My Little Thoughts

Okay, I admit it... I miss him.

I miss Schwarzenegger (I think that's how you spell it).

 

I miss Stallone (classic Stallone, not New Stallone)

 

I miss Charles Bronson.

 

I miss John Wayne.

 

I miss... ACTION MEN.*

 

You know, guys who basically more or less knew they were never going to get an Academy Award (if they did, it was a total surprise), so they had to content themselves with simply blowing up/dismembering/hacking/shooting/mayheming people/buildings/small countries/evil dictators who have been ousted from their country and want to assassinate the new guy and take over/just plain Bad Guys.

 

Where have they gone?

 

I think the closest we have now is Bruce Willis.  I mean, he's almost 100, and he's still kickin' bottoms and takin' names (yeah, this is gonna be a hard-hittinng, bad-talkin' column... cover your kids' eyes).  He's bald, too, which makes it even cooler, because everyone knows that ever since Samson came along, a full head of hair has been a virtual requirement for the Action Man.

 

But even Bruce gets out there and does artsy fartsy stuff once in a while.  Which makes me sad.

 

Because Action Men are never artsy, and rarely fartsy (unless in an Action Comedy, in which case such flatulence is accepted).

 

I started pondering where have all the Action Men gone?

 

Have they been replaced by Action Women?  Like Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider: The Quest for Shorter Shorts, or the chick in leather from The Matrix (no, not that one, the other one... no... no... yes, it's hard because they're ALL in leather, but... YEAH, her... the one Neo has a crush on).

 

No... Angelina has an Oscar, and she got it early, and while she did put up a convincing fight scene or two in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, there's always that lingering sense that you could throw a pointy pillow at her and she would crumple.  And I don't even know what Leather Matrix Chick is doing these days, other than probably enjoying the bazillions in residuals that she's gotta be getting.

 

So Action Man has not been replaced by Action Woman.

 

Is he then, like the dodo, extinct?

 

But wait!  What about The Rock?

 

Weeeelllll.... promising start.  The Rundown.  Walking Tall (stupid movie, but he was definitely an Action Man).  Then he starts the downhill plunge with Gridiron Gang (good movie, but he's playing a tough but fair father figure, not Action Man), which continued through to the bottom of not-Action-Man depths with The Tooth Fairy and Race to Witch Mountain.

 

WHERE ARE MY ACTION MEN?

 

Tom Cruise?  No.  Artsy fartsy movies.  Plus he's got the whole jumping on a couch thing that forever takes him out of Action Man running.  I know, I know, he did the Mission Impossible movies, but can you picture John Wayne jumping up and down on Oprah's couch for ANY reason?  No?  I rest my case.

 

So what happened?  What is the common thread?  Why are they gone?  Who can supply infinite bullets from a single machine gun clip?

 

Wait... machine guns...

Machine guns = NRA.

NRA = Republicans.

Republicans = NOT ALLOWED IN HOLLYWOOD.

 

Oh.  My.  Gosh (see, I told you there'd be rough talk here).

 

Action Men... ARE REPUBLICANS.

 

No wonder there are no more Action Men!  They've been blacklisted (except for Bruce Willis, who could kill anyone who tried to come against him because he is both Unbreakable and Dies Hard).  It's all part of the vast left-wing conspiracy to turn out a bunch of wimpy peacenicks who think they should talk to that guy downstairs who keeps booming the stereo too loud, instead of just dropping a grenade down the stairs (THAT'll show him what "boom" really means).

 

Well, not me.  I'm stocking up on all the 80s action movies I can, even the really bad ones like Gymkata (yes, it's an actual movie, look it up), and I'm going to construct an underground bunker where I can safely show my children these gems of black and white morality.  They don't need to know American History, all they need to know is that a) the Butler did it, 2) the FIRST beautiful girl you meet is always REALLY interested in the bad guy, and ∞) all problems, from a broken toilet to an Evil Mastermind plotting to crush the World's [insert important noun here] can be solved with a rocket launcher and a pithy one-liner.

 

Education?  Educate THIS, baby (I couldn't figure out how to work in "hasta la vista" here, best I could do).

 

No, my children's education will be a crash course in Mayhem, followed by a final exam on the Dead End Streets of No Return.

 

I will give them a compass, a match, and some rocket fuel.

 

And they WILL come out of it alive.

 

Because I will have taught them (even the girl) to be Action Men.

 

And also Republicans.

 

* I also occasionally miss either Simon or Garfunkel, but I can never remember which is which.  And that's a story for another day.

There's been a lot going on recently: the Toyota craze, Anthem/Blue Cross having its little toesies held to a teeny tiny fire by legislators who get annual donations from them... you know, business as usual in Sacramento.

I know all this because I listen to NPR so, according to the litmus test of the elite, I am a Very Informed Person.

 

Of course, I also peek at Fox News from time to time when no one is looking, so I suppose that pushes me down to bigoted, racist pond scum again (and if you're asking at this point what prejudices pond scum could have, I have no idea... but apparently they're naaasty).

 

At any rate, sandwiched in between all these fascinating bits of information that both keep me from falling asleep at the wheel and ironically at the same time often make me want to intentionally drive into a bridge abutment, I heard a piece on the Constitutional Convention.  For those of you who aren't V.I.P.'s (Very Informed Persons), I'll give you a quick update: there have been more than a few people who have noticed that California as a whole, well... it isn't doing so well.  In much the same way that someone who has cancer, AIDS, sickle-cell anemia, AND a wart on his toe "isn't doing so well."  We aren't just circling the drain, we're walking around in the sewer and wondering what the heck happened to what used to be the "Golden State" and now seems more mucousy than golden.

 

But I digress.  At any rate, there have been a bunch of people who have been trying to get enough signatures together to get a ballot initiative that would authorize a Constitutional Convention to fix some of the glaring disasters that California has gotten itself into of late (no, I'm not talking about the fact that more soap operas are now filming in and around my office building than ever before... though that hurts, too).  I found it particularly interesting that part of the reason the pro-CC'ers were having trouble (one of them claimed) was that to get enough signatures to get a ballot measure online (onboard?  ontop?  on something, I'm sure...), you almost HAVE to have the help of professional signature getter people (that's the technical name for them).  And guess who opposes the idea of a Constitutional Convention?  Well, yes, the crazy lady who carries around a dead cat and insists that it's NOT a dead cat, it's really a dead puppy; but also the professional signature getter people businesses (again, technical term).  Why?  Because (so this pro-CC guy claimed) the Constitutional Convention might have, among other things, changed how signatures are gathered and put some of the pro-sig-get-peeps (I'm abbreviating now) out of business.

 

"That's horrible!" I thought.  Mostly because I had just driven over a dead possum at this instant.  But also some of my horror was about the fact that some people think The Phantom Menace was a good movie.  And a tiny bit was left over for the idea that the pro-sig-get-peeps would do such a rotten, underhanded, dirty-minded, spiteful, evil thing.

 

Then I brightened.  Because I realized something: they may have saved our butts!  How so? you may ask (and if you don't, then pick up your bags and leave, I don't like your attitude).  Well, it's like this:

 

Say we had managed to get enough signatures to put the idea of a Constitutional Convention on the ballot.  And say further (say it!) that the ballot measure had passed.

 

What then?

 

"Well," says you, "I guess that the Convention process begins."

 

"I can see it now," I reply, "Congressional Booth Babes and free pens everywhere!"

 

"No," you explain patiently (because let's face it, if you're my friend you're patient by definition), "It's not that kind of convention.   People will get together to change the California Constitution."

 

"Oh," I say with downcast face, because free pens sounds more fun.  "And who will do this changing?"

 

"Well," says you (you always "says" things when you start off with "Well..."), "probably the legislators."

 

"Wait... " I respond, my teeny-tiny brain almost exploding into a teeny-tiny puff of smoke, "... so the people who will fix our problems... are the same ones who are currently in charge of them?"

 

Is it just me, or does this make almost as much sense as a coma patient performing open-heart brain surgery on itself?

 

So, thank you sig-peeps.  You have saved us from ourselves.  You're like Superman, only without the cape or good intentions and as near as I can tell Kryptonite does nothing to you (I've tried).

 

But even though it was evil that spared us, at least it spared us from evil.  Because probably my biggest problem with California is that while there may be one or two legislators in Sacramento who are bright, solid people of integrity (though I suspect they hide these traits as undesirable), I wouldn't trust most of them to hold a rubber band and return it still-springy.

 

Nor, it seems, is this solely a California problem.  Orson Scott Card - bestselling author of Ender's Game and a slew of other things (and something of a nice guy to boot - but don't tell him I said that or he'll kill me) writes an online column called "World Watch" (probably because "I Like to Rant" was too on the nose).   In his latest column, (click here to view the excitement!) he wrote about how North Carolina's Department of Public Instruction* recently proposed to stop teaching American history before 1877.

 

What is it with these people?  Card proposed that it was a planned attack designed to cripple children into believing only in Leftist ideals.  Me, I think that credits too many government officials with too much strategic aptitude.  I bet the average Congressman doesn't even know what Connect Four is, let alone how to play it, let alone how to win it, let alone how to then leverage that win into world domination.

 

So, again, thank goodness for our system.  It's broke, but at least we can't fix it!  So cheers!

 

* Yeah, I know that technically these are educators, not legislators.  But frankly I was too depreseed to think that professional educators are that evil and/or stupid, so I'm pretending they're politicians.  Politicians are like lawyers: they're fair game for abuse and no one feels bad about it!**

 

** I know, because I'm a lawyer.  STOP MAKING LAWYER JOKES!  If I had a heart and/or soul, it would be breaking.

The below is a response I posted on Facebook to a friend who had made the threat to withdraw his friendship from anyone who didn't agree with his viewpoint on a particular social question, and had compared those who disagreed with him to those who stood against women's rights and agaisnt the rights of people of different ethnicities to marry.  While usually these posts are a bit on the lighter side, I thought this was important enough to be set out for you to see.

 

FYI: the names of others have been changed to protect the innocent.

Not mine.  I'm not that innocent.  ;o)

*****

John, at the risk of (hopefully not) endangering our long friendship, when re-reading your response to me, something came to mind: While I have many friends (and family) who are gay and, in some cases, married, I do not agree with the idea that the current discourses about the rights of homosexuals can or should be analogized to the rights of women to vote or - especially - to the anti-miscegenation laws overturned by Loving v. Virginia.*

To do so is to use analogy as politics; to seek to quell dissenting opinion by using an analogy that has as its logical conclusion the fact that anyone who would stand on the other end of the socio-political spectrum from you must also be someone who would have been a wife beater or a member of the KKK. It is the rhetorical equivalent to a trial lawyer asking a witness "When did you stop beating your wife?": it is a question (or in this case an analogy) that is designed, not to determine truth, but to decide by fiat.

You speak most eloquently in your other posts of the fact that evil occurs when people are silenced. Yet you by your own verbiage - not to mention your threat to withdraw friendship from others - are seeking by both verbal ploy and outright threat to silence any who might disagree with you. This is not only a bad way to "win" an argument (it is designed to make it one-sided, after all, so not much actual argument can be had), but it is also goes a long way toward finding bad answers. For just as I dismiss those who hold up signs that say "God hats Fa**ots" as being hate- and fear-filled people who will not aid me in finding any kind of Truth, so do I dismiss people on the opposite side of the spectrum who call anyone and everyone who opposes them such horrific things as "bigot," "homophobe," "hate-monger," (and the list goes on forever) without recognizing the possibility that at least some of those people may have reasoned and rationally thought out opinions that bear up under not only private scrutiny but public debate. ... See More

But again, debate (in the friendly, "Let us reason together and find what is Right" sense of the term) is impossible when one person starts out by saying a) if you disagree with me you're a bad - EVIL - person and b) if you disagree with me I won't be your friend and we can't talk anymore.

It is the adult version of taking your ball away and going home to make sure you won't lose the game.  And no offence, but if the only way you can keep from losing is to leave the game, then I suspect your cause is doomed from the start.

* For those who don't know, this was the Supreme Court case which determined it was unConstitutional to forbid people of different ethnicities (in that particular case a white man and a black woman) from marrying.

Today, I am full of sadness.  Sadness and internal organs.  But mostly sadness.

Why am I sad? you ask.

Or maybe you don't.  In which case we're not friends anymore so give me back my ball and I want to go home.

Where was I?  Ah, yes, the sadness.

I am filled with sadness because of Avatar.  Avatar, what some could call the "American Idol" of Cinema, both in terms of market share and in the fact that (spoilers) there is some weird singing that goes on at times in both.

But why does Avatar fill me with sadness?

Well, mostly because I wanted better out of it.  Now don't get me wrong.  Like most of the rest of the audience at the IMAX 3D theater where I saw it, I too was at the edge of my seat at many different times throughout, screaming, "HOLY CRAP!" like a 12-year old boy who's just seen someone lit on fire in the middle of a flock of pigeons (and trust me about this situation... I know).

But at the same time that I was screaming "HOLY CRAP," I was also having an internal debate with myself.

I can multitask.  For instance, right now I am both typing AND avoiding work.

Back on task: the debate.  My debate was whether Avatar was going to turn out to be the kind of HOLY CRAP movie that bears up under repeat viewings and requires HOLY CRAPpage upon each and every one, or whether it was going to be the kind of HOLY CRAP movie that Titanic (another 16-hour long movie by Mr. Cameron) turned out to be: the kind of HOLY CRAP movie where you scream HOLY CRAP throughout the movie, then when you go to see it again, you say Holy Crap? in a kind of befuddled way because you are wondering where the totally amazingly frickin' awesome movie that you saw the first time disappeared to.

Sort of like the Phantom Menace.  I saw that, LOVED it.  Went back to see it the next weekend.  COULDN'T STAND IT.  What was the difference?  Well, the first time I was so exuberant about the return of the epic space opera from my childhood that I didn't even notice it lacked a few things, like story, narrative, believable characters, and dialogue that didn't cause spontaneous diahrrea.

So do you see where I'm going with this?  Because unfortunately Avatar, while no Phantom Menace (I think God sent a flock of doves into the sky the night that movie was released as a sign He would never again punish the world on such a scale... like the flood/rainbow thing, only Phantom Menace was, of course, much worse) is not one I'm going to want to see again.

I mean, thrills?  Yes!  I was totally surprised a couple of times.

But now I know where the thrills happen.  Surprise exits, stage right (in glorious IMAX 3D).

Story?  It has been well-documented by many academics (or at least by some of my friends who pass on chain emails like they'll be killed if they don't) that you can watch Pocahantas and get the same story in about 1/16th of the time.

Which leads me to the other problem: the pee break.  I'll say no more, but there has been many a great movie that is wrecked by my inability to "hold it" all the way through.  Titanic at least had an extended nude scene that I could use as a 45 minute pee-break (PG13... really???).  But Avatar has no such benefits.  Or at least, not of the human variety (I'm pretty sure there are some fairly naked aliens in the movie, but I don't know if that counts).

And so we get to the final piece of the sadness (and internal organs) that is me today: I like Cameron's work.  I cannot think of a single thing he's ever released that I didn't like.

But I used to LOVE it.  Back when he was a "no one" or just a "someone" instead of "king of the world."  Back when he had to take suggestions from other people and actually listen to them, rather than just laugh, flash a billion dollars at them, offer to have them murdered, and then laugh again as they fell silent.

Now, I'm a screenwriter (side job - but it does pay at times), so I know that the process of going through "creative meetings" where everyone has different ideas how to get from A to 9 can result in frustrations.  But I also know that some of my best ideas have come out of those meetings, and in them I've also been notified of some of my biggest story flaws.  Why?  Because I'm still a "nobody," and so I still have to actually LISTEN.  And listening is what you have to do if you want to be a great - not just decent - storyteller.

Believe me, if we're talking effects, Cameron truly IS King of the World: he is one of those rare directors that not only understands how to integrate technology into his films, he understands the technology ITSELF.  The difference is subtle, but important.  He is a maker and and inventor and innovator of superior calibre.  One thinks of Walt Disney as someone who had similar vision in pushing the envelope where it came to merging creativity and technology, and as someone who, if the technology didn't exist, either made it himself or teamed with someone to get it made.

But still.  Movies shouldn't just be about effects... unless they should.  Those of you who have read earlier posts of mine about Transformers and GI Joe will know that I am a firm believer in the idea that dumb movies can be brilliant in their own dumb way.  But the difference is that neither of those movies pretend to greatness.

Avatar does.

And does it succeed?

On the first viewing?  Yes.  An all-around, no holds barred yes.

On a technological level?  Yes.  Forever.  This is a ground-breaker.

As a movie to be watched and savored and loved, viewing after viewing?

I think you know the answer.

So does my spleen, which has been removed to make room for the sadness.

It's the last day of a decade, and so I find myself somewhat introspective.  Thinking about what has mattered most and least to me in these last ten years.

Oddly enough, when I tried this exercise, I found it was very hard to remember what has mattered least to me.  There's a lesson to be learned there, I'm sure.  But it doesn't matter much to me.

At any rate, I heard a news report this morning saying a Poll by a reasonably believable polling group had found that 2 out of 3 Americans think that this last decade has more or less stunk (I'm paraphrasing for dramatic purposes).  They had a number of reasons, and of course there are the top two that everyone knows about:

Yes, I know that it was released in 1999, but I believe the malaise that it caused leaked over well into 2005 and 2006.

 

And the other cause of the public demonization of this decade was, of course:

I don't think that there has ever before been a decade where two such beloved franchises have been struck such crushing blows by "follow up" movies.

Actually, I would have let Indy 4 get by with a "pass" except for the scene where he hides in a refrigerator to escape a nuke.  I get it: the fridge is lead-lined, so no problem with radiation.  But then add on to that the fact that he's at ground zero, the nuke goes off, the fridge (with 92-year old Harrison Ford inside*) goes flying through the air for several miles, so fast it PASSES A CAR THAT IS CONSUMED BY THE EXPLOSION, and then Indy basically rolls out of it and says "Ow" with no other ill-effects.  And this is RIDICULOUS, because as we all know, refrigerators from that era couldn't be opened from the inside, so he would have suffocated.  How could the producers and writers have missed this logic gap???

And so what do we have?  What do we have? We have twin bases of hope in the end of the 20th century - the fact that the Force is out there and the Ark of the Covenant is in good hands - utterly decimated in the first years of the 21st century.

No wonder people think the decade has stunk.

Plus there were some people who died of various causes for some reasons that I could probably remember if I cared to but I don't because I'm still so friggin' upset at the revelation that the mystical, magical "Force" is really caused by some kind of interstellar microbe.  It's not an archetypical metaphor for religion, it's closer to space herpes: "Hey, baby, check this out."  "Wow, your lightsaber is really... bright..."  "Yeah.  It's the force.  That's what it does, baby."  Or how about "May the Force be with you," now it's like saying "I hope you catch cold."

 

Sucky.

And so the United States swirls downward into a fog of depression.  The only way out, logically is to either eat a bunch of brownies or go buy a bunch of houses and high-end electronics that we can't afford. And who really likes brownies that much, right?

So in a nutshell, it's all Lucas's fault.  I'm not saying he's EVIL, but perhaps he is a little bit evil (see the difference: all uppercase is like Hitler; all lowercase is just Manson or something small potatoes like that).

On the upside, this year I personally did see some good:

 

I knocked a guy's tooth out in a fight (it was a friendly one, and the dude didn't even know it until after someone gave it to him... which means I won't be fighting him again, because people who don't even notice the loss of a tooth due to a swift uppercut scare me, but still it was a cool macho moment).

 

I managed to remain out of the hospital for heart attacks (I'm 35 and a lawyer... this is a miracle).

 

Neither of my children impregnated anyone or became impregnated out of wedlock (yes, they're only 3 and 5, but kids grow up so fast these days).

 

And my wife is as beautiful as ever (which could be interpreted as a bad thing, since that tends to highlight my rapidly declining facial state when we stand together).

So on the whole, I'd have to say I personally have come out ahead.  I'm still inhaling following every single exhalation (that's the secret to living forever - now you know).  I have my health.  It's not good health, but it's mine (until universal healthcare takes it away from me).  I have a wonderful family and a wonderful extended family.  I have over 600 friends on Facebook, and am fairly certain I've actually met over 20% of them.  I wrote a book that my wife loved and that has had over 125,000 hits on its website in the four or so months since its launch.  I've written this column on a (semi) regular basis, and helped a few people to laugh, a few people to think.

Yes, Lucas did his best to destroy our souls.  Yes, we face challenges (albeit smaller ones) in our domestic situations and in the war on terror.  Yes, all of this happened in the last decade.

But in the last decade we also re-discovered Robert Downey, Jr.  The Dark Knight made almost as much money as it deserved.  People kept praying and working for peace in lots of parts of the world, though some had different opinions of how best to achieve that peace.  Most of us - the great majority, I believe - managed to be good people, good citizens, good neighbors, good friends.

We, as a race, are still alive.  A triumph in itself when you consider our prediliction for self-destruction and the ability we now have to achieve it on a complete scale.

I breathe in.

I breathe out.

I breathe in again.

May we all do better this New Year than we did last.  And may we view that exhortation not as a way of saying "last year was terrible" (after all, none of the Star Wars Prequels or the Crystal Skull came out this year), but rather as an opportunity to look back at our blessings (there will be no more Star Wars prequels), to review our failings (some of us continue to watch the Clone Wars series), and to do better next year.  To feel better.  To BE better.

Triumph lies not in being the best.  It lies merely in being a little bit better today than you were yesterday.  And so, no matter what happens externally, triumph is always within our grasp.

Happy New Decade everyone.

*I only say 92-year old because he looks better at his age than I do at mine, which is so unfair it borders on one of those ancient Greek God-style curses.  On me, not him.  Jerk.