is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Newsflash: Hollywood Unlikely To Offer Up Nietzschean Plotline!
Newsflash: Hollywood Unlikely To Offer Up Nietzschean Plotline!
Today the LJST department took me out to lunch as a goodbye, and gave me the 1300-page volume called The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib, for my light-hearted beach reading this summer. I�m exceedingly glad to have my own copy of the book, but I don�t think I�ll be taking it on hikes in the High Sierras. That UZI weighs a ton! And if you get that reference, then I am guessing that you are from the same sector of the same generation as me!
In fact I think I am going to add that UZI to the box that I am going to have the LJST department pay to have mailed to my new office at Haverford College. I am going to use the SHIT out of the volume for some research, but I think that research can wait until September.
Yesterday I spent the day in Philadelphia, found a new apartment for next year, ate some fiery-hot Indian food, and got chased by geese. Plus I took pictures of all the insane cuteness of the Haverford campus. I will pick those photos up tomorrow, and maybe you will see some of them.
After lunch today I went to Target in HadleyMass to pick up some prescriptions. (BTW, have you seen Target�s newly-designed prescriptions-packaging? Cute!) And while I was there I decided to go see the SHIT out of XXX: State of the Union in the multiplex at the other end of the mall�my first summer blockbuster this year. It was GOOD. As were the popcorn and Pepsi that saw me through the movie.
Oh, sure, there are things to find wrong with XXX. Like how it very simply depicts everyone who has a suit-wearing job as evil and anyone who has ever done service work, or, better yet, gone to jail, as better-suited to understand what �the good� is, albeit in a twisted way. Because in XXX: State of the Union all the people who save the day are ex-cons or small-time thieves. And one ex-mechanic. My favorite line is when Ice Cube says, as the save-the-day crew is poised to take the White House, �Tonight the fate of the free world lies in the hands of hustlers and thieves,� and the Scott Speedman character (who is suited but now A-OK because we find out that he used to be a car mechanic before working for NSA) says, �Why should tonight be any different?� HA! Ye olde switcheroo wherein those who are usually depicted as having power, and rightfully, are displaced and replaced by those who are usually depicted �rightfully� as being disenfranchised. Ah, we can always count on Hollywood for the most simplistic political statements. However, let us remind ourselves that simple reversal never fixes anything. Because it doesn�t rid us of the hierarchy on which the division between �good� and �bad� is based! As such what it gives us is that same old thing of which we fought to rid ourselves. And that is the second time today I�ve gotten to reveal my Nietzchean roots in odd circumstances. Which leads me to�
Today at lunch we were talking about dietary health restrictions and one party at the table was lamenting that it isn�t true that your current good eating patterns can reverse the damage you did to yourself in the past. Another luncher said that current good eating does have an impact, beneficial effects, on your health right now. Luncher #1 insisted that it was still depressing that one can�t undo one�s earlier misdeeds. And I said, �Well, that sounds right to me. You can�t change the past, and shouldn�t want a world where you could change the past.� (Why? Because then you are wishing for the impossible, which destroys the capacity you have to will things that are possible.) Luncher #1 told me I was no fun. And I said, �I�m a Nietzschean, what can I say!?�
I think I am TREMENDOUSLY fun.
Anyway, XXX: State of the Union is a perfect summer blockbuster: Lots of action and loud music and hot guys and girls and fast cars and improbable conflicts and alliances. It pleased me to see Ice Cube playing XXX instead of Vin Diesel, who, if you ask me, looks like what I used to hear people calling a Mongoloid when I was a kid, before that term became outdated as both inaccurate and politically incorrect. Total short-bus look, that Vin Diesel. He does nothing for me, I tell you, though I did appreciate, absolutely thoroughly appreciate, the look he rocked in the second XXX movie when he wore that crazy fur coat and the leather pants. That was some fashion daring that did not go unnoticed by Jill!
This latest XXX has gotten bad reviews in general. For instance see this one--everything it says in complaint is true in one way or another. But when I read such reviews, I wonder just what are the qualities held by earlier such movies--XXX or otherwise blockbusterish things--that escape these criticisms? So, let the buyer beware. It only costs $4 to see a movie in HadleyMass, but I would have been fine if I had paid the $10 it costs in San Francisco. Ice Cube is easy on the eyes, and there are enough ridiculous stunts and funny (purposefully or despite itself) moments in the movie to make it worth seeing. In fact, faced as I am now with packing more boxes and cleaning an apartment, I'm ready to go see it AGAIN.
In sum, it is my recommendation that you go see XXX if you are in the mood to bust some blocks, Hollywood-style. I enjoyed it thoroughly from Frame 1 through to the end. And I am now looking forward to my next summer blockbuster, BATMAN BEGINS, starring hott Christian Bale, and, if the trailer is to be trusted, looking like it will be a return to the dark-dark version of Batman, which I favor. And who better to play a dark, dark Batman, than Christian Bale, who has proven himself capable of transforming himself into all kinds of crazy characters, from the most sympathetic (Velvet Goldmine) to the least (American Psycho)? Yay! for Christian Bale, who has played the part of violent racist, mass murderer, heroic fighting-guy, sexually confused teenager, "newsie," "swing kid," and Jesus!
4:50 p.m. - May 12, 2005
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