I had a great New Year's Eve, except for the nagging belief that there must be something better to yell at midnight, especially if you're at a party. Some suggestions:
Oh god, the Prophecy!
Begin phase three!
Who farted?
Oh god, the ransom deadline!
Naked time!
I want a divorce!
Time to steal first base!
Movie Review: The Reader
Me and the gf wanted to keep the good times rolling as 2009 got underway, so we took in an afteroon screening of "The Reader." SPOLIERS BELOW!
This is a touching movie about a teenage boy who discovers love with a vulnerable older woman (Kate Winslet). Their passionate affair flames out, as all passionate affairs do. But their bond persists, and he returns his debt to her decades later by helping her erase her lifelong shame of illiteracy.
Also, at some point the woman killed 300 Jews. It's a real feel-good movie, and it should lead to lots of great post-movie discussions about first love, and passion, and whether people who commit atrocities are living in denial or the only only way they can exist is by rewiring their worldview to the point where they honestly believe they have done nothing wrong.
Just be warned: it's not a first date movie. There's a lot of nudity, and who wants to have that awkward discussion?
Accentuate the positive
Kate Winslet is (seriously) really good in "The Reader," even doing a German accent the whole movie. The movie (which takes place mostly in Germany) is entirely in English, with all the German characters speaking accented English, and all the books used by the characters are printed in English. Contrast this with "Valkyrie" (spoiler: they don't kill Hitler), in which Tom Cruise speaks Americanese and many of the other Nazis seem to be British.
Subtitles probably would knock about 80 percent off box-office receipts and deprive you of the acting talents of Tom Cruise, so I can totally understand shooting a movie about foreigners in English. But when will we see an artist with enough integrity and boldness to create a Nazi movie in which all the Germans speak English ... with Japanese accents?!!?!?!
Comedians sometimes struggle with promotional biographies. You want people to know who you are, you might want to be funny, and you don't want to sound like everyone else. I have finally found a man who has mastered the art. From the Jokes.com (Comedy Central) page for Kevin Hart:
He walks into a room and the atmosphere immediately changes. Awed by his immodest warmth and sex appeal, the conversation lowers to buzz, the barometric pressure rises and the air grows thick with anticipation and want.
A few points here: "immodest" warmth? That's "immodest," as in "lacking modesty," or "arrogant." What exactly does arrogant warmth look like? Is that where you greet your friend, never breaking eye contact as you fondle his wife's boobs at the same time? Second, barometric pressure rises? He CREATES HIGH PRESSURE SYSTEMS. He might be linked to global warming. Someone should chart this. All that thick, want-soaked air could be affecting the jet stream. Also, I don't know that I've ever been to a comedy show where the air grows thick with "want." I think that's a Victorian euphemism for erections.
Kevin Hart is electrifying. Stardom radiates from him like a New York billboard as he lights up the stage and side swaps his audience with his unique comedic humor.
I don't know that I've ever seen stardom radiate from a billboard, and for the record, I have seen the huge Louie Anderson billboard outside of the Excalibur in Las Vegas. And why a New York billboard? Are New York billboards better than other billboards, like, say, the Louie Anderson billboard outside of the Excalibur in Las Vegas? Also, I do not know what "side swap" means. A google search seems to indicate that it's a juggling term. If his show is an erotic juggling act, I would actually be very interested to see it. I don't think that's been done yet. And that it includes comedic humor, as opposed to the many other kinds of non-comedic humor ... wow.
Undaunted by his chances of being accepted on the "tough" comedy circuit, Kevin debuted on amateur night at a Philadelphia comedy club. The audience welcomed him into their hearts and Hart was hooked. Kevin quit his job as a shoe salesman for an athletic shoe store chain and began chasing his dream of becoming a star. Comedy swims through his bloodstream right along side red and white cells.
Hard to believe that he wasn't managing that shoe store, what with all the anticipation and electricity and want. I am worried about his blood pressure though, since his veins are holding red and white cells, AND comedy. But I like how the bio breaks down what's in a bloodstream, or at least Hart's bloodstream. He's got white blood cells. That means no AIDS, ladies. It's a coded message especially for you. Speaking of coded messages, I don't know why "tough" is in quotes. Maybe "tough" is code for "black," or maybe this is the undaunted, sarcastic way of saying that the comedy circuit could never be tough for any man with control over ... uh, barometric pressure, I guess.
I have never seen Kevin Hart's show, and it might be great. But I know, for sure, that it is not funnier than this bio, because nothing could be.
A side note: Kevin Hart is in "Soul Plane," which my younger brother informs me has one of the most degrading portrayals of white people ever put on screen (in the embodiment of Tom Arnold). I don't know if that includes "Birth of a Nation," but I can't wait to find out.
Next month, ITR 5 comes to Indian Head, Maryland! I'm so excited I made a commercial.
Millions Now! Ask me How!
Among my many successful projects for 2008 was my effort to become a world-class stock investor. And now, because you are my close personal friend, I'm passing my can't-miss secrets on to you!
1) Don't research too much. The real secret of the world-class stock investors is that they don't overthink things. Michael Jordan doesn't spend hours calculating the angle of a jump shot -- he just does it! What you want to do is take a quick look at a stock. Does the ticker symbol seem pleasing? Does the company have a respectable sounding name (i.e., is the word "Corporation" or "Incorporated" anywhere in the title)? If so,buy it! The financial "experts" who got us into this economic mess have come up with all kinds of confusing figures to scare off regular Joes -- things like "P/E ratios" and "profits" and "52-week low." Who knows what that stuff means? Apparently not those jerks on Wall Street, am I right?
If you're one of those people who absolutely needs to get some research, don't worry -- there are lots of people who already did it, and they post regularly to message boards on Google finance. They'll be happy to tell you what stocks you should be buying. They'll even tell you about the luxury cars they bought with all their previous huge stock deals! The Wall Street Journal is worthless next to the collective wisdom of benzdaddy12, pumperdawg and yachtzman58. Trust the REAL experts.
2) Buy low! If you see a stock trading at anywhere near the 52-week low, buy it! Simple logic says that nothing could possibly stay bad forever! Things will always improve! Any stock that goes from $62 to 5 cents in three weeks has some good karma on the horizon!
3) If you hear a lot about a stock in the news, you should probably buy it! When people talk about a stock in the news, that means it's hot! There's no such thing as bad publicity! Buy!
If those three tips aren't enough, I have a very special offer:
4) Pay me $250 a month for stock tips! Consider this: in one year of investing, I have consistently underperformed the market by 20 percent! I can anticipate the exact point at which a stock's upward swing will end, which is when I jump in and buy! I'm so finely in tune with market psychology that I can sell right before a dramatic recovery! Experience is on my side! For just $250 a month, I will e-mail you all my latest transaction reports, allowing you to profit from my special intuitive relationship with our nation's financial markets!
You can't afford not to do this!
Snuggie!
I finally saw the commercial for the Snuggie, the amazing new product that finally solves the centuries-old design flaw in the blanket. Please click through and watch.
How different would western civilization have been had the warlords of northern Europe been able to use their hands at night, instead of burrowing under mountains of sleeveless pelts? We'd all be drinking a lot more grog. My favorite part of the ad is when the whole family is sitting at the football game, and they look like they came from either the Spanish Inquisition, or the orgy in "Eyes Wide Shut." Sexy.
There are lots of things around my house that need improving:
Pillows. They're soft and pillowy, but how can you eat when you're lying on your side? Can't they build some kind of flexible, cushy trough for snack foods directly into the pillow surface?
Towels. Sure, they help you get dry, but I feel like I can never play tennis, run windsprints or dunk a baseketball when all I'm wearing is a towel. Is there some way we can make the towel more suitable to intense physical activity, like making it in the shape of shorts, and out of different material? I'm wasting minutes of exercise time every day!
Robes. They always open in the front, which makes it very embarrassing for company when I want to sit on the couch naked except for some non-closed garment. Can't they make a robe that opens in the ... oh, wait. Never mind.
Somewhere in the mix with strong nuclear force, weak nuclear force, e-m force and gravity is 5th-grade perv humor. You can't stop it. You can't contain it. It will relentlessly destroy us all.
And so I do not envy anyone with the job of fighting it. That said, a Web editor at Washingtonpost.com goofed up yesterday:
Heh. Heh heh.
Heh heh heh.
Heh.
They're Back!
By the way, Congress is back! I read all about it at my occasional journalism gig yesterday. All the new members get sworn in today, and then the old members pick out who they want in their pledge class, throw hoods over their heads and drag them off to be hazed. Usually that means a few naked laps around the Capitol, but if anyone turns up dead in the Roosevelt Island swamp with a beer bong lodged in an inappropriate orifice I'm sure you'll read about it in the papers.
The other big thing for Tuesday is that the House has to approve the rules for the 111th Congress. This is a very boring process, as the rules usually involve legislative procedures, committee assignments and ZZZZZZ ...
In the the true spirit of change, in the interest of an honest and true government, I beg you, Congress, adopt only one set of rules.
A few weeks ago, I was lucky enough to run into Brett Leake (he's one of the podcast interviews). Brett has muscular dystrophy and uses an electric wheelchair. Last year he upgraded his chair to a "standing" model -- it can actually get him in an upright position, which is good from a health perspective. As a result of this, he's been dealing with a new problem: for the first time in a while, he's had to keep his pants up. When I saw him, he was wearing suspenders. You don't see suspenders much these days, so I immediately commented on them.
"Thanks," he said. "I wanted to so something to make me distinctive. I'm thinking about becoming the suspenders comic."
New Podcast: Guy Torry
The first podcast of 2009 is up. Guy Torry was fun to talk to, even if we covered almost nothing of profound social relevance. He met Magic Johnson!
The conversation does veer into the raunchy a few times, so if that's not your thing, you've been warned.
Host of Hosts
Interviewing and chatting with headliners the last seven months has been interesting. It's not quite Frost/Nixon, so the interview goes wherever the headliner wants it to go. For example, when I was preparing my notes, I didn't plan on asking Guy Torry about boobs, but somehow it ended up there. You have to go along, since the main point of the podcast (which the Improv graciously lets me do) is to promote the comedians.
I'm pretty tough to offend, and I can also fake intelligent discussions, so I think most of my bases are covered ... still, it's always an adventure.
There is something very cruel about showbusiness; it dangles the promise of wealth and fame always just out of reach, and so some people can never really resist going for it. You see people succeeding or failing around you, you don't understand why, and all that gets you through is the belief that maybe if you work a little harder the breaks will magically come to you. That you're doing it voluntarily makes it unsympathetic.
Even worse is the situation of people who HAVE made it, and then lost it ... how could you ever go back to a regular life knowing what you'd lost? That's the situation of Mickey Rourke in "The Wrestler," and it's very, very depressing. Beyond fame and glory, wrestling can destroy your body, so if you haven't implemented a successful exit strategy by the time your body starts failing (in the movie, he has a heart attack), then what else is there?
Randy "The Ram" tries to pick up the pieces once he's forced into retirement; he wants to make good with his estranged daughter, and he tries to get some romance in his life by hitting on an aging stripper (another profession where you need an exit strategy. It should be noted that Marisa Tomeii is a fine actress, but it was horrible casting to make her the stripper, because she doesn't look broken down at all). But at this point in his life, the only way he can relate to people is as a performer.
This isn't a happy movie at all, because apparently Darren Aronofsky is on some mission to destroy all vestiges of hope within humanity. He's the anti-Obama! It is very well acted, but I'm not sure how it will be Mickey Rourke's "comeback" movie. Mostly because he still looks like a truck ran over his face. Repeatedly. Ron Perlman got around that in "Hellboy," but there aren't too many movies where being hideous is a great asset.
So: Me likey. But you won't walk away feeling groovy. Plan accordingly.
TV Review: 24
"24" is back! And in the first 3 minutes, they already started getting into wildly implausible scenarios, like a Senate subcommittee hearing that starts at 8 a.m. Why not just have flying dragons attack Washington?
I am enjoying that the show is now in D.C., because when they drive to different parts of town, I will KNOW if their transit time is total horses***. I hope at least one episode includes Jack waiting out a motorcade for 30 minutes while trying to drive two blocks. I think that would really build dramatic tension. Torture is almost justifiable once you've waited out a motorcade. That rage has to go somewhere.
Facebook Relationship Status Suggestions
Nothing brightens your day like logging on to Facebook and seeing that someone has gone from "In a Relationship" to "It's Complicated." Here's some free advice: Advertising to the world, and your significant other, that "it's complicated" usually means "single" is just around the corner! I have often wondered what is meant by "It's complicated," and since the possibilities are endless, I suggest the following clarifying categories:
Friends With a Capital F
Open Relationship, As Long As I Stay Away from Her Friends
Will Be In a Relationship As Soon as the Bloodwork Comes Back
Stalking, With High Hopes
It's Complicated By Tennessee State Laws
Single, but Still Telling Everyone I'm In a Relationship Because I Can't Have Another Dinner With My Parents Telling Me How Disappointed They Are and How They'd Like to See Grandchildren Before They Are Too Crippled By Age to Play With Them
Green Card Marriage
It Turns Out I Might Be Gay. Sorry, Kids!
We're Keeping It Quiet Because She's Ashamed of My Looks
As a holiday gift, I enrolled my girlfriend and me in a dance class. We're learning West Coast Swing, we've had one class, and sadly there was no fishbowl. Beyond that, I really like the concept: the man basically stands still, the woman has to learn most of the steps, and yet by virtue of being a man, I still get to "lead." It's like the 1950s in dance form!
Our instructor seems to be very good, and he has been providing helpful visualizations. The best one: The dance is always back and forth along the same line. Imagine you and your partner are standing in the middle of a giant hot dog. The girl keeps moving up and down the hot dog. The guy steps on the bun to let the girl pass, then gets back on the hot dog. Girls: move up and down the hot dog. Guys: move on the bun. Somehow a group of 30 people heard this without laughing, and by the end of the class, I was actually imagining a giant hot dog on the floor. It works!
The only downside to the evening was running into a gang of East Coast Swing dancers on our way to the parking lot. It's not that we wanted to start shooting. We had to. If you're gonna learn the dance, you have to live the life.
Based on the fact that I, Chris White, can figure out self-employment taxes, I urge the United States Senate to forever deny this man not only a Treasury department post, but also any employment in the financial sector ever again, down to and including working the counter at a check-cashing shop. Any man who can't understand something that I can should not be lording over the nation's money supply.
Of course, all this assumes that he's being honest. And if he is, isn't that a bad thing? After an IRS audit revealed his underpayment for 2003, he didn't immediately go back and pay taxes for 2001-2002, when he was working for the same employer. Apparently his accountant told him he didn't have to do it. And then when he was up for this new job, Obama's vetting team (who carefully went over Bill Richardson!) suddenly realized that he had to pay for those years. If he's honest, what we've learned is that he doesn't pay attention to details, and he hires and trusts incompetent people. Qualties you want in a Cabinet secretary, yes?
The right move here is to tell the world that you tried to cheat on your taxes, even if you didn't. What American wouldn't sympathize with that? "Taxes suck. I tried to get away with it, I got caught, so I had to pay in full. Oh well." He'd be the Treasury secretary of the people! A lovable rapscallion with authority over $800 billion in bailout and stimulus funding! America can party with that guy, no problem.
New Video: Hairy Elegance
The White History Project is also cashing in on the plate craze. Behold the Chester A. Arthur commemorative plate!
New Video: National Plastics
And what the heck, here's a friendly commercial message conceived by my good friend Jared Stern. It has a dirty word at the end. Be warned.
Inauguration weekend is almost here! For most Americans, it means the dawn of a new era of hope. For Washingtonians, it means a bunch of starry-eyed *******s blocking traffic. Some people say there are no real Washingtonians, that we are a city of tranplants and passers-through. To them I say, a true Washingtonian is a person whose enjoyment of special occasions is surpassed by their annoyance over street closings. That's when you know it's your home. Or that you're a buttwipe. Either one.
Having attended the Phillies victory parade and witnessing the minor debacle in that very large city, I'm sort of curious to see what an equal number of people will do in a much smaller city. The inaugural parade route is maybe a mile long, but they're only letting 300,000 people along Pennsylvania avenue. Plus everyone is effectively banned from driving downtown, which means Metro for all. I'm putting the over-under on trampling deaths at five!
I am a bit of a presidential history buff, and so I offer unto you FUN INAUGURAL FACTS!
The first inauguration was held in New York City, at Federal Hall. While popular legend indicates that George Washington improvised "So help me god" at the end of his oath, eyewitness accounts indicate that his exact words were "And if you have a problem with it, so help me god, I will throw down all over this *****."
Most presidents have chosen to take the oath of office on a Bible, with the notable exceptions of Martin Van Buren (Toben's Spirt Guide), Bill Clinton (Madonna's "Sex") and Jimmy Carter ("Steal This Book").
The longest inaugural address was by William Henry Harrison, who contracted pneumonia during his speech and died a month later. George Washington's second address stood as the shortest address until FDR's fourth inaugural in 1945: "My fellow Americans, blah blah blah, you know the drill. Let's drink."
The most heavily attended inauguration to date wasin 1965, which drew more than 1 million people when LBJ threatend to personally "kick the ****" out of any American who failed to attend.
Millard Fillmore's wife Abigail died after falling ill during the inauguration of Franklin Pierce, because god loves kicking a man when he's down.
In transition years, upon reaching the White House at the end of the parade, it is customary for the new president to help the old president load all his boxes into the moving helicopter.
Temperatures were so cold in 1985 that the parade was canceled and the swearing-in was moved to the Capitol rotunda. Temperatures were so warm in 1869 that Ulysses Grant wore hot pants.
This time out the DC Improv let me do something a little different ... ROLLER DERBY! I talked to Anti Entity of the DC Rollergirls, Washington's all-female roller derby league. In the podcast we do a bit of an overview of the sport and the atmosphere, plus she explains how the girls get their names.
There's a promotional tie-in here, too -- if you go to the Rollergirls match on January 24 (Saturday) at the DC Armory, bring your ticket stub or program to the Improv on January 25 and you can get in to see the Jameson comedy tour for FREE. Pretty swank, huh?
Subscribe via iTunes! Or, if you're a cherrypicker, go snag it off of the podcast page.
I was out for my afternoon consitutional, only to discover 2 million more people
than usual on the streets. Apparently we have a new president. Did you hear about
this? Some notes from my walk past the inauguration:
Of the many changes in store, one of them is not in people's willingness to
litter. What better way to honor America than by throwing garbage on the World War
II memorial? I will concede that the garbage for this event was notably less than
that for the Phillies victory parade, and that there were no beer cans. But I will
also point out that the event was (if memory serves) roughly the same size as the
Phillies parade. And yet the Phillies get no love or around-the-clock coverage from
CNN. The media bias agains the Phillies continues.
I am heartened by the lack of trampling deaths. I think it speaks to the fundamental good will in all of us. Not that it
wasn't close! I got stuck in the exodus off the mall, between 14th and 15th Streets on Independence Ave. a third of the crowd was going east, a third was going west, and a third was going south. There were no guardsmen / cops / army guys directing traffic, so everyone basically leaned on each other and went nowhere for about 30 minutes. It was wall-to-wall humanity, and I would have expected a monster freak-out, but people seemed to be taking it in stride. One guy did attempt to
manipulate the crowd, shouting that there barricades east and west, and that everyone should go south, which just happened to be the direction he wanted to go! But the fact that he was in a Colorado Rockies jacket sort of undermined his authority. No
one budged. The only time authorities did show up was to clear a path for an ambulance. This was almost impossible, because there was literally no space for people to vacate to. This inspired the biggest freak-out I was privileged to see. A middle-aged black guy wearing a fur coat you ordinarily see on a 90-year-old woman with a small dog started screaming, "There's nowhere to go!" Much like Rockies jacket guy, his clothing undermined his authority, and so the crowd did not rally to his flag.
Regardless of your politics, there's something nice about being in a crowd of 2
million people who are in a good mood. Smile more, America. It worked for Ronald
Reagan.
If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then John Williams is the most
sincere man in the history of sincerity. I mean that sincerely.
I felt sincere pity for Obama being forced to watch the parade after he finished the route. The standard American parade is awful, and I say this as someone who marched in lots of them during high school. Specialty parades (The Mummers, Macy's Thanksgiving, Mardi Gras, your favorite sports team's championship parade) are cool, but the whole marching band / military review stuff is mind-numbingly awful. In the days before TV and recorded music (and when march music was also pop music) I'm sure a parade was the greatest thing in the world, but now ... it's vestigial. All they're doing now is propping up the high-school marching band fundraiser industry. Really: If you already saw the first black president walk for the first time to his new home, WHY would you want to sit in 30-degree weather to watch an hour of 8-year-olds doing tumbling passes on asphalt?
Randolph Terrance has been doing a joke recently about possible Obama t-shirts
showing Obama, Malcolm X, MLK Jr., and Tupac. Seen today on the street: an
illustration of Barack Obama as a posse leader on horseback, with various civil
rights leaders on the other horses. Oh, and Tupac. Seriously. Also, on the counter
at Walgreen's, opposite the wall of unsold Obama commemorative plates, were Obama
"collectable" baseball-style cards. When the guy behind me pointed them out to his
wife, I thought he was going to mock them. Turns out he wanted to buy a whole
unopened box. I'm guessing they had some extra space in the Beanie Baby closet. I
love the word "collectable," because it implies greater value. But anything not
perishable is collectable, right? Not everyone wants a pile of toe nail clippings,
but you can collect them if you so choose. Now, commemorative toe nail clippings --
that would be impressive. I think I'm getting off track here.
I only heard parts of the speech as I was walking alongside the mall, but it sounded pretty good -- better than it reads, in fact. The guy is a great speaker when he has prepared remarks. But now comes the real test! Is this really the
dawning of a new age for America, where personal responsibility is paramount and tough decisions about government are finally made? Do people really have a new faith in the American dream and the willingness to sacrifice or serve others? Or did their
commitment to change end when they voted and their guy won? I fear that politics has degenerated (again, it's been there before) into naked boosterism -- people aren't invested in ideas, but instead they want their team to win (witness people booing Bush today. Shameful.).
You hear of people inspired by Obama, but so far the outlet for that inspiration has been a propaganda-heavy political campaign (shades of 1960s China!). From what I've seen, the Obama team, to its credit, appears to be leveraging their campaign organization toward greater community involvement. Some people will answer that call, but how many? The problems facing American society are decades old, as are the opportunities to chip in and lend a hand. I find it hard to believe that vast armies of citizens are suddenly awakened to, and willing to avail themselves of, these opportunities; I think most people are content to let their civic involvement end in the voting booth. Despite what gets said on the campaign trail, things aren't exactly at their darkest. If you wanted to chip in and serve your nation, the odds are you would have done it by now. If you weren't inspired to action by 9/11, for example, then what's different about today? And are people really, truly ever going to consent to having programs slashed or eliminated for the overall health of the nation? A million blue-ribbon panels can write a million reports, but so far we haven't seen any serious efforts to change to Social Security, and all the talk on health care is to make it BIGGER.
Calls to service, responsibility and sacrifice are laudable, even necessary, but American society won't be changed with words. It will be changed with deeds, whether it's a Congressman willing to risk his political career to do something unpopular but necessary, or an average Joe trying to restore the power of family, the most dynamic, powerful and unlegislatible tool for shaping the future. Obama is not the first, second or even tenth person to make these kinds of statements; you can find them sprinkled in inaugural addresses throughout the last century (compassionate conservatism, anyone?). The concerns we have about our decaying national character and our love-hate relationship with capitalism have been used as political whips for generations, and it makes you wonder if we're dealing with the problems of the modern day or fundamental flaws in human nature. For all the talk of change and a new day dawning, I really do wonder if the average American has ever been (or even should have to be) all that interested in an "American dream" or anything much beyond their own personal welfare.
We tout the "will of the people," but there's a famous Andrew Jackson quote: "One man with courage makes a majority." Does society as a whole will changes to its fundamental nature, or do courageous men rechannel society through their labors? If so, are courageous people in charge now? Or is it just expediency dressed in eloquence? We'll find out.
Home Economics
I'm clearly in full-on politics mode, so might as well purge the system. Admitting that a) I am not an economist; and b) my historical assumptions could be way off ...
All the spending by the government right now is scary, right? We more or less know that the New Deal and its massive expansion of government didn't end the Depression. World War II did. And once World War II was over, the United States was the only nation with a fully operational industrial complex (infrastructures and economies across Europe and Asia were devastated), giving it huge competitive advantages for decades to come.
Now we're poised to spend a ton of government dollars, expand a ton of programs and make people more reliant than ever on the state. We don't have any precedent that suggests this will "heal" the economy any faster; and on top of that, we don't have any world-changing event on the horizon that might spur some massive growth in national output, and given the spread of globalization, we don't have guaranteed market dominance waiting just around the bend. If it turns out that we're needlessly racking up debt with no obvious economic benefits, what on earth will turn things around this time out?
There's talk about government "creating jobs," but it's all just pig in a python stuff -- even if we invest massively in, oh, "green jobs" by converting to more energy-efficient production, what happens when everything is converted? In the '90s we saw crazy, technology driven increases in productivity, meaning each worker could do more and more. When everyone was flush with cash, you didn't have to fire people; what company would want the PR hit that would come from purging staff in the midst of huge profits? But when the bottom falls out, the fact remained that you don't need as many workers to do the same amount of work, so it's justifiable to trim payrolls and leave them trimmed. We have more people in the world, but thanks to technology, we don't NEED so many people to keep the world operating, and all the extra people are going to be stuck with crap jobs or no jobs. The pig got through the python. We can find more pigs to swallow (green jobs is the popular new pig), but they'll always be temporary fixes.
People strive to give their kids a better life than they had; technological progress, good fortune and hard work have made this possible in America for generations. But the quality-of-living curve is starting to flatten out. What do we do? You can lower expectations, which is decidedly "un-American" to most people; you can lower population, which is unrealistic unless you're a "12 Monkeys" terrorist type; you can expand to a new frontier, but we're not quite ready for moon bases or kelp farms on the bottom of the ocean.
The economy will, to some extent, turn around. But schools are already pumping out more lawyers, MBAs and liberal arts grads than the market can digest, and factory work and heavy industry haves largely been shifted to nations trying to recreate the American dream on their own terms. Lifespans are longer, and people are staying in the workforce longer, meaning they aren't clearing out to let fresh faces take over. New competitors in each industry will arise, but we still don't NEED as many people to staff them as we have in the past. More and more people are going to see their standard of living and personal sense of worth decline as jobs become increasingly mundane or scarce.
This is all armchair economics, and I bet I'm making some hugely erroneous assumptions here, but it's not entirely implausible, right? Scary.
Grizzled old racists finally get their day in "Get Off My Lawn: The Movie," also known as "Gran Torino." Clint Eastwood somehow makes bitter generational hatred fun again! Simple story: a gruff, blue-collar Korean War veteran refuses to leave his Detroit neighborhood, even though it's filling up with all the immigrants he hates. Lonely from the death of his wife and completely out of touch with his kids, when events give him a chance to interact with his Hmong neighbors, he grudgingly moves forward, learning to appreciate them while at the same time dropping every ethnic slur imaginable straight to their faces. Walk Kowalski isn't exactly sympathetic, but he's certainly more complex that most grizzled movie racists, and Clint Eastwood even at 78 definitely plays a badass better than anyone on the planet. A near-octogenarian facing down gang members sounds stupid on paper, but on the screen, it actually seems plausible, and at a few points in the movie you will be eagerly anticipating your own old age, when people will fear you simply because no force on Earth has been able to kill you just yet.
Unfortunately, this is just a good movie when it could have been a great one. For some reason, most of the actors have almost no movie experience, and it shows. They're working off a stilted, ham-handed script (neat ideas, but bad writing), and other than Eastwood, no one really has the chops to elevate the material. Half the conversations sound like something from a high-school drama department, a few of the relationships are borderline cartoonish (Kowalski's son and grandkids) and there are too many asides and mutterings -- they could have scrubbed about 20 percent of the words, and just let the actors make menacing or shocking looks. Show, don't tell, right?
I did enjoy this movie, and I do recommend it. I wish they had a do-over, though. There's so much here that's fresh and interesting, to the point where it could have been a Best Picture with some polishing. Clint Eastwood, at least, is great; the role reminded me of Kate Winslet's in "The Reader" in that it showed a stereotypical "bad" character in a light you aren't used to seeing, without being maudlin.
Change.gov
Team Obama has rewritten all the presidential bios on the White House web site, and apparently they're chock full of historical judgments! When one of the greatest criticisms against your organization is its tendency toward quasi-propaganda and message manipulation, you might want to hold off on this until week two. You know, just for the sake of appearances.
I am unusually bitter about this, by the way, because now I have to go back and find all new pictures for the Dead Presidents pages. I don't usually steal images from other sites, but I didn't feel bad about borrowing bandwidth from the government. Sigh.
I am no sucker. My keen and discerning eye has kept me from many a swindle. Sure, I may have gone in on a few time shares, or paid $500 for the "special" Jiffy Lube engine treatment, but on day-to-day basis I use my "street sense," honed in the broad lanes and cul-de-sacs of Upper Providence, Pennsylvania, to beat the hustlers.
And you can do it too! For example, today a guy on the train platform at Metro Center asked me for money, because he was "homeless." You probably would have handed over your wallet and invited the guy to sleep on your futon for a few months, such was his smoothness. But my street sense started tingling:
Shoes. Shoes are a definite red flag. This guy was wearing clean, heavy-duty Timberlands with unworn soles. I was jealous of these shoes, and in my general experience, I should not ever be jealous of a homeless guy. I knew something might be up.
Nice clothes. Some homeless guys are "put together," but usually they don't wear clean, untorn jeans and a new winter coat. His brand-new knit cap with a Barack Obama logo on it also seemed slightly suspicious.
No big bag of stuff. I study the homeless, and I know that the lack of a home often requires them to carry things. This guy wasn't carrying anything at all. Hmm.
Good teeth, no smell, groomed facial hair, walking around a Metro station that requires money to enter. Insignificant details to most people, but again, I am from the streets.
It didn't take long for me to figure out that this guy was either a) not homeless; b) just recently homeless, by a matter of minutes; or c) homeless but with no common sense about marketing. Since two of the three scenarios include homelessness, and I have white guilt, I gave the guy money. But ONLY $600. You can't let these guys steamroll you.
Be smart, people, and I'll see you on the streets!
Trivia! Trivia! Trivia!
Yet another fine edition of Happy Hour Trivia is in the books. The post-inauguration special had four rounds: "Two Face," in honor of the Roman God Janus; "We Are the Champions," in honor of great sports franchises; "Fill in the Blank," in honor of doctored photographs; and "Billy / Bob," in honor of ... uh, Billys and Bobs.
[You can play "We Are the Champions" at home: there are 122 major North American sports franchises (MLB, NBA, NHL, NFL). Name the 10 franchises with the most championships. Answers below.]
Plus, after the prizes were awarded, we threw in a bonus round of tough president questions, what with the leader of the free world changing and all. It's good for me to purge the presidential questions from my system every few months, and this was the most appropriate time to do it. Thanks for bearing with me, world.
If all that weren't enough, we got to hear some words from our new sponsors: National Plastics, the commemorative plate industry, and the Politically Motivated T-Shirt Fund. Thanks to those guys for helping to underwrite the evening. You can see their ads over at the videos page.
Red Beaver came up with 33 out of 44 for the win; Golden Triangle Gun Club finished second and Sqizzle took third. We had our second straight month of tiebreaker hilarity; there was a tie for third place, and I had a list of 20th Century first ladies in hand. The team that got to go first confidently went with Laura Bush, so we were able to use the same tiebreaker to break the deadlock for the top two spots. This was a virtual repeat of December, when one team, with 15 Soviet Socialist Republics to choose from, went with Yugoslavia out of the box. Tiebreakers are awesome. Teams are shown in order of finish. And thanks to team "Voltron," which combined to form a horrible score, but made me smile. Well done.
Champions!
Here are your answers for "We Are the Champions": New York Yankees (26), Montreal Canadiens (24), Boston Celtics (17), Minneapolis/L.A. Lakers (14), Toronto Maple Leafs (13), Green Bay Packers (12), Detroit Red Wings (11), St. Louis Cardinals (10), Chicago Bears (9), Philly/Oakland Athletics (9).
I'm changing careers. I am, as of today, a professional J.J. Abrams. Watch this:
A dark office in Bangkok. A man in a Hawaiian shirt with a
handlebar moustache is holding a flashlight, forcing the lock on a filing cabinet
with a screwdriver. As he does so, he slips, accidentally gouging his hand, and as
he inspects the wound we see an hourglass-shaped scar on the tip of his middle
finger.
The cabinet open, he begins to flip through files, only to suddenly stiffen,
wide-eyed and collapse. As his body slumps to the side, it reveals a midget in a
bowler hat, who has stabbed him through the heart with an epee. After laying a rose
on the dead man's chest, during which we see another hourglass-shaped scar on the
midget's middle finger, the midget grabs the files, walks to the hallway, and hops
onto an Irish wolfhound wearing a saddle. He produces a cell phone and begins
dialing.
Cut to a closeup of a ringing phone. A manicured woman's hand picks up the receiver, and we hear the voice on the other end: "Phase two has begun."
"Excellent," the woman replies, and the camera pulls back to reveal a stunning,
hard-bodied, full-lipped brunette in a tailored suit. As the camera continues to
pull back, she is revealed to be the president of the United States, and with her in
the Oval Office is a sinister-looking man in a dark suit, reading a copy of Kurt
Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse V." He looks up. "So I take it we're on our way," he
says. She nods, and as we zoom in on her right eye, closer and closer until the
black pupil fills the screen, techno music starts blaring.
Sounds cool, right? Like it might go somewhere? Here's the amazing thing: it doesn't! It only took me two minutes to write! And I can stretch this paragraph to 8 hour-long episodes. Or 50. Or 100! I know we can get this thing to syndication before anyone realizes we have no ending. Please e-mail your development deals to chris@dcstandup.com.
My friends and I had the "suicide seats" at Saturday's DC Rollergirls event: on the floor, on the turn. That means the odds of getting close personal attention from the rollergirls, by way of them sliding into you, is very good. It happened twice! Sure, you could have a baseball or basketball player land in your lap at a game, but they probably won't be wearing fishnet stockings at the time. There was also an impressive moment as one of the girls I was sitting with managed not to spill her beer during a collision. Amazing athleticism all around!
Three hours of sitting on the floor was definitely worth it, as Scare Force One overcame a 11-0 deficit to win something like 80-50. They're a juggernaut. And for reference, Anti Entity of SFO was the Rollergirl who helped out with the DC Improv podcast. Go synergy!
Floor seats means good pictures, so here you is ...
For reasons not entirely clear to me, the last three Sundays I have watched "Tool Academy" and "Rock of Love: Bus." In most circumstances, this would be deeply shameful, but "Rock of Love: Bus" has maybe the most inspiring personality in television history. Her name is Ashley. She looks like Paris Hilton with breast implants and hair extensions, she's a raging alcoholic, and she talks like a valley girl with none of the pleasant ditzy qualities. Also, she might be pure evil.
I say "might," because it's possible that she realizes saying horrible things greatly increases her chances of getting her own VH1 show after "Rock of Love: Bus" ends. The highlight thus far: a girl falls off a four foot stage, possibly crippling herself. Ashley's (paraphrased) comment: "If you're gonna date Brett Michaels, you have to deal with falling off a stage, bitch." Apparently, this happens all the time if you date rock stars. They throw you off the stage for spite.
If Ashley does get her own show, I would like to to be in the "Best Week Ever" format, only Ashley comments on history's greatest atrocities. As in, "If you're gonna be a poor Chinese person in Nanking, you have to deal with getting raped and mutilated by the Japanese army, bitch."
Lost in the happy-go-lucky chirping this week about Great Depression 2.0 and torture
is the slightly upsetting news that we're all hopelessly doomed.
This information comes to us in the form of a study from the ever-helpful National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA (as in, "I want you to build an
ark"): "The pioneering study, led by NOAA senior scientist Susan Solomon, shows how
changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for
more than 1,000 years after carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are completely stopped."
Completely stopped! Meaning that even if we manage to flush all the carbon down the toilet and go cold turkey, you'll still have to cancel your vacation plans for Key West in 2832.
Those whose teeth gnash like a collapsing ice shelf at the mention of Kyoto always had a fuzzy argument: no
matter what we do, China and India will crank out carbon like champs, and maybe get
rich trying. History has seldom smiled on the "everybody else is doing it" defense, though. But now along comes science to claim the high ground! And if the report is correct, high ground could be very valuable real estate in the next few centuries.
Yet we haven't heard all that much about our guaranteed environmental Armageddon,
maybe because NOAA had the smarts to bury the story on a day when "American Idol"
was running an auditions episode. Or maybe because the people who usually trumpet
stories about our impending doom don't really get too much benefit from it actually
being a reality. (Donation dollars might be better spent on, oh, a small fleet of
heavily armored yachts for close family members.)
Or maybe it's because not all is lost: "Geoengineering to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere was not considered in the study. 'Ideas about taking the carbon dioxide away after the world puts it in have been proposed, but right now those are very speculative,' said Solomon."
In the last 100 years humanity has mastered powered flight, successfully traveled to space, invented and refined computers, harnessed nuclear energy, uncoded the fundamental building blocks of life, described plate tectonics,
and made it possible for a very tiny percentage of the population to feed everyone. We now have more educated scientists than at any point in history, and they have unprecedented, near-instantaneous access to information and research.
And so you might be tempted to put money on "things will be OK." Almost no one had cell phones when I was in
high school, and now you can watch streaming pornography on them while riding through subway tunnels. How hard can carbon scrubbing be, exactly? It seems irresponsible to put all our hopes with the science genie, but everything we know about human nature, global economics, and now "the numbers" seems to be rubbing that lamp. Pretty sensible people have been noting this for the last 10 years, but they've been drowned out by people with an overwhelming need to Do Something.
By all means, Do Something. Plant trees, create a green job, or get an electric car. There are serious environmental and resource management issues threatening the world every day. Do whatever makes you feel good; whatever shows respect and consideration to the other citizens of the world. Good habits like that will pay off down the line.
But in the meantime, how about chilling out a bit? Loud cranks serve a useful purpose, but having hysteria translate into public policy seldom works out well, whether it's with climate change or, oh, an $800 billion stimulus package. In an era where message manipulation is a cottage industry (serving other industries that would cease to exist if things weren't horribly wrong), it's a pretty safe bet that things are never as disastrous as they seem. Relax.
Unless you're a scientist, in which case, BACK TO THE LAB, POINDEXTER!
Legal Stuff: If you have questions about this Web site, why? You should spend your time questioning the moral nature of any god who would let Chris White exist. But anyhow ... copyright 2009, Chris White Sucks Inc.
August 2009: Jefferson.
Fall 2009: comic interviews on the podcast. 
