Criticult.Com

So continuing to provide me with evidence that Hollywood needs to be burned to the ground for the good of the world of cinema comes word that Brett Ratner (excuse me, Brett FUCKING Ratner) plans to bring the same "magic" to the Beverly Hills Cop series that he brought to the Rush Hour (and X-Men) series.

Fuck. Ducks.

So let me get this straight. Eddie Murphy, who hasn't had a movie that was worth a shit since Bowfinger, is teaming with Brett "I took over the reins of X-Men 3 and managed to make the worst comic book movie since Dolph Lundgren's Punisher" Ratner to resurrect a franchise that was PREVIOUSLY resurrected with the abomination (and cleverly titled) Beverly Hills Cop 3? So now Hollywood is re-launching series that ALREADY HAD RELAUNCHES?

Piss off.

Seriously, this has got to stop. What GOOD can come of Beverly Hills Cop 4? Will Danny Glover pop up occasionally to say "I'm too old for this shit."? My GOD. I could get through "Indiana Jones and the Not Really an Indiana Jones Movie but Good Enough in the Kingdom of George Lucas' Fucking Obsession with the 1950's" purely on the charisma of Harrison Ford and some great action scenes. But THIS is just too much. Eddie Murphy jumped over the shark so many times he's a frequent flyer.

And FUCK Brett Ratner right in his stupid face. X-Men 3 was a goddamn travesty and if you disagree, I will fight you.

They should just call it Beverly Hills Cop 4: Meh and move on.

Labels: Brett Ratner, Eddie Murphy, meh

There comes a time with every decade – usually 20 years on or so – where pop culture, ever more out of original ideas, decides to strip mine a previous generation's formative years for cultural riches.


As you may or may not have noticed it's been the 1980's turn for some time now. Having experienced my most coagulative years during this time this in some ways reinforces the sense of nostalgia we all feel to some degree for the past and in other ways sickens me immensely. Few things make you feel old and insignificant faster than watching something like The Wedding Singer and hearing yourself say “You know there were more than five songs written between 1981 and 1990.”


Or, watching the recent NBC remake of Knight Rider, wondering why it sucked so hard, and then remembering – Knight Rider was always garbage. You just didn't realize it when you were twelve.


And then there's another, seldom mentioned by product of the 1980s that like Chernobyl and Fine Young Cannibals nobody wants to talk about but to this day has left an indelible scar across modern society that may never be healed.


I speak of course about that wretched form of social Marxism called Political Correctness. Now permanently stamped onto society's back end like a bad graduation night tattoo, believe it or not Political Correctness did not always exist. Oh, it's been a part of leftist thinking since early in the 20th Century but it didn't really begin to permeate American culture and manifest itself into the law books and the general social lexicon until the 1980's.


Great. I was born just in time.


You remember when fraternity movies were funny because they were able to make fun of how exclusionary and yes – sometimes racist many fraternities are? (Yes, satire works best with holding a mirror up - tongue in cheek - to the ugly truth). Do you remember when hard rock was more fun because it was sexist and apolitical? (Anyone who takes that sort of excess seriously has their own issues. The password is: repression!) Do you remember when people were just black, white or Asian instead of Something-American? (Yet the people who were here originally aren't referred to by their tribal association, just ubiquitously as 'Native Americans'. Another gift from their European conquerors!) When the only girls on the field during football games were holding pom-poms? (Reporters used to wait till after the game to ask players how they 'feel'.) When Ace was the place with the friendly hardware man? (Yet they still use the song...) Or how about when 'developmentally challenged' people were simply retarded?


Really, despite the available pejorative meaning, 'retarded' already means 'developmentally challenged'.


Yes, those were simpler times.


All that has changed now – people feel that by limiting what we can say or how we say it that it will somehow prevent us from also thinking it and thereby eliminate it from existence. If you can prevent people from expressing what they're thinking, it will somehow keep them from thinking it. You know, the way placing electrical tape over your check engine light will fix your engine. Slathering a nice layer of socially repressive cement into the faults between us will do us more good than actually talking about them.


Yes, the virulent social deconstruction that is Political Correctness is pernicious not just because it aims to homogenize society into a bunch of docile, myopic intellectual peasants – it also threatens to drive the way real people think and act underground, making normal human behavior seem subversive.


Why do you suppose shows like The Simpsons, South Park or Family Guy are considered so subversive – or for that matter are animated? Because animation is still considered an innocent form of entertainment by most Americans and therefore is – ironically – one of the last refuges of free thought in American society. A live action show could never get away with the things the Griffin family does on Family Guy. But the truly sad thing is how many of us enjoy watching a cartoon family think and act the way most of us already do not as an act of admission but because the subversion lies in pretending we're not really watching ourselves!


But there's a point to this intellectual treadmill I am on and I should get to it. The widespread tidal forces in society that beg us not to offend one another by thinking honestly, acting true to our nature or speaking forthrightly have now begin to infest the food we eat. I now know the end of Western Civilization is truly at hand. When even your food begins spouting Marxist pabulum at you it won't be long before the crossing guard is goose stepping your kids cross the street. I speak now of fortune cookies.


I ordered Asian-American® food today and after finishing my spicy shrimp whatever it was found a couple of fortune cookies. Curious, I opened them to find the following two sayings:

Huh? Okay, full disclosure – I have eaten at this place before and have noticed that all their fortune cookies are full of soporific blather like that. I remember reading somewhere – and it may be myth – that the normally honest, occasionally thought provoking Confucianism of traditional fortune cookie sayings like...









...was off putting for many people, to the extent that fortune cookies more commonly appear stocked with hackneyed nonsense like what I found. Great, so first of all are you telling me people actually think that a dessert can predict your future? Second, you're telling me they believe it to the point that like a true friend, they'd rather their dessert coddle them with banality rather than inform them with the truth?


Yes, it's true. Your food is now PC. Since the key to self improvement – as an individual or a society is to face your weaknesses and shortcomings, come to terms with them honestly and grow as a result is too hard, we prefer to cover it all up with revisionism and euphemism. Most people used to be lazy, unmotivated or stupid. Now everyone has ADHD! Just take a magic pill that removes your personality and not only will you become less ignorant, you'll no longer be responsible for your constant lack of achievement!


No, you can't call that person handicapped, even though 'handicapped' simply means 'disabled'. You need to call them 'disabled', which of course means 'handicapped'. Rejoice! You're not a 'trash man', you're a 'sanitation engineer'! Not only would I love to hear Stephen Hawking explain some of the governing scientific principles of 'sanitation engineering', I'd like to point out that 'trash man' means 'man who picks up trash'. That's what you do. If you don't like it then do something about it rather than relying on me to soften the blow by calling you something you're not.


And one more thing – and I am talking to you, Jesse Jackson - I'm not African-American (for those under 30 - no, that's not really me in my profile photo). I've never set foot in Africa in my life and my blood is enough of a social cocktail of influences I'm comfortable simply calling myself – are you sitting down? - an American.


And if you don't like it, here's a fortune for you:




Now there's something you could still say in 1985. I think I'll go pop in The A-Team season one and fondly reminisce about the America I knew as a boy.

Labels: Family Guy, fortune cookies, George Peppard, retard

I find it amusing that media pundits, desperate to find something to talk about now that the Obama/Wright controversy(?) has started to finally wind down, think that the box office performance of Iron Man will be affected by the release earlier this week of Grand Theft Auto IV.

In case you have been living with Osama bin Laden in a cave, I should tell you that Iron Man is the movie that people that don't like movies plan to see. The super-hero flick that your comic hating friends/family/and significant other are beating down the door to get tickets to.

These experts reached this conclusion based on the preposterous theory that Halo 3 affected the poor box office performance of The Heartbreak Kid back in September. Yes, that must have been the problem. Well done, folks. You've solved the mystery.

This is why media experts are fucking tossers.

The Heartbreak Kid did poorly because it looked like a shit movie. Iron Man will do well because it looks fucking spectacular and Robert Downey Jr. rocks whatever movie he deigns to take part in. If you disagree, watch Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and get back to me.

So no, I don't think there is a correlation here, people. Move along.

I don't know what is more surprising, that Motley Crue is back in their original lineup and STILL has an album coming out before the mythical Chinese Democracy, or that Vince manages to get through the song without skipping every other word.

All bullshit aside, this song is pretty damn catchy. I've been a fan of Motley Crue since, well, since the beginning so I gotta admit it's pretty damn cool it's 2008 and they got a new track out. And if you haven't read their book The Dirt yet I can only say get your ass (or mouse) to the book selling establishment of your choice and rectify the situation. That book is the unofficial guide on how to be a proper rock star. Oh, those glorious bastards.

Labels: motley crue, music, video

I have a lot of friends.

Or, I should say I have a lot of different kinds of friends – the numerical count probably isn’t that impressive. But I’ve always viewed most of the people I know as acquaintances – you know, the type of people you’d probably give a lift to the airport but you’d never lend money to.

Incidentally, I wouldn’t recommend lending money to your friends either but that’s another story for another day.

So anyway as I said I have many different kinds of friends from all over the social spectrum and this weekend I had some friends of the jet-setter variety come into town. I have spent most of the last few days (enjoyably) socializing with fairly well off forty-somethings who spend a lot of time traveling to exotic global destinations and eating at classy restaurants where they serve things I often can’t pronounce and certainly can’t afford more than once a month.

So this morning at brunch - yes, it turns out that once you pass a certain income level there is a magical land where people go to art shows, travel overseas at will, drive cars that park themselves and have discovered an ancient long lost extra meal called 'brunch' - we were having a conversation about crime – specifically career hoodlums like gypsies, confidence men and racketeers. It was pointed out that more often than not these types of people are extremely intelligent and in some cases downright gifted.

Why, it was suggested, could such people not use their talents for goodness instead of badness?

I pointed out that I once had a similar discussion with a friend who was a law enforcement officer and he explained that many such people insist it’s simply easier than going straight. One of my friends replied:

“Why would you want to spend your life looking over your shoulder?”

Another replied: “Sure, they don’t have to pay taxes.”

Well, last time I checked everyone has something waiting for them over their shoulder. Without exception, everyone on the planet has a wake up call coming sooner or later – a nasty surprise of the cosmic bitch-slap variety that will turn your life in a different direction, turn it upside down or maybe just plain end it.

I am not saying you need to run around in a panic about the fact that one day your parents will die, you’ll wreck your car or your appendix might explode suddenly. I am just saying you need to be aware that negative shit doesn’t just happen to other people whose lives you happen to disapprove of.

Then again, a great Jedi once said that what we consider to be the truth often depends on our perspective – in this case globe trotting upper middle class white guys without an apparent care in the world. I’m not trying to sound like a bleeding heart liberal but let’s see YOU just wake up tomorrow and just change careers at the drop of a hat. Let’s be honest – many career criminals sort of end up that way through happenstance, environment or just dumb luck and they aren’t thinking about convenient ways to get out of paying taxes – sometimes when you’re born into a world of shit and that’s just how it is.

I am not saying that life isn’t about choices, and of course if you’re a criminal you do have at any time the choice to ‘just say no’ and walk away from your life of crime and you know, just go legit right? Maybe, maybe not. I suppose I could just wake up tomorrow morning and decide to be a jet pilot, but I have a feeling it simply isn’t that easy.

It’s cake for a 45 year old investment banker who already owns two houses and drives a Lexus to say to a career criminal: “Why don’t you just take your skills as a mob accountant and use them for something else instead?”

Ok, I’ll tell you what. I will play the part here of fictional hood Jimmy 'Fingers' Vineroni, who has just been busted running a numbers racket in Las Vegas.

“Hey you bet, mister GQ! Great idea! I’ll go legit! I’ll just quit tomorrow and go straight to a bank for a small business loan, or better yet to a fortune 500 company like yours for an interview. I can see it now; they ask me ‘So, Jimmy Fingers, what skills do you think you can bring to the investment firm of Goldstein, Goldberg and Goldman?’ And I’ll say to them: ‘Well, I have an extensive background in graft, extortion, racketeering and fraud so I’m good with people and I know how to make large sums of money disappear for long periods of time. I can guarantee you a reasonable rate of return on your investment in me.”

As you can probably guess, this is why many people like this find it easier and more dignifying to just do what they do until they get caught or killed, rather than go out into the cruel world and end up wearing the blue vest at Wal-Mart. When all you’ve ever done is swindle little old ladies out of their life savings, you may or may not hate what you do but you also aren’t likely to find a legitimate gig outside the French fry making or gas-pumping industries, so why clean up your act? Besides, if and when you're caught you do a little time, find another racket on the inside and when you get out go right back to what you were doing.

It's not the way I personally would want to live but like anything, I imagine you get used to it.

Needless to say you should have seen the way these people looked at me. I’m not sticking up for criminals; I’m just saying that the longer you are exposed to only one point of view the harder it is to accept that there are others. You also have to understand that while these people are my friends they're almost all considerably older and better off than I am so I barely fit in with them.

The most far away place I've been in the last few years is Madison, Wisconsin, my car does not have a number for a name and although I like a four star joint as much as the next guy, my usual idea of fine dining is an evening at ESPN Zone with the type of girl who is more likely to be able to belch the National Anthem than she is to know Gucci from Prada.

I guess I just am used to looking at the world from multiple perspectives, and ready to accept the possibility that mine may not be the right one. It seems to me that's the best way to even begin to understand this planet.

Or, in the words of Jimmy Fingers, “That’s easy for you to say.”

Now if you’ll excuse me it’s late – I have some money to print.

Labels: commentary