Issue 67

News: A few of my favorite things: The Book.
I have recently started work on a book which will start off as a list of my favorite 100 films, albums, and Books, plus my 33 favorite television series. Each entry will cover a page's worth of my thoughts on each of the items on the list, although in some cases where two consecutive items are very much related (like when I do Sufjan Stevens' albums Illinoise and The Avalanche or both film versions of Lolita), two entries will be combined into one page. Currently, I have 180 items out of 333 listed so far. The film section of the book will feature new versions of the reviews of many of the films I have reviewed on my blog, and some which aren't even on the blog, including some well-known classics, and some films which are either critically panned (Glen or Glenda?), didn't do well in the Box office (DEBS), or were just too obscure to merit a DVD release (David Holzman's Diary). The Albums section of the book, while heavily oriented towards Classic rock from 1960s-1980s (for Chicago readers, asically what you can expect to hear from WDRV), there is very much else on the list (including things from the 1955 Glenn Gould recording of Bach's Goldberg variations to Serge Gahinsbourg to John Coltrane to the Original soundtrack to O Brother Where Art Thou.) The Books section of the book will feature novels (like the ubiquitous Catcher in the Rye), as well as plays, books of essays, and even some holy books (like the KJV Bible, Koran, and Book of mormon, which will be merged into one entry). Finally, the Television series section will include many different series from All in the Family to Roots to John Safran vs. God to Aqua Teen Hunger Force.

Band Name of the Day: The Christmas Massacre. Yesterday, I passed a house with my mother and we noticed that there were many Christmas figures still on its lawn, and she noted that it looked like a "Christmas Massacre"

Film Reviews of the Day: Pump up the Volume. In this film Christian Slater plays a teenager who becomes a Pirate Radio Shock Jock and wreaks havoc on the town he lives in including several people commiting suicide obstensively due to his broadcasts and also humiliating the powers that be of the high school he attends (which has some of the highest SAT scores in the state, and also one of the highest rates of expulsion, which are related.) Ultimately, the FCC closes in on him as they locate his signal and he loses his voice disguiser.

She's Gotta Have It. Spike Lee's first feature film, which hasn't been released on DVD yet, which tells in a pseudo-documentary style the story of one woman and her struggle to choose between the three men she loves: An immature jokester (played by the director himself), an vain male model, and a controlling intellectual.

Quote of the Day: "It's your right to do as you wish. It's my right to take no part in it"
______________Dominique Francon, The Fountainhead.

Link of the Day: The Million Dollar Homepage: Space rented out on a site with a 1000x1000 pixel grid for $1/pixel

Issue 66

News: The Beethoven Fallacy.
As long-time readers will probably guess, I am strongly Pro-Choice, and have dedicated the news stories in two issues of my blog (Specifically Issues nos. 21 [where I parodied an article on Jack Chick's website which is a variation on what I will talk about], and 31 [Where I ranted about a law in South Dakota which would have totally banned it, which has since been overturned.]) and have made several other references to it in other issues. Recently, I purchased Richard Dawkins' new book The God Delusion. In one section of the book, he writes about an urban legend circulating among pro-lifers since at least 1945 which goes along the lines of "If a woman with (Tuberculosis/syphilis) and her husband had (whichever one the woman didn't get assigned with) had (4-8) children already, and three of them were deaf, Two blind, and One Retarded, would you reccomend abortion? If you did, then you would have killed Beethoven." As Dawkins points out that this is very incorrect on many levels.
1. Beethoven's father had neither syphillis nor Tuberculosis, though he was an alcoholic, albeit competent enough to further Ludwig's musical development.
2. Beethoven's mother did end up with Tuberculosis only after he was born.
3. Beethoven was effectively the oldest child of his family, with the actual oldest dying in infancy , not blind/deaf/retarded.
4. Beethoven's parents only had 7 children, only three of which even survived infancy, and, to my knowledge, no real defects apart from Ludwig's deafness, which had nothing to do with the illnesses of his parents.
5. Even if a fetus could have the potential of somebody as creative as Beethoven was, there's also as much possibility of a person killing a fetus with the potential to become as evil as Hitler was.
6. Considering that, on average, only one in 1/2 Billion sperm even reach the uterus in the first place, and that afterwards, even if the egg is fertilized, the odds of the sperm-egg combination ending up being flushed out with the mother's period has been given as anywhere from 50-80%, worrying about the termination of a pregnancy seems trivial in comparison.

Band Name of the Day: Googly Gogol. A band name in the book and movie A Clockwork Orange.

Film Idea: No Film Ideas, but many film reviews in queue, so instead of a new film idea and a review of a film, I will post 2 film reviews per issue for as long as I have more than two film reviews to write, and even after that, I will only post new film ideas as they come to me.

Film Reviews of the Day: A Clockwork Orange. As deeply messed up as Kubrick's vision of Anthony Burgess' novel (Of the 50 or so he wrote, the only one for which he would be remembered), it seems to be the most perfect film I have ever seen, almost on par with The Catcher in the Rye. It is also fitting that given Alex's Obsession with "Lovely Lovely Ludwig Van" in the film, that my news article was about him.

Rocky Horror Picture Show. I haven't seen this film in a theatre, but I do own it on DVD, and to quote three characters from the film:
* It's A credit to Richard O'Brien's genius.
* A Triumph of his Will.
* It's Okay.

Quote of the Day: "Why is it that most of the people who are against abortion are people you wouldn't want to **** in the first place?"
_________George Carlin, Back in town.

Link of the Day: Scopitones: The French Granddaddy of today's Music videos. View them here.

Issue 65

News: What Does the Bible Say about ______? Whatever you want.
Once, when I was at the Library, I found a book called What Does the Bible Say About: The Ultimate A-Z resource. I was curious, so I glanced at it and read the paragraph about what they believed the Bible said about abortion and found the standard Christian Pro-life ideas encapsulated in a single paragraph. Of course, the Bible does not really cover the subject of abortion very well at all, and one of the few, if not probably the only explicit references it makes to termination of pregnancies (in exodus 21), says something to the effect of "if a man induces a miscarriage, and the woman survives, he will pay a fine of whatever the Judge wants him to pay, but if she dies, he must be killed." And if God indeed does view the life of fetuses as being on par with those of actual human beings, that may not really be saying much, because, after all, he managed to disown his annointed after failing (I would say he refused, but I may be overestimating the convictions of a character who used to throw things at musicians) to do a full My Lai on a neighboring tribe (1 Samuel 15). Another point to make is that one thing most Christians (indeed most enlightened people) today find morally repugnant, Slavery, is something fully sanctioned by the Bible, so long as as the masters do not beat their slaves to death. Upon further inspection, the Bible contradicts itself so many times that it is likely for two sides on an issue to use the Bible to support their claims. To put this in another way: Both The Klan and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used the same book to justify their diometrically opposed ideologies. So, until next time, remember that people who say that the Bible says only one thing about issues tend to not even really know what they're talking about.

Band Name of the Day: The Traumatic Breasts. In the movie But I'm a Cheerleader, when the characters talk about what made them gay, one guy said "Traumatic... breasts."

Film Idea of the Day: None.

Film Review of the Day: But I'm a Cheerleader. It's a film about a cheerleader named Megan suspected of "deviant Tendencies" (read: Homosexuality) which she only becomes aware of around 20 minutes in (even when she is seen making out with her boyfriend, but concentrating on the chests of her fellow cheerleaders.) She is sent to an ex-gay camp (which, in real life, don't work at all) where her parents (and later, she) try to get her to become heterosexual. Ultimately, she develops a friendship with another campmate, named Graham, which eventually blossoms into a romance, which leads to Megan's expulsion from the camp.

Quote of the Day: "It's your choice; you can run off with Megan and turn into a raging bull-dyke or, you can do the simulation and graduate and lead a normal life."
______Mary Brown (Cathy Moriarty of Raging Bull) to Megan (Natasha Lyonne) in But I'm a Cheerleader

Link of the Day: Why did the Chicken Cross the Road? See various celebrities say why in this website.

issue 64

News: A one-man bible show.
I just recently came up with the idea of a one-man show of the Bible as a companion piece to my annotation to the King James Bible (see Issue 56) , which consists not only of the stories that everybody seems to remember (like the ones that are ubiquitous in Children's picture book bibles [ie David and Goliath, The creation, Noah's flood, the gospels], so that the sex and violence in the regular bible doesn't alienate them from Christianity too soon), but also some parts of the Bible which tend to be obscure to people who haven't read the Bible (ie the times [all three] where Abraham [Isaac in the third one] saves his and his wife's life by claiming that she is his sister), and with my commentary from the original annotated Bible interspersed with the Narration and even the Characters' dialogue, although the dialogue will for the most part, not be taken verbatim from the King James Bible (though some exceptions will be taken when I do the poetic sections of the Old Testament and make light of the Elizabethan language and its absurdities to the modern day reader). The idea was inspired by the Reduced Shakespeare Company's own condensation of the Bible called: The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged). In their show the three members of the troupe act out sections of the Bible and often including jabs at the religious right (one of the top 10 rejected Commandments in the show was "The Christian Right is Neither Christian nor Right.")

Band Name of the Day: Frenglish. It comes from a line in the Movie D.E.B.S.: "You need to speak French or English. Frenglish is not a language."

Film Idea of the Day: See above.

Film Review of the Day: DEBS. In this film there is a secret test in the SAT which recruits teenaged girls (in Schoolgirl uniforms, no less) for a secret spying agency called D.E.B.S., and the plot consists of a major conflict of interest when one DEB (ironically, the only DEB in history to ace the secret test) falls in love with a supervillain named Lucy Diamond. When I saw the DVD, I mainly rented it for the apparent kitsch value of the film (Schoolgirls in uniform as secret agents), but I wound up enjoying it not just as a kitsch film, but as a film in general.

Quote of the Day: "Well, I believe in the soul. The c*ck. The p*ss*. The small of a woman's back. The hanging curveball. High fiber. Good scotch. That the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a Constitution Amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas eve. And I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days...Goodnight.
___________Kevin Costner, Bull Durham

Link of the Day: Here's a site of movie monologues, including the above quote.

Tract Review: Heart Trouble?: A doctor diagnoses a man with a heart problem. He uses this to get off on a tangent on other "Heart Problems" (read: sin), and that the cure for the "Heart Problems" is Jesus.
Fame: No relation to the film/TV series or the David Bowie/John Lennon Collaboration, but it is a predominantly-black version of the recent tract The Star.