when will it all end?

Via Kotaku, a story about an Indian man who broke the world record for most hours spent playing Grand Theft Auto IV in a row: 40.3.

The Mumbai, India resident started playing at his home on September 4 at 10:00 a.m. and wrapped up on September 6 at 2:00 a.m., taking only four breaks. His marathon play session was observed by observers and has earned its place in the Guinness Book, surpassing the previous record of playing GTAIV for 28 hours and 1 minute.

So now the Indians are better than us at science, engineering, wireless router tech support, and sitting around on their asses playing GTA? I weep for America's future, Glenn Beck-style.

This just in: we're winning the culture war

I didn't get much of a chance to read up on the blogosphere today, but I noticed that several of the writers I read commented in amazement at the Washington Post's decision to publish an editorial by Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, entitled "America's Secular Saboteurs." These bloggers quite accurately pointed out that the content of this piece is unhinged and naked bigotry, and argued that its publication reflects extremely poorly on the Post's editorial standards. The truth is quite the contrary. The Post has done a great public service in giving this column such a prominent platform, as it ably illustrates the desperation and intellectual bankruptcy of religious conservatism in 2009. It would take far too much time to point out every instance of ignorance and historical contradiction in Donohue's piece (read it yourself and they'll likely jump right out at you), so I'll only address what I see as the highlights. The editorial's first paragraph:

"There are many ways cultural nihilists are busy trying to sabotage America these days: multiculturalism is used as a club to beat down Western civilization in the classroom; sexual libertines seek to upend the cultural order by attacking religion; artists use their artistic freedoms to mock Christianity; Hollywood relentlessly insults people of faith; activist left-wing legal groups try to scrub society free of the public expression of religion; elements in the Democratic party demonstrate an animus against Catholicism; and secular-minded malcontents within Catholicism and Protestantism seek to sabotage their religion from the inside."

The standard practice in this type of writing is to identify your ideological opponents as a marginalized but devious band of schemers seeking to deceive the larger body of honest citizens into complicity in their agenda. By contrast, Donohue rattles off a laundry list of conspirators: educators, sex enthusiasts, artists, civil libertarians, the Democratic Party, and even unnamed fifth columnists within Christianity itself. Note that this 'paragraph' is actually only a single hysterical sentence. One can almost feel Donohue's paranoia rising with each successive semi-colon. Indeed, given the vagueness of his language, Donohue may well be including up to half of the U.S. population under his "cultural nihilist" rubric.

Shortly thereafter, Donohue pinpoints his villains' sinister logic:

"If societal destruction is the goal, then it makes no sense to waste time by attacking the political or economic structure: the key to any society is its culture, and the heart of any culture is religion. In this society, that means Christianity, the big prize being Catholicism. Which explains why secular saboteurs are waging war against it."

The magnitude of ignorance displayed in Donohue's equation of Catholicism with the essence of American culture is nothing short of breathtaking. The heyday of American anti-Catholicism to date took place in the nativist movement of the mid-to-late 19th century, when Catholic immigrants began arriving en masse to United States from Europe. The reaction from the largely Protestant populace was to mount a campaign of violence and economic and social marginalization against Catholic immigrants for - you guessed it - their perceived lack of allegiance to American culture. (Feel free to watch Gangs of New York for a fictionalized primer on the religious politics of the era, but be sure to fast-forward through the scenes where Cameron Diaz has speaking roles). In fact, as recently as 1960 John F. Kennedy, still the only Catholic to hold the U.S. Presidency, had to take pains during his campaign to assure the electorate that he would not be beholden to Papal authority in making decisions as President. Beyond the typical religious-right "religion is the primary arbiter of culture" fallacy (which I'll return to later), it's nearly impossible to argue that American history and culture are synonymous with Catholicism without ignoring a great deal of salient historical facts.

Donohue later follows with this bit of revisionism:

"There was a time when Hollywood made reverential movies about Christianity. But those days are long gone. Now they just insult. And when someone finally makes a film that makes Christians proud, he is run out of town. Were it not for Mel Gibson, there would have been no "Passion of the Christ." But for every Harvey Weinstein who likes to bash Catholics, there is always someone else waiting in the wings to do the same."

Mel Gibson was not "run out" of any town for making The Passion of the Christ. Donohue conveniently neglects to mention the very public incident in which Gibson was caught driving while intoxicated and proceeded to sexually harass a female arresting officer, all the while spewing the kind of rank anti-Semitic beliefs that he had so vigorously denied holding during the run-up to The Passion of the Christ's release. Isn't it interesting, in this context, that Donohue prefers to pin Gibson's downfall on the likes of Harvey Weinstein (what kind of last name is that, anyway?)

"The ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State harbor an agenda to smash the last vestiges of Christianity in America. Lying about their real motives, they say their fidelity is to the Constitution. But there is nothing in the Constitution that sanctions the censorship of religious speech. From banning nativity scenes to punishing little kids for painting a picture of Jesus, the zealots give Fidel a good run for his money."

No. What Donohue and those who think like him fail to understand is that these groups and their supporters, with very few exceptions, have no designs on censoring private religious expression. Rather, they push back forcefully on the fiction that religious belief, in general or particular forms, is an intrinsic part of American society and should receive official sanction and support as such. Preventing public property and money from being employed to display a nativity scene or a statue of the Ten Commandments is not religious censorship and is no way equivalent to denying private citizens the right to do the same with their private property. Rather, it's a judicious assertion of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which remains deeply ingrained in American culture no matter how loudly the Donohues of the world disdain it.

"Catholics were once the mainstay of the Democratic Party; now the gay activists are in charge. Indeed, practicing Catholics are no longer welcome in leadership roles in the Party: the contempt that pro-life Catholics experience is palpable. The fact that Catholics for Choice, a notoriously anti-Catholic front group funded by the Ford Foundation, has a close relationship with the Democrats says it all."

I'm sure that the gay activist overlords of the Democratic Party are quite pleased with President Obama's speedy and bold moves to overturn the federal Defense of Marriage Act and the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on homosexuals serving in the armed forces. More fascinating is the rapid sequence of assertions that (1) the Democratic Party does not welcome "practicing Catholics" (2) there exists a group called Catholics for Choice, which in fact has a close relationship with the party, and (3) Catholics for Choice is "notoriously anti-Catholic." The message here is fairly obvious: personal religious belief and identification mean nothing when it comes to determining whether or not a person "counts" as a Catholic, while toeing the Church's anti-abortion hardline means everything.

Donohue concludes with this gem:

"The culture war is up for grabs. The good news is that religious conservatives continue to breed like rabbits, while secular saboteurs have shut down: they're too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids. Time, it seems, is on the side of the angels."

Let's leave aside the more explicitly disturbing connotations of asymmetrical breeding as a strategy to achieve cultural and political goals for the time being and focus on the real implications of what Donohue is saying here. In a single sentence, he's managed to neatly encapsulate his view that children are little more than empty vessels to be indoctrinated with an unaltered version of their parent's religious, cultural, and political beliefs, for the purposes of continued engagement of a vaguely defined and ever-changing enemy on a metaphorical field of battle. It is inconceivable to Donohue that, absent some nefarious outside influence, children raised in a conservative religious family could grow up to become atheists, homosexuals, members of Catholics for Choice, or any other of the myriad means of "deviancy" that populate his worldview. To him, these are not their choices to make. They are to be made for them by authority; specifically, by a glorious singularity of parental power and religious dictate.

Bill Donohue is a grubbing fascist with not one shred of respect for the United States of America's rich and dynamic culture of individualism, mutual tolerance, and democracy. He makes no secret of his profound contempt for American citizens who fail to reflect in full his personal prejudices. All of this is abundantly clear in every sentence of his idiotic and vile editorial. We are fortunate to live in a time where this can be made clear, and even more fortunate that Donohue himself has chosen to discredit himself so thoroughly and nakedly on the public stage. It's clear that Donohue imagines himself to be a holy warrior leading a vast army of the devout to a divinely ordained victory. His writing reveals him to be little more than a cheap dictator huddled in a bunker, cursing the names of imagined conspirators under his breath, while promising his dwindling camarilla a glorious triumph in a war that he has already lost.

Why you shouldn't buy an e-book reader

Hot on the heels of the success of the Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble announced the impeding release of a competing e-book machine called the Nook. Despite the terminally retarded name (couldn't they have named it FantastoBook or something? Grow a fucking pair, gadget marketers!) it actually sounds pretty cool.

There's still no way in hell I'd buy one, though. Consider this: the major social benefit to book reading in our modern age is the ability to lord it over people who either (a) don't read or (b) spend most of their time reading bullshit young adult fiction. The corollary to this is the ability to arrive at a rough estimation of a person's intellect by the size and content of their bookshelf or show off your brilliance through the size and content of your own. That's why I have a handful of antiquated books on psychotherapy that I didn't pay for and have no intention of reading, yet keep in plain view in my apartment. The whole point of books in this day and age is that they're retrograde and inefficient. A healthy book collection is the perfect complement to your useless liberal arts degree.

The e-book reader fucks all that up. First off, you can't tell what other people are reading on it and nobody can tell what you're reading, effectively ending the time-honored social ritual of reading a book in public to make yourself look smarter. Also lost is the ability to sneer at another person for reading Deepak Chopra or one of those "inspirational" books where a retired pro-football coach tortures personal anecdotes into dubious metaphors for achieving success in business. Worse, the Kindle/Nook ruins the convenient more books = smarter person shorthand by being the same size whether you have one book or a couple thousand. Consider: despite the fact that everyone now owns an iPod or comparable MP3 player, all of which can hold a couple thousand songs at a minimum, the average number of songs kept on such devices is somewhere in the 300s. All most people do is copy the 15 or so greatest-hits albums they own over to their MP3 player and call it a day. Similarly, I bet most people who get an e-book reader once the market expands more mainstream will probably buy the Twilight books and maybe one or two other things and just read those over and over again, and no one will ever be the wiser.

In conclusion, buying an e-book reader forfeits a great deal of the educated American's established avenues of pretentiousness. With the economy being the way it is today, that's a price we can't afford to pay. It's bad enough that HBO had to make it to where we can't look down on people for enjoying television anymore. Now we're gonna turn reading books into the functional equivalent of browsing sports scores on a BlackBerry?

Proof of my greatness: part one

Andrew Sullivan linked to a blog post tonight by some libertarian blogger named Peter Suderman pondering whether or not video games are supplanting B-movies. This caught my attention primarily because I wrote a blog post a little over two years ago making essentially the same argument on the eve of the release of Halo 3. I doubt that Peter Suderman was copying me, seeing as the post was on my friends-only MySpace page (mind you, I was writing back in the heady days of 2007, before it was scientifically proven that using MySpace marks you permanently as a member of the urban poor) but still, chalk me up as being ahead of the curve. Adding to my greatness, I also predicted in this post that The Dark Knight was going to be good, that Halo 3 was going to be better than any of the bullshit blockbuster movies of summer 2007, and that I'd never wind up seeing the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. All of which came true! The entire post is re-printed below so you can bask in my reflected glory.

The hype around the release of Halo 3 this week generally says that the game stands a good chance of bringing in more money on the day of its release than any entertainment event, ever. Traditionally, of course, big-money openings are the province of blockbuster action movies, with the current champ being this year's god-awful Spider-Man 3. The comparison poses an interesting question: namely, how long is it going to be before big mindless summer blockbuster action movies are rendered irrelevant by video games? My line of reasoning is this: of all the action films I saw this summer, the only one that strikes me as particularly notable is Live Free or Die Hard, and that's mostly because I expected it to suck and it didn't. I saw Transformers, but I can't remember a goddamn thing that actually happened in it. Obviously, the less said about Spider-Man 3, the better. In fact, pretty much the only one I didn't see was Pirates of the Caribbean Go To China or whatever it was called, which I decided to skip when I found out it was like 3 hours long. Clearly, I haven't played Halo 3 yet, but I think it's a pretty safe bet that it's going to be a lot better than any of those movies. With the level of production value and interactivity that games offer in the Xbox 360/Playstation 3 era, at some point, we have to ask ourselves what the point of watching some CGI robot blow shit up is when you can do it yourself from the comfort of your own home? Obviously, action movies will continue to exist for the foreseeable future, given the fact that box office takes are still rising and I still hear a lot of people talk about how they can't handle the amount of buttons on modern video game controllers. But you have to wonder how long that's going to last given the fact that by this point, the bottom half of the crucial 18-25 demographic came of age in the Playstation 2 era, and more and more of the types of people who might not have played many video games in past generations (read: girls) are getting into the hobby. My guess is that summer event movies will survive the transition, but they're going to have to step their game up a peg by emphasizing the elements that film does better than video games, like story and performance (I'm crossing my fingers for The Dark Knight to represent the critical step in this direction), because they aren't going to be able to compete much longer in terms of sheer visceral experience.

Where The Wild Things Are review and thoughts on children's movies

Spike Jonze's film adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are is a masterpiece. The cinematography and art direction create visually stunning tableaus throughout the entire running time. The script is an evocative and nakedly emotional exploration of childhood. Max Records, the child actor who plays the main character Max, is note-perfect. The Wild Things, voiced to perfection by a variety of well-regarded actors and actresses, are completely convincing as characters and never come across as whiz-bang special effects despite the obvious technical virtuosity involved in their creation. The movie steadfastly avoids pat moralizing and tiresome postmodern wink-and-nudge reference smuggling. To sum, it's difficult to summarize Where The Wild Things Are as being anything besides a complete artistic triumph.

So why the hell do I feel so uneasy about it?

Where The Wild Things Are is an adaptation of one of the most famous children's books of all time. Presumably, it's very faithful to the source material. Re-reading children's books hasn't been a high priority of mine in my adult life, and I don't have any kids of my own, so my memory of the book outside of the more iconic images from it are a little hazy. However, it's been loudly praised by author Maurice Sendak, who served as a producer on the movie, and the quality of the production marks it generally as a far cry from the corpse-fucking live action Dr. Seuss movies from the beginning of the decade. Despite all that faithfulness and care, Where The Wild Things Are isn't a children's movie. It's a movie targeted largely, though by no means exclusively, to millenial hipster types. In some ways, it's probably the crowning achievement to date of that culture and ethos, partly because of the sheer breadth and wattage of the creators - Spike Jonze! Dave Eggers! Karen O! - but mostly because of how it zeroes in on the tension between childhood fantasy and adult emotional complexity that undergirds so much of the hipster zeitgeist.

But, unlike the book, it's not made for kids, and it's got nothing to do with the content of the film itself, which is straight down the middle PG stuff. I think that the real crux of the issue has to do with the inherent difference between books and movies as media. Children's books are mainly designed to give young kids a visually oriented story that they can, ideally, read with their parents. It's supposed to be a tactile experience, where the kid can go at his or her own pace, looking at the pictures, sounding out the words, and asking mom or dad about what's going to happen next before turning the page to find out. The whole process takes a half-hour, forty-five minutes tops. In contrast, watching a movie, especially in the theater, is a passive experience. The kid sits in the dark and watches things happen until the movie's over and then he or she can talk about it, because while it's going on, any talk will fetch a quick reprimand and annoyed looks from the nearby people in the audience. Even a short movie requires sustaining this for an hour and a half.

As a result, most kids movies are designed to give repeated manic bursts of attention-grabbing fun. This is a large contributor to why most kids movies are so unbearable to anybody over the age of 12. Take, for instance, the trailer for the upcoming Jackie Chan movie The Spy Next Door, which played before my showing of Where The Wild Things Are:


Looks terrible, right? The Spy Next Door, as near as I can tell, has the exact same plot as Vin Diesel's 2005 movie The Pacifier, which in turn had the exact same plot at Hulk Hogan's 1993 movie Mr. Nanny. There's probably three or four more identical movies in between those two that I'm just not aware of. The reason that Hollywood gets away with this is that the target audience is (a) not old enough to be cognizant of the fact that an identical movie was made just four years ago and (b) more concerned with high-spirited action and fun than plot, character, and originality.

That's not to say that ALL kids movie lack those things, of course. Pixar's entire output, and corresponding boffo box office numbers, are more than enough proof that kids can appreciate heartfelt characters and a well-crafted and resonant story. The thing of it is, though, is that Pixar's movies and other "quality" kids movies provide plot and heart without skimping on a generous dose of the action and funny antics that are the perpetual hallmarks of the form.

Where The Wild Things Are doesn't really have much of that. That's a credit to it as an artistic and thematic work; the film would have been a total abortion if it were reworked to include a wacky sidekick and an extended chase scene. Be honest, though: if you were 8 years old again, would you rather see a movie about a kung-fu expert, a sassy Average American family, and the dad from Hannah Montana, or one about a bunch of monsters sitting around in a forest talking about their feelings? Because the latter is literally the plot of Where The Wild Things Are.

I could be wrong about this. Despite the bluster of the preceding paragraphs, I don't really know that much about kids. Maybe they'll absolutely flip their shit for an allegorical psychodrama about childhood. Maybe they'll just groove on the cool creatures and pretty pictures and wind up liking it. In that case, hey, problem solved (more accurately, problem non-existent). I certainly think that Where The Wild Things Are will provide a hands-down more rewarding experience over the course of growing up than any one of the dozens of DreamWorks CGI movies produced each year. I'm seriously considering seeing it again just to enjoy the experience without wondering what the kids in the audience think about it in the back of my mind the whole time (after all, why should I give a shit?). But my gut tells me that Where The Wild Things Are is going to go over a lot of little heads. And wouldn't it be ironic if thousands of kids were to be bored to tears by one of cinema's greatest depictions of being a misunderstood child?

Paranormal Activity review

Having sold $7 million in tickets over the weekend despite playing in only 160 theaters, Paranormal Activity is already a huge hit. It's already received a good deal of mythologizing news coverage, and thanks to a grassroots Internet campaign where people cast votes to bring the movie to their city, is probably ingrained enough in the mass consciousness now to get a wide release in the next couple of weeks. Paranormal Activity tells the story of Katie and Micah, a young couple played by two unknown actors named Katie and Micah, who begin video-recording their home life in the hopes of capturing the supernatural events that have been happening to them at night and have seemingly followed Katie around for her entire life. The onscreen action unfolds entirely from the point of view of the couple's camera, and Katie and Micah are the only significant characters who appear onscreen, with the exception of a "ghost expert" who only appears briefly. The film's naturalistic camera work, sound design, and judiciously paced scare moments ramp up the sense of tension throughout, focusing particularly on the characters' growing unease with their surroundings.

Let's stop a minute and acknowledge that the details of Paranormal Activity, from the style right down to the marketing, are extremely reminiscent of 1999's mega-hit The Blair Witch Project. And indeed, I think that your feelings about The Blair Witch Project will probably prove to be the best predictor of how you'll respond to Paranormal Activity, at least in terms of how scary you'll find it to be. I know people who were genuinely frightened by The Blair Witch Project, but to me it came off like an hour and a half of rustling leaf sounds and vaguely spooky stick men capped off with a two-and-a-half second death scene. Similarly, I could tell that a lot of people in the theater watching Paranormal Activity with me (a surprisingly big crowd, given that I went to an 11:15 AM showing) were really scared, but the movie never really rose to that level for me. Even though it builds tension effectively, and has some very creepy moments, I wasn't ever really able to make the mental leap from "door closing unexpectedly" to "abject terror." I think that's more of a reflection of what I find scary than the an indictment of craft on display in Paranormal Activity, and I expect that my opinion of this aspect of the film will be in the minority.

Unlike The Blair Witch Project, however, Paranormal Activity has other virtues beside scare value. First of all, it really nails the intended naturalistic feeling, particularly in the acting. Katie and Micah are among the most believable couples I've seen in a modern film. Katie Featherston's performance is particularly phenomenal, in how her work never feels like she's playing a character in a film. I found myself liking both Katie and Micah quite a bit, which is a positive contrast to how I felt about the main characters in both Blair Witch and Cloverfield. Also, the plot smartly makes the issue of the camera a way of exposing the dynamic between the two main characters; Micah insists on it over Katie's objections and takes a flippantly combative tone toward the haunting that's completely discordant with Katie's emotional turmoil. As the film progresses, their different approaches to the issue increasingly drive a wedge between them.

On a certain level, Paranormal Activity almost plays like an art-house breakup drama with a ghost story in the background. Even thought it's reasonably clear that this was part of the intent, I wish the creators of the film had played up these elements even more. In particular, there's a kinda-foreshadowed plot development in the last five minutes of the film that could have easily been introduced earlier in the third act, which in turn might have opened up more of an arc for Micah's character (I may expand on this more in a post in a couple of weeks once the movie goes wide, so as not to spoil it - watching Paranormal Activity really made me reflect on what I find scary in movies). It's a bit of a nitpicking criticism, but I think that if Paranormal Activity did as good a job of resolving the haunting/relationship trouble parallel as it did setting it up, it'd have a shot at being a real classic. As it stands, it's a very well-crafted horror film that's worth getting excited over. Don't succumb to the coming hype about it being the scariest movie ever made (or the inevitable coming backlash against its overexposure, for that matter) because it isn't. It is, however, a worthwhile movie that's probably best experienced on the big screen with a large audience, and if you think you're interested, I'd suggest that you get together with some friends and go as soon as it opens near you. If nothing else, it'll make for a hell of a fantastic alternative to Saw VI.

Leave General McChrystal alone!

The political chatter of the week is quickly coalescing around U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, who last week publicly stated his support for a large troop increase in the war in Afghanistan and his belief that a more narrow approach that does not revolve around ensuring political stability, as has apparently been advocated by the Vice President's office, will not be effective in securing the U.S.'s strategic interests in the region. Much of the published opinion has been critical of McChrystal, with at least one commentator going so far as to dub it a "plain violation of the principle of civilian control." The idea, it seems, is that McChrystal is trying to force Obama's hand into giving him what he wants through press leaks and public pronouncements.

I'm skeptical. McChrystal's job isn't to avoid having a professional opinion on the conduct of the military operation that he is in charge of overseeing, and he isn't required to refrain from sharing his professional opinion with others, except, I suppose, in cases where it would threaten the operational security of his stated mission. Rather, McChrystal's job is to obey the orders of the commander-in-chief, Barack Obama. As far as I can tell, he hasn't disobeyed an executive order or even communicated an intent to do so. All he's done is state a tactical preference based on his analysis of the situation. If Obama doesn't like how he's behaving, he's free to relieve him of his command, as presidents have frequently done to military generals throughout U.S. history.

Yes, McChrystal's comments go against the grain of chain-of-command protocol as it's typically understood, and yes, it's hardly good decorum to put your boss on the spot. But, as is so often the case, what's bad for discipline and protocol is good for American democracy. Lest we forget, American men and women are currently on Afghan soil putting their lives at stake in this conflict, with the potential of more joining them depending on the decisions made. Let's also remember former General Eric Shinseki, who Donald Rumsfeld threw under the bus in the George W. Bush days for having the sheer balls to suggest that the U.S. bring enough ground troops into the invasion of Iraq to maintain order in the country. The American people didn't get the benefit of the full debate then. I'm not about to argue that they should be denied it now.

All this isn't to say that Obama has to take McChrystal's advice. There's no telling whether or not he's even right about Afghanistan. After all, if the Iraqi people had greeted the U.S. invasion with party hats and kazoos, like Bill Kristol promised, and begun throwing Sunni/Shiite get-to-know-you block parties as soon as that statue of Saddam hit the concrete, no one outside of a few military historians would even know who Eric Shinseki is right now. Obama's the President, and the decision is his alone to make based on the facts and strategic objectives as he sees them. Does he expose himself to more potential criticism because of McChrystal's statements? You bet. But that's the burden of leadership.

I'm a strong Obama supporter, and I genuinely don't know what the best course of action in Afghanistan is at this juncture. I trust him to weigh the alternatives and make an appropriate choice. But I also expect him to be open and accountable to the American people about the reasoning behind that decision, and having this discussion take place in the public sphere will only serve to motivate that transparency. Obama's supporters don't owe him any protection from the political risk that tough decisions entail. We'd be better served by advocating our own views and values, whatever they may be, in hopes of having our own influence on the outcome (advocates of full withdrawal are probably in for lean times on this front).

And if things don't go well, maybe in 2012 we'll wind up with President Mitt Romney, aka the only American executive to preside over a government that's both legalized gay marriage and mandated universal healthcare.