Clueless In Connecticut

Hi! So I haven’t blogged you like a summer breeze lately, let alone a hurricane, so I thought I would change that. On past Thanksgivings around this time I would probably be half in the bag and in no condition to blog anything remotely coherent or grammatically recognizable, but I decided to stop after 2 beers and a glass of whine today. Maturity breeds blogs.

And besides celebrating the slaughtering of Indians and turkeys, what could be more American than spouting off completely unsolicited thoughts on Thanksgiving? The Pilgrims would have wanted it this way. I can’t wait to get started!

I’ve come to realize that I have finally obtained true wisdom in my life. How do I know? Aristotle once said….hold on let me Google the exact quote….nope can’t find it. Maybe it was Socrates? Screw it. One of the ancient Greek philosophers said something like, “The difference between the wise man and the fool is the fool believes he knows all there is to know but the wise man is only aware of his own ignorance”. Or, to site a slightly more contemporary source, I recently heard John Cleese—the British comedian known as one of the creators of Monty Python—say, “The older I’ve gotten, the more I’ve realized no one has any clue what they are talking about”.

He’s 74, but I’m only at the tender age of 41 (practically a kid!) yet I feel as if I’m starting to reach that stage of my personal development as well. I’ve realized I’m pretty much clueless about pretty much everything, but so is everyone else! The best quote I heard this week on the Ferguson debacle came from Glenn Beck (just kidding). It was a Facebook post which said, “In other news, millions of Facebook users suddenly get their law degrees”.

Bingo. Everyone is an authority on this case. Not. None of us could buy a clue if they sold it at a Wal Mart Black Friday blowout sale. In fact even if I had a law degree (at press time Arizona State is mulling over awarding me an honorary JD—they’ve sunk to a new low) I still wouldn’t have an idea. At the most basic level, we don’t even know what happened! There is the report from Officer Wilson—hardly an objective source. There are the varying eyewitness reports—not objective either because they apparently contradict one another as well as some of the forensic evidence. And the witnesses may not even be lying. They just don’t know! This is called the Rashomon Effect—named for a classic Japanese movie in which a crime is committed near a clearing in the woods and each eyewitness tells a different version of what happened so we never know exactly what really went down. People's ability to provide a true objective account is limited by their vantage point, perhaps their fear, maybe their preconceived notions of life…. Even when we are present at events we often don’t even know exactly what we saw.

But we do have forensic evidence. Science. Pure objectivity. None of this wishy washy human error ridden eyewitness crap. But forget it. Can the forensic evidence prove whether Michael Brown really did reach for the cop's gun? And even if it could, could it prove whether Officer Wilson had no recourse but to shoot him? Can it prove he truly didn’t have access to his night stick? Can it prove that if he had shot him in the leg once or twice that that wouldn’t have subdued him? Or can it disprove any these things?

So in the end…..we’re left to guess. I think if we’re truly honest with ourselves, our views of this case—and maybe every case—come back to our assumptions about the world in general, not the specific facts that took place in one tiny corner of the world that most of us had never heard of known as Ferguson, Missouri. To quote another insane famous wise man who actually didn’t a have clue about anything despite book after book of theories claiming the opposite, Sigmund Freud once said, “We are not rational creatures, we are rationalizing creatures”. We look for ways to make the facts fit our pre-existing biases. My own thought? I lean towards the suspicion that the cop could have found other ways around this problem, that we was not in fact painted into such a corner that shooting him six times was the only option and that we are moving the line too far in what we call self defense.

But why do I think that? It might be simply because I root for the underdog. I’m the type of person who looks with utter disdain on the guy whose favorite sports teams are the Yankees, Lakers, Cowboys, Canadiens, and of course the other “name for the winners in the world”, as Steely Dan would put it, the Alabama Crimson Tide. In other words, the obvious front runner. The person who believes—not without some justification—that life is short, you only get one life, life is about winning, and the best way to assure winning is to reserve your sympathies and loyalties for other winners rather than betting on those long shot losers. Meanwhile, others are the champions of long shots—some might say lost causes. These poor lost souls believe life is about transformation, not accumulation. They are most turned on by alchemy—converting base metals into gold, turning water to wine, or turning frogs into princes. If things are gold, or wine, or princes to begin with, then what’s the point? Where’s the fun? What is their purpose or anyone's purpose when the work is already finished? Their favorite song isn’t All I Do Is Win, it’s Even The Losers Get Lucky Sometimes.

And such a person as this might look at Michael Brown as the base metal never allowed to become gold, the frog never to be transformed into a prince. A big kid, yes. A shoplifting thug, maybe. But a poor, underprivileged kid in a Cardinals hat who may have gotten direct or indirect messages from the day he was born that he was worthless. Unneeded and unwanted by the world. Human surplus. And he internalized those messages until he came to see himself as good for nothing but shoplifting and lashing out. And for a cop to opt for shooting him to death as a possible first resort to a conflict, perhaps not the last resort? The final humiliation.

So when others say, “You don’t believe in personal responsibility at all then? He was a victim then?”. The underdog rooting-for worldview holding person will say it’s not that they don’t think he was wrong, but that it’s naïve to believe his actions were the sole cause of his death. Yes, shoplifting was the first domino to fall. Yes, it was wrong. But the actress Winona Ryder was caught shoplifting several years ago and she was likely treated a little differently by the authorities when she was caught. Disability attorneys collect a cut of social security disability checks from claimants who hired them even when the attorney played zero role in the case. The claimant believes it was money well spent because they think the attorney is the reason they were approved, but it was strictly their medical condition. It's robbery--a rose by any other name smells as sour. Wall Street masters of the universe conned people into buying mortgages they knew they couldn't pay off and watched bond prices soar knowing they could sell them off just before the game was up. One could easily argue that was shoplifting on a truly epic scale, and not one of them faced arrest, let alone six bullets. So while personal responsibility does matter, it’s possibly sanctimonious to site personal responsibility when similar irresponsible actions yield wildly dissimilar reactions depending on where someone stands on the social ladder. Possibly the Al Sharpton haters are right to say it’s not about race, but it’s most certainly about social class. And it that is the case, focusing on the dissimilar reactions of similar wrongful actions is not about blindly shielding oneself from reality, but rather properly diagnosing the fundamental relevant and irrelevant distinctions of reality.

But I regret to inform you that the above paragraphs were written—or should I say scribbled?--by a naïve, bleeding heart, deluded lost soul who has no idea what the real world is like. Call us when the spaceship lands, buddy! Those who are a bit more sober minded, those non-dreamers with their feet firmly planted on the ground know that everyone has free will and fifty wrongs don’t make a right. So if you CHOOSE to steal cigarlos and if you don’t fully cooperate with the cops and you happen to get shot…….oops. We need to thin the herd. Another tax draining loser that won’t be burdening society for years to come. A blessing in disguise. And this view is not so much pro death as it’s anti-stealing. If you don’t steal cigarlos, no cop ever shoots you, so in effect it was a suicide more than a homicide. These champions of free will and context-less, sociology-less hard line morality accordingly bend and reshape the forensic and eyewitness evidence the opposite way the dreaming liberals will bend and reshape the evidence. The cop clearly had no choice. There was no wrong doing. Period. But the key mantra from both sides: let’s never learn anything! 

But again, just to recap: everyone is full of it! We don’t know. There was no camera—we will never know exactly what happened. Ever. Fox News and MSNBC might as well each change their names to The Mystery Channel. And if I’m right in saying that our conclusions reveal more about our pre-existing views of the world than our diligence in studying the minute details of the evidence, we’re still left with questions, not answers. Which world view is right? Is it right to say that in a world filled with unpunished sinners, it’s shortsighted and hypocritical to call the demise of one punished sinner justice? Or is it right to say we’re the authors of our actions so any unfortunate reactions are the footnotes written by others, but they are only made possible by us, the one and only author? Thre is no invisible magnetic force which forces someone to rob a store, their own independent thoughts and emotions are the only driving force, so they bear sole responsibility and it's weak minded cowardice to blame socioeconomics. Therefore save your pity for the non-thieves, the ones who pay for their cancer causing cigar/cigarette hybrids with money they earned at Cinnabon. Who is right? I don’t know! And—don’t shoot the messenger--I don't think you do either. 

One of the eeriest things about adult life, the thing no one really warns you about when you’re a kid, is the realization that no one is truly in charge. One of my all time favorite lines is from Apocalypse Now. Martin Sheen comes along a bridge with chaotic gunfire between the Marines and the Viet Cong and he says to the first soldier he sees, “Who’s the commanding officer here?”. The soldier looks at him nervously and says, “Ain’t you?”. He then goes back to firing his machine gun. Perfect analogy for adult life! No one is in charge! Okay, people are in charge in an “all the world’s a stage” kind of way. Some play the role of being in charge, but they actually have little clue about how to steer the ship someone decided to let them captain. Bumbling idiots is perhaps a bit too strong, but if the shoe fits…. The board members in charge of Apple thought it would be an amazing idea to fire Steve Jobs in 1985—not knowing it would take him returning in the late 90’s to rescue the company from near bankruptcy. George Bush invaded Iraq having no idea for sure whether Saddam had WMD’s or whether the invasion would lead to democracy and peace in the Middle East or ISIS. It’s like the documentary of Robert McNamara calls it: the fog of war. You can’t see what will happen because there are so many variables it’s beyond human comprehension or prognostication, but you feel you have to act anyway…so you guess and pray. W. likewise went with his gut because he didn’t know! Much like he did while a student at Yale, he just guessed “C“. Obama also didn’t know whether healthcare reform would bring better health to America or bankruptcy. He acted not on the guaranteed assurance that he was doing the right thing, but rather the “audacity of hope”. And what is hope but an admission that we don’t know but we’re going to choose to believe the best?

But it’s not just our leaders who are clueless, I’m afraid. Who are the smartest guys on the planet? I’d say it’s either Howie Mandel or theoretical physicists. Too close to call. Let’s focus for a minute on the latter. Clearly they can tell us how the universe began, right? Everyone knows this: the Big Bang Theory. They even named a sitcom after it. Except…..what is it? A bunch of matter became too dense and exploded and then we all had cable TV. With some stuff happening in between, but brevity is the key to awesome blogging. But where did the matter come from in the first place? And isn’t one of the basic rules of science “nothing can be created or destroyed but only recycled”. So doesn’t that very rule almost nix the idea of the Big Bang being the true beginning of anything? Then there’s this thought—which I saw on the Science Channel a couple weeks ago—that the explosion might been from a black hole which had collected too much stuff. But what is a black hole? An invisible matter sucking, light sucking Death Star (that’s not really a star) which is formed after a very large star explodes. Another country heard from! So if it was a black hole that had reached its full seating capacity which caused the Big Bang, there had to have been a star beforehand so how is that the beginning of the universe? This is starting to sound like someone sent us the DVD for Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogalo before we had a chance to watch Breakin’. Or…I don’t know! And they don’t know! And although I don’t have a PhD any more than I have a JD, I think I can accurately sum up the totality of collective theories on the origin of the universe from nuclear physicists across the globe: “Beats the shit out of us. But we will totally get back to you on this”.    

(PS—Physicists have also theorized that we might actually be living inside a super massive black hole as we speak, but before I ponder that any deeper I may need to wait until they legalize marijuana in Connecticut. Maybe mushrooms). 

So politics, science, law…..what else are we clueless about? Oh, of course: religion. Religion is perhaps the motherload of people raging against their own confusion. I don’t know who to pity more: atheists or total, unquestioning devout, 110 percent believers. In either case, they are basically people who post reviews on Yelp of a restaurant they haven’t eaten at yet.

BELIEVER: My wife and I visited this establishment on Sunday and it was simply divine. The bread was heavenly and the house band sounded absolutely angelic. Their cover version of Hallelujah even blew away Jeff Buckley’s version. We were on cloud nine. If I had one small complaint it’s that I tend to prefer my maitre d’s to be a bit more clean cut and wear classier footwear than sandals.

ATHEIST: I kept reading rave review after rave review about this place but when I showed up it was a huge letdown. THERE WAS NOTHING THERE.

I think we can clearly see that both reviewers are batshit crazy. We just don’t know, do we? And if hope is our way of navigating through our sea of uncertainty in life, faith is our way of navigating through the uncertainty of the afterlife. And the ultimate slapstick comedy is when confused scientists go to war against confused religious extremists and vice versa. Other than contracting the first few pages of Genesis, for all we know science and religion are bedfellows. As I said earlier, maybe there was no true beginning of the universe, the Big Bang might been just the latest cycle after a previous cycle died. That’s a sort of religious idea. Many religions have theorized that our world is only the latest in many, many prior cycles. Maybe modern science is slowly proving them right. And the scientific idea that nothing is created or destroyed so maybe there WAS no real beginning of anything, it just always was? Well, religion offers a term for that too: eternity. So hey scientists and religious folks, why you gotta be so rude? Don’t you know they’re human too?

And I would probably be remiss if I didn’t note another way we try to build a beautiful house atop our foundation of uncertainty: love. The cousin of hope and faith. The world is full of old love songs passionately dedicated to future exes. But...how do you know you won’t change? Or the other person won’t change? Or that no one changes, but your perception of the other person or of yourself changes and you had no way to see it coming? Or that your relationship working depended on both of you not changing? Billy Joel once sang, “Don’t go changing / To try and please me”. He doesn’t perform that song anymore because it’s written about an ex he doesn’t want to think about. But Billy can be forgiven because as Bono once said, “Love is blindness / I don’t want to see / Won’t you wrap the night around me?”. If the man who is singlehandedly ridding Africa of famine and disease with his bare hands can’t figure out love, who can?? 

Well, I’m not certain of anything except that it’s getting late. In summary…..I don’t know. I’m clueless about how to end this blog which just illustrates the clueless nature of everything! Maybe my parting bit of advice (which will rival in its uselessness a  Dr. Phil pearl of wisdom): if someone tells you to get a clue, get them a mirror. I don’t have a clue, you don’t have a clue, they don’t have a clue. But it’s okay. We have out hope, faith, and, our love. Who needs a clue?

Heroin, Satan, and Derek Jeter: Together At Last

Hi, well I haven’t blogged you like a hurricane or even a 5-10 mile per hour gusty wind lately so I thought, “What better way to spend Lincoln’s or Washington’s birthday than by blogging nonsensical unsolicited opinions that no one will or should care about?”. In 2014 isn’t that even more American than staving off the British Empire or freeing the slaves?     

And on this most patriotic of days, what better topic than Hollywood celebrities? Let’s be honest: Hollywood is the only city in America that matters. Our movies and TV shows are our Number 1 export. (iPhones are technically an import). Detroit? A cesspool that you should probably drive a Honda through just so you know you won’t break down before reaching the exit ramp. Washington? A swamp full of swamp things. New York? The finance capital of the world: i.e., a glorified horse track full of parasites trying to make money off the innovation of others. Hollywood IS America. Hollywood stars are our true kings and queens, our ambassadors to the world, our trend setters, our bright beacon of hope and dreams in the “buy two and get the third 1/2 off” workaday reality of our lives!

Philip Seymour Hoffman. Oh for God’s sake. Granted, I saw The Master and I was so thoroughly depressed and creeped out I kind of wanted a bag of heroin myself. The guy was a great actor but you have to wonder if you can seemingly constantly play depressed guys and not get a little depressed. At some point is that all you get offered? Like, “This character seems borderline suicidal and tormented by deep, unsolvable existential riddles---get Phil Hoffman’s agent on the phone pronto!”. 

Wait, I’m sorry…..I was just assuming there were psychological factors that might influence people to become junkies. Like Kurt Cobain—another smack devotee who seemed terribly depressed. Luckily I’ve watched enough Dr. Drew to know this is wrong. Philip Seymour Hoffman had an illness. There was nothing volitional whatsoever about his heroin addiction. We might as well judge a cancer patient, a schizophrenic, or a hedge fund manager for being the way they are.

Sometimes I miss the old Dr. Drew from MTV’s Loveline when he was just offering highly professional, clinical advice to women complaining of painful sex due to their clitoris ring or guys complaining that real sex just didn’t quite measure up to the pure magic that is masturbation.

So, okay, it may be an illness if we look at it from a certain angle. Heroin is capable of making biochemical changes in the brain and a person so afflicted can therefore be labeled as suffering from an illness—and therefore must be shielded from our judgment. But could we also say this: Adam and Eve are sufferers of the illness of apple addiction so they should have been treated clinically on Eden Rehab, not banished from paradise and forced to deal with a fratricidal maniac of a son and the knowledge of spawning the whole “my screwed up parents messed everything up my life” mentality?

But, as with so many things, Satan is the answer. (Letting people think I’m a Satanist can’t hurt my blog hits so let’s just stick with that. Sex and Satan sell!). The devil himself may offer the key to sailing through the Scylla of harsh judgment and the Charybdis of clinical determinism. (If Sting can reference Scylla and Charybdis in The Police’s Wrapped Around Your Finger, why can’t I? Then again….Sting may not be a good starting point for any argument that one is not in fact a pseudo-intellectual twit, is it?). 

The problem with the illness argument is that while it explains the continuing use of heroin, it doesn’t seem to adequately explain why someone chose to do heroin in the first place. Are there innate biochemical processes in the brain that compelled the star of Capote and Boogie Nights to do heroin? I think I have trouble really buying that myself. But possibly what happened is he was at a big party—say the Magnolia world premiere or an American Buffalo opening night after-party—and someone offered him heroin. Kind of like Satan went out of his way to offer Eve the apple. Of course the serpent not only offered it, but he made a sales pitch: eat this and you will be like God! Maybe a heroin marketing agent told him, “Do this and you will SEE God!”.

So is it an illness to succumb to temptation? Is it biochemistry? I can’t believe it is. One can resist temptation…..but can we judge it? I say we can only judge it if a) we’ve been at parties where someone offered heroin and we politely declined, or b) we’ve stood naked in a pre-civilized paradise when a talking snake offered us a sweet fruit. I, personally, have never had either life experience, but would I have acted wisely if I had been tempted? I’d like to think so---but I used to go to parties and get way too drunk and I can’t say with 100 percent certainty that I would have made the smart choice. I might have thought, “Well, can William S. Burroughs, Lou Reed, Kurt Cobain, Lane Staley and God’s first power couple ALL be wrong?”. Only the good die young and temptation is the path all the cool kids choose! So maybe I would have gotten hooked too and ended up with this illness Dr. Drew and Pat Robertson talk about so much.  

In other news, Derek Jeter announced he’s retiring after this year. Can we make a new rule? You’re not allowed to announce you’re retiring until you’re actually retiring. I mean get ready for a season full of farewells. It’s going to be truly sickening. “Oh you sound like a bitter Red Sox fan?”. Bitter? Bitter about three World Series titles in the last decade? I don’t THINK so, mi amigo. Derek Jeter is a classy guy. He’s a winner. He always says the right thing. He’s a gamer. He gets it. He brings his lunch pail to work every day. He likes to get his uniform dirty. Every father and mother would love to have a son just like Derek Jeter. Global diamond production would quintuple if Derek Jeter decided to switch to a high fiber diet.

But that’s just the problem, isn’t it? Derek Jeter is so aggressively bland it’s almost shocking in its dimensions. I almost want to believe he’s being oddly subversive and we haven’t caught onto the joke. Like, “I’m so good at baseball and so good looking that I can act like a half human, half robot hybrid for two decades and you will love me all the more for it. Women will want me, men will want to be me, and John Sterling will want all of the above”. Derek Jeter is an assault on the very notion of personality and individuality. He’s a blank slate that we can write on ourselves! He’s a human Etch A Sketch. It surpasses the bounds of my imagination to understand just how content with the universe, just how comfortable in one’s ability to inside-out fastballs to right field for base hits, just how absolutely positive one must be that the female race is assigned a phone number for the express purpose of one day giving it to us that one would feel no need to even attempt to develop a personality. If Martians zeroed in their anthropological study of humans on #2 from the New York Yankees, he, she, or it would conclude that a personality is a consolation prize we give ourselves after the Santa Clause of life brings us coal for Christmas but it’s a useless decoration when we have more stocking stuffers than we know what to do with. Personality developing, blog writing lost souls must pretend they are not actors reading off a pre-written, audience tested script like everyone else. These sad fools actually imagine they are the script (or blog) writers themselves! Derek Jeter proves otherwise. Jete is a living rebuttal to those who don’t think we should take things one game at a time, stay within ourselves, and stay focused on what’s best for the ballclub. And who knows? Maybe somewhere deep down beneath that cool, calm, impenetrable layer of class and sportsmanship there is a complex, tortured, brilliant, creative soul silently screaming to get out if only Susan Waldman will hit the right buttons during her next Spring Training interview live from Legends’ Field. We will never know. But do we want to know? Do we even want our athletes to be people or mere archetypes of idealized People? Numbers and blank slates only? Baby faced, double play turning Rorschach ink blots?

But is he really that? Imageless? Guys who say they don’t care about image almost always have an image even if the image is having no image. Kurt Cobain used to claim that, as opposed to those shallow hair metal guys of the 80’s, he was just about the music! Last night Palladia showed a Nirvana show from 1991 and I was reminded that Kurt wore sweaters during concerts. If a punk rocker wearing a Cardigan on stage isn’t fostering an image I don’t know what is. Likewise Jeter may have actively sought praise more than he’s ever let on. In one of his most famous plays he dove into the stands to catch a foul pop against the Red Sox in 2004. This was the oddest play I’ve ever seen in my life. It really looked like it was not necessary for him to dive so aggressively into the stands after catching it. Pokey Reese of the Red Sox had made a similar play earlier in the game that did require him to go into the stands. It looked an awful lot like Jeter was consciously trying to top him—i.e., Derek was FISHING for praise later on. So maybe his eternal blandness just stems from being so desperately in need of love and worship that he won’t risk sullying that in any way with an even slightly offhand, eccentric remark? But why have I devoted paragraphs to the least interesting man on earth?

In further news—and to inexplicably reference Kurt Cobain for the third time in this gripping and thought provoking blog---what else can I say? Everyone is gay. A football player from Missouri came out as gay. So did actress Ellen Page. In both causes they are being lauded for their courage. In one case, they deserve it. The football guy, that is. A movie star? Sort of. But many people in Hollywood are either very liberal or very gay so I’m not sure it’s that big of a deal. Yes, she could risk losing out on roles because producers are worried about selling tickets to people in Iowa who have been told the Bible is anti-gay, pro-river of blood so they’re sticking with that story, but maybe gay rumors had already done that and she has been eclipsed by the likes of Jennifer Lawrence and Rooney Mara as the “spunky independent girl with a vulnerable side” anyway. So if that’s the case, there is probably little risk.

But I’m actually a little sad that Juno is a lesbian! And don’t give me that, “You do realize that Juno was a movie and she was an actress playing a fictional role, don’t you?”. Way to be a concrete thinker! We can’t help it: we do link our perceptions of actors and actresses in real life with the roles they play. Possibly it would have happened anyway as he reached middle age—a time of life when absolutely no one wanted to see him dancing in tighty whities to Bob Seger hits--- but Tom Cruise’s box office numbers seemed to sink the more he started to seem like a midlife crisis suffering, cradle robbing, couch jumping Scientologist. But this is inevitable. Even if actors think they entirely inhabiting characters, they are always doing so with the same voice, the same face, etc. So we can never TOTALLY separate the actor from the role even if we’re only linking them subconsciously. Like whenever Scarface comes on TV---which is to say, every day---in the back of my mind I sort of think, “Wow. What HAPPENED to Michael Corleone? He appears to have developed a Cuban accent, he’s started dropping way more F-bombs, and he started wearing much brighter clothing”. Michael Corleone and Tony Montana are as different as two (gangsters) can be. In real life Tony would have been as irrelevant to Michael as Fredo was at the end of Godfather II after he found out he had gotten in league with Hyman Roth. He wouldn’t have even let Tony clean his pool at his Lake Tahoe compound. Yet filtered through the movies, they are linked by the voice and face of Al Pacino. So they kind of are the same and not the same at the same time. If that makes any sense—which it probably doesn’t.

So yes, to SOME degree we have in fact learned that Juno is a lesbian. She doesn’t really love Paulie Bleeker! Or Michael Cera. Juno was sort of a masterpiece, I thought, because it was actually surprising. Most multi-plex movies don’t even try. Chuck Klosterman—a very funny writer—wrote a short story in which he his fictional alter-ego was on the verge of being fired as a newspaper movie critic because he gave every single movie 2 ½ stars. I thought this was hilarious because, honestly, as a regular moviegoer I’d say that’s exactly the rating 99 percent of movies should get. Just good enough to be mildly entertaining, but without any pesky risk taking which could potentially dampen audience word of mouth in Des Moines or Singapore. That’s the “artistic” goal of filmmakers today. (Who aren’t even using film anymore now that movie theaters are finally all digital).

Anyway, back to Juno. It was kind of a thriller in disguise. Thrillers, of course, are so often based on a “twist”. This trend exploded in the 90’s: Tyler Durden in Fight Club was a figment of Ed Norton’s schizophrenic imagination! The kid in The Sixth Sense “sees dead people” because Bruce Willis is dead! The Usual Suspects’ Kevin Spacey is Kaiser Soze!! Those twists were great….these days they are usually lame and derivative. So unlike this blog.  

But Juno did the same thing. Make a movie about an accidental teen pregnancy, make the girl an ultra-hipster (with a tomboy and……fine, maybe slightly lesbian vibe), and make her insist she doesn’t give a damn about the kid who impregnated her. She was just bored one night. THEN let him go to the prom with another girl and watch her fold her hand as soon as he plays this Jealousy Card and tell him she’s in love with him and make the end of the movie about that! They sing a duet together on her front porch right before the screen fades to black! Unlike every conventional romantic comedy ever made, the “love story” that this movie ended up being came as a genuine surprise, a twist that miraculously worked.

And of course NOT casting a blonde girly girl made it work all the more. And NOT casting a manly man with smoldering charisma made it work further still. This was the greatest male fantasy movie of all time! Be a shy, nerdy kid who still proceeds to impregnate this super cute girl after a mere one time of having unprotected sex (the virility of this kid!) and despite all her attempts to resist your charms, have her break down and confess her undying love to you!

But she likes girls.

Damnit, Hollywood. You have failed me for the last time. I preferred the illusion of Ellen Page who sort of seemed like she could be gay but wasn’t and so there’s this weird, uncategorizable thing about her to the one who is actually gay. I don’t see it as a moral issue one way or the other, but it make her more……again, categorizable. Like, “Oh, now I get it. Slap that label on her and move on”. It’s not quite Derek Jeter bland, predictable categorizeability (not a word but it should be) but closer than before.

The best comparison might be, oddly enough, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Clearly he is not gay. A guy who rose to fame injecting steroids in his buttocks, flexing for photo shoots, wearing skintight speedos, waxing his body, and rubbing baby oil all over himself is CLEARLY all man. But like Ellen Page in Juno, Arnold’s success as an action star stemmed from his contradictions. Whether by instinct or carefully thought out strategy (okay, probably the former) Arnold understood the Teddy Roosevelt method of action star acting: speak softly and carry a big stick. Too many action stars not only punch guys in the face, shoot them in the forehead, toss them out 50^th  floor office windows, but they ACT LIKE JERKS ABOUT IT. Arnold? Always impeccable manners. Always soft spoken. A gentle giant. Take even his famous scene from The Terminator: a guy gives him lip, doesn’t give him the answer he’s looking for, so he calmly, quietly says, “I’ll be back”. Then he gets in his car and drives it through the (conveniently) all glass front enclosure of the building. Then he’s back. He had just informed him—out of courtesy—that he could expect to see him back real soon. What a nice guy. He never resorted to name calling or giving him the evil eye. I mean does he LOOK like Steven Seagull? Arnold could wreak havoc and destroy entire armies, cities, alien races, barbarian tribes, or whatever the situation called for but he had impeccable table manners! He was a droll, at times multi-lingual Derek Jeter with far more longball ability.

So actually the real life image-shattering move for Arnold wasn’t really him sleeping with his maid. Okay, that was not cool. But his action star image existed on a separate plane entirely from issues of marital fidelity one way or the other. No, the image shatterer would be if Arnold was caught on camera loudly insulting a DMV worker who had just told he had been standing in the wrong line for the past 85 minutes and needed to get in the back of the correct line or if he was seen stomping his feet on the ground after being told by a Genius he should have bought Apple Care if he had wanted his iPhone’s shattered screen fixed free of charge. THAT would have flown directly in the face of his movie image. So thank you Arnold for sleeping with your maid, your fans owe you a debt of gratitude.

Wait, that came out wrong.

Man, we’ve covered a lot of ground today. I hardly know how to wrap things up but I’ll try: heroin is a forbidden poppy that is bad for you in the long run but makes you feel awesome at the time, Derek Jeter is good for you but also flavorless like Brussels sprouts, Juno shows us we can never trust a girl named after a Roman goddess when she tells us she loves us, and sometimes you just prefer a down to earth gal with a mop over these prissy Kennedy clan members in their pants suits.  

Or something like that.