CSotD: The Critics Raved. (Not in the good way.)
Skip to comments
I could start and end with this Tom Toles piece, which not only summarizes our incoherent, solipsistic foreign relations stance but also captures the same tendencies in Dear Leader.
It's no surprise that a man who lies incessantly about things a third-grader could prove were false — like claiming not to have spent the night in Moscow when records prove he did — would simply trim his sails to whatever wind blows at the moment.
We want a deal with North Korea? Any concession becomes a major victory, even if it's only a lukewarm pledge to quit testing.
We want to spark a war with Iran? Any treaty, no matter how comprehensive, no matter how well-crafted, no matter how many allies have signed on, is a horrible failure.
I've said before that, if Trump tells you it's raining, you should look out the window. But it really is a mystery how even his most faithful deplorables can continue to believe in him. I guess Elvis has reassured them, while he was showing them around the set where the moon landings were faked.
And why shouldn't they trust in Trump, if, as Bob Englehart notes, they can ignore the clear teachings of Jesus in favor of living the permanently forgiven life?
I could understand it if they would periodically prostrate themselves and admit their shortcomings, but they honestly swallow the notion that calling yourself "Christian" requires no further action — that "accepting Jesus" doesn't demand living according to what he preached.
Trump was raised on the gospel of prosperity, in which material success is both the result of and the proof of being seen as righteous in the eyes of the Lord. It's the opposite of a religion in which you must struggle to imitate the Lord, but it's genuinely a real thing.
Of course, accepting Trump as your earthly savior also involves pure faith, which means paying no attention to the news or to the niggling little voice that says, "How could he say that when the facts are so clearly the opposite?"
It's the same mindset that can explain lipstick on a collar, or assurances that he'll never raise his hand to you again.
Love is blind. Willfully so, in too many cases.
The creative urge
Zits is supposed to send old empty-nesters into a reverie of nostalgia, and the arc that actually began yesterday is doing just that.
Probably not the nostalgia that Scott and Borgman had in mind.
There was a brief, odd moment in the 60s when everybody seemed to be making movies. Or, to be more specific, getting stoned and making movies.
It somewhat preceded hand-held video, though "200 Motels" was notable for being one of the first, if not the first, video-to-big-screen production, and also for being the most stoned-appearing movie despite Zappa's rejection of drugs (which apparently didn't diminish the chaos.).
But you could walk into the theater completely straight and come out tripping.
And also find out that the guys from the Turtles were a whole lot more strange — in a good way — than you had suspected.
Other efforts were more coherent if not any less strange: "Candy," Terry Southern's semi-pornographic takeoff on "Candide" (which was, of course, semi-pornographic to begin with) featured a shopping list of well-known actors (including Ringo Starr, who was also in "200 Motels") seemingly all totally stoned and a screenplay that may have been written on an index card.
And I don't know what the studio heads insisted on doing to "Easy Rider" before they allowed it to be released, aside from apparently adding everything after "We blew it, man," because you couldn't just end a road trip with a philosophical conversation around a campfire contemplating the meaning of freedom.
Tacking on that "Murderous Crackers" ending raises the question of whether a movie is worse when everyone is stoned or when everyone is cynically pragmatic.
And I don't know if everyone shooting Norman Mailer's "Beyond the Law" was drunk rather than stoned when they filmed it, but they sure were well over .08 when they debuted the rough cut at Notre Dame's Sophomore Literary Festival.
Most of these flicks made "The Blair Witch Project" look like "Citizen Kane," but I still like the idea that you could get really stoned and pretend to be Eric Rohmer or Francois Truffault.
I like the idea more than most of the resulting footage, mind you, but watching those movies is like going through your old files, including the things nobody would publish but which are milestones of their moments.
I'm in a student film somewhere, as a chap flipping a coin in the air and catching it until the protagonist walks past and snatches it out of the air. I wasn't even sure it had ever been edited until two years later when someone said they'd seen me in it.
Anyway, good luck, Pierce. See you in Cannes.
This leads quite naturally to the current xkcd, which should be blown up and mounted over a whole lot of computers.
I took a fiction-writing class every semester, less to learn anything than to ease my workload and get academic credit for what I was going to be doing anyway.
What I accidentally learned, however, was valuable. We'd submit our (mimeographed!) stories anonymously, each I think getting two shots a semester. We'd all take these handouts home, read them and then the class would critique and discuss each while the author sat quietly and unknown (except for being the strangely quiet one).
What you learned, or should have, was that, if one or two people didn't get it, that was on them. If more than a couple of people didn't get it, that was on you.
It may have been the most valuable thing I learned in college.
And I sure know a lot of people who didn't.
(Want a look? Here's what "good but not good enough" looks like.)
We also wrote poetry
Comments 3
Comments are closed.