Bizzo's blog

~

For other reasons, I happen to know Contra Costa County is a ridiculous place. It didn't need the extra distinction of a mayor renouncing Veteran's Day "in favor of" Occupy Wall Street.

What a tangled up country this is. Could anyone explain to her that most of the people in that anti-establishment rally probably Support The Troops? That there are veterans in that rally, and that they are not protesting the war or the millitary? Probably not. A 60-something mayor of a small Southern California city is still marching against Johnson. Against the fucking army and the fucking office and the whole fucking power thing, man. While Newt Gingrich is still waddling around the world looking for fucking hippies to give haircuts and a goddamed job, already.

Those Occupy protesters who have jobs have very good jobs, probably. Those who don't (especially those who were in the army, and want an office) can't get one. They're in the street because the world between those realities is vanishing.

I joke in my last post about how bloodless and tired any political process looks, when that process produces shambling suits like Gingrich and Romney, and fires them off to fight the ghosts of 1968, again, while more and more people in every town can't find a way to live.

I guess the joke isn't very funny.

The enemy of this country is not its army. The enemy of this country is not its students. The enemy of this country is not even its bankers. Really.

The enemy is the idea that we can live apart any more. That America in 2012 can indulge the same intravarsity score-settling that made our parents' America so transformative.

We do not want to socialize the banks. We do not want to take your guns. We do not want to revoke the New Deal. We do not want to overturn Roe. We do not want to work for China.

And for the love of god, you lunatics, we do not want to build a flying highway between Alberta and Mexico City. What the hell would you do with that? Get there and turn back around? Pee over Kansas and watch the wind blow it to Oklahoma? Jump off? Would you people either take your medication or die, already? 

Where was I.

I want the Republican party to be functional again because I want this country to be functional again. All of it.

I hope our parents will understand that stance, someday.

~

While we are on the subject, let's take a moment to note how sad this year's Republican primaries are, compared to the last batch. 

Now, those were impossible to top. They were so thick with old white macho fantasy that we are still trapped in the comic book world they created. Sarah Palin sprang from their head fully armed, the nightmare fairy for a generation's rage against all things outside the cul-de-sac.

Now what? Now they have a bench of young governors and congressmen, well-oiled fundraising groups and a chance to tag the Alien Usurper with a recession. Now they don't have to campaign from under George W. Bush. Now they can really let fly. Who's coming out of the gates??? 
 

Hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii ...

Dear lord.

At least the grabass radio host is having fun.
 

Let's be clear. Herman Cain is what happens when the elephants die and the monkeys run away and the ringmaster is drunk and the acrobats have herpes and the last clown relizes this is his chance. Before the audience leaves, he can do whatever he wants. No hope. No rules. No pants.

Good on him I guess.

For the rest of us, a ripoff.

~

I stand a little corrected. The soundbite pagents between people who don't have to say anything and won't be President have done some good. 

In August of this year, Rick Perry was going to be the perfect canned Republican. Cocky, intimidating, Conservative, a distant cousin to George Clooney.

Then he was forced to speak in public. Again. And again. And again. For some reason, Republican insiders and media elites were not able to take whatever drugs got them through George W. and Sarah P. with a straight face.

Then again, George and Sarah could approach a podium and read a canned answer with flair. They could read a prompter and enunciate. They could read. 
 

Soooo, that's over. Which is good.

Meanwhile, the Cain and Gingrich candidicies drag on painfully until some humans finally touch a ballot and we can all throw out the year's worth of polling data that ran serious numerical analysis on people's responses to "if you had to express a preference of no consequence you could later reverse, who do you like more, Eyebrow or Glasses?".

After all, both Gingrich and Cain can wear a tie and look forward and pronounce a three syllable word without pissing in their shoes. Thus, for two more months, we must pretend they can be President. 

Is there some room in Hell where they write these rules?  

~

Exhibit One.

It's funny I went on about tonal discomfort two days before I used this book in a way no doctor would reccomend. I'm very lax in my Alan Moore knowlege. I've got Watchmen and some Lost Girls and now this. But even with that small sample, I'm ready to call out my favorite strength of his: godlike mastery of tonal discomfort.

It's one thing to write "I felt horribly interested at the same time I felt disgust." That's what Lovecraft, for instance, would say. He'd use four or five synonyms for "disgust" and twelve commas before he finished saying it.

Moore uses the story organically. Moore walks you to that state of mind. Then he makes you live there a while. He builds a story on the spot where you are processing sex and rape and jokes and death and discovery and horror all at the same time. Then he invites you to have tea.

In the end you have to be horrified at yourself, if you're horrified at all. Then you have to condone yourself to keep reading. Which you will.

You're locked in here with you.

Happy Halloween.

~

(Um ... please ignore my previous comments on this subject.)

I will not be seeing Paranormal Activity 3 this Halloween. Not because it's bad or unimportant. I think 2 was very well made. I cheer for the series and enjoy overthinking it. But it has a very basic problem.

You can only do this once.

Paranormal Activity begins full of mysteries. Then it slowly reveals them. Then it ends. Resolving all the mysteries. "Resolving" with a capital "!". Those mysteries are resolved as fuck.

For this reason, all that's left is to flesh out the backstory. Both 2 and 3 are prequels. We know everything. We know who survives, what the spook is, and what it will ultimately do. Heck, from the setting of #3, we know what happens to the house. We know what they keep from the house. This story is so spoiled I could fill out the insurance claims.

The choices they made in the first movie were good. But they were one-movie choices. Now they can manufacture the creepiest setups and the shockiest shocks anywhere, but it's like a haunted house you've already walked through. You can't get back the ignorance, so you can't get back the fear.

Such is life.

~

Horror comedy is beautiful.

Like all great slapstick, it needs movement, reaction, impact, and just the right wet sounds. Like all jokes it needs wit, dedpan and zest. Put these together with the opportunity to make great, gross, imaginative sets and to work the revulsion angle, and you get something that is very fun to look at, very fun to hear, and will stay with you for life.
 

So why can't it get any respect?

It's great that Shaun of the Dead found success. But in our lifetime, what else has broken out of the genre? Scream, I guess. Which was so misunderstood that its legacy is Scary Movie and all the shame that came afterward. People saw that spoof, and thought, man someone needs to do a spoof of this! Lighten the mood a little.

So the problem may be that a good parody is a good thing-it-parodies. To be absurd a story has to take itself seriously. So a horror comedy will have horror. Think of Nick Frost being eaten alive. Or Drew Barrymore 20 feet away from her parents, bleeding out. Or the deer in Evil Dead II. Did you see that in nightmares? I did.

Tucker and Dale vs. Evil has several of those scenes. There's rape, there's torture, some of the kills have real pathos. There's POV from inside an oven. 

This is really uncomfortable, but that's the point. It makes laughter more of a release. It heightens contradictions. And shock humor is not exclusive to the genre. There's a huge audience for revulsion in The Hangover or Kingpin. Some people like Tom Green. He gets major studio releases.   

So why do I have to sit in the one dirty theater to see the one weekly showing of Tucker and Dale? I'm hidden away like I'm watching porn. Porn with cats.

Okay, so some of the jokes are insidey. Your viewing experience will be enhanced if you've seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Pumpkinhead and The Hills Have Eyes and Cabin Fever. The after-teaser opening shot may actually be the after-teaser opening shot from The Descent. When it's on DVD I'll check.

But hell. None of that is necessary. Strictly. Unless of course you don't ... want ... to see dismemberment slapstick? Or you don't have a choice ... because it's ... unpleasant to you?

There is a wall between us, hypothetical person. 

A wall of zombies

I can still remember how the rug in my basement felt. The loose thread in the rug I would pick at while I stayed up untill 2AM or 3AM, watching Tremors and The Fly and Friday the 13th Part VI. I was twelve and so were my friends, and we'd go downstairs after my parents went to sleep.

Today I could still find the hotel room on the first floor of the Holiday Inn. Where I'd sit up against the couch, my cousins to either side, my parents and aunts and uncles on the sofa or milling around, getting beer. Family reunion was the perfect time to share taped episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Which was a Wisconsin cult theater show when they were in college, and a cult cable show now that I was 10. I can still recite every gag from Giant Spider Invasion. ("Ya'll want a piece of milk?!?").

I doubt all this desensitized us to real violence, or even screen violence (see below). But it helped fill our world with a context. Gushing blood, absurd costumes, deserted swamps, blondes running in high heels, dudes saying "Hello? Guys?" then getting decapitated to a violin sting ... these things were a style. They could be dark or funny or stupid or plain old loud and entertaining. We understood "camp" before we knew the word.

That.

Tucker and Dale will be loved by us because it picks up what feels like an old conversation, and tells great jokes in its turn. 

To those outside the conversation? To people who can't easily slip into the asummptions that mean here, now, murder is hilarious? I can almost peer over the wall, to see why they think we're weird.   

Confession: When I was 17 I left the theater halfway through There's Something About Mary. I couldn't handle the violence. Really.

There was something very wrong with the tone of that movie. A romantic comedy about a hard-luck guy, who can't seem to get ahead because his dick gets ripped open and fishooks pierce his face and cars run him over. The zany scamp!

I felt misplaced empathy. Some part of my brain thought they were really torturing Ben Stiller. People around me gasped and laughed and I wanted to punch them. If you asked me to step back and explain the joke, I could. But I really didn't get it.

I had to go home. Get Ben Stiller off my mind. Watch something light. Cleanse the palate.
 

There's no accounting for taste.

Except that yours is wrong.

~

Yeah. The new edgy, dark, golden-age-of-cable-drama show on FX. That one. Have you seen it? Has anybody? I hope not.

It is the goofiest, campiest, chicken-slapping shit I have seen in this life or in my secret past life as a 19th century fetus. Don't even ask. The dialouge is from Jerry Springer. The performances are from All My Children. There's a hunchback who kills people with a shovel. Yes, with the DONG sound. Three people died in the episode I watched and all three times I laughed.

My god, the fetuses. You could have a snowball fight with all the fetuses.

I wish I could say more. This show would be improved by a cross-dressing Tim Curry. It would be improved by marijuana. It would be improved by most things.

Be afraid.

~

Yes, I think we will.

~

We're stuck with a lot of privileged liars in this country, talking this way but not understanding or living it. And not wanting to.

But the real thing, messy and crazy, exists.

"I believe in the dignity of labor, whether with head or hand; that the world owes no man a living but it owes every man an opportunity to make a living.

I believe that thrift is essential to well-ordered living and that economy is a prime request of a sound financial structure, whether in government, business or personal affairs.

I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man's word should be as good as his bond; that character - not wealth or power or position - is of supreme worth."

Steve Jobs, great American, RIP.

~

I've tried to avoid or ignore commentary on the thing that happened on TV last night. I make exception for Ta-Nehisi Coates: 

Heh:

"But as the exchanges intensified, one of the candidates, Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, chastised the moderators of the debate, from NBC and Politico, and said they were trying to stoke divisions among Republicans in a way he said would help Mr. Obama."

Dude, it's a debate.

Newt Gingrich is such a hack it's impossible to know if this was clever stupid or regular stupid. Debating is a tool of the liberal media! Is it really a "primary" if the result isn't final? What is it to be voted for? What are words, really? I am Newt Gingrich and I am freaking your mind. I poop in a shoe.

There is a larger issue here, which I don't trust Boot Toilet to represent. In my days at Holiday Inn podiums, I ran into kids who didn't know what debate was. They would express confusion while at the podium, debating. Once or twice they cried.

It went like this: 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Debater: There is no better way to protect the Brown Owl, to protect our American natural hertiage, than the Act we consider today. I direct the judge toward the strong evidence and the need for action, and urge you to decide for the Affirmative. 

Debater's Partner: *table thump*  

Judge and Bizzo: *polite clap*

Judge: ... okay. It was a close round and both teams made strong points. Affirmative, you failed to respond to the cost arguments made by Neg conclusively, and dropped the feasibility point from openers. Neg, you dodged a bullet because "owls are too greasy to eat" and "therefore cannot be loved" was a non-sequitor. But I'm giving you the round. You advance.

Bizzo: Thank you! *goes to shake the hands*

Debater: But! But ... no! No, judge, you can't do that! Think about the damage this will do! 

Judge: Affirmative, my decision is final. It was a good debate but ...

Bizzo: *stands there, hand awkwardly out*

Debater: But we're RIGHT. Ohmygod why are you doing this? It's in National Geographic. They really will die! WHY WOULD YOU LET THEM DIE.

Judge: ...

Bizzo: *brain make squeak noise*

Debater: I TOLD you how important this was! We're going to HAVE NO FORESTS. FORESTS ARE IMPORTANT.

Judge: Debaters, please clear the stage. Neg advances.  

Debater: YOU'RE TRYING TO KILL THE OWLS! OH GOD WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO KILL THE OWLS! IT MAKES NO SENSE! YOU'RE TERRIBLE.

Bizzo: I never touched an owl.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And I never have.

At the time this baffled me. What do you say to that. "Sir, when you lose at Monopoly, do you file for unemployment?" "Are you sick?" "Were you kicked by a mule?" "Are you Newt Gingrich?" 

Today I know better. What goes on in Newt Gingrich's head does sound like two rats fucking in a pile of sawdust, but his words appeal to a common misunderstanding.That the point of debate is to win. Or that the point is to be right.  

Anyone can be right. It takes someone working within a very complex system to turn their rightness into action without killing or raping everyone who thinks otherwise, then setting their books on fire. Whatever the Democrats or the GOP have latitiude to do today exists within a tiny civilized window, framed on at least one side by boring civil consenseus. On at least one other by the rules of non-rapey persuasion. 

The first point of debate is to have one. This souds obvious, but we've got honors students crying over dream owls and an ex-congressman saying hey what if we skipped all the stuff before I win. And no one tazered him.  

Please. Anybody.

My opinion is when six political leaders show up, say hateful things about each other and each other's ideas, shake hands, go home alive, and everyone treats this as banal, the big win is behind us. That sort of thing is never normal enough. We should use every opportunity to its fullest. This is why I hate the soundbite format. This is why I think kids should internalize the rituals and rules and tactics of debate. Right after learning to read.

A key part of that lesson should be arguing for things you hate. Do you love the Brown Owl? Argue that we need the timber. Do you hate affirmative action? Argue it's vital to society. Do you eat three cookies at lunch? Argue to replace them with vegetables. Do it well. You'll be graded. You'll develop an ear for reason and persuasion. They'll come to be normal.

There's a lot of power in making things normal. If Rick Perry gave a speech pantless or speaking pig latin (or both), no pundit would tease out its impact on South Carolina. Headlines would read "Governor has hairy thighs, forefits race."

I fantasize about an America where that applies to debate. Where arguing well and submitting to rigor is what you need to even show up. Where storyboarding an interview or scripting a press conference or saying candidates shouldn't argue because they might lose carries the social weight of stapling hot dogs to your chin and yelling "I'M SANTA MEAT."

In a country like that, we'd wind up with fewer Newt Gingriches and fewer Michael Moores. Or at least fewer people who respect them.  

Maybe we'd have real debates.