Monthly Archives: March 2012

Rick Santorum: Portrait of a Goddamn Lunatic

The rhetoric between the four candidates in the Republican primaries is very angry and very apocalyptic, and that leads people to wonder why Barack Obama fell from the graces. That’s just what happens, guys! Everyone wonders why the pendulum of American political opinion swings to one party or the other every four years- how did the nation go from being a God-loving bunch of red-blooded patriots in 2001 to a liberal-congress electing group of cheese-eating, peace mongering pussy socialists in only five years? I can tell you why- it’s because the average American simply can’t accept the fact that part of the job of being a politician is making promises you can’t keep. If a candidate ever ran for president with a realistic agenda of “yeah, chances are I’ll get two, maybe three bills passed that fundamentally change people’s lives,” they’d be lauded by the media as unambitious. Obama was certainly no exception- he campaigned on a platform of Change and Hope and that’s all well and good, but anyone who actually expected it to happen is as full of shit as the Republicans who think he acts as a mere puppet to the eternally-living, voodoo-powered severed head of Vladimir Lenin he keeps in his closet. Presidents can’t radically change the structure of America- their office itself was designed specifically so they couldn’t. And even if they were in full control of the government, it wouldn’t matter. If one shitty leader could have made Rome fall, we wouldn’t remember it enough to use it as a metaphor. That’s not to say we should just let any drifter roll off the street and into the White House, but having expectations for Barack Obama that were too high or low is being unfair to the guy. If he does too much, he’s a revolutionary, if he does too little, he’s lazy. I’m not one of those who say that being President is the worst job in America. The illiterate Latino meatpacking sanitation workers that make up most of my fanbase would be offended. But having everything you do either damned or praised 24/7 would definitely get annoying. The only mistake Obama made (other than leaving Guantanamo Bay open) was not being able to live up to his own hype, and because of it, we have to live in a world where Rick Santorum is a genuinely viable candidate.
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Heaven is For Real is a Goddamn Event that Happened

If you don’t know who this guy right here its, he’s the one with the New York Times Best Seller. His son, Colton, had an appendectomy, and during complications, saw some visions in dreams expected from Colton, the son of a preacher, saw images of Jesus and Heaven and a lot of his dead relatives. His Dad thought it would be a neat idea of he asked his son the details of his dream, and wrote them into a book. Now, let me be clear with your right now. A lot of atheist bloggers think this dad has got the kid brainwashed and recovering false memories and that little Colton is psychologically damaged forever. I’m not saying that. I’m saying he’s was a 4 year old boy that had some dreams on some painkiller drugs, thought it was a cool story to tell his parents afterwards, and whose dad got a little carried away with things. None of them see anything wrong with what they’re doing. This kid just smiles and nods and remembers an already subjective hallucination how his dad wants him to so his Dad will be happy. And, yeah, that’s exploitation. But the part that pisses me off the most, the thing that’s just the absolute worst, is this: If you want to tell your kid that he saw heaven instead of explaining to him how neurotransmitters work, go ahead. But don’t write a book about your child’s drug trip, and is try to pass it off as non-fiction! There hasn’t been a less poorly disguised literary hoax since Go Ask Alice! Even Gretchen Carlson is looking at them like they’re full of shit! Imagine someone trying to publish a five-year old kid’s dream as a book and it not being about Jesus. That would be almost as hard to sell as a manuscript titled Ba’al is For Real: One Illegitimate Child’s Journey to the Third Ring of Hell. So, if you’re writing a book in the United States, bear and mind that if you can make it about Jesus, you can get free bags of money and a book deal for, lets face it, no reason.

The Last Song

Why did a fifteenth derivative and formulaic Nicholas Sparks book need to be turned into a sixth derivative and formulaic Nicholas Sparks movie? The Last Song is a perfect example of how when films are not made by real human beings, they unsurprisingly turn out plastic and disingenuous. I know that corporations are legally people, but they sure as hell can’t make a film like one.

This is an actual fucking moment from this movie. The Last Song’s take on Americana is about as meaningful as a Bryan Adams song or a goddamn Coke commercial. If you don’t live in the South and think that life down here is like this, it really isn’t. It’s just basically like the North, but there’s a few more trees, the political culture is deeply rooted in racism and religious fundamentalism, and “Carl’s Jr.” is called “Hardee’s” for some reason.

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Crazy, Stupid, Love

There’s an idea that Hollywood can’t seem to get out of it’s head- that simply assembling a group of undeniably talented actors can make a less-than-mediocre script into a great movie. Crazy, Stupid, Love is a perfect refutation of this concept. No one could possibly argue that this movie isn’t filled with terrifically talented human beings- Steve Carell, Emma Stone, Marisa Tomei, Julianne Moore, Ryan Gosling, Kevin Bacon- all very good actors who are very good at acting in the movie they’re in. The problem is that no matter how much synergy there is with a cast and no matter how great the individual actors in the film are, if their script is a fucking ridiculous pile of chiches and unrealistic scenarios, they wont be able to save it. This movie is the very definition of two-out-of-five stars, in the sense that one good thing about it saved it from being total crap. Crazy, Stupid, Love is not so bad it couldn’t be worse.
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