I ALMOST FORGOT!

It's my Dad's sixty-eighth* birthday today! For him:



I love the smile on Wile E.'s face as he's getting ready to dig in. Also, the Road Runner reminds me here of the emu I fed at the Iowa State Fair in 2000. Terrifying animal.

* - He's still younger than McCain.

Depressed Kids Eat More Sweets

The ice-cream truck that hawks its wares in my parents' neighborhood plays "Greensleeves." Ad nauseam. You know the tune. Sample lyrics below:

Alas, my love, you do me wrong,
To cast me off discourteously.
For I have loved you well and long,
Delighting in your company.

Your vows you've broken, like my heart,
Oh, why did you so enrapture me?
Now I remain in a world apart
But my heart remains in captivity.

It's enough to make you strap yourself to a bomb-pop and never look back.

Colbert-bury Tales

Colbert was excellent. For those of you who didn't see the show, the best segment involved a surprise appearance by John Edwards. The wait prior to the show was fairly obnoxious, a function of the heightened security surrounding the high-profile guests. Security that, unfortunately, robbed me of my beloved keychain Leatherman. Perhaps they thought I'd tweeze Hillary to death. Apparently they've read the blog.

A few pecks of behind-the-scenes dirt:

• They powdered him a lot. Stephen must be sweaty. I feel closer to him than ever.
• He and I are now on a first-name basis.
• Stephen needed only two tries to throw a Doritos Spicy Sweet Chili Tortilla Chip into the greedy mits of Ben Franklin.
• Nerdiest crowd I've ever been in, bar none. And I've been at Notre Dame history department prospective student parties...Zing!
• Stephen (or whatever intern he has deejaying between segments) has excellent taste in music. They played Neutral Milk Hotel's "Holland, 1945."
• Ben Franklin played air guitar to "Higher Ground" by the Chili Peppers.
• Stephen did a hand-stand into the awaiting arms of his stage manager, Mark McKenna. It was goofy and endearing. He looked like he may have hurt his back. I feel extremely close to him.
• There were long breaks in between segments.
• The editors cobbled together the beginning from two takes. B-Frank botched his first try at the toaster gag. It wasn't much funnier when he did it correctly.
• They cut the funniest joke in the show! Well, "funniest" if you have the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old boy. Stephen asked about what Rep. Murphy & his compatriots ate in Baghdad and he said, "mostly MRE's." Stephen replied, "I hear if you eat one of those, you won't have to take a dump for the rest of your tour." Then he got noticeably embarrassed having said that to a congressman, but saved it by pulling his Peabody Award out from under the desk for all the world to see.
• Stephen has a lot of energy. They told us he would. Stephen never broke character. They told us he would, during audience questions. If he did, I missed it. However, if you'd like to see him more serious than usual, I recommend this video of his interview with Charlie Rose:

The Canterbury Tales By Geoffrey Chaucer

The Wachowski Bros. Just Shat Themselves

Awesome camera:



My favorite thing about this video, once I got over the coolness of watching the water keep its shape in the immediate aftermath of the popping, is the slow-mo surprise on that older man's face. Think about it: he's the one performing the demonstration and holding the pin. So he knows exactly what's going to happen. And he still lets out a kind of delighted gasp.

Ah, but I was so much older then / I'm younger than that now.

Also: Pam Anderson guest-starred on an episode of Futurama where she mentioned winning an Oscar for Baywatch: the Movie, the first film shot entirely in slow-motion. Just a funny bit of trivia in case you're playing Scene-It this weekend.

Live-Blogging the Debate

Because there's still no good website documenting the exhilarating process of wet paint becoming dry, I'm going to take a page from Andrew Sullivan's book and live-blog the five hundredth debate between Obama & Clinton.

Away we go:

8:10 p.m. ~ They're beginning each segment with a quote from the Constitution. This reminds me of that weird tribute Fox did before the Superbowl. We get it, ABC. You love America more than Rupert Murdoch.

8:11 p.m. ~ Clinton declares her commitment to seeing a Democrat take the White House. This is at odds with her McCain-lovin' commercials and talking points of late.

8:12 p.m. ~ Obama talking about bitterness. Of all the news-less news that has come out of this campaign cycle, this has got to be the emptiest.

8:14 p.m. ~ Clinton touting her Pennsylvania roots & blasting Obama's characterization of bitter voters. Oh, Hillary, tell me more about how well you understand the common folk. Her supporters should hand out scratch-off lottery tickets. You could get a lot of those for $109 million.

8:17 p.m. ~ "Yes. Yes. Yes." - Hillary's answer to the question of whether or not she believed Barack could win against McCain. Did anyone see that episode of Arrested Development when Gangy asked Michael to move home and he answered her by saying, "No. No. No. No."? Yeah....

8:20 p.m. ~ These are two people who are very tired of hearing their voices. Correction. Three people.

8:21 p.m. ~ Hillary talking AGAIN about "thirty five years of experience." At this point I'm not even sure whether it's true. All I know is that it FEELS like thirty five years.

8:23 p.m. ~ Wow, ABC, you're discovering new galaxies of irrelevance. Has there been a substantive question in these first twenty minutes? The irony is that after this many debates, you'd think that all the "good" questions would be used up when the truth is that they've barely scratched the surface.

8:27 p.m. ~ I'm kind of hoping that Obama's playing rope-a-dope right now. For those of you who haven't seen Elvis' Aloha from Hawaii, it is a performance by a consummate performer completely in control. He's sort of lackluster early on and you think "Wow, the King has lost it." And then he brings it so hard in the second half that you realize he was just waiting to wow you because he could. That's not what's going on here, but I'd like to think so.

8:31 p.m. ~ Clinton just used the "B" word. And then mentioned Farrakhan & Hamas in the same run-on-fuck-you sentence.

8:34 p.m. ~ Unsatisfying answer from Clinton about the Bosnia sniper fire. But just because she won't admit that she prepared the comments beforehand DOES NOT MEAN THAT ANY OF THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT. I get the impression the moderators are trying to instigate a fight. And they're being about as delicate as a junior-high cafeteria.

8:37 p.m. ~ Hillary laughed. Yikes. Obama defending his right NOT to wear a flag lapel pin. Why is this complicated? He needs to just say "Symbols are one way to demonstrate patriotism. Actions are another. I choose actions because they're stronger. Symbols can be hollow. Actions can't." Say it. Say it. Say it. (UPDATE: I remind myself of Sam Kinison here.)

8:40 p.m. ~ Bill Ayers! This debate is a clearinghouse for all the scandals that have taken place since the last debate. I can't wait for the moderators to tear off their masks and reveal the faces of O'Reilly & Limbaugh because this debate could not be better for Republicans if Rove had written it himself.

8:43 p.m. ~ Hillary's first lie (if you don't count the fib about wanting a Democrat in the White House). The Weather Underground's bombs never killed a single civilian. One of their bombs accidentally went off and killed one of their own operatives.

8:53 p.m. ~ Commercial break. Just checked in with The Daily Dish to see how I'm doing compared to the Big Dog. We could be blog twins right now. Seriously, at the end of this, he's gonna have to buy me a Coke.

8:55 p.m. ~ Hillary's hitting all the right notes on Iraq: W sucks, I'll withdraw, Iraqis are welfare queens.

8:56 p.m. ~ Barack strong on the role of the Commander-in-Chief in setting the mission. Makes the Decider kind of look like the Follower and the Listen-To-Er.

8:59 p.m. ~ George & Charlie are really very rude. Their idea of "challenging" the participants is to willfully distort the answers that have been given and repeat those distortions back as if they were quoting the original answers verbatim. It's like Colbert but nobody's laughing.

9:02 p.m. ~ "The Security Umbrella." Fall-out keeps a-fallin' on my head...

9:04 p.m. ~ So, the economy is the number one issue in voters' minds and it only took them 55 minutes to bring it up.

9:09 p.m. ~ Hedge fund managers paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries. Good image.

9:10 p.m. ~ Obama mentions borrowing from China. He just picked up a few Ron Paul voters.

9:12 p.m. ~ Hillary wins $5 in my TBKF online gift shop for being the first to mention "infrastructure." Remember Minnesota? I still tremble when I go over bridges. Not really, but it IS an underreported problem. Why can't road repair be sexier than scandals involving words like "bitter"? I wanna live in that world.

9:16 p.m. ~ ABC = All Bad Commentators. Ok. Not my best work. But I'm still light years ahead of ABC News.

9:17 p.m. ~ Clinton just claimed the mantle of bipartisan consensus-building to preserve Social Security. If you believe that, I'll fix your bridge.

9:19 p.m. ~ I haven't been this grateful for a commercial break since I was eight. Dukes of Hazzard was on and I drank a whole can of soda right before the show.

9:21 p.m. ~ I know this is all very sarcastic. The truth is that I have no idea how ABC news is supposed to behave. I get so little of my news from t.v. these days that I was pretty naive going in. Just sort of surprised that these guys are able to justify their paychecks, which, incidentally, they seem to be deathly afraid of losing should a Democrat win in November.

9:23 p.m. ~ Charlie Gibson getting maudlin about VA Tech. Come on. You'd be remiss if you didn't mention it? Were you remiss when you masturbated for the first forty five minutes of the debate and asked them which character of Friends they most resemble? There's a war on. Do your job, douchebag.

9:26 p.m. ~ Hillary talking about guns & crime rates. Fun thought experiment: what if one of them decided he'd/she'd had enough of all this and said he/she agreed with Steven Levitt's contention in Freakonomics that the low crime rate during the 1990s had more to do with Roe v. Wade than anything else?

9:30 p.m. ~ ABC's decision to use the Constitution as their lead-in for each segment was a bad one on so many levels. It's like they're saying, "Hey, here's an important idea. And now for something completely different."

9:33 p.m. ~ I'm just gonna go ahead and call it (though, in fairness, Sullivan has already beaten me to it): the winner of tonight's debate is McCain. Obama looks and sounds tired. It's like ABC just walked up to me and my ice cream cone and slapped it on the ground. Now nobody can have it.

9:36 p.m. ~ Clinton talking about gas prices. She alludes to Enron-style market manipulation and blames Bush for not going far enough on energy independence. Hell yes. Good answer.

9:38 p.m. ~ Ooooo. Obama refers to investing $150 billion on an energy-oriented "Apollo Project." Then qualifies and calls it a "Manhattan Project." Dude. You were right the first time. Get some sleep.

9:40 p.m. ~ George S. asks them how they might use former presidents, specifically George W. Bush. ABC, you really dropped the ball here. Will you not ask Clinton what role - SPECIFICALLY - her husband would play in her administration? THAT is a Constitutional issue. You remember the Constitution, right? The thing that guarantees your right to investigate questions on behalf of the public good? The thing you keep using to class up your lame debate like someone who displays classic books on his Ikea coffee table that he has no intention of reading?

9:46 p.m. ~ Oh, good. A question on superdelegates and electability. That hasn't been discussed in the media at all. Still, a good capstone for this particular debate. It's been a horse race all along. And Gibson & Stephanopoulos whipped the shit out of them. Rode hard and put away Red.

9:48 p.m. ~ Obama's given this speech MANY times. He's sick of it. And you can tell.

9:51 p.m. ~ I think that's it. Even if it isn't, it is. That...was...interesting.

10:01 p.m. ~ UPDATE: Turns out, there are several websites devoted to paint drying. Try here, here, and here, for starters. And here's a YouTube of the riveting phenomenon:

"Pumped As Shit"

Yet another reminder that Will Ferrell is funnier on the small screen.

I actually think the George W. Bush Presidential Library & Paintball Range is a good idea. Hell, I'd go.

Colbert Countdown: 48 Hours...

For those of you who've been following the blog, you know that I'll be heading down to Philadelphia for the Colbert Report on Thursday. So far, my buddy Dave is driving down and - as of today - my friend Conor is still a "maybe" for claiming the other two tickets. I may just get that cheesesteak after all...

Last night, Colbert kicked off the proceedings in fine form. That's him singing the harmony part to The Star-Spangled Banner with R&B star John Legend (and holding his own, I might add). He interviewed Chris Matthews. They're keeping a pretty tight cap on the upcoming guests, but Stephen made a pretty strong plea for Obama. However, the star of Hardball threw a changeup, revealing that Clinton may be making a surprise appearance. You are allowed to laugh at the notion that the enjoyment I derive from my much-anticipated hajjedy (comedy + hajj) might be tempered by the experience of having to watch Hillary attempt to be funny. Still, no matter how audacious it may be, I'm hoping for an upset from Barack. In more ways than one.

Real Live Gremlins

Do NOT feed this thing after midnight:

Is Cheney a Cheater?

I sure hope so. Adultery, at this point, would humanize the man. Probably just into looking, though. Anything approaching the physical exertion of sex would most likely require defibrillation.

My favorite quote:

A spokeswoman for the veep says the picture shows nothing more than a hand casting a rod.

Oh, is that what the soulless warmongers are calling it these days?

Crimes Against Humanity

What is the worst movie of all time?

A writer at The Guardian recently took a stab at answering that question. El Ranchero made some useful points here. I'd like to throw my hat into the ring.

For those of you disinclined to follow those links, allow me to summarize their arguments:

The Guardian's Joe Queenan claims that in order for a film to be worthy of worldwide derision, it must meet the following criteria:

1. It must have "started out with some expectation of not being awful."
2. It must be famous.
3. It "cannot be a deliberate attempt to make the worst movie ever."
4. It "must feature real movie stars, not jocks, bozos, has-beens or fleetingly famous media fabrications like [Paris] Hilton."
5. It "must generate a negative buzz long before it reaches cinemas."
6. It "must induce a sense of dread in those who have seen it...that they may one day be forced to watch the film again."
7. It "must keep getting worse."
   

Derek countered by saying:

1. the qualifications upon which he insists are virtually impossible. How can a movie both start with the promise of not being awful and have a terrible reputation that precedes it... and live up to that reputation?

2. The writer's choice for Worst. Movie. Ever., the 1980 "anti-western" Heaven's Gate, may have offended the sensibilities of the fine hosers at the Toronto Film Festival, but it then moved on to Cannes... where it was nominated for the Palm d'Or. I'm not saying it's not a terrible movie (I haven't seen it so I don't know), but it sounds like it only did so much damage because it was so horrendously expensive. Plus, the director's cut received better reviews.

Ok, since enumeration seems to be the order of the day, I will begin by numbering my qualms with Queenan.

1. It must have "started out with some expectation of not being awful."

I agree that a movie must believe it is good in at least one of the following two respects. It must believe that it has a grand, artistic vision or it must believe that it will be sufficiently entertaining. The first covers avant-garde badness. The second covers stupid popcorn movies. From this point, one could get into a debate over the relative merits of "high" and "low" culture, but I think that controversy would only serve to distract us from our current purposes. Let's just say that movies should be judged on their own terms; Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle was not made to wow the NPR crowd. We can shelve the business of how best to compare apples and caviar for the time being.

2. It must be famous.

I agree that a movie must be famous. In order for a movie to earn a universal title like "worst ever," it must first reach a universal audience. After all, before Miss Carolina can share her wisdom with the world, she must first prove herself in the gauntlet of the Miss Teen USA pageant. Not to mention the practical difficulties of accounting for all the terrible footage out there. This has become even more true with the advent of YouTube and the avalanche of unwatchable e-trash it has unleashed.

3. It "cannot be a deliberate attempt to make the worst movie ever."

I agree that a bad movie is made exponentially worse when it's trying to be good. Taking one's self too seriously is the death knell for any pretense of quality. A karaoke corollary: the bachelorette party that shouts its way through "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" is usually tolerable for a minute or so. Much like the amiable heroines about whom they sing, they're really just in it for shits and giggles. But the self-styled songstress who vamps it up to Gloria Gaynor - screeching into the microphone with all seriousness the drunken female anthem "I Will Survive" - tends to leave the audience wondering if she'll even make it back to her table without having a nervous breakdown. Yet self-awareness merely mitigates suckage; it doesn't cure it. The tone-deaf drunk who ambles up to the stage and slurs his way through "Hollaback Girl" is usually unintentionally charming until it occurs to him that he's funny. When the laughter finally penetrates his stupor and he embraces the newfound identity of "ultimate party dude," the bloom is off the rose. It makes me think of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!. Nobody involved in making that movie could possibly have believed it was the next Casablanca. And so we take its parodic prerogative into consideration when ranking it. Though the fact that it's not a very good parody means it's still in the running.

4. It "must feature real movie stars, not jocks, bozos, has-beens or fleetingly famous media fabrications like [Paris] Hilton."

I don't know what "real movie stars" are. Do they get stamped by the celebrity mint? May I point out that one of the stars of Return of the Killer Tomatoes was nominated for his FOURTH Oscar this year? This criterion seems dumb or, at least, much less important than the others. I loathe Paris Hilton, but is her fame any less legitimate than that of, say, Freddie Prinze, Jr.? They're both vacuous and pretty. They're both horrible actors. They're both famous by virtue of having famous parents. Neither of them "made it" in nose-grinding fashion. I fail to see any essential distinction. And can we really afford to forget all "bozos" and "has-beens"? If the inclusion of Meat Loaf in Fight Club was inspired (and it was), then we can't automatically discount all of the attempts at stunt casting that dragged films down. Hell, just ten years after brilliant turns in Psycho and The Manchurian Candidate, Janet Leigh was reduced to making films like Night of the Lepus, a film so appallingly bad that I bought a DVD copy just to make sure I didn't dream it up in a fever-induced delirium. If Coleridge had taken a bad dose of opium, he might have conjured up giant, mutated rabbits instead of Kubla Khan. To say that that movie is ineligible because Leigh was no longer a going concern is like exonerating a criminal because you don't want to see an old man go to jail. There's no statute of limitations on poor decision-making. If anything, the older you are and the better you were, the more you should know and the less forgivable your mistakes. There's a PSA for you, NBC. Help yourself.

5. It "must generate a negative buzz long before it reaches cinemas."

I disagree entirely. Bad movies should thwart expectations. They should arrive on a crest of positive buzz. And then immediately disappoint. Advance warning only softens the blow. Horrendous films are a sucker punch to your sensibilities. If you tell me the food is going to be awful, I brace myself and manage to choke it down. If you tell me the food is going to be good, I end up being more pissed when it tastes like hot garbage.

6. It "must induce a sense of dread in those who have seen it...that they may one day be forced to watch the film again.

I can agree with this. Truly bad movies can't have camp value. Or make you nostalgic for the "bad old days." My friend Rachel & I still remember a fun night we had in high school when we watched Jason Goes to Hell. It was abysmal. The only reason I haven't watched it again is that I'm afraid it won't be as delightfully bad this time around.

7. It "must keep getting worse."

Yes. See #6.

Now, as far as Derek's objections go, I agree with #1 and most of #2. But the financial havoc caused by Heaven's Gate - that's important. Here's my theory:

b = (x)($), where b = total badness, x = subjective badness, and $ = the movie's budget.

There is no empirical method for measuring "x." By its nature, it must be an estimate. Consider some possible benchmarks:

How Bad It Is Compared to Other Works By the Same Creators

I hate Beerfest. I hate it more than Club Dread and I HATE Club Dread. These movies aren't funny or original and - without trying to flaunt my snobbery too obviously - they are not worth my contempt. Still, I seethe when I think about them. Why? Because when I think about them, I remember they were made by the guys from Broken Lizard. And Broken Lizard made Super Troopers, a movie that I didn't expect to like, but which was a pleasant surprise. Beerfest was so bad, I sought out their debut film - Puddle Cruiser - with the hope of resurrecting my high opinion of their troupe. No luck. Beerfest is so bad that though I saw it for free, I still wanted my money back. Beerfest is so bad that it has tainted other movies with which it is associated in my mind. Like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Except instead of Kevin Bacon, it's botulism. Still, it doesn't get my vote for worst movie.

How Bad It Made You Feel

This may be a good indicator for your likelihood to watch a movie again, but it's not a good measure for much else. Alexander Payne, Todd Solondz, Noah Baumbach - they make movies that highlight human ugliness. The proper response to their films is misanthropy. And even though I'm rarely in the mood to watch them, I own About Schmidt and The Squid and the Whale. I love Election and Sideways. So you can't really judge a movie based on the emotions they generate. Charges of manipulation sometimes stick, but more often than not the accusation underscores a director's skill or a writer's talent. Of course, some feelings are harder to evoke than others. As Bart said in The Simpsons episode "Homerpalooza": "Ah, making teenagers depressed is like shooting fish in a barrel."

How Bad the Production Values Are

I finally got around to seeing Plan 9 from Outer Space. It will be fifty next year and in half a century we have not yet developed snark strong enough to describe how badly this movie was put together. Still, for all its many defects, I'd still rather watch it than Bring It On.

How Bad Its Effect on Real Life Was

Most bad movies end when you stumble out into the light of day and your shoes begin to shed the soda residue you picked up from the theater floor. Maybe you have a bad dream or two. Perhaps you hammer out a furious letter to your congressman or stage a rally. But, for the most part, the world of the cinema does not break through the fourth wall in any meaningful way. But what about Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will? You could argue that her paean to Nazism only documented a movement already in full swing. Or you could say it helped ramp up nationalist fervor by utilizing the cutting edge technology of the day. Either way, one thing is certain: the film did not hurt Hitler. But Hitler hurt a lot of people. Can movies be blamed - however tangentially - for genocide? As a student of history, I tend to get very upset about movies that do damage to public awareness. When people conclude, for instance, that the American Revolution or the argument for Scottish devolution can best be described in terms of arch-conservatism and the cult of modern fatherhood, I wonder how I can right this wrong in the eyes of my students. Conor wrote a post on movies, too, and he mentions Rambo. He has remarked to me in the past that most Americans still view Vietnam through that lens. We lost not because our soldiers didn't KICK FUCKING ASS but because all those hippie pussy liberals hamstrung our generals with quaint anachronisms like "restraint" and "congressional oversight." Maybe if we elect McCain we can finally cut that leash.

Ok. So we can't quantify with any exactness how bad movies are . At some level, the number one derives for "x" is a gut-level call. But if such gastrointestinal calculations are good enough for Stephen Colbert, they're good enough for me. We can, however, count how much money a movie costs to make. That's the key. Now, if a movie were so bad that it busted a producer or bankrupted a studio, you could make the case that the market is working by culling the herd, etc. According to that holistic arithmetic, the bad movie redeems itself by taking its blameworthy progenitors down with it. But I don't think the macroeconomic interpretation is the best one. What about the money itself, the actual dollars and cents used to light the sets, to power the jib hoist, to stock the craft services table, to pimp the best boy's trailer? When you think of the millions spent on the production of bad movies, this is when your blood pressure should rise. Bury the rag deep in your face, for now's the time for your tears. Of course, private citizens and corporations should spend their money creating any art they like. I'm not recommending censorship or even creative guidelines. I'm merely suggesting that given the myriad options available for utilizing one's capital, there are constructive projects and then there are bad movies. That these producers believed that they'd make money with the script for Batman & Robin makes them bad businessmen. That they allowed director Joel Schumacher to have a fluorescent orgasm all over the screen while children are dying of malaria makes them bad people.

To sum up: "bad + cheap" = regrettable, but harmless. "Bad + expensive" = misallocation of resources tantamount to a crime against humanity.

At the beginning of Dead Poets Society, John Keating (Robin Williams) urges his students to disregard the introduction to their literature books. It is an exegetical piece on poetry by a one Dr. J. Evans Pritchard and Keating disavows its thesis so strongly that he encourages his students to tear it from their textbooks - a classic scene in this quintessential "teacher porn" (a genre that includes Mr. Holland's Opus and Dangerous Minds and is deserving of its own blog post. Have you seen The Substitute with Tom Berenger? He throws a student out of a window. Easily the feel-good movie of the year.). Pritchard's chief offense is his attempt to determine the value of a poem by charting the importance of its theme and the degree to which that theme is effectively rendered on a set of "XY" axes. In the context of Pritchard's essay, the method is absurd. But it might work for my equation.

I'm no good with Excel, but feel free to try out my hypothesis by plunking in some of your own numbers. Rate a movie in quality from 1-10, with "10" being the worst movie you've ever seen. Then look up its budgetary stats and graph the results. The film that yields the greatest total area on your chart may just be the Worst. Movie. Ever.

You've been patient. My own pick for worst movie of all time is Con Air with Battlefield Earth in a secondary orbit. With a "modest" budget of just $75 million, Con Air doesn't evoke my rage for purely monetary reasons. No, it is the perfect storm of a ludicrous premise (a modern judge in a well-publicized trial condemning a soldier/hero for protecting his wife), phony dialogue, predictable plot "twists," and outrageous special effects seemingly designed to waste money (crash-landing an aircraft on the Vegas strip?). It could only be worse if there were snakes on that plane. The government should seize Jerry Bruckheimer's assets. Wait. I just remembered he did Pearl Harbor, too, a movie they debuted for WWII vets on the deck of an aircraft carrier. He belongs in Leavenworth. And as for Battlefield Earth, well, what can I say that hasn't been said? Catch me on a bad day and B.E. sits at the top of my list, with extra points for its connection to sci-fi scam-artist L. Ron Hubbard, the architect of the spiritual pyramid scheme that is Scientology.

UPDATE: Con Air made three times its money back. I can't believe they haven't made a sequel. Or is that what the National Treasure franchise is? At any rate, it's not that the movie has to lose money. It has to waste it. And Con Air most certainly did that. $300 million worth.

Whew. Now, that's what I call exorcise. Who's up for a snack?

"If I Can't Dance, I Don't Want to Be Part of Your Revolution" - Emma Goldman

As near as I can tell, some peaceful (albeit nerdy) libertarians were arrested for dancing(!) at the Jefferson Memorial.

If there is a judge worth his salt in Washington, this case will be dismissed, the charges will be dropped, and the cops responsible will throw a barbecue - at their personal expense - for the offended parties. Hell, they can get it catered if they're lazy. Old Glory Bar-B-Que would be appropriate and delicious. But there should be a birthday cake for Mr. Jefferson. And they should serve moonshine, just because.

What makes this story so repugnant is the location. How can you arrest somebody for that THERE?

I consider the Jefferson Memorial to be hallowed ground. Let me tell you why.

The first time I remember visiting, it was during Halloween weekend in 1999, my junior year at Boston U. I spent a day on the Mall with my high school friends Brendan and Andy, who went to Georgetown and Brandeis, respectively. We played frisbee and walked around. It was unseasonably warm. At one point, we trekked it over to the J-Mo. Great place to chill out. The marble was cool to the touch. A breeze wound around the pillars. I started reading the inscriptions chiseled into the stone. There were quotes from the man himself on subjects like "God," "Truth," and "Law." And then I noticed a quirk of the design. In the round building, with your back to the wall, it was impossible to view all of the quotes at the same time. It dawned on me that this was the perfect representation of Jefferson's own mind. F. Scott Fitzgerald held that genius was the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the head at the same time while retaining the ability to function. Well, Jefferson had two plus ten.

It is too coarse to call him a simple hypocrite. A man devoted to liberty? Yes. A man who owned slaves? Yes. But he was also a man for whom this glaring contradiction posed the greatest of intellectual puzzles. It is easy to point out in retrospect - with help from Martin Luther King and his demands that America's promissory note be paid in full - that the early Republic did not live up to its standards. It is more difficult to recognize that these individuals were throwing off the shackles of the Old World (the corruption of its offices, the bigotry of its religions, the entitlement and greedy depredations of its gentry) while asking themselves to spurn the temptation to recreate those shackles here. They kept each other mostly honest, but, because people are people, many of those conditions persist in one form or another. This is the conundrum, the national cognitive dissonance we live with every day. A country that decries the violence in Tibet and the slaughter in Darfur with its voice, but that tortures its own citizens at Guantanamo Bay and massacres the innocent in Haditha. The optimists (and the vapid cheerleaders over at Fox News) say we are the former America and our values are not to be questioned. The pessimists say we are the latter America and our values are not to be trusted. But, of course, they're both wrong. We are both Americas simultaneously. Jefferson knew it. Lincoln knew it (hell, doesn't "better angels of our nature" imply we've got our demons, too?). And just because most of us, including me, can't wrap our heads around that fact doesn't make it any less true.

Let me close by relating two quick anecdotes. The first happened just after I noticed the architectural oddity of the memorial and I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. A little boy, no more than two or three, wearing a red, white, and blue pair of overalls, ran up to the big, black chains that surrounded Jefferson's statue. He looked at them for a minute, as if he were sizing up their weight. Then he reached out, unabashed, with both hands and began shaking the ever-lovin' shit out of them. It was very noisy and his young dad was a bit embarrassed. He went over and grabbed his son and brought him away to what he thought was a safe distance. The kid's feet were moving before he hit the ground. He ran right back up to those chains and let freedom ring. I was laughing and loving every minute of it.

Fast forward to 2003. Willis and I were making our way down the east coast on our seven-week, cross-country road trip. We left New Jersey in the afternoon and were rolling through D.C. around midnight. It wasn't on the itinerary, but Willis had never been, so we stopped to walk around the Mall. I recommend that everyone do this once in their lives. There are no crowds and no distractions. No veil between you and the feelings those monuments were meant to evoke. If one were so inclined, one could build a city every bit as impressive and imposing dedicated to our failures as a people. But I wouldn't visit. I see its skyline every day. I hear its traffic and smell its refuse on the nightly newscast. Every so often, it is good to remind yourself what it is we're aiming at here, the elusive union we're endeavoring - perhaps in vain - to perfect. We made it over to the J-Mo, wreathed in night, lit from within. Willis couldn't help himself. He jumped over the barrier and sprawled himself across the feet of the statue. I snapped a picture. We made some ridiculous and bawdy jokes that most people would consider to be at odds with the ostensible solemnity of the setting. People other than Ben Franklin, that randy old coot. But we knew what we were doing. There's freedom in laughter.

We did not, however, get the last laugh. When we walked back to the car, we noticed a parking ticket under the windshield wiper. I think it ended up being a $50 fine. Thank God we weren't dancing.