Friday, April 24, 2009

Swayze 'n Sheen Slaughter the Commies

In what may one day be an entry the Ronnie Reagan Ridiculous Cold War Film Fest, I watched the beginning of "Red Dawn" (1987) for free on cable last night. For anyone unfamiliar with truly wretched 80s Cinema or has thankfully forgotten, the movie centers around a group of teenagers who save America after World War III breaks out and the Soviets (wait, first the Cubans!)take over most of the country.

The first scene takes place in a high school on the Colorado plains, where a teacher is lecturing on the martial prowess of Gengis Khan. He looks out the window and there is suddenly a rain of parachutes falling from the sky. These turn out to be armed Cubans, who proceed to shoot up the teacher and the school building.

Ironically, of course, it was American teenagers who shot up a high school with American weapons in Columbine about 10 years ago, and they seemed to be much better shots than the Cubans.

A group of teens (including Charlie Sheen) somehow escapes in a pickup truck, driven by the inimitable, slightly older Patrick Swayze. They hide out in the mountains, and when they come down the town is covered with Lenin posters and Russian movies at the theater (hopefully better ones than this). The citizens were put into re-education camps. I went to bed when some Soviet soldiers came up to the mountains for a little R and R and were easily dispatched of by the kids. The ideologically-impaired soldiers, of course, couldn't hit the side of a barn with their automatic weapons (not enough Second Amendment practice).

How did this horror come about? Easy. El Salvador and Nicaragua invaded Honduras, Mexico went into revolution, and those Euro-wimps at NATO gave up to the Russians with hardly a shot.

It's again a hilarous irony that two years after this jingoistic fantasy was released, the entire Soviet Union fell apart with practically nary a shot. Still, I can't wait for the righteous, bloody all-American commie-slaughter spectacular ending. The red of American blood will conquer the Reds anytime (except for North Korea, where the Dear Leader would kick our butts single-handedly, all while revising the 3000 books he wrote in college).

Thursday, April 23, 2009

An LA state of mind

Near the beginning of "Easy Rider," a man at a gas station in the rural American west asks Peter Fonda, on his motorcycle, where he was from.

"LA," Fonda says. "El Lay?" says the man. "Los Angeles," Fonda explains.
Who in this era would not know what LA is? The question is, what it means.
If you look around mall-America, what do you see? LA Fitness. Hollywood Tans. West Coast Video (now defunct, I think.)

All reflect the common perception that the place is all about, essentially, superficiality. Perfect bodies. Winter tans. Video uber alles, over print, traditionally New York's bailiwick (publishing, magazines, newspapers. All threatened with extinction in the brave new Internet age.)

The question right now is whether Southern California remains the last frontier, America's America, where you can go and make a whole new existence and identity for yourself. To be someone else, not dictated by family, home, education, town, state or country.

I have been fascinated by the place ever since I read my uncle's collection of magazine articles on it in the late 60s and early 70s compiled in a book called "Eureka!" the California state motto. It means, "I have found it."

Found what? That remains unanswered. But there is no question that the place gives one an intoxicating sense of freedom. Just get a car, somehow, some way.

Southern California seems, from the east and midwest, not just a different state, but a different country. The land looks different, the light looks different, as are the trees and vegetation, more like the Mediterranean than the US. Even the smog gives it an otherworldly character, like being on Venus.

The city itself, though sprawling, is only a small part of it. You can go to the beach, go to the mountains, go to the desert, all in a single day if you want. Close-by destinations abound: Vegas, Palm Springs, Tijuana and Baja California. Up the spectacular coast to San Fran.

The British love the place, especially Santa Monica, chock full of English pubs. Totally different than what they're used to (probably the same reason they flock to the Costa Del Sol in Spain).

Then there is the dark side, so thoroughly examined by noir writers (are you reading, Rambler?). Would-be starlets jumping off the Hollywood sign (you can't actually get to it now). Teen girls exploited and thrown out for the next piece of ass on the porn-flick assembly line. Aging rockers, former film and TV stars and other has-beens pathetically trying to hold on to some semblance of fame, glamor, and youth beautiful youth. The plastic-surgery capital for plastic people.

The whole place is fake. Sustained only by stealing water from the entire American west. Ready to fall into the sea when "The Big One" comes along. Multi-million dollar castles built on land that burns in one season and slides away in another. A mass-manufactured Garden of Eden whose inhabitants have long since eaten the forbidden fruit. Tinseltown, Land of the Lotus eaters, Hell-A.

But the stereotypes of LA represent only a small part of it. Usually the wealthy and celebrity-laden Westside and Malibu, or, conversely, the theatric violence of gangs in South Central and East LA.

Last time I checked, Southern California contained the largest number of manufacturers in the US. It also faces the growth area of the world; China and the Pacific Rim. Metropolitan LA's population is growing ever closer to that of metro New York, and there's lots of empty desert left to subdivide and conquer.

There is now, of course, a tarnish on the Golden State, with 10 percent unemployment. The frontier has washed backwards toward the mountain states: Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and sometimes Utah. Housing is cheaper (Cal. has the highest home prices in the US). The air is cleaner, the traffic less hectic, fewer social problems, less hassle. Americans always want to go somewhere newer and somehow better. We are like children who play with a toy for a certain period, then leave it a mess and abandon it for something, anything else. Greener pastures in a rain-starved place.

All that freedom can certainly be liberating, but it can be atomizing too. The absence of social restraints can lead to a kind of ridiculous narcissism personified in Hollywood excess and deified by the rest of the population. California is home to the religion of you. Be your own God.

This can be healthy and self-fulfilling, or it can be empty, lonely and leave one with a distinct feeling of foolishness. Much of California remains vacant. Some of the population can be cartoonized as the same. Jay Leno's "Jaywalking" bit, where he asks Californians (and tourists)about current events and they display a snicker-inducing ignorance of anything in the public realm besides celebrity hanky-panky underlines this stereotype in bold letters.

But the fact that Southern California is artificial is part of its attraction. What do people in a free country do when given maximum freedom? Is it inspiring or dispiriting? The fact that a kind of fake civilization collides with a real environment that is breathtaking but often hostile to it (mudslides, wildfires, earthquakes) adds to the place's strange allure. Anyone with a remote interest in sociology, politics, journalism or anthropology has got to be attracted to it.
Obviously I am, but I leave it to the Rambler to channel it for the rest of us for now.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

"How Could I?"

The title of this blog is from Newsweek's cover story on Eliot Spitzer. It refers, of course, to his appointments with a high-priced call girl in DC that forced him to resign from the NY governorship.

When I saw the cover's question, I thought what possibly every guy immediately thinks: because you are a man.

When I was younger (and hornier)I thought of the problem of monogamy for married men. The solution, I thought, was to go to a high-end prostitute every once in a while, to satisfy the male urge for sexual variety, without any troublesome emotional entanglements.

Spitzer's (who was one of my father's senior thesis advisees at Princeton)actions weren't as dumb as they seem. He went to another city outside NY state to do it, and his name was kept confidential; he was Client No. 9. Unlike having an affair or a mistress, there was no danger of emotional involvement. No "other woman" would be calling his home at 3 am while he was in bed with his wife and demanding he leave her.

There is of course the fact that women are attracted to power, and that for men power provides a rush and a sense that you exist in a plane above normal people. Powerful men often have high testosterone levels and hence high sex drives.

Why a hypersexualized society insists that the private actions of its elected officials should be everyone's business is a mystery to me, unless it seriously compromises one's effectiveness as a political leader. In the old days, with a mostly male media, sexual indiscretions were kept entre nous (among us). Now you'd probably be on You Tube or somehow all over the net ten seconds after the act.

I remember telling my older brother about my solution to the male monogamy problem, and he said "would you want your wife to do the same?" I thought about it, and concluded that if it happened in the beginning stages of the marriage I'd be outraged, but if it was later on and our sex life had inevitably tapered off, and it was occasional, and she wasn't somehow in love with the "professional," well, tit for tat.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

The Pirate Walks the Plank II

This is supposed to be the date of "The Pirate Walks the Plank" 2 entries below, which is a response to "Crap and Misdemeanors." I have to get a blogger tutor.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

Crap and Misdemeanors

Hey, why didn't I think of that? I was watching Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors" last night and there was a scene in which his sister goes out on a few dates with a man she met through the personals. The guy doesn't touch her for the first few dates, but on the third, boy does she get a perfumed surprise: the guy convinces her to let him tie her to the bed, then he squats over her and takes a dump.

I've heard some really bad dating stories, but that one takes the cake. Imagine recounting the date to your co-workers. "It was nice. He took me to dinner, then dancing. Then we went back to my place and he took a crap on me."
"I guess that sort of spoiled it, but hey, at least the restaurant and dance club were great. And he paid, so I guess I kind of owed him one."

How can I one-up that guy? Projectile vomiting on her face and fifty lashes while she's tied to the rack? A greased hamster in the rectum? The Dirty Sanchez? Maybe The Pirate.

For those of you unfamiliar with the twisted brilliance of The Pirate, here's how it works. The female fellates a man, who then blows his gentleman's relish right in her eye. As she gets up and covers her eye, her partner kicks her in the shin. She then hops around on one leg, covering her eye, and says "aye, aye, aye."

I dare Woody to push the envelope further. But pretty soon kids prematurely jaded by regular sex will say, "but Mom, everybody's doing it!"

Readers, all two of you, try to imagine a worse date than the one above. Then message me or put it in your blog.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Marilyn, My Marilyn

Not Monroe, Chambers, the 1970s porn star. I might have missed her death at age 56 from an unknown cause (as of yesterday) except Lux reminded me.
Chambers did not have a stunning body, but rather a tight little package she worked like a snake. Her face was not really beautiful, though it famously appeared on the package for Ivory Snow. She was a mother of a newborn on the cover.
No, Chambers was just sexy as hell. A wanton dream come true, who conquered men as much as the opposite. She never really pulled off the innocent young thing thing, even with the requisite bows in her hair. You could call her a Cougar, though she was much younger than that in her films.
The contrast between her and the weird female androids who are called porn stars now couldn't be farther apart. Women with fake everything: breasts, tans, hair etc; over-exaggerated moaning and squealing and no public hair or that weird little landing strip many now have (or worse, the Hitler mustache over the vagina).
The question is, what does female passion and erotic ecstasy look like? For Chambers, it was all about her facial expressions and again the undulations of her lithe body. Plus a voice that practically undressed men, and some women, by itself.
The NYT noted that her first film, "Behind the Green Door (1972)," along with "Deep Throat" the same year, "is generally credited with helping establish a mainstream market for pornography."
The transitions from film to VCR/DVD and then the internet have made porn practically background wallpaper in today's society. Kids know everything about it by younger and younger ages. It takes away the forbidden-fruit allure of the whole thing.
Like writing fake notes from your supposedly sick father allowing you to buy a Playboy. Or buying it from a kid who sold his father's old ones. Or stealing it. (guilty of the last two, Lux and the Berg the other.)
Chambers work was mostly on film, which provides a richer texture. I know, I know, sex is sex; what's the difference? For Chambers, it was the seduction, even with the bad porn plots.
Last time I was in LA I was searching around for the Manson family's infamous home. You go up a road that rises from the northwest San Fernando Valley, and everything gets dry, silent, and weirdly spooky. But looking down into the Valley, you notice a cluster of large white low-rise buildings.
These are, pardon the expression, fuck factories. Something like 90 percent of American porn is shot in and around these buildings. At the top of the VHS/DVD boom, it churned out 11,000 full-length movies a year. Now, with the net, anybody can be a star (Belladonna legitimately should be, Rambler). Most of them seem to be 18 year olds with very strong oral fixations.
Chambers, like many at the time and probably many now, thought her porn experience would lead to legit Hollywood. "Boy was I wrong," she said in an interview.
Now, with starlets making "sex tapes," Hollywood has instead come to "Porn Valley."

PS yes the title of the blog is a takeoff on the Maryland state song.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

The Pirate Walks the Plank

Seems I've gotten some criticism for the frat-boy/locker room talk of my last blog, particularly the description of the infamous though in all probability ridiculously fictional sexual act of "The Pirate." Yes, it's immature and incredibly crude, but that's the point. Let's have a vote, should the Pirate Walk the Plank? (Jhat is, cut from the post?)

Monday, April 13, 2009

noise in this world III (I'm practicing links)

Once again, I hope this goes through to the Salon noise story in Krugman's blog.

noise in this world part 2

Check out this post from Paul Krugman,nobel prize-winning (economics) prof at Princeton and NYT columnist.

noise in this world

If you can see but not hear, read this Paul Krugman (a nobel prize winner in economics) post on his blog that links to a great salon piece

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Sunday, April 5, 2009

America, living (and dying) on the edge

Forgive my pontificating, but is the price for American liberty now that you simply accept the fact that you may be shot to death in a senseless mass killing?

The old equation that you could just stay out of ghettos (or 7-11 at 3 am) and you'd be fine seems over. Not that certain areas are not still statistically safer, but there's no real, inviolable sanctuary. From school killing to killing at a nursing home, you as a US citizen get to live your whole life under the gun

But for most people the threat still seems remote. It can't happen here, it can't happen to me etc. Having been on the wrong side of a gun three times in my life (New Orleans, the tourist section of San Juan PR, and Philadelphia - only the last was in a ghetto), I cannot subscribe to that any longer.

Did the founding fathers intend a society that seems to have a death wish when they supposedly established the supposedly individual constitutional right to bear arms?

On the other hand, you can go to Europe and seem like a tough guy. "That's right, we live on the edge and wouldn't have it any other way, you wimps." What can compete with being shot at to liven up an otherwise routine day or event? Cheap Thrills!(except for the undertakers bill).

Saturday, April 4, 2009

44, er, make that 47 dead, and I'm hauled away!

Thank you Supreme Court! In the past month, counting today, the US has had 47 people die in mass shootings, including seven police officers. That's probably more than the American casualties in Iraq in the same period.

Today a man who feared that Obama would somehow take his guns away shot three officers to death in Pittsburgh, all while wearing a bulletproof vest of his own (don't barricade yourself in your home without it).

This followed a mass killing in Binghamton, NY, in which 13 immigrants taking a course for citizenship were killed.

Unfortunately, mass killing is about all you need to know about being an American citizen today.

I wonder if a teacher shouted above the gunfire "look, isn't it wonderful, that man is exercising his second amendment rights!"

I've already written that someone should give the NRA a dose of its own medicine by "airing out" their offices (spraying it with gunfire - while nobody is in the building, though unfortunately that's hard to tell.) Guns should also be allowed in the halls of Congress and the Supreme Court, since they so reverently believe in our need for militias of one.

Maybe it might be better just to bring them into the Congressional and Senatorial offices of NRA supporters. All at once, though unloaded. It would make a statement (and get people arrested).

Sign up now with me, and you too can get charged with conspiracy to commit your second amendment rights. Wait, there's someone at the door. They've got dark jackets on ...FB?..FB something is written on their backs. Hey!...wait a minute!...I can explain! ... no!...no! .....

Thursday, April 2, 2009

The Immigrant Sheild

An Arab store owner is killed in Crown Heights, just another example of what I call "The Immigrant Shield." This means that immigrants take jobs that can be dangerous while serving poor minority populations that Americans would never do, like driving cabs and running convenience stores in ghettos.

Their willingness to be on the front lines of our country's biggest social problem protects the rest of us. We can pontificate on crime and racism while never actually having to deal with it directly. We can condemn the white working class for their supposed bigotry. After all, "They" don't come to our stores and businesses, and we don't have to serve them in their neighborhoods as delivery men, gas men etc.

Yesterday, me and a friend ate at a place called Mexican Village in Princeton's Hispanic neighborhood, which used to be its small black ghetto. A black kid came in dressed in what looked like a parody of a gangster rapper, with an oversized knit cap covering his eyes, a hoodie, drooping pants, and a medallion of some sort hanging way down near his navel.

He just wanted something to eat, but the place was definitely freaked out for a minute or two. Yes, even tolerant, open minded liberals.