Tuesday October 19 2004

The luck I’ve had can make a good man bad

I was going to start off with “Let’s not even TALK about the goddam Bucs game – and Adam Archuleta can KISS MY ASS.”

Yeah, that’s the bad tempered, poor loser, unsportsmanlike snarl that I was GOING to start this blog entry with. It’s been bouncing around inside my skull, making my cheeks flush and my eyes burn and my forehead veins bulge with outraged, exasperated, frustrated fury ever since last night. What a horrible, HORRIBLE football game.

But while the blog is for venting, still, you get to a certain age and you have to TRY to be an adult in social situations, right? You have to try.

Being an adult, or trying to behave like one, anyway, I have to say… Adam Archuleta made one helluva play. He got some luck, but you make that kind of luck. He rolled Michael Pittman like a ten dollar hooker, and he knew what to do when he came up with the ball, which is a lot more than you can say for Pittman in those crucial instants, or any of Pittman’s teammates, all of whom stood around gaping like stunned trout as Archuleta galloped 93 yards for the touchdown that broke the Bucs' collective back in what should have been Tampa’s second victory for the season… a victory that would have meant a lot more than their first, since the Rams, lucky sonsabitches that they are, can actually PLAY this game.

I should note that I am officially sick, and thus, not at work when I should be. I’m honestly not feeling all that well… I’m going through one of those aggravating stretches where I can’t seem to sleep for longer than five or six hours at a time, and it's adding up. So I walked back to work after my lunch hour (after spending most of my lunch hour micro-nodding in my recliner), clocked back in off lunch, clocked back out again, and here I am, typing to y’all, with plans for nothing more strenuous tonight than watching NYPD Blue at 10 and then probably tumbling into bed.

If I remember to do it, I may order a copy of The Criminal History Of Mankind when I get online tonight. Or I may not. I’ve already tossed away quite a lot of money from my last paycheck on DVDs and comic books. We shall see.

Back on the Bucs, at least, for a few paragraphs… more than anything else, Tampa Bay seems to just not be a lucky team any more. Marc Bulger threw a big strike against us on the Rams first drive, floating the ball an improbably number of yards down the field to Torrie Holt, who hauled it in and galloped another thirty yards or so into the end zone. It put the Rams 7 points up on Tampa Bay three minutes into the game, which was disheartening… but what made it worse was that us Bucs fans have seen that play executed early in every Bucs game to date, by everyone the Bucs have played. They ALL toss one way downfield in the first or second drive of the game, and it always goes in for a touchdown, and Tampa Bay NEVER leads.

I nearly turned the TV off at that point, but Brian Griese led the Bucs right back down the field, and pulled a first in, I don’t know, over a year, maybe longer than that… he led the Bucs to a touchdown on their first drive. Honestly, I do not know how long it has been since we’ve seen that around here… even Chris Simms could only get us a field goal on HIS first drive last week. A first possession touchdown… it was sweet. And it wasn’t even a fluke; Griese hit Clayton for two one-snap first downs in a row, and the Bucs just rolled on in, looking like Sherman going through Georgia. It was enough to give you a little hope.

But the Bucs aren’t a lucky team any more. When the big plays hit like a bolt of lightning from the clear blue, it’s always the other teams that benefit. Archuleta’s strip was like winning the Irish Sweepstakes, especially since it came one play after Ian Gold had ended a Rams drive with an interception and a 30 yard run back. Even worse, Archuleta’s heads-up grab and gallop happened at the end of Michael Pittman making an 8 yard off-slant run to the Rams 3 yard line. It should have been second and goal; on the next play, Brian Griese should have hit Michael Clayton or Will Heller or Ken Dilger or even Pittman again in the endzone for the go ahead touchdown that would have put the nail in the Rams’ coffin.

You could see it all happening, in that immeasurable instant when Archuleta was making his tackle. It HAD to happen. It was all so clear. The whistle would blow, the teams would line up again, the Bucs would toss the ball into the end zone, and we’d be 2-4, with a suddenly resurrected season stretching out ahead of us –

But the whistle didn’t blow, and the teams didn’t line up again; instead, some guy whose name I didn’t know, couldn’t pronounce, and still have to double check the spelling on every time I type was up and streaking along the sideline, and nobody was even bothering to try and stop him, because, well, the whistle was going to blow, any time now, and the teams would line up again, and Griese would toss the ball into the end zone…

It was like a horrible, horrible nightmare, and everyone was so certain it COULDN’T be true that Jon Gruden threw the challenge flag, even though John Madden and Al Michaels were up the box already going over instant replays from three different angles and telling an audience of millions that yes, freakish and unbelievable though it was, Archuleta and Pittman had rolled in EXACTLY the right way to keep Pittman’s knee off the turf for a crucial quarter second as Archuleta popped the ball out of Pittman’s arm. Pittman wasn’t down, it was a legitimate fumble, and the whistle not blowing was correct. The touchdown stood.

The Bucs couldn’t do anything for the rest of the game, and you could easily see why. They weren’t lucky. The big play had hit like a cannon going off, and it had been an opposing player who had made it, and the opposing team who had put the points on the board from it. As that irritating old prick John Madden put it, “It was a 14 point play”… it not only racked up a touchdown for the Rams, it took a nearly certain one away from the Bucs.

The Bucs need to get lucky again. The team plays well enough, the team has a lot of talent. Michael Clayton is simply an extraordinary wide receiver; Pittman is a good running back with the potential to be great; Charles Lee and Will Heller have got some game, and both Brian Griese and Chris Simms play like young athletes who still want to prove something, instead of like old bulls who have never gotten the respect they deserve, and who are pissed off and sullen about it, and who are spending most of their time in the huddle picking out retirement condos instead of calling plays.

Well, enough of that nonsense.

I finished watching The Wire, or at least, its first season, this last weekend. After watching the second season of The Shield last weekend, I am just about super-saturated with gritty urban cop dramas.

The Wire doesn’t compare well to other gritty urban cop dramas in a lot of ways. Primarily, Baltimore is a fairly lousy backdrop for a cop show, compared to New York or Los Angeles. Beyond that, The Wire isn’t as edgy as any Bochco/Milch cop show, or as The Shield is, mostly because the characters, while they are all interesting and fairly three dimensional, simply don’t have the same heft to them as Vic Mackey or Andy Sipowicz.

Having said that, what The Wire does have going for it is both depth and breadth. Other cop shows are episodic; they have an A story and a B story (sometimes just an A story), and the detectives work on both storylines, bringing in as many different suspects as the episode budgets allows character actors to be hired to play, before finally slapping the cuffs on the guilty perp right before the credits roll. While the detectives work on the rapist/murderer/child molester/arsonist/drug pusher du jour, they generally move their own reasonably predictable and endlessly repetitive sub plots along… the good looking young male detective is always banging someone he shouldn’t be, in the squad or outside it, the good looking young female detective has problems with her child, or her addiction, or her abusive ex husband, or some other cop sexually harassing her, or the fact that she’s struggling with her sexual identity and can’t let anyone else in the precinct find out… when you’ve watched as many cops shows as I have, all the sub plots quickly become very familiar, and they all get played out on an endless loop, with only minor variations distinguishing what is happening to Connie this season from what happened to Diane four seasons ago and to Adrianne two seasons before that.

The Wire doesn’t follow this formula, because The Wire is all about a temporary task force coming together to handle one particular case involving one particular group of bad guys, and it follows that case, and those cops, and those crooks, for the entirety of its 13 episodes. And since the show is essentially a novel rather than an ongoing, open ended series, its characters need not have Hollywood happy endings or non-resolution resolutions that will let them start another season six months after the end of this one. (The Wire has been renewed and there’s a second season of it on now, and unless it features all new characters, I cannot see how they continued with this particular ensemble, since the case was over and the task force dispersed in episode 13.)

The show is certainly well written, and the characters and situations all seem plausible enough. I enjoyed watching it, and if there are no characters really striking enough for me remember their names a day after I finish watching 13 hours of it over the course of 96 hours or so, well, still, it’s a good series, and an interesting one. I should, perhaps, exercise a little more judgement in how much money I shell out for gritty urban cop drama; the last such set I bought prior to The Wire was the first season of Boomtown… and while I enjoyed watching both of them, I’m not sure spending $150 to own them was a good long term investment.

Now, after that ROTTEN football game was over last night, I also watched Fahrenheit 9/11. And I have to say, I have mixed feelings about it. Mostly, I’m not sure I really understand why everyone is so freaked out about it. Even mentioning the movie seems to polarize any potential listener into one camp or another, and both groups are screaming at the top of their lungs, waving ax handles in their hands with foam spraying from their lips.

The conservatives harp on what I assume must have been a mass emailed list of inconsistencies, exaggerations, and distortions, while never being willing to admit that the underlying essence of the film is, and largely must be, true. It is, after all, mostly an edited together series of photographs and videotapes; unless Moore had a billion dollar F.X. budget for computer animation, the events depicted in the film must have actually happened. Moore’s interpretation of some things may be suspect, but still, how much interpretation is necessary when you’re showing footage of civilians whose faces have been melted like a plastic doll’s from a U.S. napalm attack? How much nitpicking do you really want to do with the concept that the U.S. invaded a country that had not attacked it, or even threatened it, and killed a lot of people and maimed a lot more people who were absolutely no threat to us at all, for no acceptable reason than anyone can substantiate or is even willing to own up to now?

Liberals, on the other hand, all seem to embrace Fahrenheit 9/11 as some sort of holy scripture, delivered from on high by the very Hand Of God itself, in which every single syllable and second of developed celluloid must be taken with the utmost solemn seriousness, and defended to the last man standing.

I fall somewhere in between the two poles. Much of it I found persuasive. On the other hand, there were parts of the movie that simply reinforced my own personal dislike of Moore.

As are extremists at all ends of the political spectrum, Moore is a demagogue, and he uses distortion and exaggeration to make his points, often times with all the subtlety of a SCUD missile going off. Yet the fact that I have to despise Moore as his camera follows a weeping mother collapsing to her news in front of the White House, because he obviously cares more about getting the admittedly powerful shot in the can than he does about offering comfort to a fellow human being in extreme emotional agony… well, my thinking to myself “Jesus Christ this guy is a ghoul” does not make that woman’s pain any the less real, nor does it excuse George Dubya Bush for sending her son overseas to get killed in a useless, pointless, utterly immoral and evil invasion.

And the fact that I regard Moore as being someone who exacerbates and then exploits the pain of others for his own self aggrandizement, and who spends more time on pointless stunts than on doing anything that might really make a difference, does not in any way invalidate much of the message he is trying to get across.

The movie didn’t really tell me much I didn’t already know. In fact, I could wish that if Moore is going to spend his time and money and undoubted talent for the jugular putting something on film, well, it would be nice if he’d pay about two hours worth of attention to the 2000 Election. It amazes me how many people, even liberals and left wingers who despise Bush, still don’t have more than a slight grasp on the sheer, staggering range of illegal, unethical, and inexcusable dirty tricks and rotten tactics the Republicans employed to steal the election with.

Moore makes his points well, if occasionally deceptively, and once in a while, he displays a flash of absolute brilliance, as when he strips in the theme from the old TV Show “Greatest American Hero” over shots of Bush in his hijacked flight suit swaggering across that aircraft carrier’s flight deck under a gigantic red white and blue banner absurdly declaring “Mission Accomplished”. A brief lyric fragment – ‘Look at what’s happened to me, I can’t believe it myself, suddenly I’m up on top of the world, should have been somebody else’ – as Bush smirks triumphantly into the camera – very neatly sums up Bush’s regime in all its moral bankruptcy, corruption, and illegitimacy. In fact, the cheerful, upbeat delivery of the peppy, chillingly apt words over the 70s pop-guitar and saccharine strings TV theme background music literally widened my eyes as I watched. If thee was one moment in Fahrenheit 9/11 that took me by the throat, it was that one.

Having said that, Moore’s early obsession with pointing out that the Bush family has a lot of ties with Saudi Arabia, and that the Bin Laden family seems to have gotten some special favors right after September 11, honestly struck me as trivial. Yeah, it doesn’t look good, but all in all, Moore’s insistent hammering on the notion that Dubya let people who were RELATED to bin Laden skip out of the country (rather than tossing them in holes like Gitmo or Abu Ghraib) just exasperates me. Had the FBI arrested the lot of them and grilled them for days on end, Moore would be screaming that their civil rights had been violated. As it is, Moore seems to be saying that people should have been detained on the basis of who they are related to. Perhaps Michael Moore hasn’t heard, but this is America, the place where we aren’t supposed to do things like that. (I grant you, since 9/11 we’ve been doing it an extrarodinary amount of the time, but shit like that is what this movie is supposed to be protesting.)

As he nearly always does, Moore ends up shooting himself in the foot with his own passion for his politics. His need to make Bush look as bad as possible in every single instance causes him to exaggerate and distort where no such tactics are necessary. A dry, straightforward presentation of the various different contradictory, deceptive, and outright really rotten things Bush has presided over since swiping the 2000 election would be far more effective than this polemic, which conservatives can easily dismiss as little more than liberal propaganda, because, well, a significant portion of it is.

By letting his work be dismissed this easily, Moore does his causes a great disservice. He makes a lot of valid points, and the footage of the real life consequences of Bush and Halliburton playing military war games with live ammo on actual people is absolutely horrific. Had Moore divided his film more evenly between dead and/or wounded American soldiers, and dead and/or wounded Iraqi civilians, I suspect he could have pivoted the course of this election. Die hard, heartless, conscience-dead conservative extremists could and would sneer that “you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs”, but nutjob rightwingers alone can’t put Bush back into office. 90 minutes of dead and crippled American soldiers/Iraqi civilians would have had to affect anyone with an actual soul, and I’d like to think that the majority of Americans still fit that definition.

Okay. I realize that the overwhelming consensus, back when I asked last year, was that people preferred me to break up my various comments by topic and do separate entries with separate comment threads… but, you know, I have very few readers, and even fewer regular commenters, and none of you have short attention spans or reading comprehension problems. And more than that, none of the whiners who WANTED smaller text-bytes that they could more easily skim are still tuned into this blog, or, at least, bothering to comment any more. So deal with the sprawl, folks. I have confidence in you all.

RULES OF THE ROAD

In one of his many invaluable essays on life in Hollywood, Mark Evanier described his first meeting with legendary TV comic and icon Milton Berle. Upon being introduced to Uncle Miltie and shaking hands with him, Mark, who is a pretty witty guy, blurted out without even thinking about it, "Wow, I didn't recognize you in men's clothing". According to Mark, this soured Uncle Miltie on him from that point forward, because Mark had broken Rule Number One When Hanging With Milton Berle, namely, Never Be Funnier Than Milton Berle.

I'm reminded of that anecdote now.

Recent experiences at Electrolite being pretty much entirely similar if not completely identical to my previous experiences at Uppity-Negro.com and TampaTantrum.com, I thought I'd take the time to extrapolate whatever wisdom there is to find in the whole mess. Here's The Deal, as far as I can see:

If you want to make friends and influence people when you head out onto the blogging trail, at least, as regards your posting comments on other people's blogs, you MUST NOT:

Rule E comes mostly out of my experiences with Aaron Hawkin's Uppity-Negro blog. He gets a lot of female posters and like any of us male geeks would be in that admirable position, he is thoroughly whipped by them. If a new reader comes along and does anything whatsoever to offend the babes on Aaron's blog, that new reader can expect a cold shoulder from Aaron roughly the size of the Greenland glacier. I don't really blame Aaron for this; for a male geek, positive female attention is a jewel beyond price, and if I ever had any women posting to my blog who weren't related to me by marriage, I'd most likely dance and sing like a puppet on a string when they cracked the lash, too.

I should add to this that I've learned, from Electrolite, that one Must Not Be Whimsical, Oblique, or Overly Geeky When Posting To A Big Important Political Marketplace of Ideas Type Blog, because those guys just have no time for Theodore Marley Brooks or Cornelus van Lunt references, regardless of how amusing or entertaining you and some others may find them.

Now, I am posting this to point out that while these may be the universal Rules of the Road on other blogs (and as far as I can see, they are, indeed, pretty much universal) you can ignore them here. I don't care if you:

Oh, and I like geeky references and would just adore whimsical, cleverly elliptical posts to my comment threads, although I suspect I'd get annoyed if someone started posting a whole lot of Harry Potter-speak here, just for one example.

If there is a universal rule on this blog, it is quite simply, Do Not Be A Bigger Asshole Than The Blogger. In fact, if you can avoid it (and most of my small number of regular posters avoid it with style and panache) Don't Be An Asshole At All. I am quite a big enough asshole myself to supply all the assholiness necessary for any blog, and I will continue to keep this blog well furnished with stupid remarks, doltish mistakes, whiney rationalizations, and defensive recriminations by the ton lot, there can be no doubt. You need bring none of your own asshole nature with you, I have plenty and am always willing to share.

THE INEVITABLE DISCLAIMER

By generally accepted social standards, I'm not a likable guy. I'm not saying that to get cheap reassurances. It's simply the truth. I regard many social conventions in radically different ways than most people do, I have many many controversial opinions, and I tend to state them pretty forthrightly. This is not a formula for popularity in any social continuum I've ever experienced.

In my prior blogs, I took the fairly standard attitude: if you don't like my opinions or my blog, don't read the fucking thing.

Having given that some more thought, though, I'm not going to say that this time around, because I've realized that what this is basically saying is, 'if you don't like what I have to say, tough, I don't want to hear it, don't even bother to tell me, just go away'.

And that's actually a pretty worthless attitude. It's basically saying, 'I don't want to hear anything except unconditional agreement and approval'. And that's nonsense. This is still a free country... for a little while longer, anyway... and if you really feel you just gotta send me a flame, or post one on my comment threads (assuming they actually work, which I cannot in any way guarantee) then by all means, knock yourself out.

Unless your flame is exceptionally cogent, witty, or stylish, though, I will most likely ignore it. You do have a right to say anything you want (although I'm not sure that's a right when you're doing it in my comment threads, but hey, you can certainly send all the emails you want). However, I have an equal right not to read anything I don't feel like reading... and I'm really quick with the delete key... as various angry folks have found in the past, when they decided they just had to do their absolute level best to make me as miserable as possible.

So, if you don't like my opinions, feel free to say so. However, if I find absolutely nothing worthwhile in your commentary, I will almost certainly not respond to it in any way.

Stupidity, ignorance, intolerance... these things are only worth my time and attention if they're entertaining. So unless you can be stupid, ignorant, and/or intolerant with enough wit, style, and/or panache to amuse me... try to be smart, informed, and broad minded when you write me.