liberal senator"

"partial birth abortion"

"He can run, but he can't hide"

"tax relief/tax cuts"

"privatize"

"energy policy"

"made America safer"

KERRY:

"First president in 70 years to have a net jobs loss"

"outsource"

"Reagan"

"The president's father"

"compassionate conservative"

"John Ashcroft"

"stem cell"

"Vice president Cheney"

"richest one per cent"

"I have a plan"

"fantasy world"

ANYONE:

"No Child Left Behind"

"flip-flop"

"Patriot act"

"health care"

"Medicare"

"Social security"

Bonus points:

Drink if Bush mispronounces or misstates any word other than "nukular"

Drink if either candidate interrupts the moderator; twice if it's Kerry

Drink every time a candidate does NOT write anything down while the other is talking.

Drink if Bush blinks two or more times in rapid succession.

Drink if Kerry does that toothy grin thing while Bush is talking.

Drink any time a candidate uses their time to finish answering a previous question rather than the one at hand, or if they just sidestep the question entirely and start speaking on a totally different issue.

Should make things more amusing, at least temporarily.

UPDATE: Okay, reaction time. Bush actually came prepared to this one. He came off like a smug asshole, but that's how he always comes off, and is a step up from "raging moron." Kerry is smart, serious, and has numerous facts and figures at his disposal.

Of course I'd rather have a beer with Bush, because alcoholics are generous with bar tabs. But I'd rather have Kerry running the country.

Posted by LYT at 1:50 AM | Comments (0)

October 11, 2004

Holiday! Celebrate!

To all my Canadian friends -- Happy Thanksgiving!

To those here in the U.S. -- Happy Indigenous Peoples' Day!

Posted by LYT at 5:41 PM | Comments (0)

October 10, 2004

The Death of Superman

No sales gimmick, this. No Doomsday. Just a paralyzed childhood hero of mine, dead at age 52.

Only Thursday, John Kerry was name-checking him in the debates. The man himself was convinced he'd walk again.

It didn't happen.

I knew Christopher Reeve as Superman before I even knew the comics. He was always the man of steel.

I never met him, but even still, I feel like I've lost my hero.

It's a shame he often felt confined by the role. Like being everyone's hero wasn't enough. But for those who want more, check out THE BOSTONIANS, THE AVIATOR, and SOMEWHERE IN TIME.

If angels exist, maybe now he can truly fly.

Posted by LYT at 11:00 PM | Comments (2)

The Taliban offered to turn over Bin Laden; Bush said no

Kind of amazing in hindsight, eh?

Link courtesy daily kos

Posted by LYT at 9:28 PM | Comments (0)

October 9, 2004

Bush Loses It

If you didn't see the debates, make sure you at least watch this clip.

Posted by LYT at 11:07 PM | Comments (0)

Laugh so as not to cry

In honor of the debates, and in hopes of beating Entertainment Weekly to the punch, LYTrules.com presents...THE TEN BEST SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE IMPERSONATIONS OF PRESIDENTIAL CONTENDERS

10. AL FRANKEN as PAT ROBERTSON. Yes, Robertson ran for president back in 1988, and sans glasses, Franken actually looks a bit like the grinning televangelist. Sounded like him too.

9. PHIL HARTMAN as ADMIRAL JAMES STOCKDALE. Ross Perot's clearly senile running mate was already close enough to Hartman's Frankenstein that this was just a natural fit.

8. DAN AYKROYD as BOB DOLE. Dole impersonations are hard to screw up -- Robert Smigel did a pretty good one on Conan O'Brien's show simply by superimposing his own lips on a photo of the real Dole. Aykroyd actually looked like Bob, though: You know it, I know it, and the American people know it.

7. CHEVY CHASE as GERALD FORD. Genius simply because Chase made no effort to look or sound anything like Ford -- he just acted like a doofus and kept falling over stuff. A gambit that paid off.

6. AL FRANKEN as PAUL TSONGAS. Tsongas didn't last long on the national radar, and wasn't that well known when Franken spoofed him, but once he did, speaking in a muppet-like voice and proclaiming to a sci-fi convention crowd that he was the real Star Trek candidate, it became impossible to take the real Tsongas seriously ever again.

5. DANA CARVEY as H. ROSS PEROT. Perot would seem to be God's gift to satirists, but then so would Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and SNL dropped the ball with those two (Will Ferrell's Bush and Phil Hartman's Reagan never impressed me; the new Bush guy has some mannerisms down but doesn't look like him at all). Carvey was hard-pushed to be funnier and more insane than the real-life Perot, but somehow he managed. When he debated himself as both Perot and Bush, he hit it out of the park.

4. DARRELL HAMMOND as BILL CLINTON. There were several Clintons -- the first, Phil Hartman, was pretty bad. Hartman was a funny guy, but he only got half the equation in Clinton's high-pitched voice, seemingly incapable of adding the necessary Southern accent. Michael McKean did a decent "defiant Bill" for about a year, but Hammond got everything right, including the quintessential lip-biting and bedroom eyes.

3. DARRELL HAMMOND as AL GORE. Hammond's on a roll! It's easy, and obvious, to make fun of Gore's monotone, but Hammond also nailed the Tennessee accent, the vaguely effeminate undertone, and even Gore's specific breathing patterns. He also turned the metaphor of the "lock box" into a total national joke.

2. NORM MACDONALD as BOB DOLE. Before Mike Myers created Dr. Evil, Norm portayed Dole as a failed evil mastermind who just wanted to be loved. As Dole, he joined the cast of MTV's The Real World, bit the head off a live chicken, and engaged in increasingly surreal sketches that quickly became the best thing on the show. The real Dole finally confronted Norm on TV once the election was over, and accused him of doing a pale imitation of Dan Aykroyd's Dole. Wrong -- Norm's Dole was at least as much a thwarted supervillain as he was a direct impression of Dole.

1. DANA CARVEY as GEORGE H. W. BUSH. How do I know this is the best? Try to remember Bush the Elder as president, and I'm betting one of the first things that come to mind will be a Carvey-coined catchphrase like "Not gonna daaaait" or "Wouldn't be prudent..." Part of the genius of the whole thing is that Carvey's Bush wasn't exactly a direct impersonation -- he always had a big idiot grin on his face, even though the real Bush rarely smiled in public -- but the caricature came to outshine the real guy. That's brilliance.

Posted by LYT at 5:46 PM | Comments (1)

Leapin' Lizards

McFarlane Toys has finally answered fan requests for a line of dragons.

HERE'S A LOOK at the first figure in the series.

Posted by LYT at 12:45 PM | Comments (2)

New links

Just updated the links again with some long overdue friends and colleagues, like director Young Man Kang, actress Sarah Lassez, and journalists Pat Saperstein and Pete Peterson.

Please note: There is no particular order of priority among "Friends of LYT", except that golittlerecords very clearly belongs at the top for inspiring this site in the first place. Some of the higer-up links include an ex-date I never hear from anymore, and a writer whose politics continually drift further and further towards the frightening and intolerant. Dunno if I should keep those or not; they're certainly not as valuable as many of my friends listed below them.

All in all, though, it seems that either my friends are growing in number, or just more of them are getting websites. Either way, a positive development.

As always, let me know if you think you should be on the list and are not.

Posted by LYT at 12:46 AM | Comments (0)

October 8, 2004

Click the link now

eBay is very likely to take down THIS PARODY very soon, so go now! Hilarious if you watched the debates.

(If there's nothing there any more when you click, alas, you missed a good joke. The auction was for "selling wood on the internets", but there's more to it than that, so check and see if it's still there.)

Posted by LYT at 11:45 PM | Comments (2)

The Spinning Head Zone

Touching on a few political things...

Is it me, or are right-wing pundits particularly insane right now? I listened to a bit of Hannity today, and he was seizing on a comment made by Theresa Heinz Kerry on the Dr. Phil show, where she said something like, "Men are all really little boys, and women whoudl understand that so they can love them."

Hannity said something like, "So, is she basically saying that John Kerry married her for her money?"

Um, no, Sean, she didn't. Nothing like that at all, in fact.

Later, after the debate, I heard "pundits" actually having a serious argument over whether Bush or Kerry had a more angry facial expression. How pathetic is the analysis in this country when that's even a significant topic?

Ralph Nader is not on the California ballot. This is odd, because anyone can get on the California ballot. Some guy named Michael Anthony Peroutka is on the California presidential ballot, but not Ralph Nader. I wouldn't vote for Ralph this year, but it seems to me there must have been shenanigans at work in this case -- he oughta be on the ballot. Those of you who want to vote for an antiwar third-party candidate can still vote for the Green Party's David Cobb or the Peace and Freedom Party's Leonard Peltier. I'd endorse Peltier over Cobb.

So, how about that debate?

I listened to the first half on radio, then saw the second part on TV. It seemed to me that Bush was especially petulant and angry during the first half -- I thought he was going to lose it. His handlers dropped the ball, I think; righteous indignation doesn't work for him. It seldom works for any major candidate. Kerry beat Dean because Dean was too full of it.

Kerry's highlight was in response to Bush saying "Name one thing he's done for Medicare in 20 years," and Kerry said something like "We fixed Medicare in 1997, Mr. president, and we also did something else you can't do -- we balanced the budget." I literally yelled out "Boo-yaa!" That was the closest to a "Jack Kennedy" line.

Bush recovered on domestic issues -- I wonder if he simply stopped concentrating on foreign issues after the first debate was over, thinking they wouldn't come up again? Kerry was clearly ready for the "What about Poland?" line to resurface. Someone at his campaign watches the Daily Show, I can tell.

Bush's joke about "I own a timber company? That's news to me. Want some wood?" played well; trouble is, according to factcheck.org (NOT factcheck.com, heh heh), he does indeed make money from a timber company. And he tried to turn his petulance into jokes; "That almost made me wanna scowl" and "I'm not telling!" got some laughs.

But a really telling moment was when he was asked to name some of his mistakes. He's never been able to do that, and he didn't this time, either, using the question to play up what he saw as his successes, and implying that his only mistakes were in hiring the wrong people, i.e. making it their fault rather than his. What an asshole.

Isn't conservatism supposed to be about personal responsibility and accountability? This man takes responsibility for nothing. It's a good thing he's not a Catholic; "Bless me, father, for I ain't sinned, heh heh."

Sure, I could leap all over his reference to the "internets," his calling Kerry "Senator Kennedy" and addressing him at one point as "Ma'am," but frankly, lowered expectations mean that no-one is even surprised by Bush saying dumb things by mistake, and the gaffes don't change anyone's opinion's of him. In the interests of being fair, Kerry stammered a bit sometimes, and that was a little painful. But he also didn't condescend to the audience, as I was afraid he might.

Overall, I say Kerry was the clear winner, but Bush pulling together by the end may leave some viewers with a more favorable impression than the debate as a whole might suggest.

Posted by LYT at 11:18 PM | Comments (0)

October 7, 2004

Sign Your Pity...

Louis C.K. reacts to the debates:

"The first debate showed how arrogant and truly stupid George Bush is. No, he is stupid. I'm tired of hearing people say 'Actually, he's not stupid at all.' yes he is. It took one man to prove how stupid he is and it wasn't John Kerry, it was Dick Cheney. Dick did the exact same thing George Bush did in the debate but he did it so much better. Bush's strategy was to just keep pumping over and over that John Kerry flip flops and can't be trusted to lead. So did Cheney. But Cheney said it differently every time, he said it intelligently and he backed it up with plenty of real and fake evidence. George just kept saying 'you can't just say wrong war wrong time and then win.' Over and over, with no syntax, slurring his words like a drunk, and even not focusing his eyes on any one spot in the room. He is shockingly dim and shallow. I love how people tick off a list of things that he doesn't have and then try to hang on to that he's a competent president. 'Well, just because he doesn't know every detail of every issue, doesn't speak well, isn't a personable guy, can't communicate, is very stubborn and has made a lot of mistakes, still, let's chisel his face right into our mother's tits, because what a great american he truly is.'

The main thing that i think has really hurt george bush at this point is the fact that they staged all of his events with the fake crowds. I can tell you from experience that if you put any performer in front of cheering stadiums of people chanting his name, he starts to buy his own bullshit. Even if you tell him before very rally 'Hey, just so you know, these folks are ALL heavily screened and some are being paid' he will still walk off stage saying 'I think people really like me and the things I say.'

But the fact is, no matter how George packages his economic numbers, people don't have jobs or money. So every time he and Dick says how great things are, some guy in a flannel shirt at a bar (who voted for them) is getting reallllly mad. Every time he says things in Iraq are great, there are millions of military family members who get reaaaaally mad.

But George doesn't know this because Karl Rove won't tell him. You know why? Because Rove is selling to Bush. Rove sells Bush shitty one liners just like that Bruce whatever bearded hack who sells jokes to bette midler. The trick is that Rove juices the crowds, so that his one liners work every time. Bush has no idea that they are starting to sour with unconverted voters. Bush has gone tone deaf. The only reason he's president is because no one could possibly lose to Al Gore, it's just impossible.

Okay, I'm rambling. The point is that we got to see Bush up against it for the first time last week and we saw how far he is from even understanding how bad a president he really is. I truly believe that if someone whom he really trusted could sit him down for one hour and lay out for him just a simple timeline of his adminsistration, he would blow his own brains out."

Posted by LYT at 6:00 PM | Comments (0)

October 6, 2004

Great CD buy of the moment

The FAHRENHEIT 9/11 soundtrack.

Not only is the score great stand-alone stuff -- minimalist and ominous compositions by Jeff Gibb -- but Moore actually got clearances for every other song used in the film.

Yes, that includes:

"Vacation"

"Cocaine"

"Rocking in the Free World"

"Shiny Happy People"

"The Magnificent Seven theme"

"Fire Water Burn"

and best of all...

"Believe it or not (The Greatest American Hero Theme)"

If you don't like the idea of giving money to Michael Moore, wait a couple weeks and buy it used. Soooo worth it.

Posted by LYT at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)

Fun with Dick and John

My brief reactions to the VP debates. Again, I'm very biased here, not just for left versus right, but for my North Carolina homie John Edwards.

John started badly, though. Dick was cool, collected, and full of utter bullshit that a more advanced debater could have taken to pieces. Instead, John stuck to talking points. For the first time, I felt glad that Edwards was the VP nominee and not the main guy.

He gained momentum back towards the middle, castigating Cheney for opposing Nelson Mandela's release in the '80s, and opposing meals on wheels. Cheney seemed a bit taken aback, and totally shut the fuck up when it came to gay marriage.

But then Dr. Evil regained his footing a bit, and by the end of the debate John was back to his talking points. Cheney totally lied about many things, or else he's just delusional (being generous), but I'd give him a slight edge on strict debating tactics. John has a huge edge in looks and charm, however. I call this one about even.

When Cheney was asked what the differences were between him and Edwards, my advice to him would have been to start that with a joke, something like, "He has a few more hairs than me, but I'd have to say I'm just slightly better looking." That's something I think Bush could have pulled off, even.

When it ended, Edwards thanked the moderator and the VP. Cheney pointedly only thanked the moderator. Bad move.

Dunno about Cheney's strategy of beginning EVERY SINGLE ANSWER with "Well, Gwen..." It could read as excessively obnoxious dismissal of his opponent. Or not.

Posted by LYT at 5:47 PM | Comments (1)

October 5, 2004

Catching Up

Well now. Where were we?

The Unnamed Project moves on to its next stage. I'm going to add one new scene, then give it to the director and have him make a pass on it -- meaning, essentially, that he'll add some new stuff for the sake of pacing, then give it back to me to smoothe all the changes over and make it feel like a coherent work by one person. The name of the project will also likely change -- yet another good reason I haven't named it to the world. By the time we're done, it will not resemble the first draft in the slightest, and I'm thinking of pitching my original concept as a sequel if this one succeeds.

I'm not going to blog about the Liberty Film Festival, because I'm being paid to write about it elsewhere. Look for that piece in CityBeat's election issue, October 28.

Yesterday I shot my scene for THE LAST EVE, playing a gay West Hollywood TV reporter who announces that the end of the world is nigh. Also playing a reporter who announces the very same thing is Douglas Dunning.

Douglas showed up while I was waiting for director Young Man Kang at Hollywood and Gower. As we waited, Douglas made a phone call, and subsequently announced that he had gotten a callback to audition for the role of the major villain in a huge, big-budget upcoming remake (I could say what it is, but on the offchance this is for real, I'd better not jeopardize his chances).

Then announcing he was tired, Douglas sat down at the bus stop bench. A few seconds later, he was lying on it completely horizontally, homeless-guy style. Meanwhile I was getting weird looks for wearing a jacket and tie, weirder than I usually get for dressing like I wanna dress.

Young finally showed up, and clearly had no idea where he wanted to shoot. He said the Kodak theater (where the Oscars are held), and I told him no way without a permit -- security is tight, as that's a potential terror target. So we ended up shooting on side streets.

First, Douglas. (For the uninitiated, a reminder that Douglas is about 6 foot 7 and speaks in a booming Christopher Lee-type voice). Douglas had not memorized his lines ("Reporters don't memorize LINES! They READ them off the TELEPROMPTER! That's why I brought cue cards, oh yes, heh-heh"). He had a bit of trouble reading his own cue cards at first, and cleared his throat a lot.

Before I continue, bear also in mind that Young Man Kang is a short and thin Korean, and watching him direct Douglas is a bit like what it must have been to watch Ishiro Honda direct Godzilla. After the first reading, Young went up to Douglas and said, "No more 'Ahuh-ahem!' Don' do dat."

"Well, I HAVE to CLEAR my THROAT!"

"And why you wearing sunglasses?"

"Why, because the SUN is OUT, of course! Heh."

So there was another take. Then Young asked Douglas why he was shouting so loud.

"It's the END of the WORLD! It's URGENT!"

Toned down a bit, Douglas finally got into the swing and began improvising, adding the line "Run for cover!" which had to be explained to Young, who didn't know that particular phrase. The final take was pure magic.

Before Douglas did his shot, Young ran lines with me, in my effeminate character. Douglas overheard, and said something like "Bit over the top, isn't it? I thought you wanted this serious!" Again, for the record: The person calling me "over the top"? Douglas Du