The Collapse of Society: a theory from Jared Diamond examined

"In the present book focusing on collapses rather than buildups, I compare many past and present societies that differed with respect to environmental fragility, relations with neighbors, political institutions, and other "input" variables postulated to influence a society's stability." - Jared Diamond

I bought the book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed over a year ago (it's by Jared Diamond - same author who wrote 'Guns, Germs, and Steel': very well researched, by the way) and I finally had time to read it, and just finished it. I've only read it once, so my opinion on it is pretty worthless right now, and I admit I skimmed a few chapters.

The thesis is very interesting. Diamond is going to talk about how societies live or die: pretty important, huh? What do we care about when it comes to our society's survival? Technological advancement? The biggest, baddest weapons? Technological sophistication in general? Should we get the values that third-world nations have instead? Should we try to get rid of European culture, since it's lead to near-global subjugation?

Societies die because they neglect the environment. I disagree. To show where I'm coming from I'll focus on 2 examples.

1. Consider Easter Island, an island in the southeastern Pacific. Is its culture dying? If so, why? Diamond thinks its because its natural resources (minerals, forests, water, etc . . .) are being used up and that the place is getting overpopulated. But the evidence doesn't support this. Carl Lipo and Terry Hunt got some soil samples from the island and found out how old they were through Radiocarbon dating. The dating showed that the island didn't have anyone on it until 200 to 800 years after Diamond's thesis requires. There hasn't been people there long enough for Diamond's theory to be plausible.

2. Consider Greenland. What happened to Viking society? Diamond claims that the Vikings were racist against the Inuit, and that this meant that the Vikings weren't open to different Inuit ideas that would have kept them from starving. This lead the Vikings to have an agriculture that wasn't good enough to feed them. But Viking scholarship doesn't support this at all. They say the Viking diet switched from farm to marine food. So, the Vikings didn't need to get fishing lessons from the primitive Inuit to survive. The Vikings weren't just agrarian.

The Vikings died off - according to scholars - because of the mini-ice-age (known from tree rings and core samples), and how that made the Vikings switch their diet back to farm foods (which didn't grow well anymore because of the ice-age), and because the Inuit killed off a lot of the Vikings because they were competing to get that marine diet.

That's just a few. But this isn't to say the book is all bad. It's actually very, very good. I actually liked it better than GGS. Remember the opening quote? He looks at a bunch of societies, past and present, and finds out how the societies collapsed, and finds out what the input variables are. There are 8 of them. Cutting down forests. Problems with soil. Problems with water. Too much hunting. Too much fishing. How new species interfere with native species' way of living. Too much reproduction. Impact of overpopulation. He goes into how any combinations of these factors made a society collapse in the past.

For future societies, there are 4 input variables: man-made global warming (hmmmm), too much toxins in the environment, not enough energy, too much human tampering with Nature's ability to use photosynthesis.

The book is divided into 4 sections. Section 1 focuses on Montana; section 2, on past societies; section 3, on modern societies; and section 4, Diamond gives us some ideas on how to help our society from not dying.

There is no doubt that Diamond is an original thinker, a clear, analytical writer, who makes very good arguments, who has done very affective (even if neglectful in some areas) research. Get ready to take a tour through time, into all sorts of societies, learn their ways, and at least read a very interesting theory as to why they died. You'll also get acquainted with mainstream social-science models that help you understand a society, diagnose and organize the problems of a society, and finally give the medicine for the society's survival. Diamond writes very lucidly, and the dry parts are seasoned with a subtle sense of humor that makes for an interesting read throughout.

Illegal Immigration in Arizona: why is Obama not giving Arizona a break?

I always find it easier to picture states or nations in terms of neighborhoods or homes. It’s a little more familiar and concrete that way. Imagine that you live in a well-ordered, policed town, and in order to fund the town, the rightful citizens are taxed. So far, so good. To keep the town in working order, you have to have documentation that you’re a citizen. Makes sense: since if you’re not documented, you can find a way out of getting taxed. That way, you get all the benefits of being in our town, but none of the cost.

This is what is happening in Arizona. Arizona is a border state: in other words, it is a town that borders a foreign neighborhood that aren’t citizens of Arizona. Every day, more and more citizens from Mexico pour over into Arizona, breaking state and federal immigration laws. But this is a problem. Remember: to keep the state fiscally afloat, its citizens need to be taxed. But if you’re in Arizona illegally, you can easily evade taxes. Now, watch what happens.

Mexicans take advantage of the hospitals, the schools, and tax-funded prisons. But what happens if more and more Mexicans come in, use the schools, the hospitals, and fill the prisons, but don’t pay taxes? The state eventually becomes broke. How else are all these services and benefits going to be funded?

As a result, citizens of Arizona are fleeing north, as did the citizens of California.

What is cool is that Arizona governor Jan Brewer had enough. She enforced the immigration laws of her state, because the federal government has been so slow to act while her state is in a fiscal crisis, the same crisis that is making California bankrupt.

But - for some reason that I’m not aware of - Obama doesn’t like what Brewer is doing. Obama called Brewer ‘misguided’. To make the job of Arizona police harder, he has gotten the Justice Department involved to make sure no one’s civil rights are violated. What is frustrating is that we all know what that means. The minute a police officer is suspicious of someone, he’s going to hesitate, because he knows his judgment is under a microscope, and he knows there’s a real possibility that the ACLU could probably prove - in some crooked court - that the ‘undocumented worker’ was racially profiled.

Do you see what’s happening? This is just annoying to me. It seems like Obama can do what he wants - since it is ‘legal’ - but he knows what he is doing. Why not let the Arizona police do their job? Why not give a whole darn state some faith? The federal government isn’t doing anything, and in the mean time, the state is fiscally dying. By doing this, Obama is feeding a theory about him (that isn’t fair at first glance) that’ll make me never vote for him: the majority of Mexicans vote democrat - connect the dots.

So, Obama cares more for the civil rights of people who don’t have a right to be here, and less for the rights of hard-working, legal citizens, who have to go to work everyday, get taxed, and have those taxes pay for the services and benefits of people who evade our laws, who evade taxes, and leech off the system, until the system is dry? I mean, money doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s got to be taxed. Without taxing hard-working Americans, the Nation’s bank account plummets. I mean, do you guys see the pattern?

Another thing we have a right to do as a Nation is put our military on the border. I think this is called for. Drug cartels come across the border everyday. A lot of times, they’re escorted by the Mexican military - read that again. Hard working farmers have been murdered, along with the police. Kidnappings. Etc. There’s got to be a seal on the border. We can’t just be a nanny forever. It just doesn’t work that way. If you continue to be nice and just let anyone in whenever, we’re not going to last very much longer. It’s just the logic of it, as I see it.

I know the immigration issue is complicated. But seriously. Why is Obama silent on it? There’s 12 to 20 million illegal aliens here. 12 to 20 million! And that’s just roughly. We’re not taking into account all their family connections. No nation in the history of civilization has survived with that track record. Rome did it. Europe is doing it with the muslims.

A part of a nation is its culture. If citizens aren’t naturalized, they bring their culture with them. Multiculturalism is a good thing, and that’s the cool thing about America. We can have a chinatown, a ‘south of the border’, etc. But first and foremost, they’re Americans. A lot of these Mexicans - and you can hear it straight from the horse’s mouth - believe that the southwestern part of America was stolen from them, and that it’s theirs, and they’re going to get it back, not militarily, but from the ground up, from the inside out, coming in, evading the laws, using the voting system, infiltrating American culture, and getting it back, and getting back at us that way.

That’s no way to come to America. That’s a horrible attitude to have. Something has got to be done. And Arizona has taken the initiative. Some statistics show that around 8 million African Americans are being shut off from jobs they’d otherwise have if illegal Mexicans didn’t have them: and Al Sharpton is going to march against Arizona law against the illegals? Oh, the irony.

What is also funny is the irony somewhere else. Mexico has a lot of indignation toward us if we don’t bend over backwards to take in their illegals. But Mexico deports their illegal aliens. Isn’t that hypocritical? And why do they do that? Well, they have immigration laws, and they know they can’t stay fiscally afloat if they have a boatload of illegal citizens who can leech off the services and benefits without being taxed. They know money doesn’t just pop into being out of nothing.

I’ll stop here, but I just thought I’d write this because I think Arizona is doing the right thing, and that Obama is just annoying me.

Robert E. Howard's masterpiece: Conan of Cimmeria

"But not all men seek rest and peace; some are born with the spirit of the storm in their blood, restless harbingers of violence and bloodshed, knowing no other path."
Robert E. Howard



One fateful night, Robert E. Howard created the character of Conan, a barbarian, a wonderer, a thief, a pirate, a mercenary, and finally king of Aquilonia. He is a hulk of a man, armed with sword or axe or both, battling ravenous demons, aliens from other worlds, witches, vampires, sorcerers, all to retrieve some rare potion or medicine having peculiar magical powers. The women are scantily clad and mostly slaves, and there is always a bratty princess who gives the barbarian his marching orders. And lets not forget the legions and legions of bloodthirsty barbarians that populate Howard’s mythical world, which rivals Middle-Earth in its detail and scope.



This is Conan. King Conan. Conan the Barbarian. This is a character born and created during The Depression, in the early 30’s. Since the publishing of the books, we’ve seen him in comic books, two films (Schwarzenegger), and the recent graphic novel. But go back to the covers of the books. A half-naked, muscle-bound savage stands atop a giant mound of slain bodies, and two voluptuous maidens wrap their arms around his thigh.

This begs an important question: who are these stories for? Who is the audience here? Is this supposed to be the prepubescent’s fantasy? Is this for guys with too much testosterone? Is it lurid, shoddy crap trying to pass itself off as solid literature? Is it a subtle appeal to sadism or masochism or rape or lesbianism? The short answer is: Yep. But the longer answer is that there’s bit more to it than that.

Consider when Conan confesses to his comrade Prospero:

“"These matters of statecraft weary me as all the fighting I have done never did. . . . In the old free days all I wanted was a sharp sword and a straight path to my enemies. Now no paths are straight and my sword is useless."

As far as his nature, Howard compared Conan to a tiger or a wolf. He was simple; he used instinct; he was not a thinker. He did not ponder. He was a man of action. He is undomesticated. There is no red tape. There is no negotiation. He doesn’t play chess with all the intricacies of political drama. His sword slashes through all that bureaucratic twaddle. He doesn’t get depressed. He doesn’t have any fear. He doesn’t doubt. He does the bidding of Crom and that is that. The only thing that changes is what he does with his women and wine afterwards.

This is the fictive Hyborian age, which means “the barbaric dweller beyond the north wind”, some time before 10,000 B.C. Conan is my guilty pleasure. If you like sword and sorcery, this is it. It doesn’t get any better. The skeleton of every story is a quest for a treasure or a magic talisman or vengeance, and the enemy is always a demon or a witch or a sorcerer or a wizard, and there is always a collapsing palace or temple or a hidden tunnel or room or underwater passage. Magic is everywhere. We have delicious passages like:

"Ships did not put unasked into this port, where dusky sorcerers wove awful spells in the murk of sacrificial smoke mounting eternally from blood-stained altars where naked women screamed, and where Set, the Old Serpent, archdemon of the Hyborians but god of the Stygians, was said to writhe his shining coils among his worshippers."

No matter what the task, Conan finds a way and never surrenders. Remember in the movie when he was crucified? Read this:

“Conan drew his head back as far as he could, waiting, watching with the terrible patience of the wilderness and its children. The vulture swept in with a swift roar of wings. Its beak flashed down, ripping the skin on Conan's chin as he jerked aside his head, then before the bird could flash away, Conan's head lunged forward on his mighty neck muscles and his teeth, snapping like those of a wolf, locked on the bare, wattled neck. . . . Grimly he hung on, the muscles starting out in lumps on his jaws. And the scavenger's neck bones crunched between those powerful teeth. With a spasmodic flutter the bird hung limp. Conan let go, spat blood from his mouth."

Or this:

"But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet."



Howard is a master of pulp. His popular fiction was groundbreaking. This myth is topnotch. Conan is a character hacked out of the very sinews of saga, epic, or legend. He is less a person than a force of nature. Imitated much, but rarely equaled: Conan is a staggering character and Howard, a pioneer.

Lost interest in "Lost"

I have been an avid viewer of the show Lost for quite sometime. I remember being introduced to the show after its first season was on DVD and watching it through and catching up to the rest of the world in what felt like one very confusing hour. With the rest of the world, I wondered what was going on.

Are they in purgatory? Is this a figment of their imagination? What happened to the kids kidnapped? And, "Is that what I think it is, a smoke monster as well as a polar bear? on an Island?"

This show drove me nuts.

In a good way. I was initially intrigued by its new style of storytelling. Showing through flashbacks, how each individual ended up on the island. Some involved in sketchy things, others it seemed coincidental. Either way the questions of morality intrigued me and each week brought me back pining for more.

I have always had a love/hate relationship with this show. After an episode I would make sweeping declarations of my "Breaking Up" with Lost. I did not care anymore, they weren't telling me anything. And if my past relationships with girls are any indication of my level of dedication, I'm surprised I had made it that far anyway.

Well, 6 years later, I'm still a loyal viewer. But, not without my regrets. I feel like a husband looking for an excuse to get out of a mediocre marriage with my only complaint being, its not like the first two years and the wife saying "Of course jackass, it never is, ask anybody."

So what am I left to do?

Here's my problem. I no longer care. The characters no longer interest me. The moral questions that at one time stared you in the face are no longer there. Instead, we are given a puzzle. A big white canvas of a puzzle with no discernible way of deciphering an answer. To many questions left unanswered and not enough time to answer.

I miss the moral ambiguities. The burning questions that live in the gray area.

Sayid: Torture or not to torture?

Jack: What is a good person?

Sawyer: Cynicism

Kate: Torn between 2 lovers.

I could go on. But the more I think about it, the more I am disappointed in the current trajectory of the show and miss the early seasons and the world of potential they held.

At this point I do not see how it can end in any kind of satisfying way, except that it would be over and I would have one more hour back in my life each week.

A defense of Paul Giamatti's portrayal of John Adams

I just began watching the TV mini-series "John Adams", spanning 7 episodes (covering 50 years) tonight. Paul Giamatti’s portrayal of the 2nd president was jaw-dropping. But this blog isn’t going to be a vehicle of praise, but a critique of a criticism. Alessandra Stanley wrote a piece for the New York Times called “Blow Hard, Patriot, President”, which argues that Giamatti’s performance was weak, and that John Adams is the Achilles heel of “John Adams”. Though she may be right, and I profoundly disagree, I found her reasons inadequate.

The real president John Adams was an amazing man among amazing men. He did have a complicated personality filled with overt and latent contradictions. The overall canvass of his personality is brilliantly and lucidly explored in the biography ‘John Adams’, by renowned biographer David McCollough. In the show, you have box seats to the Continental Congress itself. Passions soar, debates rage, and politics smolder. You can see the sagacious humility of Washington, the pugnacious feistiness of John Adams, the reserved and quiet wisdom of Thomas Jefferson, and the wit of a Renaissance man, Dr. Benjamin Franklin.

But what exactly does Stanley think is wrong with the Giamatti performance? First, she thinks that Abigail is reduced to one-word summations of character traits in her husband in an effort to underline some unnoticed – because not sufficiently acted – mannerism. Well, I don’t agree at all. Abigail talks a lot. I mean, just watch the show: she and John have lengthy discussions about a variety of subjects. It’s just false to say otherwise. But even if she did that, what character trait was trying to be emphasized? Nothing is noted.

She further says, “Mr. Giamatti is a prisoner of a limited range and rubbery, cuddly looks — in 18th-century britches and wigs, he looks like Shrek.” On the contrary, if you read McCollough’s biography, Giamatti’s look is exactly what it was in my imagination. He was short, unseemly, dirty, unbecoming, bald, and pudgy. Giamatti took on this look with perfection. A prisoner of limited range? I beg for examples. He is the stern but affectionate father, the loving husband, the concerned husband, the reluctant politician, the insolent debater, the man of conviction, a rival, a friend, an implacable foe, patriot. What else does Stanley want?

Stanley muses about the bewilderment that viewers (ignorant of the biography) will have at the initial visual shock of seeing a Giamatti portray Adams. All I can say is that ignorance is not bliss. An ignorant critic is a scourge on proper artistic enjoyment. All you have to do is follow the adjectives and match them with the visual appearance you see on screen. If you can’t see it, then you’re either lacking in imagination or comprehension of the language.

The only reason Stanley marshals forth is his bias (which he has the right to have!) for another actor’s role as Adams: William Daniels – who played him in a musical called “1776”. I don’t deny he did great: I do deny the implied notion that Daniels exhausts any and all qualities Adams might have had, or that they were exhausted by a solitary performance over 40 years ago. I haven’t seen the Daniels performance. I don’t need to. What Stanley needs to do is give reasons why Giamatti doesn’t have the “power or the flexibility” to pull it off. An incredulous stare isn’t an argument.

So, I disagree with Stanley. Giamatti was perfect for the role, not only because of the look, but for the tone, even the eyes. They bulge with stress and the tenderness of his voice in a calm moment seems like a hindrance. The resulting paroxysms break through believably. He is a man for the law and when that conviction is breached, his passion fumes. Giamatti’s somewhat calm, reserved, and introverted personality resonates with that "Adams’ drive" and passion in a really insightful way.

Science Fiction at its finest: Minority Report

I’ve always thought that Philip K. Dick was a philosopher masquerading as a novelist. Minority Report - starring Tom Cruise - is an excellent film of science fiction, done in the category of film noir, by an amateur of film noir (Spielberg), but nonetheless done very effectively. The premise is an immemorial philosophical problem. Recall the lines (after throwing a ball):

John Anderton: Why'd you catch that?
Danny Witwer: Because it was going to fall.
John Anderton: You're certain?
Danny Witwer: Yeah.
John Anderton: But it didn't fall. You caught it. The fact that you prevented it from happening doesnt change the fact that it was *going* to happen.

You catch your wife of 20 years in bed with your best friend. She has had an affair. You’re in a rage and you form the intention to kill them. All of a sudden, a storm of police barrage the house, and before the intention could grow roots for half a second, you’re under arrest for the future murder of your wife and best friend. But I haven’t done anything yet, you think!

Cruise is John Anderton. He is in charge of the Department of Pre-crime in Washington D.C. It is the year 2054. The city swallows the earth. There is no Nature. This is a dystopia that gives Orwell’s 1984 a run for its money. Technology has reached its zenith. Advertisements follow you around like pop-up ads on the Internet, only they're tailored to suit your every need, and addressed to you personally. Cars race to and fro, horizontally or vertically. Homes are equipped with state of the art technology. Everything seems to be voice activated. Bottom line: this is the future Marty didn’t go far enough to see!

Remember your wife and the best friend you caught in the act? Remember those guys who arrested you before you did anything? Well, that’s the Department of Pre-crime - and Cruise is the ringleader. The Department gets their leads from a very reliable source: the precogs. There are 3 of them, but of the 3 Agatha is the most powerful. They can see the future!

As with any government agency that is both highly successful and morally questionable, the Justice Department has to stir the pot to keep everyone accountable: or are they jealous?

Art direction, production design, and cinematography are spectacular. Nearly every edited scene is full of details that repeated viewings won’t be able to exhaust. Consider the computer Cruise manipulates with his hands like the conductor of a technological symphony. Every image can be moved, adjusted, magnified, closed out, opened, highlighted, superimposed. Classical music plays in the background. Disks are made of glass, inserted in some high-tech CPU, and our imagination just swims and gets lost in all these details. This is a world we can’t wrap our heads around.

A problem happens when the pre-cogs see Cruise commit a murder. The hunter soon becomes the hunted and the story shifts to a fugitive theme. There is a very affective scene of Cruise and Agatha scrambling through a mall away from the cops with insightful directions about where to stand, for how long, who not to look at, where to run: she knows what would happen if you didn’t do what she said.

Another cool scene happens when Anderton is fleeing from the spiders. There is an aerial scene, showing the camera hovering just above all the adjacent apartments, after ‘spiders’ are sent in to do exhaustive retina scans. The jet-pack fight scene strays away from the cartoonish acrobatics of Spiderman or the nature-defying stunts of the post-Matrix era and stands firm in realism. It's actually one of my favorite action sequences. 'Don't run, John', advises his long time partner. 'Everybody runs.', quips Anderton.

This is one of my favorite science fiction movies. It has a great story with an unpredictable twist and all the while juggling some hefty philosophical problems. One can’t help but focus on the paradox in nearly all time-travel movies. If Anderton did something that the pre-cogs didn’t see, then why didn’t they see ‘that’ instead? But I’ll quit there.

Voice in the Wilderness

I am severely depressed with the current state of television.

Two and Half Men is one of the top rated shows and I'm pretty sure there are like 87 new hospital dramas starting.

ER was the best there will ever be, lets just get used to that fact.

A few years ago a few television shows were given their start. Heroes, Studio Sixty on the Sunset Strip, 30 Rock and Friday Night Lights. In my opinion, Studi

o sixty was the best. It was created and written by Aaron Sorkin (Who I have a giant crush on). He wrote movies like A Few Good Men, The American President and created and wrote my favorite show of all time The West Wing. Unfortunately, it was cancelled after a season for reasons beyond me.

Moving on, we have 30 rock. Hysterical. Tina Fey is a genius and super cute. I love her with my whole heart. May it never be cancelled.

Next, Heroes, this show started strong, but in my opinion has tapered out and I have lost interest. I have also lost interest in LOST but that is a whole different discussion.

Finally, the point of this blog.

FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. I was not interested in this show in the beginning. It is about a high school football obsessed town. Their world revolves around friday nights and they turn 16 year old quarterbacks into gods. The idea of the show did not interest me, it was also based off of a ESPN original movie and it was on friday nights (Attn: Party People! Friday night is my night!). The factors here did not add up to Matt Johnson tuning in.

A year went by and shows were getting dropped like bad habits. Studio's were canceling things faster than Brangelina could adopt kids. During this almost nazi-like extermination, one show was developing a fan base. A serious one. ESPN sports analysts were talking about this Highschool football show, News networks were doing pieces on it. It was bizarre. I couldn't get my head around it, where were the sit-ins and MLK's for studio 60? So I did what any responsible, mature adult would do. I boycotted FNL.

Fast forward 4 years.

Steven King has become one of my favorite authors. I recently read The Shining and a ton of his short stories and I cannot get enough of this guy. He might be the our generations Charles Dickens. Who knows?

Anyway, he writes a column in Entertainment Weekly and he made a case for FNL that I had not heard before. He talked about the tight, clever writing. The moral decisions, watching these students make decisions that are way outside of their maturity level, it's genuinely engaging.

Based on his recommendation, I watched an episode...and then...I watched 3 seasons.

Hands down, with out a shadow of a doubt, it is the best show on television. It is the voice in the wilderness, it is the tether of creativity in a world gone reality mad. It reminds me and gives me hope that truly excellent storytelling can exist in a world of reality TV and CSI: Prostitutes.

I encourage, no demand your attention to this show. You will not regret it. It is the Highschool you would attend now, as an adult. You are reminded how those minor decisions as a 16 year old really were your world. Nothing else mattered at the time.

I applaud the creators and writers for a job well done. I just hope they don't let me down.

Paranormal Activity: truly frightening!

I feel it. I feel it breathing on me. - Katie in Paranormal Activity

It took a decade for a movie to match what The Blair Witch Project did back in 1999. But Paranormal Activity did the trick - at least, for me. I’ve talked to some who weren’t scared in the slightest. Open Water tried to do it, as did Cloverfield and Quarantine. But the shaky camera, discovered footage genre was I think done the best in Paranormal Activity. It is an acquired taste.

This is a movie that uses an atmosphere of dread and spookiness instead of CGI or buckets of blood. It’ll scare a certain type of personality. I don’t see the skeptics of a spiritual world too susceptible to this type of movie. I think they may need to be jarred by the buckets or the all-out monsters. We need to keep that in mind though if we’re going to properly critique this. It’s in the shaky camera genre and it’s a movie about atmosphere and the ‘less is more’ angle. It builds tension very cleverly; and when the tension pops, it’s quite eerie.

After I saw this, those bumps in the night got pretty loud in my own house. I’m talking every little tick and plumbing noise. You want to turn your head around just to make sure.

The plot is simple. Katie and Micah are a normal couple living in a 2-floor apartment. She has been spooked out lately because she thinks some entity is haunting her. It’s been happening in the bedroom. So, they buy a camera to film the goings-on in the bedroom while they sleep. Micah mostly does this to prove nothing is going on. He is the naive skeptic, probably how 99% of us would act in situations like this - up to a certain extent. He is more interested in the footage than Katie. I won’t spoil the footage in the later parts of the movie. But I’ll just say that they are very spooky.

Katie is entirely believable. She seems like your normal college student. Micah acts just like your normal, macho guy.

They go to bed where the timer is in the bottom right part of the screen. The time speeds up to actual paranormal events, which get creepier and more aggressive as the movie progresses. The bedroom door creaks a couple of inches. Thumps are heard downstairs. Lights turn on and off. A sheet ripples and winds up the bed.

They consult an expert, but when he comes in the room he is immediately unsettled. He senses a heavy demonic presence and even as I type that I’m getting goosebumps.

We are trapped wherever Micah moves the camera. It never leaves the house. It has a tight, claustrophobic feel to it. It plays on our fear of the dark, how it symbolizes the unknown. There is a macabre feeling to the idea that the house is your normal suburban home that any of your friends would be living in. When nothing is happening, I wasn’t bored. It’s what is not happening that is the most interesting. Your imagination fills in the blanks.

Ears Wide Open?

I heard a funny story about the movie Eyes Wide Shut. Some random girl tried to watch it but her volume malfunctioned. She had to watch the entire movie with no sound. After she was done, she asked the friend that recommended it whether she missed anything. He replied: a word or two. In an interview, Nicole Kidman said she asked Kubrick what the film was about, but he just looked away in his characteristic way. Did Kidman act out the film without any sound?

The first thing that goes through your mind after you’re finished watching the movie is what the heck it was about. Some critics just overcomplicate the simple and others oversimplify the complicated. Some even thought Kubrick made a gaffe on purpose: that the gag was on us.

Just what was Kubrick up to in the opening scene: Kidman stripping completely naked. I tried to grasp for something less visceral and sexually arousing. I groped for Gestalt psychology and the terms ‘figure’ and ‘ground’. If Kidman’s butt was the figure, what was the ground? Let me explain.

In Gestalt psychology, our conscious minds trick us with figures in our life. The figure is the surface; the ground is subliminal. The ground organizes our senses of the figures and gives us a place in our environment. But it can’t be accessed consciously. According to some theorists, the artist is the one who allows us access to the grounds. The world of everyday experience puts us in touch with figures; and art puts us in touch with grounds. It turns out that Kubrick was familiar with this psychology when he made 2001: A Space Odyssey.

So, the key to understanding EWS is to find Kubrick’s ground; and to find Kubrick’s ground we need to find out what kind of movie EWS is. For that’s what Kubrick did throughout his career: he made certain kinds of movies and strove to make the best movie of its kind.

We all know the genres: action, noir, drama, suspense, horror, science fiction, comedy, war, etc . . . If we focus here, we’ll find that EWS doesn’t fit any of these. Lots of critics thought it was just a bad movie, period. But like I said, it’s hard to call it bad without knowing what kind of movie it is first.

So, why is everyone in the dark? Reviews hate it because they think it’s bad; and no one can agree to a theory as to what Kubrick was trying to do here. Some think it’s a conspiracy! And I happen to agree with this. What kind of movie is EWS? It’s a conspiracy movie. And it’s the best conspiracy movie of its kind.

Conspiracy against whom?: us, the cast, the critics. The movie is manufactured to confuse, distract, and defy traditional tools for movie criticism. A Kubrick worshipper gets tired trying to interpret it. This is Kubrick’s intention. EWS was the last movie of his career and as a testament to his craft, he finally made a movie that frustrated the most dogged of interpreters.

Are there any clues in the script? Is the movie’s title a clue? Is it right in front of our noses but that our eyes happen to be wide shut? Or are ‘eyes wide shut’ a way of seeing? Is it right in front of us, but we can’t see it?

What about starting with the password to enter the secret sex society. It is “Fidelio”, which is oddly enough a opera by Beethoven. Dr. Harford (Cruise) got it from the piano player: but remember it isn’t really the piano player’s password - it’s Kubrick’s. He wrote the script. If we look at the text of the opera, we find themes like deception, imprisonment, rebellion against tyranny. But this doesn’t sit well, because the setting is in Spain in the late 19th century and could just be another smokescreen intentionally put in by Kubrick.

Do “Fidelio” and conspiracy have an affinity? Follow this link: http://www.schillerinstitute.org/fid_97-01/fidelio.html

If you did, you’ll find “Fidelio” is the name of a magazine - it is presided over by Lyndon LaRouche, someone who heads up an organization that gets it’s inspiration from various conspiracies! It was started in the early 90’s, but the question remains: is this reason enough to say there is a connection? Does the magazine inspire the movie somehow?

As you know, Kubrick based the screenplay off a novella called Tramnovelle, by Arthur Schnitzler. It was about a doctor who transforms psychologically over a two-day period. But in the novella, the password isn’t “Fidelio”: it’s “Denmark”. Why is that? Does this mean the novella is a distraction? Is this Kubrick’s masked way of telling us to disregard the novella? Is the password just a figure, rather than a ground?

During the orgy, there’s also a difference in the novella and the movie with the costumes worn. In the novella, they're bright and colorful; in the movie, they’re black and ominous - and the people wear masks.

If you remember, Cruise is the only one wearing red. When he is asked for the password, Cruise gives the correct answer, but is then clued in to the idea that there is more than one (is that a reference to "Denmark"?)! But remember our only clue is the word “Fidelio”.

What’s the significance of the guy in red? Is there significance in the masks? I read that all the masks can be found in Venice, Italy. Do we look into the history of Venice? Is the man in red a Pope, a Cardinal? Is the whole scene an allegory for the relations between Venice and the Catholic Church? Well, if you’ll remember the magazine “Fidelio”, the founder Lyndon LaRouche focuses on a pretty complicated conspiracy involving Venice being the location where the East has been slowly taking over the West over the last 2000 years: an elaborate scheme.

What is this scheme? Well, the East and West have been at each other’s throats since Alexander the Great, when Persia (modern-day Iran) murdered Alexander’s dad. These Persians then migrated to Venice, and LaRouche thinks Venice to be the most powerful city since the fall of Rome until the 15th century. Venice has also been a city at odds with Rome. The writers for “Fidelio” focus on these ideas the most.

According to the theory, when Venice relocated after Florence and Rome began to creep in, they relocated in London. From London, they moved to New York City. Culturally, then, London and New York are Venice, and so ancient Persian.

Okay, enough history. What’s this got to do with EWS? Here is the question: Is Kubrick making a parable about a secret sect, whose headquarters is New York City, who can trace their roots culturally back to Venice? Is the surface of EWS just a distraction from one of the most elaborate conspiracies of all time? Where was the European premiere of the film EYS shown? VENICE.

Kubrick had subscribed to “Fidelio” for years. Lets look at a possible example. Who had a hand in inventing the atom bomb? Leo Szilard. The magazine and LaRouche himself wrote badly about him. Guess what LaRouche called Leo Szilard? Dr. Strangelove! Another Kubrick film. On another note, LaRouche wrote about British brainwashing techniques that were hush-hush. These techniques were what inspired the brainwashing scenes in A Clockwork Orange, and were gathered by a British Intelligence officer.

Watch Eyes Wide Shut again with this conspiracy in mind. Make sure the volume works. Listen to the script - and if you have to have your eyes wide shut, keep your ears wide open.

Inception: a new Christopher Nolan masterpiece?

“What is the most resilient parasite: an idea!” - from the upcoming movie Inception.

I started paying attention to the style and personality of Christopher Nolan’s movies after I saw Insomnia (2002), starring a more serious Robin Williams - with that kind of creepiness we saw in One Hour Photo - and a cranky and sleep-deprived Al Pacino. The distinct impression I remember feeling as I finished the movie was that I had been following a very good story. This is the quality that I think separates Nolan as a director. He is a story teller.

I even remember thinking that The Prestige (2006) was a good movie, but it seemed to stand out in a way other good movies didn’t. There just seemed to be a personality behind the story direction. The story unfolded - as all stories do - in a certain style and with a certain temperament. Memento (2000) was the same way, as was Nolan’s utter revitalization of the Batman franchise.

What I am particularly excited about as of late is the upcoming release of Inception with Leonardo DiCaprio, a secret agent who uses advanced technology to enter into the minds of rich geniuses to find their tricks and strategies for amassing wealth. His name is Dom Cobb. He steals ideas. After the secrets are found, he ‘sells it to the highest bidder’.

If you’ve seen the trailer, the special effects look incredible. In the mind, shapes can shift without warning and people can have powers not had in the real world. In my blog on the movie The Cell, you’ll remember that I loved it because it focuses on a theme I am especially interested in: the inner consciousness, the mind. In the preview, we literally see a cityscape folding back on itself! The soundtrack sounds amazing, with that rhythmic bellowing of the horn.

The movie has been shrouded in secrecy. When Nolan delivered the scripts, there were guards just outside the front door of the actor's homes, not letting anyone get a chance to know anything about the movie. But the testimony of the actors reading the script is enough for me. They are very excited. They were blown away by the story and the twists and turns.

I can’t wait to see it! I’ll probably miss it in theaters - in darn boot camp. Maybe I can sneak off base!

Is nuclear disarmament a good idea?

I’m about talk on an issue I know nothing about: nuclear disarmament. I have no idea what the pros and cons are. I have no idea what reasons there are for disarming or not disarming. I’m going to go with my gut.

If you’ve been watching the news, you know President Obama has just had a nuclear summit. At the summit, he called for all the nuclear powers to reduce the amount of nuclear weapons they have: including us. We’re supposed to reduce our nuclear arsenal by 2/3, or something like that. I suppose the reasoning is that we are to lead by example, which is just another way America manifests its hubris. Why doesn’t that show other countries that we look down our noses on them? Only this time, we have reduced our defense.

It’s scary to look at the slippery slope. Of course, we all want a world with no nukes. But there are countries who want nukes in order to detonate them. Some countries have as a logo on their flag an image of a mushroom cloud. If these countries get nukes, they plan to use them. Logically, we’d want to keep them from getting nukes; or, if they did get them, deter them from using them somehow.

This whole pipe-dream of complete nuclear disarmament will leave the cooperating countries in a scary place. It’s the issue of gun-control all over again. If you outlaw guns, only the outlaws have guns; if you outlaw nuclear weapons internationally, then only the international outlaws have nuclear weapons. And when we law abiding countries are stripped naked of any kind of nuclear defense, there’s no stopping the international outlaws from blowing us to smithereens.

Even if we’re going to lead by example (supposedly), do you really think other countries will find this admirable, fall head over heels, and have a life-changing experience to follow suit? Is this the real world we live in? I think of Iran or North Korea or Cuba or even Russia, China, or even minor terrorist groups. If they banded together, or even if one country got one nuclear weapon (especially Iran), we’d be in hot water. Sure, we still have a nuclear arsenal to tap into. But down the road, if Obama gets the countries of the West to completely denude themselves of any nuclear defense, there’s literally nothing - but our good faith and trust in otherwise untrustworthy nations - to prevent possible nuclear holocaust.

I was just randomly thinking about that and I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts on it.

Who are your favorite movie villains?

Undoubtedly, a key ingredient to any great movie is a great villain. You could even say this about any story in general; or, if villain is too strong a word, try antagonist. There is no Othello without Iago, no Jean Valjean without Javert, no Captain Ahab without Moby Dick. In the movie world, though, the pressure is mounted a little more. We have to see them, they have to look a certain way, talk a certain way. They have to be truly evil, cunning, ruthless, distinct, and have their own diabolical attitude.

The first time I paid attention to the art of the villain was when I saw Hans Gruber, played brilliantly by Alan Rickman in Die Hard (1988). He was suave, sophisticated, and cultured. He quotes Alexander the Great with ease and rhythm: “Benefits of a classical education”, he says smugly. He reminisces how as a boy he loved to build toy models because of his love for detail. He is up to date on the latest fashion, boasting of his John Phillips suit. I can’t remember a villain with a more laid back air about him and at the same having cultivated sensibilities.

Gruber was a great villain because of a worry we all have. I think of the Germans in World War 2: how they thought that a good education would solve nearly all of society’s ills. But come to find out, a good education just better educates us on how to kill more people more creatively. Gruber is the educated sophisticate, proof that intellectual cultivation does nil to make one a person of virtue.

How can evil coexist with smarts? The villain that perfected this mix was Hannibal Lector, the brilliant psychologist who happens to have a taste for human flesh. But aside from the visceral response we feel to cannibalism generally, we feel a horror that such bestial behavior could be coupled with an elite mind of genius. I remember feeling aghast when his mood would switch without warning: one minute he is enamored by Mozart and the next he is biting someone in the jugular.

And while we’re in this category, it’s hard to forget John Doe, from Se7en (1995). What particularly struck me was the discovery of his private journals. They were voluminous! The scene where Morgan Freeman’s character reads a sentence or two, chronicling the normal sociopathic response to normal everyday situations: how he barfed all over a man because he was sickened by his banalities - and how he couldn’t stop laughing.

I think of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now (1979). It seemed he started out sane. But after a while, seeing all the horrors of war, he turned into something that is hard to categorize. A part of you wants to say he lost his sanity, but that seems too simple. Another part wants to say he began to see things the way they really are. He peered into the abyss until the abyss peered right back, as Nietzsche would say. Here Colonel Kurtz is, alone at some godforsaken outpost, worshiped as a god by the natives, fully embedded in the ‘Heart of Darkness’ itself. It’s too late when Captain Benjamin L. Willard comes to the rescue. The ensuing monologue from Kurtz to Willard is one of the high points of American cinema. Two T.S. Elliot poems are read: The Wasteland and From Romance to the Grave. Kurtz himself reads from Hallow Men. It’s not what is said so much as how it’s said. The horror of war really shines through Kurtz’s raw voice. It’s a hallow voice, hallowed out by the atrocities of war he’s witnessed.

Another antagonist with an intellect, but which is no help against falling prey to evil. Now these are the villains that appeal to me the most. Daniel Plainview could fall into this category. The other type could be called the weasels. I’m thinking of that despicable guy in The Green Mile (1999). Then there are the mindless monsters like Alien (1979) or Predator (1987); or you have the villains who start off creepy, but their sense of humor eventually just makes them a caricature of themselves, like Freddy or Chucky. The mindless juggernauts like Jason or Michael Myers are particularly unnerving. You wonder why they never talk. Have they been through something so bad they’ve lost the will? Does complete evil remain silent? Is it that silence keeps you guessing about how evil they are, so they keep quiet?

As a kid, I remember watching Misery (1990) for the first time. I always tell people that this was the first movie I ever covered my eyes to. Years later, I can watch it all the way through, and I’ve grown to see it for the dark comedy it is. But there is no denying that Annie Wilkes is an eerie personality. The scary thing is that you always wonder if there’s really people out there like that. I take that back. We do know that there are people out there like that. People just define their identities by celebrities and if the scenario in Misery played out in real life, you’d almost be surprised not to see it recur. She is a child in a lot of ways and her hissy fits are tinged with spookiness because they go with a dominant personality that just so happens to have complete control over your movement. She is lonely and drifts in and out of depression. The hobbling scene is a doozy. The one flaw in the movie is the end: the mystique is gone and she turns into a cliche’d axe murderer. When I saw the trailer for the first time, the oddest thing for me was the scene when she oinks like a pig. There's a great ‘less is more’ foreshadowing here. We’re thinking, ‘Who is this screwball lady?’

I’m leaving out so many. But we can all agree that when you got a good villain, it’s almost certain you got a good movie.

Pearl Jam: how I came to love the album Ten

I have heard Pearl Jam throughout my life. I remember listening to Last Kiss (1999) in my beat-up Nissan Stanza when it first came out. I can even vaguely remember listening to the riff from Alive at a Little League baseball game. But I never had the album. It was 2003. I had a thing for guitar solos. I was still in that phase of my life where I thought Slash was a god. But it was starting to rub off and it seemed like the only band that fit the bill for me was Guns N’ Roses (circa late 80's).

So there I was in a CD store when a friend of mine told me to place ‘Ten’ under the censor that allowed you to sample 30 second sections from songs for the album. I do remember hearing guitar solos: lots of guitar solos. Based on that pretty simple reason, I bought it.

Strangely enough, I wasn’t blown away. I’ve seen that in a lot of people who hear Pearl Jam the first time. Don’t get me wrong. I did like them very much. But this type of music was a symbol - for me - that was like a death-knell for the kind of music I liked. So, I had an antipathy toward it. It was too modern. My kind of music was classic rock stuff; not this modern, mainstream rock that slowly killed my beloved guitar solo. And yet, Pearl Jam was one of the bands that nurtured it, so for that reason, it did its rounds in my CD player.

Then I did something that I probably should have done a long time ago. I listened to the lyrics. I read them. I found myself listening to a storyteller. The songs themselves are very powerful.

‘Once’ is a raging anthem about a guy who goes crazy and kills everybody because he hates himself and doesn’t know who he is anymore. ‘Even Flow’ is about a homeless man who has no hope at escaping his abject poverty. ‘Alive’ is the haunting (somewhat autobiographical) story about a tender kid finding out his father died, and how the mother makes sexual advances on him because she sees so much of her husband in the child: the ‘I’m still alive’ chorus is more of a regret than an affirmation.

‘Why Go’ is the story of a girl who wants to run away from home because her parents want her to be someone she’s not. ‘Black’ is the story a heartbreak, of lost love. ‘Jeremy’ is about a kid who is picked on and neglected by his parents only to end everything by suicide. ‘Oceans’ is a song about the longing to get away from the suffering in life.

‘Porch’ is another gut-wrenching song about lost love, as is ‘Garden’ And ‘Deep’ is about rape, while ‘Release’ is a beautiful cry for release from all the ills of the world to a father Eddie had never met.

It’s so hard to not hear the Vedder/Stapp comparison, which is one major reason I hate post-grunge. Even so, I get over this by looking at 1991 in perspective, a real hotbed for real, authentic music: Blood, Sugar Magik, The Black Album, Use Your Illusion, Badmotorfinger, Nevermind, Ten, Achtung Baby, Out of Time.

Ten is a solid album. The band is at its least self-conscious. There’s no hint of their obnoxious politics. The music came first. I’ve found that the people who like this music the most have to feel or have felt social alienation. If you haven’t, it’d be like trying to recommend something like coffee or beer to someone who hasn’t yet acquired the taste. It’s something - like everything in music - you have to see from the inside first.

The Man Without A Face: a cautious recommendation . . .

For the longest time, I used to say that my favorite movie - for personal reasons (I always added) - was The Man Without A Face, starring and directed by Mel Gibson, his directorial debut. This has changed somewhat, but there’s no denying that parts of it still have an impact.

It’s sort of hard to show other people, because, while it has strong scenes, the overall feel of the movie has a kind of cheapness. There’s some editing and continuity problems I’ve noticed through the years, but nothing major. Some scenes I feel are overacted and sometimes the sappy melodrama is too much to handle.

But there is no denying that Mel Gibson’s character - Justin McLeod - has had and continues to have a big influence on my life. I can trace my love of poetry back to this very movie. I can even trace certain characteristics of my personality back to McLeod, and even back to some of the quirkiness of the kid, Charles Norstadt.

And there’s something about McLeod’s house. I know that’s strange to say, but all the scenes from within the house stir something in me that I can’t really put my finger on. You hear the cry of seagulls and the crashing waves from the lake outside.

The house is literally filled with interesting stuff. I’m assuming McLeod was into nautical themes, because the house is strewn with model ships, model ships in glass jars, maps (do they really lead to treasure?), a antique set of binoculars.

And there are books everywhere: books on the floor, books on the shelves along the walls, books in every room, old books, textbooks, books from every subject, antique books, the books we buy for the antique spine we’d show off to our friends.

He is an artist, he paints; we find out later he paints pictures that are put on the covers of magazines, and he even points out how a couple of his pictures were chosen to be on Time Magazine.

Before I get into more scenes, I guess I’ll tell you a little about the plot, which is so-so. The strength of the movie is the relationship that builds and grows between Mr. McLeod and Charles; but mainly for me, it is the commanding presence of McLeod.

Charles is part of a very dysfunctional family with two sisters, and all three of them have different fathers. Charles’ dad - unbeknownst to him - died in a mental institute and had severe drinking problems. Throughout the movie, he doesn’t really know, but makes up stories about how his dad was an expert pilot for a spy plane that was shot down in a blaze of glory.

Charles wants to follow in his lost dad’s footsteps, enter military school, and eventually be a pilot. One problem: he isn’t naturally gifted intellectually and lacks a teacher to coach him on how to do good on the entrance exams.

But Charles is an outcast, with a meddling little sister, and a sinister bigger sister, and a mother who means well, but is somewhat of a narcissist.

Enter McLeod, a retired teacher with a tortured past, a recluse with a strict schedule - you can time your watch with his trips to the grocery store. He has horrible scars from dreadful burns over half his body. We find out later it’s from a car crash - his fault - where a boy burned to death, one of his students, the reason why he’s given up teaching. There’s a ho-hum side story about a sexual abuse scandal surrounding his relationship with the boy, but I didn’t care much about it.

On one fateful night, Charles and McLeod meet, and the seeds are sown for a relationship after Charles asks for McLeod’s help and teaching for the entrance exams. After a rough beginning, the virtues of the movie start to shine!

Here are some of my favorite scenes.

1. The Aeneid: In a fit of loneliness, McLeod sits shiftless in his chair as soft opera plays in the background. The light is dim. He reads the opening lines of The Aeneid by Virgil. Arms, I sing! And the Man. Who burst forth from the shores of Troy. Much buffeted he on land and sea. Oh, to sate Juno’s unrelenting wrath! He holds a mirror up to his scarred face. For a brief moment, it looks like his face is normal, the mirror reflecting only the good part. As the opera gets louder, he moves the mirror over to reveal the scars and he is revolted as the opera ends.

2. Charles is reading poetry pretty badly. “It’s not a cereal box you’re reading”, says McLeod. Why can’t I read it silently?, asks Charles. Because it’s a play! You perform it! 'I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano, A stage where every man must play a part, And mine a sad one (From The Merchant of Venice).' And then they start performing actual Shakespeare plays in McLeod’s living room.

3. There is a very sublime scene with Charles in his bathroom reading the poem High Flight, the most moving scene for me.

I cautiously recommend it. Like I said, I felt compelled to blog on it just because it’s meant so much to me. I’m not exactly sure why, though. I relate to McLeod’s reclusiveness, his love of books and poetry, and his love for teaching, and his scars have since become a symbol for my own past crap that’s happened to me. Charles has an innocence about him I used to relate to a lot better than I do now.

There’s a scene where’s he is making his way up to McLeod’s home, the camera is behind him, moving with him, the music by James Horner is brooding, filled with anticipation and sort of a fairy-tale aura. That whole scene has been a metaphor for so many things in my life I’ve felt a mysterious longing for.

Jurassic 5 "Quality Control"

I have worn out Jurassic 5's "Quality Control". Figuratively of course, I don't have it on vinyl or compact disc so I mostly play it on my computer or ipod. So the "times played" on my itunes is pushing 50.

This album came out in 2000 and it is a sad reality that I missed it. 10 years later I discovered this album and I have been literally blown away. For a long time I have enjoyed hip hop. Since graduating from college I believe I could begin to refer to myself as a HipHopHead. Bands like Tribe Called Quest, De la Soul, MF Doom, DangerMouse, Goodie Mob, I could go on, get serious rotation in my car, home, life.

Jurassic 5 is on the most "must listen" lists but somehow I consistently missed them. I decided to suck it up and give them a try and boy am I glad I did.

On first listen the most obvious thing that stands out for the listener is their great use of group vocals. They sing/rap together, bleeding in and out of solo's. Next, their beats are stellar and for 2000, way ahead of their time. Severely jazz influenced but simple. Not overwhelming, but more than a simple snare and high hat.

Now, the things listed above are important. Without a beat, rap would really be fast talking and then any 12 year old girl would qualify. What sets this band apart is their incredibly intelligent lyrics. An example:

You baby MC's drink Pedialyte
My underground doesn't like you, the media might
But we the elite will change that
As we bridge gaps in this lyrical grudge match, brothers
we slug back

Not only is this super clever but it is also an indictment on the overall rap genre. Often times when I tell people that I like hip hop their first inclination is to assume P. Diddy and Ludacris. To be clear I enjoy these guys, but they are not Hip Hop artists. They are rap artists. I could easily get sidetracked and list out all differences between Rap and Hip Hop, but that is for another blog post. For our purposes I believe the biggest distinguishing factor is lyrics.

What they rap about, the content.

Maybe Tribe CalledQuest can help us here. From Excursions off of Low End Theory:

You could find the Abstract listening to hip hop
My pops used to say, it reminded him of be-bop
I said, well daddy don't you know that things go in cycles
The way that Bobby Brown is just ampin like Michael

Hip Hop, in the mind of the Tribe and in this authors mind is the natural progression of Mo-town. I'm a firm believer that if Ray Charles was born now, he would have a phat beat behind Hit The Road Jack.

In closing, Jurassic 5 is an exceptional band that has released an above average hip hop album. It makes me sad that bands are not releasing albums like this anymore.

Here are two Jurassic 5 songs from the album Quality Control. The first is my favorite song off of the album with no video. Listen to the lyrics, I'm not sure I've heard anything quite like it.

Jurass finish first

Second song has a video, it is the single off of the album. Great song with some stellar lines.

Quality Control

If I could, I would spend all of my time spreading the gospel of hip hop, but, no one is willing to pay me. Maybe I can get Diddy to put me on salary.

The Downfall of the Horror Industry

There seems to be a common thread of movie posts on here as of late which has got me thinking about something that has been really irritating me for the past few years, so I figured I'd write it down and get it off my chest and who knows maybe someone out there will agree with me. I HATE HORROR MOVIES THAT ARE RATED PG-13! There are seriously few things that erk me in this life as much as seeing a trailer for a horror film that looks mildly interresting only to reach the end of the trailer to see it has been slapped with a rating that does not belong in the genre of film that i have grown to love.

This may sound somewhat harsh and possibly irrational but I firmly believe in it. The word "horror" is denfined as- "An intense, painful feeling of repugnance and fear." To translate that feeling and emotion on to film is obviously going to require a lot of visuals and depictions of unpleasantries that in my feeling should not be inhibited to accomodate the needs of persons thirteen years of age. I'm not saying I'm some type of violence obsessed nut job, but I feel like you are very limited to what you can and can't do in a PG-13 film and I feel out of any movie genre out there, horror should be the group with the least amount of limitaions.

The main reason why this has been brought to the forefront of my mind is because on the 30th of this month New Line Cinema is scheduled to release a remake of Wes Craven's classic 'A Nightmare on Elm Street' and last I had heard, the studio and executives were pushing for a PG-13 rating. I'm uncertain if they are still trying to stick to that plan or if the final cut of the film will have that rating but even the fact that it was not only considered, but PUSHED to have a PG-13 rating agitates me greatly. The original 1984 'Nightmare' and the 7 sequels that followed were all given Restricted ratings, and rightfully so. It seems a bit ridiculous that the remake should be watered down and made less fierce and abrasive then the original. If anything you would think that the director and executives in charge would want to make it more harsh and try to push the envelope much more then what the 1984 version did!

Perhaps I am alone in my way of thinking, or perhaps I really have become desensitized, as my family and the conservative media keep telling me but when I watch a horror movie I want it to be shocking, gruesome, terrifying and maybe if I'm lucky, groundbreaking. PG-13 just doesn't cut it for me.

The Cell: a disturbing voyage into the mind of a serial killer

I remember watching the trailer for The Cell, which came out in 2000, starring Jennifer Lopez and not thinking that much of it. It came out on the heels of The Matrix, and so a lot of the scenes that show Lopez spelunking into a serial killer’s subconscious looked reminiscent of all the stuff Neo or Trinity could do: stay suspended in the air, the camera circles them, time slows down, and all that jazz.

But then I got a fresh look at the movie a couple months ago and watched it again today and I must say that this has got to be one of my favorite movies. A favorite idea of mine has always been the possibility of exploring someone else’s inner mind, their inner, private consciousness. Who knows what secrets we’d find lurking in there?

Hasn’t this been the wish and desire of every psychologist, of just anyone who’d love to know the darkest desires of a certain self, a desire that’s been repressed, sublimated under layers and layers of subtle or imperceptible self-delusion?

Or, who wouldn’t want to go back to your past and find the key events in your life that made you the person you are? While the event happens, you have no idea the effect it’ll have on you down the road. So, what if you could storm this ‘interior castle’?

Well, Jennifer Lopez plays Dr. Catherine Deane, an expert in child psychology, who is part of experiments which enter the inner, conscious world of coma patients to bring them back to consciousness! Dr. Deane is hooked up to this virtual reality device that is connected psychically to the mind of the coma patient. This lets Dr. Deane explore the minds of her patients.

We then get to see Carl Rudolph Stargher, a serial killer (same guy who played the psycho, marine recruit in Full Metal Jacket) who has fallen into a coma! But the problem is that police don’t know the whereabouts of his latest victim. So, Agent Novak (played by Vince Vaughn!) persuades Dr. Deane to probe Stargher’s mind to find clues about where this victim might be!

When we get inside Stargher’s mind, something strange happens. It’s so easy to paint despicable people in all black. We say they’re evil through and through. And I don’t say this to mitigate whatever heinous act they did; but I always wonder if things might be more complicated than the surface implies.

We see the demonic, bestial, ferocious side of Stargher; but we also see the child-like, innocent, hurt, wounded side, a side that’s been buried in hatred, perversion, vice, and violence. But it’s very interesting to see that even in the mind of a serial killer, there are regions of consciousness that are beautiful beyond words or horrible beyond belief.

The sequences in Stargher’s mind in which Dr. Deane journeys are very exotic and strikingly beautiful, inspired by art the director had himself been spellbound by. The special effects here work perfectly and I don’t see how some critics call them pretentious or overly grandiose or too voluptuous or what have you. I don’t think we have the special effects tools to capture exactly whatever it is that goes on in our minds. Haven’t you had dreams that defy the ability of any special effects team to simulate?

We learn that when he was a child, Stargher killed a bird out of mercy, to put it out of its misery. This motif is reechoed near the end of the movie when Dr. Deane lures the pure part of Stargher’s consciousness into a paradise of beauty and goodness; if she does this, Stargher will awake from the coma as a normal person instead of a twisted serial killer.

But the impure part pops up in the form of a snake. Since she can’t kill one without killing them both, she kills them both in the same way as Stargher killed the bird: to put it out of its misery.

This is a very good movie, and a very good evolution of the psycho, serial killer genre, whose company is Silence of the Lambs, Se7en, and Natural Born Killers. Instead of strengthening plot idiosyncrasies, they enter a new dimension. Who wouldn’t want to enter into the consciousness of Hannibal? The visuals are unmatched, and much of the dreamscapes seem like postmodern paintings that evoke and symbolize different truths about the hidden secrets of the nooks of our minds.

Heroes, superpowers, and our resurrection bodies

I just started watching the TV mini-series ‘Heroes’. What a show! This show has my complete attention and it’s probably the best show I’ve seen so far. I love the idea of superpowers and a higher meaning to life, something that tells you you’re meant for greater things, that you have a destiny.

The whole idea of superpowers and heroes really interests me as a Christian. I can’t help but wonder about something. I always wonder how artists come up with ideas like these. Why is the idea of a superhero so appealing to us? Or, why did the idea of a superhero even enter our imagination?

To me at least, when I think of a superhero, I always think of a guy or girl in tights with some cool power. But then I think of Jesus. And I’m trying to say this without sounding just stupidly cheesy. I mean, I really think about him, how he healed people, how he ascended (could fly?: there was upward movement) to Heaven, how he walked on water, turned water to wine, rose from the dead, calmed storms, raised other people from the dead.

I always wonder whether the reason for why superheroes appeal to us, or why we even have the idea of superheroes, is because we do live in a Christian universe. And the idea of a superhero is a remnant, a hangover, an aftershock, a shadow, a copy, a reflection (or, whatever!?), of some real, true, divine, supernatural reality or truth about something or someone or some event that is supposed to happen, or is destined to happen, or is promised to us to happen.

I really can’t get that itch to go away. All this superhero stuff is really real, and it’s something - I know it in my gut - that’s going to be real one day, probably in the afterlife sometime, and it’ll manifest itself in ways we never dreamed of.

Of course, all these powers are delegated. I see it like this. Paul thinks Jesus’ resurrected body is the archetype for ours. So, whatever His could do, ours could one day do too! So, for example, when Christ healed a person of blindness, He could manipulate all the little nerve endings to come together in the way that allows sight. This is a miracle over Nature.

Or, when Jesus calmed the storm, wind and water currents were under the control of His will. He did close up and focused what He does everyday far away with every weather pattern.

But then it seems He could fly, walk on water, defy death - He even appeared in a room out of nowhere, almost a sort of teleportation.

There’s a guy in ‘Heros’ who can bend space and time. This is exactly what C.S. Lewis talks about with our resurrection bodies!!! Because Jesus could fly and just teleport in a room, it’s got to be the case that those bodies are going to be related to space and time in a different way than they’re related now!

It just seems like all these powers - superhuman strength, flying, teleportation, space/time bending, healing - are unclear, unfocused, but real, reliable clues (good guesses?) into something that may be very real with regard to us, our future, what we’ll be able to do.

I know it’s probably not edifying to dwell on that, because the first step is obedience to and love for God; after that, it seems the powers are delegated in some mysterious, special way we’ll be able to experience one day.

But the show ‘Heroes’ really brought this home for me. Perhaps every single one of us has some power, different from all the rest - it’s unique to you, and it was delegated to you for a purpose, and the exercising of that power is part of your destiny. And maybe that power is something you’ll need for whatever job or prospect God will entrust you with in Heaven.

And I readily admit all of this could be complete nonsense and rubbish. But I can almost say that this stuff is creatively created for a reason, an imaginative reason, and I almost know it in my bones that something sort of like it is going to be true in the afterlife, or at least after we get our resurrection bodies.

The Moviegoer and Movie Criticism

Have you ever met people that hate or don’t or can’t understand a movie that you think is amazing, or that you think just demands respect? I have. And I just don’t get it when they start to tell me why.

I’m thinking of people who object to Se7en because of the gore, as if that made it a bad movie. Or, the people who object to There Will Be Blood, because it disrespects the Church - which it doesn’t. Or, object to No Country For Old Men, because it’s too dark.

These people just do not understand how to interpret or appreciate art, or how to separate good art from their personal tastes. I’ve heard people object to The Joker in The Dark Knight, because he is just too disturbing, or they don’t like what Heath had to do to himself to play the part. Or, people who object to Goodfellas because of the swearing, or Good Will Hunting, because of the swearing.

Are you forming a picture in your head of the kind of person I mean? These people don’t belong in a movie theater. Their opinion of any movie is worthless. And from my experience, there’s no getting through to them just how shallow their criticism is.

Take No Country For Old Men. Is it bad because it’s too dark? Seriously? Is Anton Shigurh (literally, ‘ants on sugar’) too mean, nasty, devoid of goodness, ruthless, evil? YES! He is supposed to be. Good criticism goes to the creator, the writers, directors. The Coen Brothers are into philosophy, so you can expect philosophical themes in their works.

The whole movie is a parable, an allegory of sorts, deliberately set in a Flannery O’Connor type, short story medium. O’Connor would use dark themes set in the deep south to bring home deep insights into human nature, God, and faith. The Coen Brothers were doing the same things, I think.

To object to the movie because the bad guy was evil is pretty shallow and it doesn’t allow the movie to be what it is in order to communicate the meaning it’s trying to give us. If you personally can’t handle that, and it makes your stomach turn, or it makes you wince, then you have to be able to distinguish your sentiments from good art.

The movie gives us a visual representation of certain motifs in life that we better understand if we meet the movie half-way and let it teach us. It’s in the context of a story and is to the eyes and ears what books are primarily to the imagination. Movies get at our imagination through the visual representation. It’s the same process, different medium.

But you can go to any masterpiece out there and find bad reviews. Just visit imdb.com. Here, let me try an experiment. All are agreed that whether or not you like it, there’s something grand and sweeping and artistically brilliant about P.T Anderson’s Magnolia, right? I mean, intuitively, you’d think everyone would just ‘feel’ this, even if it’s not their cup of tea. Similarly, I feel like there MUST be something artistically brilliant about Lawrence of Arabia, even if I was bored to tears watching it. It’s just not for me. But I can appreciate and hold that distinction in my mind.

Now, read this comment about Magnolia. I’ll quote it: “As a somewhat well read person, I thought this movie was a self indulgent poor imitation of a seinfeld episode.” Read that again. This person was ‘angry’ because the characters weren’t interesting. I mean, what do you say to these people?

Capitalism works for me.

I definitely missed the train for the band Arcade Fire. I have the unfortunate habit of buying a lot of music at one time and slowly working my way through it, if at all. I have 31 days worth of music on my computer/ipod and I would say I am seriously acquainted with 85% of it.

I'm an American, overconsumption is what I do.

What I have been doing recently is making genius playlists on my itunes. If you don't know what this is then let me give you a quick tutorial. Apple/itunes has decided to create a "genius" program within itunes where you click on a song and the genius will create a playlist based on the music genome of your library.

Dictionary.com defines genome as, "a full set of chromosomes; all the inheritable traits of an organism."

Let's assume that your itunes library is an organism, genius finds other similar chromosomes and compiles them together.

Science hasn't been this fun since Bill Nye the Science guy!

Anyway, after I create a genius playlist, I discover songs within my own library! I know it seems ridiculous that one could find brand new songs in their own library, but like I said I'm American and Capitalism works for me.

Back to the original point, this is how I was reminded of Arcade Fire. I listened to their first album Funeral and enjoyed it. NPR then said some good things about their next album Neon Bible, and since I do whatever NPR tells me, I acquired it. (Don't worry how.) At first listen I was not really impressed, which may explain my apathy toward it for the next 2 years. That is not to say that there was not at least one stand out track for me. The song with the albums namesake is an interesting song. Neon Bible's lyrics are haunting. It reminds of a world that Faulkner would inhabit. They create these moods that seem to reek of immorality. Its like its on you, on your face, you want it off of you.

Well, recently I can't stop listening to the entire album. The songs have a serious preoccupation with faith and religion. But, not in the traditional sense. The lyricist seems to be exploring something, something that presumably, the church or religion in general is supposed to be able to answer but he finds it lacking.

Musically, they are, or were 2 years ago, on the cutting edge. I am interested to see the growth in this band. With lyrics as strong as these are, interesting music to back it up, they are a band that threatens to be around for a while.

And with Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber throwing out hits like candy at a parade, it is a breath of fresh air.

(To be clear, I love Lady GaGa and Ke$ha. Justin Bieber brings back memories of being uncool at 14 and I do not have the psychological strength to deal with those emotions.)

Check out this video, it is for their song Neon Bible, they perform it in a Elevator. If this doesn't strike your fancy about this band, than to be honest, nothing will.

Arcade Fire-Neon Bible (Elevator Performance)

There Will be Blood: Daniel Plainview

Daniel Plainview: “I see the worst in people. I don't need to look past seeing them to get all I need. I've built my hatreds up over the years, little by little, Henry... to have you here gives me a second breath. I can't keep doing this on my own with these... people.”

How many of you guys love Daniel Day-Lewis’ character Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood (TWBB)? This character is probably my favorite character.

He is the symbol of capitalism, and some even say America herself. Of course, his character evolves throughout the movie, or you might say ‘devolves’, as he descends deeper and deeper into his own madness and hatred.

I love the imagery - is it on purpose? - at the beginning. He is in the womb of the Earth digging for the gold he needs to fund his future career in oil drilling. A bearded and gruff Plainview is in the middle of nowhere, in the desert, 100 feet underground, in the awful heat, covered in soot. There is no talking - only Johnny Greenwood’s eerie strings that just seem echo bleakness.

I remember that quote from John Milton in his Paradise Lost poem: “long is the way
And hard, that out of Hell leads up to Light.” Only it isn’t into Light that Plainview ascends up to. It is the pit of darkness - and it is hard and long.

We have to remember that TWBB is primarily a character study. It reaches into the psychology of a man who is consumed by his own ambition, his hatred for other people, for competition because of his own competition. He says: I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.

But throughout the movie, I felt more and more like I was spiraling downward through Dante’s Hell, and as you get further and further down, the cone gets more and more condensed and you’re left with the suffocating, claustrophobic straightjacket of madness and Hell.

The movie is dominated by very powerful scenes. Like I mentioned, the beginning scene is amazing. He is in the belly of the earth. There is no dialogue. We get to know the drive of the character. He is alone, trailblazing a career for himself. He is injured after accidentally falling down the mine-hole, fracturing his leg, even though he manages to drag himself across the desert to safety.

I get the feeling that this is a time and these are men who are real men, hard men, men who are dirty, who don’t complain, who have nerves of steel, forged and tested like a sword freshly-made in the fire.

When he starts to talk, his dialect is almost haunting. Every syllable is pronounced. His gait is determined but awkward. He has a son, but he is adopted after his dad died in a mining accident. But Plainview mainly takes him under his wing as a marketing ploy, though the movie does show that Plainview cared for the boy as much as his character allowed.

There is the powerful scene in the church. Plainview’s rival, Eli (a corrupt and manipulative preacher at a church in the town where Plainview is trying to drill) puts Plainview through the humiliating ordeal of getting up in front of the congregation and admit - no, yelling - that he is a sinner, that he has ABANDONED HIS BOY, HIS CHILD! Very powerful.

There is another scene where something goes wrong with the derrick and H.W. (Plainview’s son) is catapulted by an explosion that makes him permanently deaf. There is the roar of the oil rupturing out of the ground, the soundtrack is loud, the percussion and the strings are riveting, the camera follows the running men around the derrick to fix the problem, and the background noise is shrunk to a minimum as the music just takes over the scene. The sun sets as the men are scrambling and we get definitive shots of Plainview glorying in the prospect that THERE IS AN OCEAN OF OIL UNDER OUR FEET, and no one can get at it except for him. Epic.

Not very many people like the end, but I think it makes perfect sense. Like I said before, there is a spiraling downward, like going further and further down into an inverted cone. At the bottom, everything touches, and things are almost banal, which is probably what Hell is. The two main forces in the movie, Eli and Plainview, end the movie cooped up in the mansion where a petty argument - with connections with previous events in the movie - ends with Plainview smashing Eli over the head with a bowling pin.

Let’s not forget the final words: I’m finished. I can’t help think of Christ: It is finished. Not sure of a connection there - it’s just the first thing that popped in my head.

There’s so much I’m leaving out. But the main thing is that the most subtle and brilliant element about this character is that as you look at Plainview act and talk and behave, his facial expressions, his tones of voice, his motives, his confessions, his degeneration: you see there is something in his soul that his just plain evil. It is that element in his soul that - if we look at ourselves carefully - we also see in ourselves.

The more I see the movie, and the more I pay attention to the character, I see so much of myself in the character and it sort of scares me. But parts of him are in everyone. Like he tells his supposed brother (who met a bad end): if it’s in me, it’s in you.

I remember the scene where Plainview is asking why he doesn’t own a certain tract of land. Why don’t I own that, he asks. WHY DON’T I OWN THAT?, he repeats. Al, his helper, says it’s owned by someone else and that he might want to think about making the pipeline around it. Build pipeline around 50 miles of tract? Plainview snaps: Don’t be thick around me, Al. I can just feel the frustration. His drive met a speed-bump and it’s quickly swatted out of the way like a gnat. Everyone in his way is reduced to a gnat.

I love that scene when he is talking to a competitor, someone who wants to buy Plainview’s drilling rights and in exchange make him rich. The competitor makes an off-hand remark about Plainview’s son, something with just the right amount of ambiguity for Plainview’s ruthless ambition to rationalize. Did you just tell me how to raise my son?, he asks. One night, I’m going to come into your house while you’re sleeping and slit your throat, he says. Wow. And you know he means it.