Tag Archives: Stephen Colbert

01.13.19
by

Plot Holes

I don’t take things at face value.  Never have.  One could say that makes me a cynic.   But I’d say a realist.    So let’s split the difference and settle on a little bit of both.

Hell of a time to be living in for us cynical realists.

There is nothing wrong with watching what’s going on in Washington, D.C. these days and feeling like a skeptic who is positive some dry ice machine hidden just beyond our collective eye-lines is creating that incessant shroud of dense black fog we all continually find ourselves trapped in.

MUELLER WHERE ARE YOU

The FBI is investigating the president, OUR U.S PRESIDENT for being a Russian spy, a willing Russian stooge, or a blackmailed stooge being made to spy on HIS OWN COUNTRY by…..RUSSIA???

Why, it’s like some bad John LeCarre novel that you always felt you should read but decided not to when you saw how thick it was and considered that much time might be better spent at least attempting to read Proust.  Or your latest bank statement.

Just one of the many seemingly absurd Hollywood movies that seem more relevant now #KevinCostnerwasHOT #wow

Of course, there is nothing wrong with escape.  Us cynical realists do it all the time.  I, for one, am a sucker for cheap thrills in mindless entertainment.  But cheap doesn’t mean vague and unexplained and even mindless needs to feel reasonable.  Or, well, follow-able within the unreality that is being created.

Beware — minor spoilers lay ahead.

So will someone tell me: WHAT THE HELL WAS EVERYONE LOOKING AWAY FROM IN Bird Box????  And why??  Why??  Why?????  Why did it make so many of them suicidal and yet others of them spiritually reborn or evil or just clever?  Why Sandra Bullock and John Malkovich??? Why do you need a new kitchen or house or small plane that badly?????

And while we’re on this subject, or genre:  If John Krasinski’s character cared so much about his family you’d think he’d have removed that foot long nail sticking out of the floor in A Quiet Place the first 500 times he saw it.  Or at least after it almost pulverized his beloved wife the first time.  Why???  Why????  Why doesn’t this bother anybody else?????

uh yeah Jim, that’s what we want to know!

But that all begs the question of how an earnest film like Boy Erased, a movie all about a gay teenager’s coming of age, can show us an early scene of him being raped and then NEVER address it again in a story that deals primarily with sexual identity and psychological well-being?  Why???  Why???  Why is it okay to just IGNORE the ELEPHANT YOU PLACED IN THE GOSH DARNED NARRATIVE ROOM?????? WHY??????????????

No wonder I often spend my days feeling like Rosemary Woodhouse AFTER she’s pieced together the truth on her living room floor with Scrabble tiles while everyone else tells her that the truth really doesn’t matter at all and to simply stay in her room, turn up the air conditioning and be quiet.

How many points for COLLUSION?

Yes, there are a few spoilers here but does it seriously even matter anymore if we’ve forgiven everything else?  Or at least you have?

As a writer, I don’t believe you can write (nee create) an important character and not understand their childhood, their family or their love life.  And, if they’re really important, I even need to know their favorite food, color and sexual proclivities.

Call me crazy, but you can’t really get a person unless you understand whether or not they were raised by wolves (Note: Literally and/or figuratively), what they like to eat and who they choose to… well, you know… or if they simply choose NOT to with anyone.

Let’s get personal

No judgments here.  Ask my writing students.  In fact, I get a perverse pleasure out of watching morally questionable behavior unfold as long as it’s earned.   But that’s just a start.  If you’ve made this stuff up by the numbers, or use it lazily to create ridiculous choices and/or inactions, it’s no better.  Either a lack of data and/or vigor means at the end of the day we (Note: Okay, I) won’t be able to feel it.  All you will be giving me is incomplete or hackneyed information neatly arranged into a bunch of consecutive index cards or visual PowerPoint presentations.

This, more than anything else, is my problem with most Robert Zemeckis films.  Not that anyone asked. #ForrestGump goes #BacktotheFuture3X.  And #WelcometoMarwen.

Janelle, you are way too cool for Welcome to Marwen #JUSTICEforJANELLE

This could all account for why I’ve been grossly riveted to cable news and the horrific events of our current Electoral College POTUS these last few days.

Childhood: Raised in my hometown of Queens. Beat the crap out of other kids his age and younger in his youth.  Expelled from high school and sent to military school.  Used Dad’s $$$ to get him out of the REAL military and into IVY league higher education, during which time he was known to have never picked up a book.

What? I’m tired!

Family:  Raised in my hometown of Queens (Note: Still) by extremely rich parents  who marketed in racism, corruption and various other dirty deeds in order to build and keep their massive empire afloat.

Love Life:  Married three times, during which there were countless affairs, various incidents of rage, violence and at least one case of alleged rape with his first wife.  More incidences of sexual harassment and inappropriate manhandling of women in airplanes, parties, movie premieres and television sets than anyone can count.  Or would want to.

Is it working?

Favorite Food: Well-done steak, french fries, ice cream, anything McDonalds and an estimated one DOZEN cans of Diet Cokes per day.

Favorite Color:  Gold. (Duh).

Sexual Proclivities:  I can’t even….   Stormy Daniels knows all.  Though let’s give equal credence to the mysterious #PeeTape once it surfaces.  Which it inevitably will.

If you say Pee Pee Tape three times, Stephen Colbert appears.

The consistent, salient details of DJT has, if nothing else, made me BELIEVE his most unlikely of stories.   That is because if you simply pay attention nothing is shrouded in fog.  The data continues to unfold in a consistent pattern and with the rigor of the best Shakespearean tragedies.  That is where, in the final act, the main character meets his inevitable demise because of every action he took in each scene of his play.

It doesn’t take much to see it’s all very Aristotle’s Poetics.

Both storytellers and audiences should take note for future reference.

The All-American Rejects – “Dirty Little Secret”

09.10.17
by

Stormy Weather

I’m an awful person.

When I heard that right wing radio host gadfly/gazillionaire Rush Limbaugh called the dire warnings about Hurricane Irma part of a liberal conspiracy to further discussion on climate change – and then decided to evacuate his fat ass from his southern Florida home several days later on Thursday – all I could think of was: Keep your fat ass at home.

You know I’m right

Then I heard about right wing author gadfly/gazillionaire Ann Coulter’s tweet a week ago:

And all I could think of then was: Take you and your black Lycra cocktail dress down to Rush’s house in coastal Florida and let’s see how adept the two of you really are at navigating shark and ALLIGATOR infested waters, yard sale Barbie. (Note: Thanks, Tina Fey).

GURL YES

If this weren’t enough, former Growing Pains star and evangelical something or other Kirk Cameron was then quoted as saying this about the back-to-back appearances of both Hurricanes Harvey and Irma:

God “causes [storms] to happen for punishment, or to water His land and demonstrate His faithful love…What this should be doing for all of us is causing us to remember that it’s God who supplies our life, breath and everything else so that you and I would reach out to Him…So think about that, maybe share that with your kids when they ask why this is happening. 

STOP THE MADNESS

I knew there was a reason I didn’t have kids. I’d never be able to explain to them with a straight face that hundreds of people died because the Lord overwatered his flowerbeds.   Nor could I ever be able to explain how I managed to get put in jail for wishing painful venereal warts on a mentally imbalanced former child star on Facebook. (Note: Both he and I, since his pronouncement was in a much read and re-circulated Facebook post).

By the way, did you know that hurricanes are named by something called the World Meteorological Organization and that the names are done in alphabetical order but skip the letters q, u, x, y and z? This accounts for the seeming randomness of Harvey and Irma while causing people like myself too many sleepless nights wondering just what the hell is wrong with the names Zelda, Yanni or Ursula.   (#TooLiberal?)

OK now I’ve gone off the deep end

When I found myself wondering desperately about hurricane names my husband instantly got the answer for me. He’s quick on these things and it’s one of the thousands of the reasons I married him – he either always has or can always find an answer to any question that I ask. This is no small feat, as you can imagine.

Which is why it troubled me when out of nowhere he eventually blew his stack about the right wing doubter responses to hurricanes and their relation to climate change:

What do they need… the Four Horsemen on horseback?

This is another reason I married him. When he blows his stack it is short and often includes some random biblical reference to their jugulars that I could never think of in a million years B.C.

This is love.

I hate to admit that I am now living in a me against them world but I am now living in a me against them world. I mean, there is so little attention to facts and logic I often find myself screaming into my pillow or out towards anyone who will listen. And that’s because most of what’s said is all so provocative and vindictive just for vindictiveness’ sake – fueled by dollops of insurgency, emotion and endless disguised attempts/quests to reign in popularity… said the man who has written a weekly blog for the last five years for no other reason than to… Well, let’s not get off topic.

Truth be known, I have never actively tried to advocate for one side. What one finds as one gets older and has had decades of therapy with at least a few insights, is that the only side one can truly advocate for is one’s personal point of view. Take this little nugget from liberal America which (yes – surprise, surprise) really pissed me off.

Say it ain’t so, chairy!!

Recently, Senator Bernie Sanders went on television (Note: Okay, it was Stephen Colbert’s show) to refute thoughts Hillary Clinton had written about her 2016 campaign for both the Democratic nomination for president and as the Democratic nominee for president.   Deciding for the umpteenth time not to verbally get into the grimy details of a policy debate, Sen. Sanders instead responded to her words with this dismissive retort:

Look, Secretary Clinton ran against the most unpopular candidate in the history of this country—and she lost, and she was upset about that.

Of course, this begs the question that it was Bernie Sanders that first lost to Hillary Clinton. Which most certainly makes him more of a loser than she is because by logic there is only one candidate more unpopular than the winner of the presidency – and that is the person who lost the presidency to him. The candidate Sen. Sanders managed to LOSE TO at the ballot box.

Just move along now please

I don’t know about you but these days I am indeed loaded for bear – liberal, conservative or anywhere in between. And I don’t even know how to shoot a gun. Well, one with bullets anyway.

We’re all finding our ways to cope.

Eurythmics – “Here Comes the Rain Again”