BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Megan Fox, Reconsidered...
Since she burst onto the scene a few years ago, I've always felt a sort of instinctive revulsion towards Megan Fox. This is kind of odd, since she is, in theory, very much to my liking. She has the sort of look (dark hair, slender, non-implanted) that I like, and it's not like she's any dumber than the rest of the Hollywood bimbos who constantly clog of the gossip blogs. She's always seemed so relentlessly artificial and manufactured, though. Every interview she talks about sex, she styles herself like a young Angelina Jolie, even to the point of covering herself in awful tattoos, she wears sexy clothing everywhere but never quite shows off the goods for free, etc.
Basically, the stink of artifice swirls around her, and while it's expected these days that every young "actress" is relentlessly self-promoting and plugged into exploiting the Hollywood paparazzi game, Megan just seems a little too eager. Like those contestants you sometimes see on reality TV shows who are clearly just playing along and being outrageous since they know that's the way to get more camera time and build a post-show career on the party circuit.
That said, I finally got around to flipping through the June 19th issue of Entertainment Weekly a few days ago, and while I sat and ignored the cat parade through my bathroom, I found myself bored enough to finally read the Megan Fox interview that coincided with their Transformers 2 coverage. The tag line was intelligent enough to get me to read more, "This movie is not about acting," and I have to admit that the interview reflects pretty well on her. She's no genius. Or wit. But she is fairly straight forwards and seems pretty up front about the absurdities of her existence. A few quotes, good and bad.
Transformers turned you into an overnight star. Looking back, how do you feel about the movie? I'm terrible in it. It's my first real movie and it's not honest and not realistic. The movie wasn't bad, I just wasn't proud about what I did.
What percentage of your range have people seen so far? Seven percent. On the new one, I tried. But unless you're a seasoned veteran, working with Michael Bay is not about an acting experience.
You up for a third Transformers? Sure. I mean, I can't s--- on this movie because it did give me a career and open all these doors for me. But I don't want to blow smoke up people's ass. People are well aware that this is not a movie about acting. And once you realize that, it becomes almost fun because you can be in the moment and go, ''All right, I know that when he calls Action! I'm either going to be running or screaming, or both.''
Then why are people so obsessed with you and hiring you for movies? I can't figure that out. I mean, Transformers made $700 million and that opened a door to introduce this ''new girl,'' and I happened to be such an outrageous personality that people wanted to start writing about me because it was deemed controversial. I think if I had been a typical Hollywood actress and I said all the right things and I had been a publicity android, it wouldn't have escalated to this level.
You've said you don't have to use big words in interviews just to show you're smart, like Scarlett Johansson does. That was taken out of context. It made it sound like I was suggesting she's pretentious. She's clearly book-smart and she allows people to see that every time she opens her mouth. And I was suggesting that for me to do that — people would receive it as though I was being pretentious. Not that she was! I would never talk s--- about her.
There have been a lot of comparisons between you and Angelina Jolie. I think it's a lack of creativity on the media's part. Because I have tattoos and dark hair and I was in an action movie? That's as far as the similarities extend. I'm not the next anyone.
Earlier this afternoon, you mentioned Brian Austin Green. There are always rumors about you guys. Brian and I are not engaged, because when you're engaged, your goal is marriage. And I don't think that's a realistic goal for me right now. I know I'm not capable at this point in my life of being a good partner or a good wife. That's like a joke. We're sort of trying to figure out what our relationship is.
Looking ahead, where would you like to see your career in five years? What's the best-case scenario? If I'm still making Transformers five years from now, I might not be so überexcited. But there's nothing specific that I need to accomplish. I just want to still be working.
What's the worst-case scenario? Umm...that I'd be on The Hills?
It's funny that she denies the AJ imitation, but I suppose she can't entirely help what she looks like, and it's not as if AJ was the first beautiful woman to get too many tattoos. Still... as honest as she appears to be about other things, it would be refreshing if she owned up to that one. On the whole though, pretty good. And it's had to dislike anyone her age who says worst case scenario is working on The Hills.
I was reminded that I meant to post about this when I did my semi-weekly drunken surfing Friday night, hit some gossip blogs, and saw this eloelable post on D-Listed.
Michael Bay told The Wall Street Journal, "Well, that's Megan Fox for you! She says some very ridiculous things because she's 23 years old and she still has a lot of growing to do. You roll your eyes when you see statements like that and think, 'Okay Megan, you can do whatever you want. I got it. Nick Cage wasn't a big actor when I cast him, nor was Ben Affleck. before I put him in Armageddon. Shia LaBeouf wasn't a big movie star before he did Transformers -- and then he exploded. Not to mention Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, from Bad Boys. Nobody in the world knew about Megan Fox until I found her and put her in Transformers. I like to think that I've had some luck in building actors' careers with my films."
Thanks Michael, for providing the polar opposite of Megan's honest disclosure. You wonder if Bay believes what he's saying, or if he just feels the need to reflexively defend his hackery? Admittedly, he didn't exactly reply to the issue. Megan Fox said that the movie wasn't about the acting, and no one (even Bay?) would dispute that. It's about explosions special effect robots. Megan Fox might help sell some tickets for being a hot piece of ass, but no one's weighing the quality of the actors when they decide whether or not to plunk down $10.50 for Transformers 2.
So Bay has a point; he's cast a number of actors in his explosion-fests who went on to make real movies and have real careers, but no one went to those other movies for the acting either. In a way, Fox's and Bay's replies were actually very similar. Her was honest and realistic, and his was forked tongue PR-speak (with a core of truth), but more to the point, both were answers exactly in keeping with the speaker's public image. Bay has to pretend to be a real movie maker, so people don't realize he's the more successful version of Uwe Boll. Fox has built her public persona on being irreverent and brash and sexual, so she's got to take some (honest) shots at her own celebrity and the vehicles that have created it. The only question is whether you believe Fox is really the person she portrays in interviews, or if the whole thing is just part of a (very successful) calculated effort to become famous.
After ignoring the main listing for years (literally, it was last updated in September 2006), I spent some time this weekend and added links to every book review and movie review I've posted over the last 2.75 years to the Reviews Index. There were something like 20 movie and 25 book reviews to add, and the whole process would have gone much faster if I hadn't taken the time to read some/most/all of quite a few of them. Funny how little memory I had of many things I consumed, digested, and discussed in detail just 18 or 24 or 30 months past. No wonder I never remember birthdays?
And... wait, let me skim count. 69! I have 69 reviews partially or almost completely written now on my notes page. All have at least the scores, most have some comments written and require a bit of tidying up and organizing to make them coherent enough to post, even with my low standards of editing. I really should start putting some of those online, as I say every few months. Without actually changing any of my behavior.
I will start posting some comments/reviews of the 4 Twilight fantasy/romance/vampire novels, since I borrowed them from a friend and have been reading them during the past week. I'm up through #3 now, and while I wouldn't have read more than 1 if I didn't have the whole quadrilogy sitting here... I do have the whole quadrilogy sitting here. So I'm reading them, and stopping every 200 or 300 pages to write out some notes and thoughts on the process. These tend to be more about the craft of writing and popular reader interests and mass culture and female romantic psychology, etc, than actually about the overlong/underpopulated novels themselves. Since that's why I'm reading them. Research. Curiosity. Analysis of trends in pop fiction. Etc. You'll see. Soon enough.
It's been a few months since I did anything with online dating, and a few weeks since I canceled my subscription to the service I was using. I vaguely consider returning to it from time to time, but I'm not yet lonely/bored/horny enough to make that effort. Especially since the automatically-generated new possible dates I get emailed every few days (more often since I canceled my sub than when it was active) very seldom include any women I'm interested in, and most of the ones I do like I've seen before.
That said, I'm not oppossed to the idea of further online dating, and when I saw an article about the practice on Yahoo news tonight, I clicked through. According to the article, business is booming on online dating sites since the recession began. People want more security, want to be in a relationship so they can share costs or not waste money on expensive first dates, etc. The article was mostly fluff, but it had a few quotes from the guy who runs OKCupid.com. I'd never heard of that site, so just out of curiosity and post-fireworks boredom, I clicked over to check it out.
It appears to be free to join and use it (which guarantees I won't bother, since anything free is guaranteed to be totally infested with fakes and bullshit artists and scammers), but when you do sign up they give you dozens (as many as you'll take, apparently) of 1 question quizzes, with multiple choice answers. They all follow the same format: a question/proposition, such as, "Would you object if your partner flirted with someone else in front of you?" Then there are several choices such as: "yes, no, depends on the circumstances." You click one, then click the same option for how you want your date to answer it (sometimes you can click multiple answers for her, but never for you), and weight how important her reply is.
Oddly, and stupidly, you don't get to value the importance of your answer. Just hers. For instance, I'm almost mandatory on wanting a woman to be slim or at least not obese, but I don't really care what she likes in a guy. I would never date a woman who smoked, but if she was open to a smoker, I wouldn't care. I wouldn't date a woman who was a religious fundie, but I don't care if she was open to that. Etc. I'd obviously like to be within her preference range on those issues, since if I'm not she won't be dating me anyway. I'll find out how she weights the questions depending on whether she replies to my email or not. Yet OkCupid doesn't let you weight your own answers, just those of your hypothetical match. WTF?
At any rate, your answers, flawed through the mechanism is, are supposedly used by their algorithms to match you up with someone compatible, eHarmony.com style. I have no idea if they're of any use, but I can testify from months of experience that the self-reported goals/dreams/biographical details users report on other dating sites are utterly useless in predicting chemistry or compatibility. So maybe quizzes are the way to go? They're very quick to take, at any rate. I plowed through about 50 in maybe 15 minutes, until I lost interest. Plus the more you take, the more your, "Highest possible match." percentage increases. I got up to 98% by around 45 quizzes (though I'd skipped some along the way), but it didn't seem to be increasing any more at that point.
Most of the questions are fairly straight forward, asking about your opinions on monogamy, obesity, children, religion, career choice, etc. The one that made me laugh and prompted me to post this was the 40th quiz question presented to me. (They take 10 seconds each, and I've skipped quite a few dumb ones.)
If the price of an apple was raised 50% and then decreased 50%, making it cost $0.75, how much was the original price? * $1.00 * $0.75 * $1.25 * $0.50
How would your Ideal Match answer this question? * $1.00 * $0.75 * $1.25 * $0.50
How important is their answer to you? * Irrelevant * A little important * Somewhat important * Very important * Mandatory
I'm aware that most people can not manage simple mathematical equations in their heads, (the RCA dog-expression on the face of every store cashier when I give them $5.08 on a $4.33 bill testifies to that), and whether or not my potential date can calculate a tip without taking off her shoes is not of any real importance to me in my dating choices. I just found it funny that they offer multiple choices for this one, and then you can weight the results.
What would have really made it funny is if this question had allowed multiple choices for how "my ideal mate would answer," as quite a few of them do. That way I could have picked the correct answer, and then one or two that were almost right, but excluded the really wrong one? I'll take a woman who is sort of bad at math, but if she can't even get close to the right answer, then she's off the menu?
Better yet, you can choose (or not) to let other people see your answers to any quiz question. So do I click that box on this one, to show off my basic algebra skillz? Would a person who couldn't do the problem be sure not to click that, so they wouldn't look dumb? Or would they parade their ignorance, like a creationist in a Flintstones shirt at a scientific conference?
Okay, I know I had a little too much vodka with my Friday night Pepsi (and nachos), but does this make any sense?
Pretend you have no idea who this woman is, or what she's talking about. What would you think after listening to the full 7 minutes? After 1 minute? I assume there must have been some sort of preamble that's not included on this video, something where she like, introduced herself? And made some sort of statement about what she was doing there?
I first watched this by clicking the link, and then goign to another tab to play a game or look at bikini photos, or find links to download anime. I don't remember exactly, and little bit too much vodka I'd splashed into my Friday night Pepsi (with nachos!) might have something to do with that. But after a few minutes I had to click back to the speech, since the editing was driving me crazy. The way they were cutting it up so much made it sound like she was jumping randomly between subjects and was turning the whole thing into an incoherent word salad of gibberish talking points.
And then after I watched it for a minute I realized it wasn't edited at all. That was her speech, unedited. I had to watch the whole thing for a second time to be sure, and I did so with my mouth literally hanging open. Was this written? Did she, or anyone else who worked on it, think it made any sense? Or had any consistency?
The only thing I can think is that she knew the national media that so over-covers the trainwreck that is her life would chop it up into 10 second soundbites. So she figured there was no point in talking about the same thing for more than 10 seconds, and no point in making consecutive sentences relate to each other. And she's probably right, but for anyone who listens to the whole seven minutes at once, it's utterly incoherent.
Listening to this, all of those amazingly bad interviews and talk show segments she gave last fall make much more sense. She's probably not an idiot, and she's obviously got some Machiavellian political skills that have taken her near the top. But her mind has some kind of ADD that makes her unable to be patient or logical or hold a train of thought for more than a sentence or two. It might be some kind of verbal autism; like in her head she knows what she wants to say, but when she talks her thoughts jump way ahead of her mouth, and she only says a fraction of what she knows or is thinking about an issue, before jumping to the next point. That could tie into her legendary inability to learn policy details or study complicated subjects, and maybe it's why she can't answer a question with anything but talking points?
Psychological theorizing aside, it's a fascinating display. If you give up on it, skip ahead to the last 10 seconds. At that point she wraps up, or just stops talking, and the camera swings around to show... like 10 random white people just standing around on someone's lawn, watching her talk. That's the entire audience. No other media, no state officials, just random white people in vacation-type clothing, who may or may not have any idea who this woman in the red jacket with shoulder pads is. And what's with the seaplane parked in a pond behind her? A truly bizarre setting for a speech; it makes all the "Northern Exposure reflected reality" comments you've ever heard about Alaska seem more believable.
In related news, you might want to check out the new Vanity Fair article about her. I found it overlong and lacking in content, but it does give some level of insight into the woman's inner workings and political history. And there's some interesting info about just how weird and other Alaska is and Alaskans are.
Chip Berlet gives a scholar's insight into the roots of right-wing conspiracism and the violence it engenders
I copied the title from the post that pointed me to the podcast, since even though it's unpardonably lengthy, it sums things up quite well. The recording is a segment from NPR's Fresh Air program, featuring Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates. In the segment Berlet talks about the recent outburst of right wing extremist violence, and the conspiracy theories and political arguments that are motivating these amateurish, modern day Tim McVeighs.
I'd never previously heard of Berlet or his organization, but I went and looked up some other talks by him on Google Video after listening to this one, since he's really good. Encyclopedic in his knowledge of various fringe right wing/white supremacist groups and the conspiracy theories that motivate them, and able to relate his knowledge succinctly and comprehensively. I've read a fair amount about these sorts of domestic terrorists, but I learned a lot from this piece, and enjoyed listening. (So long as I didn't think much about the actual murderous implications of it.)
Berlet talks about left wing conspiracy theories too, and is full of historical information and cultural commentary as well. He covers the origins and permutations of the myths about the Illuminati and the Elders of Zion, discusses Birthers, Sovereign/National Citizens, Minutemen, Christian Identity, and many more. Enjoy and be informed.
I'm bored with this story by now, but just because I mentioned it in my earlier post about Michael Jackson's death, here's a follow up.
It's been assumed for years that Prince Michael and Paris are not biologically related to the late star—reports have been floating around since at least 2004, when newspapers worldwide picked up on a tabloid report citing court papers filed by Jackson's ex-wife Debbie Rowe.
The new rumor surfacing, of course, is that the mystery dad now allegedly has a name, face and profession. Us Weekly magazine is claiming he is Arnold Klein, the dermatologist who treated Jackson's reported skin disorder.
So much for my theory that MJ would seek out some (white) guy with exotic skills and talents. His dermatologist? I guess MJ had to feel some loyalty to and trust for a guy who violated all medical ethics to bleach him, but still... was he the best baby daddy available?
We've got a short (supposedly/hopefully) heat wave cooking the Bay Area this weekend, and while talking about it with a friend living in a far distant (and currently much cooler) country, I mentioned how odd the weather is here. It's extremes, in terms of summer heat. The average summertime high here is about 81 for the three hot months (July, August, Sept), and it's sunny and about that warm almost every day. But when we get a heat wave, it's never like, 87, or 90, for a week. It's usually 81 one day, then 102 the next two or three, before one day of cooling as it's 88, and then we're back to 74 for 3 weeks.
It's quite possible that this is just perception/confirmation bias on my part, since I notice when it's 100, but can mostly ignore the discomfort of highs that peak in the upper 80s. But so far this summer, it's been true. There were 2 days of 100+ temps earlier this month (mercifully, they struck and departed while I was in Hawaii), with temps in the 70s for weeks before and after. Since then it's been very nice, mid-70s highs, until suddenly on Saturday it was 102, and still hot today, with a high around 98. It's 86 in my living room right now, almost dark outside as I type this @ 8:49pm. Tomorrow's forecast? 81, with 70s for the rest of the week.
Shortly after talking to my friend about this phenomena I was surfing some weather sites (which I only do in the summer when driven by heat) and saw this map on weather.com, which I liked since it confirmed my unscientific perception. I live right where that 15 is on the left coast.
Admittedly, that sort of large scale map is fairly useless for the precise forecasts required anywhere within 20 miles of the California coast. The Pacific is large and very cold, and as a result temps change radically as you move away from it. Everyone's heard the famous Mark Twain quote about which summer was the coldest winter of his life. Twain was comedically exaggerating, but he had a point; one not demonstrated by the daily high/low temperature reports. San Francisco isn't freakishly cold in the summer; it's the rapid changes that make it crazy. It's often 80+ and sunny in the late afternoon, by dark there's a western wind, clouds are scudding overhead, and by dusk it's 55, damp, and the wind makes it feel 10 degrees colder.
We don't get that kind of change in San Rafael in the North Bay, but I could move 5 miles southwest and see my daily highs drop 10-15 degrees, or move 10 miles northeast and swelter in 90+ every day of the summer.
One benefit of the heat other than growth spurts for my already towering front porch tomato plantation; I'm certainly getting my money's worth out of the blender that was a self gift on my b-day. I've had 4 large glasses of blended fruit liquids so far today, had about 6 yesterday, and haven't done fewer than 2 or 3 any day since the blender came home with me on the 20th. (The usual blended batch makes 2 or 3 glasses full.) This consumption rate will likely hold up until the temperature drops, the novelty wears off, or my lower digestive tract rebels.
Sadly, for the analytical, experimenting aspect of my nature, I've got no recipes to report yet. I blender like I stir fry or make stew/soup; I throw a lot of stuff I like in together and hope for the best, with the proportions changing every time. I have tried to be slightly scientific with the blender recipes, but it's not worked out that well. When I try to just do strawberries/yogurt/milk, or just OJ/pineapple/raspberries, I get something tasty, but too distinctive of individual flavors. The best mixtures contain a bit of everything.
Today's was great. A lot of orange juice, a splash of mango/peach juice, 8 ice cubes, a big glass of frozen strawberries (get the 6 pound bag at Costco), several cubes of frozen pineapple, several more of frozen papaya, a shake of blueberries for color, about 2oz. of gin, and a small dish of pineapple sorbet (mostly for the thickening texture it gives). Blended to a slush. It was more liquid than most, since I wanted to drink, not eat it during the hot afternoon. Still, the second and third glasses of it benefited from their time in the freezer while I sipped the first glass.
I suppose I'll have to do some solid food later tonight, once it cools down enough to contemplate eating, much less cooking. Shrimp quesadillas perhaps. I'm going to the gym as soon as I hit post on this one, and 2 hours of cardio + weights should earn me the right to indulge on whatever I wish for dinner.
I wouldn't have posted about this, since I'm not exactly a news blog and the lives/deaths of washed up pop stars don't rank very high on my personal interest meter. I did find this news item about Michael Jackson's death somewhat curious, though.
LOS ANGELES – Across the country, people reacted in stunned disbelief Thursday as word spread that Michael Jackson had collapsed and died. Within minutes of Jackson's arrival by ambulance at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center people began arriving by the hundreds, the crowd quickly filling a grassy entrance outside the hospital. Overhead, news helicopters whirred noisily and TV trucks clogged streets.
As word spread a few minutes later that Jackson had died, several people burst into tears. Others stood silently, looking pensive, as they waited for official word from the hospital. Still others whipped out cell phones and began calling or texting friends to pump them for information.
A similar scene played out just a couple miles away, in front of Jackson's tony Holmby Hills home, where a Fire Department ambulance had arrived to take him to the hospital.
Okay, sure. You've got to express some shock when someone famous dies at age 50. But is anyone really that surprised that MJ dropped dead? I'm more surprised that he lived this long, given all of his plastic surgeries, anorexia, drug issues, bizarre health habits, mental instabilities, etc. But then again I often underestimate the ability of human beings to survive in the face of almost indescribable self-abuse. That Amy Winehouse and Pete Doughtery remain sentient and functional is a source of great consternation, as well as disappointment, to me.
The official verdict on MJ's death is heart failure, but that's a fairly meaningless description. The question is what brought it on, in a fairly young, non-obese man. I'll be shocked if the autopsy doesn't find enough exotic substances in his blood stream to kill a horse, along with numerous signs of past cardiac events. Like how they say the hearts of cocaine addicts are all scarred and stretched from past abuse.
I was more shocked a month or two ago, when word came that he'd sold out 50 concerts in London in like 5 minutes. I wouldn't have thought he could sell out one show anywhere, at this point. When was his last hit? The 90s? I asked a friend of mine in the UK if MJ remained popular there, and she immediately waxed nostalgic about how much she'd liked his music when she was young, and how she would have bought tickets if she could have. Which was a surprise to me, but then again, I never go to concerts or have any desire to do so. I especially don't get the nostalgia thing that's driving the renewed touring success of every band that was popular in the 70s and 80s. Like most people, I liked a lot of really bad music when I was a kid and teen. But I like to think I've moved on and matured, and the thought of paying top dollar to watch the modern day, aged, washed up version of some band I listened to in 8th grade fills me with horror. Not delight.
That digression aside, I wonder if MJ's death will usher forth fresh geysers of juicy details about his freak show of a personal life. I don't follow tabloid bullshit that much, but I am kind of curious about his kids. MJ was manifestly not their biological father, since the kids are white. (Without requiring the extensive surgery and skin bleaching that dad underwent to achieve his eventual pigmentation.) So who was that baby daddy?
I don't think MJ picked the woman he rented for her womb (and ovaries?) at random, and I'm sure he didn't go that route to find the baby daddy either. It might have been a straight adoption, but if so he did amazingly well at covering his tracks. More likely he had some woman give birth for him, but in that case, where did he get the sperm? I can't see him picking a guy at random, or doing the usual sperm bank dream request, "I want an athletic, six-foot, medical student." Getting the right sperm to create your adopted children is important, and I don't think they saved any samples from John Merrick. Would MJ buy it from someone alive today, who he admired and who could keep a secret? Was MJ a believer in destiny and nature over nurture? Would he want a skilled dancer/singer? I'm fascinated by that question, not for the parentage of the kids who will almost certainly never be heard from again, but for the insight it would give into the weirdness that was MJ's psyche.
And no, I hadn't given that issue or MJ himself more than 10 seconds of thought in the past 10 years, until now. It's true, deaths really do bring people together!
Update: Nothing about that question yet, but there's a nice article from Time about his income and debts. Apparently he was over $300m in debt when he died. How is that even possible? He had a huge income, from his own music catalog and the Beatles catalog he bought the rights to decades ago, so he was able to continuing signing loans for money now, leveraged against his guaranteed future income. The article estimates he could have cleared $100m from the 50 sold out London concerts, and up to 5x more from an ensuing world tour.
There's good news, though, since as another article points out, he'll probably be worth more dead than alive. That's the actual title of the article, lest you think it's just another example of my callousness. It's just conjecture, but they point out that Elvis was worth less than $5m when he died in 1977, and that his estate is now worth nearly $100m annually. So good for "his" kids, I guess. Assuming his will doesn't leave everything to a chimpanzee or something.
The Transformers sequel has opened, and it's doing phenomenal business so far. It's been less successful with the critics, and is getting skewered by pretty much everyone. The average score is 38% on Metacritic, with one 100% (from TV Guide?) and one 0% (from Rolling Stone), and most scores in the 50% to 25% range.
Curious to compare, I looked up the first Transformers film on Metacritic, and was frankly shocked by the results. People liked it? Professional film critics? It got 61% overall, with no 4-star scores, but lots of 3/4 reviews.
A more direct comparison of hate: Transformers 1 has about 40 reviews listed, with 2 of them red (below 40%). Transformers 2 has 30 reviews listed, with 14 of them red. That seems to pretty well sum it up. Most critics thought the first one was good or okay. Most critics think this one is bad or awful. Given that I thought the first film was horrible, I think it's pretty unlikely I'd make it through all 2.5 hours of the sequel. Which is convenient, since I've no plans to see it.
I've got to quote some of Ebert's 1-star review of Transformers 2, since it gave me some lulz. He seems to be recovering from his various near-death medical crises -- he's not only rediscovered his ability to give bad movies bad reviews, but he's regained the ability to be bitingly-funny while doing so.
"Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" is a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments. One of these involves a dog-like robot humping the leg of the heroine. Such are the meager joys. If you want to save yourself the ticket price, go into the kitchen, cue up a male choir singing the music of hell, and get a kid to start banging pots and pans together. Then close your eyes and use your imagination.
The plot is incomprehensible. The dialog of the Autobots®, Decepticons® and Otherbots® is meaningless word flap. Their accents are Brooklyese, British and hip-hop, as befits a race from the distant stars. Their appearance looks like junkyard throw-up. They are dumb as a rock. They share the film with human characters who are much more interesting, and that is very faint praise indeed.
...
Aware that this movie opened in England seven hours before Chicago time and the morning papers would be on the streets, after writing the above I looked up the first reviews as a reality check. I was reassured: "Like watching paint dry while getting hit over the head with a frying pan!" (Bradshaw, Guardian); "Sums up everything that is most tedious, crass and despicable about modern Hollywood!" (Tookey, Daily Mail); "A giant, lumbering idiot of a movie!" (Edwards, Daily Mirror).
You're better off going to see Up again. That's the only summer movie I've thus far seen, and I'm terribly remiss in not writing about it yet, since it was fantastic. Not sure I'd say it was the best Pixar movie yet (I'd have to go with The Incredibles on that one, though I've seen it several times on DVD, so it's an uneven comparison.) but it was a lot of fun, very clever, very funny, and had a great, inspirational plot.
That's not really the message to take from this, but it's certainly a valid "shorter" version of it.
It's a lecture by a Stanford Anthropologist, and it's the most interesting scientific lecture I've heard in recent memory. And I watch/listen to a lot of scientific lectures. Quite often on this very subject. I'm not going to try to summarize the whole thing, since it's impossibly fast moving and informative. Instead I'll comment on a few elements I found most interesting.
The prof's main purpose is to explain the continuation of various reproductively maladaptive traits in human beings, and how those traits have influenced human culture. Chiefly in the creation and maintenance of religions and religious rituals. A variety of mental conditions that are very bad for humans are actually pretty good, if you have them in a limited dose. Sort of half of the condition. The analogy is to various medical conditions; full on sickle cell anemia is deadly, but it also protects against malaria, and it's possible to have partial sickle cell and be improved by it, in certain malaria-rich environments. Tay-Sach's is a fatal genetic disorder, but a related condition seems to provide immunity to tuberculosis. And others.
So can that work with genetically-transmitted mental disorders? Yes. Schizophrenia is a terrible disorder, and it was much more detrimental to leading a healthy life 1000 or 2000 or 5000 years ago than it is today. But people who have a mild type of schizophrenia called schizo-typal disorder tend to have some level of magical thinking, are obsessed with ritual, seem to be in touch with the gods, invent new religious practices, etc. They're ideal medicine men/shamans, since they can be schizophrenic more or less on command, when it's appropriate. Not during the hunt when the mammoth would be scared away, but definitely during a ceremony when the tribe needs a curse lifted or the rain gods called.
OCD, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is another one. People with it full bore are non-functional; washing their hands for 6 hours a day, tapping a certain number of times before they can enter or leave a room, unable to walk on a sidewalk since there are cracks they might step on, etc. Almost everyone with OCD has a few predictable issues. Personal cleanliness is a big one, as are rituals for entering and leaving sacred places, and numbers/counting. Most of us have some lower level of OCD, as demonstrated by the usual human need to sort papers, or stack things neatly on a desk, or use our lucky pen to write an important paper, etc.
So? As the lecturer relates, religions are simply chock full of OCD-like rituals. All of the Kosher food preparation rituals in Judaism. Hindu Brahmins must sleep in proper positions, chant holy phrases a precise number of times, breath a set number of times from each nostril in turn, etc. Catholics have prayer beads which must be a proper number, counted X number of times in the proper sequence, certain prayers must be said X number of times, etc. There's a ton of OCD type stuff in Islam as well, and many rigorous requirements and rituals about how to clean yourself. The prof gives many more examples with thorough documentation, so listen to it yourself.
There's a lot more, but I thought the overall presentation did a fantastic job of discussing common maladies, showing that they have a genetic heritability, and describing how versions of them are just tailor-made to create religions, or religious rituals. And how religious rituals are both created by these sorts of compulsions, and satisfying to humans because we have these compulsions in us, to varying degrees.
