Goodbye, Yellow Brick Choad

 Something's wrong here...

Tonight we dump the corpse of another one year old child into the secluded quarry of eternity. I'm speaking of course about the year's end, and I think we can all agree that 2014 could be roughly summated as, "meh." It's like someone found the dried out husk of 2013 and microwaved it, saying, "nah, we can get another twelve months out of this."

I hated 2014. I find cinema to be a good indicator of the worth of a year, as it is the most expensive and therefore most important entertainment industry. We began 2014 with yet another Paranormal Activity movie, and oh God, let this year just end. I mean, everything good is already slated to come out next year, anything released between now and the new Star Wars is just filler!

 I wonder who's gonna play Darth Vader?

After the fifth or sixth PA installment (ironic, since my personal opinion of those films could be equated with getting my dickhead pierced), we slogged through Flesh-hand RoboCop, Gritty Frankenstein Update, Unnecessary 300 Sequel, Unnecessary Muppets Sequel, and that fuck-awful Divergent nonsense (seriously, what's the point of reading books anymore if all they ever tell the reader is that they don't have to change and are perfect?) before we finally landed on the only good movie this year managed to cough up. I said it before and I will say it exactly one more time and then never again; I could not have made a better movie than Days of Future Past.

I'll give dishonorable mentions to movies that were good by comparison alone. 22 Jump Street was better than most recent sequels could be expected to be, but I fear for the third installment. Lightning in a bottle once is luck, but twice is a miracle. Remember how great Friday After Next was?

Interstellar was a nice looking movie and presented some interesting concepts, but I couldn't make the point of movie; aside from a decent Matt Damon cameo and brilliant special effects, what set this bloated wreck aside from the other $500 billion dollar cash-ins we were commanded to see this year? I mean, Interstellar was marketed as a really good sci-fi movie, and it delivered on that promise. So? Was that noteworthy? Complacency numbs the wait between nostalgic revelry. That's
a haiku, I think.

I'd raise a middle finger to the industry before the people, usually, but this year was different. If you're like me and you only read about it today, The Interview, a playful bromantic romp about international assassination, has come under some scrutiny from the North Korean government. It probably has something to do with how we're playing their fuhrer's death for laughs. I don't know what's more sickening; that an attempted war crime is being portrayed as a buddy comedy starring my least favorite actors ever, or that the American people are clamoring over their right to pay money for this. I'm sure at least some of you are thinking, "I'd never give my hard-earned money to watch that piece of crap. I'll just get it on the Pirate Bay." And to you I say, you're an idiot.

TV was worse, if you could believe it. Televised comedy died when Stephen Colbert walked away from the only worthwhile news program on American airwaves, and Family Guy dug the grave with yet another season of banal non-sequitors. Between the lack of real comedy (no new China, IL or Venture Bros. seasons? really?) and a neverending slew of vanilla yogurt cop dramas (True Detective is groundbreaking how, exactly?), I actually decided to cancel my cable subscription, and began hoarding old Simpsons DVDs. I have seasons one through twelve, and honestly, I may never go back. Short of seeing Dick Clark's corpse resurrected at midnight tonight, I declare any time spent on the boob tube in 2014 was a waste.

Worst of all was the music. 2014 had an absolutely dreadful soundtrack. Songs about enormous asses became a bonafide genre this year, and while I would have welcomed this change four years ago when I didn't own a radio, I presently revile the New Wave of Butt-Handling Music, or NWOBHM for short. I guess I wouldn't have a problem with asinine pop music covering asinine subjects (more like ASSinine, amirite?), this new slew of anal spew claims critical depth. "All About That Bass",  a bland pop tune from some chubby Californian tween would have you believe it supports fat-chick feminism with its lyrical content. I would have you believe that a world wherein a young woman's deepest anxiety is whether or not people like her butt is a world where I'm the proud writer of a semi-satirical quasi-misogynistic comedy blog. Hey, whaddaya know?

 Biz Markie lost weight for this video.

And that brings me to my last paragraph, and I mean that literally. After six or seven years of entertaining literally hundreds of readers with my non-humble musings, I've decided to wrap up shop. Not out of spite for lack of financial success, no; the time for that would have been last year. This year, I've begun working on another novel, because no one bought the first one, and I'll need to focus all of my time on that. I don't see myself having time enough for multiple writing projects and a full time job until all (any?) of the good parts of 2015 are done, and I don't want to leave any first time readers with false hopes of new material. I may update the blog with links to the new book once it's released, because I'll still need some money from you guys now and then, but I'm retiring the Mantle of Darsh, which is an actual enchanted mantle I bought at the Vatican gift shop. I donned it while writing each and every post, and its Satanic magic fueled my creativity like gasoline on a fire. But now it shall remain in my closet, alongside the real Shroud of Turin and my suitcase full of ten million dollars in cash, for an eternity.

Enjoy scouring my archives for wisdom to help guide you through your daily wanderings. Everything you need to know about life is within this blog: why things suck, who sucks, which places suck, why you suck, everything.

And now, as the ancient hawaiians say, smell you later, Bart. Smell you later forever.

Fall TV Sucks Ass

Fall is here, hear the yell, as TV quality goes straight to hell. Yes, children, summer is over, and since the weather outside is suboptimal, that means we must all hunker down for the next six to eight months and watch whatever Comcast wants us to watch, which lately is a big pile of shit.

The quality of television programming has been on a steady decline as of late: when the Simpsons started really sucking about a decade ago, we all turned to Futurama to fill the void; Futurama has been cancelled three times now. When that dream shattered like a hot pot of coffee thrown at a child's face in frustration, we collectively turned to Family Guy. Now that show sucks so hard, they opened their latest season with a Simpsons crossover, which reminded us all why we stopped watching both shows.

You'll all have rolled your eyes fervently at your monitors by now, I'm sure; if I think televised programming has gone downhill, it's probably because I watch shitty cartoons instead of adult TV shows, like Game of Thrones, or Arrow. Except both of those shows have succeeded based solely on luck. GoT is based on a hundred-year-old New Jerseyites acid flashbacks and is a hit because they use nudity to cover up the fact that after four seasons, nothing has happened on that show. In that span of time, two kings have died, the Starks were nearly eliminated, the Lannisters have been torn apart, and... what was the overarching plot of all that shit again? Winter is coming, right? Is it gonna be here soon?

As for Arrow, I have no clue why people watch this. The title character is wholly uninteresting; hey, I'm DC's take on Hawkeye, nobody's favorite Avenger. Who wants to watch me fight crime alone, with no other heroes, for an hour once a week? I mean, would anybody pay to watch a ninety minute Green Arrow movie? Why would you watch twenty hours of a Green Arrow movie broken up into a shitty TV series? Plus, Arrow is getting a spinoff this fall, starring the Flash, which is asinine; they're separate characters, so how is this a spinoff? Because DC owns both properties? That's like saying Ridiculousness is a spinoff of Tosh.0. Plus, didn't the Flash already have a TV show? One that nobody liked? Well, I hope being darker and grittier makes up for how no one likes your character, because the CW has already decided you like it, so they bought more episodes.

Speaking of superhero shows, even more of them! Remember Constantine, that fuck-awful Keanu Reeves movie from 2005 with Shia LeBouf as the lovable teen sidekick? That's a TV show now, because... ? Also, neither Keanu nor Shia will reprise their roles. Wanna know something really interesting, though? Hellblazer, the comic upon which the movie and its spinoff (why is The Flash called a spinoff of Arrow while this show is being called "a new original series"?) is actually really fucking cool. Just look at that name: HELLBLAZER. If Microsoft named their five hundred dollar NSA spying device the HELLBLAZER, Sony would be bankrupt by now.

Well what about the people that don't watch Thrones or any superhero based programs? Women, I mean. Well, females have always been subjected to pandering, idiotic programming full of such words as "reaffirming", "heartwarming", and my personal unfavorite, "touching". Touching what, exactly? My balls? I don't think that's the case, because if these shows touched my balls, I might actually like them.

Shows like Switched at Birth and The Fosters are white male propaganda aimed at young minority females. Seeing women of color rise to prominence in the early 2000s (I wish we called that era the zinths), the white man decided that colored females like Beyonce and Jessica Alba should lighten their hair and skin to become more attractive to white men; being a white girl was "cool", as it were. Once young colored girls were hooked, we started seeing TV shows starring semi-white women dealing with outlandish problems, often times reacting to them in an even more over the top way. These episodes usually culminated in the young female being affirmed or validated by the words of an older, wiser female. If the older female is of color, this counts as a treefolk moment; if not, it's racist bullshit. This message indoctrinates the viewer into thinking that following the example of an older white woman is the best option to take. But what did the last generation of white females give the world? There are two answers: Hilary Clinton and moms.

There's a reason 'different' is in a white font.

The white man has decided that being a young, possibly mixed-race female is acceptable on TV, but only if the example being set is to be just like your mom and marry a white dude. This tells our younger sisters and daughters that the only thing they could ever hope to accomplish is voting in a swing state. Unless of course, you're one hundred percent white, at which point your character must be a complete brat, constantly turning up her nose at the never ending stream of gifts flowing past her feet. She has failed to appreciate the gifts of the white man, and must therefore be made an example of.

I can't be the only person who realizes this shit, right? On Switched at Birth, the two lead females are comprised of one very light-skinned mixed race girl raised by rich whites and one deaf ginger raised by light-skinned Latinas. The mixed girl is very rebellious, insistent on expressing herself and constantly going against the wisdom of her elders, only to spend the end of every episode admitting she was wrong and apologizing to all the whites she upset. In other words, her Latin heritage manifests itself in dissent and chaos, however the white half inside her acknowledges that this is wrong, and makes her feel guilty for succumbing to these primal urges. Her deaf "sister", however, is a standout student in her inner city high school, rising head and shoulders above her classmates. This is supposed to be inspirational because she's deaf, but it's really racist, because she's white. Being deaf isn't her actual handicap, because it's something she has long since overcome. Her handicap for the duration of the show is her Latin family, and the courage she displays overcoming that fact that she can't get the educational opportunities and money that she whitefully deserves.

I can't give you any preferential treatment, even though I really want to.

The Fosters is an even worse show. It's about two lesbos (nice), one white and one mixed race (iseewutyoodidther) who raise a squadron of foster children. Get it? The Fosters? Foster kids? You don't get it, do you? Anyway, the muff divers offer these kids tough love with an open-minded, liberal spin. Because dykes can't vote Republican, that would just be crazy. Plus, even though these two women run the household, the white woman's ex-husband can show up any time he wants and stay for as long as he wants, doing whatever he wants. The message here is that lesbian marriage is only acceptable with oversight and permission from a white man. It may also be that lesbianism is only a sure thing if you've tried at least one dick. Hell, there was even one episode where the ex-husband showed up simply to ground his son for doing something he didn't approve of while in the care of these lesbians. The father wasn't there when the events transpired, he had no clue of the context, and the lesbians had already explained to the child that what he did was okay. But fuck all that shit, because the white man wants it his way. What's worse, the white lesbian takes time to explain to her biracial boob-squeezer that what her husband said was right, and that their parenting was flawed in this situation. Again, being a lesbian is totally okay so long as you obey the white man at every opportunity. Of course, later on that season, the son has sex with his father's girlfriend and the lesbians don't get mad at him for that either, so maybe Whitey has a point on this one.

TV sucks. Want to know what's better than watching an entire season of Gotham? Watching one of the Nolan Batmen. Just pick any of 'em, all three are better than watching young Bruce Wayne brooding for twenty episodes. There's a reason nobody puts that shit in any of the movies; no one wants to see it. However, there is also a reason why DC will never allow Batman to suit up and fight the Joker in a TV show. To see that shit, you'll have to watch Gotham: the Movie. Or just read the source material, whichever. Call me when China, IL gets a third season.

You should all be watching this.

quickie: Robin Williams

When you look at celebrity deaths from a large scale perspective, you realize how meaningless their lives really were: What did Kurt Cobain do with his time in the spotlight before he killed himself? When you summate someone's contributions to the world at large to only a few years and two major album releases, you see how little Cobain left for his generation. In fact, to paraphrase Prof. Dave Mustaine, the lasting message of Kurt Cobain's career was "suicide is okay".

This past year, Paul Walker from the Fast & Furious movie series died. People were saddened, to be sure, but on a personal level, I was unaffected. I have seen the first FF movie, and it is not good. I've seen Varsity Blues and Eight Below, too; not great. In fact, the only movie I recall him starring in that was even slightly better than mediocre was She's All That, and that movie succeeded in spite of his contributions. By all measurements of an actor, Paul Walker was not an exceptional one.

But still, people went out of their way to remember him, and commemorate his career through social media, FaceBook posts, etc. That was all that could be done for him, and honestly, that's all he deserved.

Very rarely does a celebrity die that deserved the term artist, and in no uncertain terms, Robin Williams was that. The man's IMDB profile sports over a hundred credits, and I can name only a handful of clunkers. Even in the worst of his pictures though, from Jumanji to RV, Patch Adams and August Freakin' Rush, Robin Williams brought genuine humor, and when necessary, dramatic gravitas. Like Christopher Walken, he never gave less than everything to a performance, and because of this, even the most generic pictures became memorable while he was on screen.

But this shit isn't about his bad pictures. To ruminate on the man's legacy of comedic genius in film would subvert the definition of the quickie, but to abstain would dishonor the man. Classics like Mrs. Doubtfire, Good Morning Vietnam, Moscow on the Hudson and Dead Poets Society, animated forays in Ferngully and of course Aladdin, through darker satire like Death to Smoochy and Man of the Year, dramatic turns in What Dreams May Come and Good Will Hunting, and even recent success in World's Greatest Dad will collectively stand the test of time, making Robin Williams' firebrand mixture of timing, delivery, and energy live forever.

Suffice it to say, the man could act, but was also genuinely funny outside the parameters of scripted comedy. Take a look at this opening monologue from his first SNL appearance in 1984. From the moment he steps on stage to the moment those lights go down, Robin Williams is hilarious. Humor, experience, and unabashed joy exude through his performance in a way that enthralls all who witness it. Very few performers, let alone those who are confined solely to performing with spoken words and body language, can express what Robin Williams made abundantly clear in three minutes of stage time.

Robin Williams was a comedy god, and his death is, to me, on par with the losses of Ronnie James Dio, Darrell Abbot, and Corey Haim in terms of unbridled and unequaled talent lost forever. And yet, the sad irony is not that he's gone, but how few people appreciate what is lost and can never be recovered. The same people who mourned Walker's death, mourned Cory Monteith and Gia Allemand, are giving equal accolades and remorse to someone who deserves so much more than that.

That said, will commemorations and posthumous honors make his death outshine his life? I keep reading articles on Cracked and Slate about how many (allegedly) funny people like Williams suffer from depression and suicidal thoughts. Going back to what I said about Kurt Cobain and his death, will the same prognosis apply to the career of Robin Williams? I don't think so. I'd go so far as to say the lasting message of Robin Williams' career is that suicide is not okay. The fact that a man who gave so much and yet had so much more to give killed himself makes one reflect on his own contributions, and realize that a life cut short at any time is really a life wasted. Was Kurt Cobain a talented musician? In his own right, yes. But did he make enough of an impact that his life exceeded his death? Apparently not. I don't believe the same fate will befall the legacy of Robin Williams; he has done too much and been an instrumental part of too many people's lives for his death to be anything but a sad closing chapter to a lifetime spent bringing people joy.

Paul Walker isn't coming back; I hate to be a dick (lie), but objectively, what are we missing? Robin Williams is never going to make another movie, never write another joke, never voice another cartoon, never make a single appearance from here until the world stops turning, and because of that, the road ahead is going to be so much harder.
 
 From the mind and heart of a true fan of comedy, good night cochise.

See you all real soon, kids!

Summertime Blues

Well hello again my troubled little children. Sorry to leave such a gap between postings, but like most adults, I find myself struggling to function between April and July, so forgive me if my posting becomes erratic during what I'll now call 'the off-season'. Also, every season is now the off-season.

During my downtime, I tried to reconnect with my roots by playing a lot of Skyrim and listening to Megadeth. I feel revitalized. Having decapitated a few dozen Falmer while listening to Killing is My Business brings a certain clarity to me, a high only lots and lots of drugs can top. Also, I did lots and lots of drugs.

 

Breakfast.

I'm sure many of you are wondering what brought me back to the fold. Well summer is officially in full swing, and that means, of course, terrible movies! And nothing makes me happier than anonymously telling the hard working men and women of the entertainment industry that their efforts are shit, and that everyone who disagrees with me is wrong. Here's my bottom... five sound good? I'll shoot for five.

5) CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER. It's not even that this movie is bad, it's just not in the least bit necessary. I mean, I know it's supposed to connect the stories of the other Marvel universe movies and get us all hyped for Avengers 2, but therein lies its caveat: it exists solely to sell tickets to the next venture. Nothing even really happens in this movie, except Cap makes a black friend, gets his ass kicked by the bad guy, and... that's it! Not even a funny third thing. The last time a well received action flick got a sequel that spent two hours developing a plot that wouldn't be resolved for another two years, it didn't go well. Surprisingly, however, Cap 2: Electric Boogaloo did okay with critics and fans alike, which just goes to show you that everyone everywhere is a fucking idiot.

4) A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST. I hate Seth MacFarlane. Name one funny project that man has developed since Family Guy came back in 2005. In nine years, that dickweed has produced three more cartoons, two live action shows, a movie and an album of big band standards, all of which collectively blow more dong than a frivolous Vietnamese millionaire. You see in Vietnam, they call their units of currency 'dongs', so... frivolous millionaire, blowing dong across the country... I thought it was pretty funny.

Anyway, Million was awful. Everyone hated it, and really should never have even thought it would be funny to begin with. Watch the fucking trailer; it's just Seth MacFarlane reacting to his own comedy for two minutes. Also, I know this is supposed to be about movies, but have you seen Family Guy recently? Tons of reaction jokes alluding to gags made previously in the show. That hardly constitutes writing comedy. How would anyone reading this feel if all I did was constantly post links to funnier articles I wrote?

3) THE FAULT IN OUR STARS. Finally, a movie for lonely white girls! This pic sells us the story of Hazel, a hipster girl that's dying of cancer. Right off the bat, I'm interested; this should be a pretty short movie. But alas, the movie isn't really about her suffering the disease she rightfully has been cursed with; it's about her being quirky, and finding a boyfriend that is totally okay with her being exactly the person she is now, at age sixteen, for the rest of her life. Which, in truth, might not be for very long, but whatever. This movie sucks because it sells young caucasian females the same asinine romance that has been poisoning their worldview for decades. If something's wrong with you, it just makes you special, and you should in no way ever try to change or better yourself for someone else. You are the only person that matters, and the only men you should ever show interest in should be able to a) take care of every personal need, possibly including curing any diseases you might have, and b) always be okay with every decision you make, ever. Anyone who questions or challenges you, or tries to make you develop personally isn't worth your time. Bullshit.

2) PLANES: FIRE & RESCUE. Remember Cars, the weakest movie Pixar has ever released? Remember the shitty spinoff, Planes? Well someone call Xzibit, because I put a shitty spinoff of a shitty spinoff where your steering wheel should be!

1) AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2. I hated the first Amazing Spider-Man (famously). It succeeds based on fundamental changes made to Peter Parker's character; changes made to satiate the clamoring of hipsters with a passing knowledge of the Spidey mythos. Peter is not a cool kid. He doesn't skateboard around with holes in his sleeves, going to art classes and listening to Blink-182 all day. He's a nerd, one who gets beat up by bullies more than once per movie. He's also not exorbitantly wealthy, unlike the version offered in Amazing, who purchased a few thousand feet of diamond tether filament and a wireless security system for his bedroom with his paper route money. Hey Pete, maybe you wanna install one that will protect the whole house? No? Well Aunt May and I were just wondering. It's not like New York City is a dangerous place.

Amazing 2 follows the exact formula that ruined the previous franchise by giving you villains, villains, more villains! Also, Gwen Stacy dies, and for once they show Parker actually suffering some severe emotional pain because of it. Seriously, in the first one Uncle Ben dies and Pete doesn't even cry. He's back in costume hunting down criminals in the next scene. They tried to make him look vengeant by having him hunt down Unky Ben's killer, but even that plot thread goes unresolved as soon as Xenophilious Lovegood shows up. I should give points for having Green Goblin kill Gwen in a fashion similar to what happened in the comics, but I couldn't get over how Pete had in the last movie promised to never date Gwen again, as doing so would put her in danger. Pete pretty easily scoffed off that notion later on, but only after breaking Gwen's heart and telling her he doesn't love her. All of this, every bit of it could have been solved if Peter was a mild mannered nerd instead of a hotdoggin', freewheelin', hubris-marred Teen Wolf pastiche that every high school peckerwhip wants to be nowadays. Here's a note to any Marvel Studios execs who might be reading this in the bathroom: hire me to write Amazing 3. It'll be shorter, more violent, and just like the ending to Hamlet, the greatest story ever told, every character will be dead by movie's end.

As I say every year, this summer is a trainwreck. I can name only one good summer movie to be released this year, and I only bring it up because, much like Dark Knight Rises did in 2012, this movie met all of my expectations perfectly. I almost never admit to things like this, but I couldn't have written a better movie than Days of Future Past. It really sucks that Marvel Studios keeps pooping out new movies with terrible characters when they should be throwing all of their weight behind the one franchise that still holds water. Can't wait to see how shitty Ant-Man is going to be.

Don't Drink on St. Patrick's Day

 

Today may be my least favorite day of the year. St. Patrick's day, for the uninitiated or inebriated, was originally a celebration of the Saint Patrick, a man who was not Irish in any way whatsoever. He was born in England and raised by a family of Catholic priests, and thus only drank when the beverage was alleged to be Jesus' blood, and yet once a year we applaud his efforts to turn a nation of barbaric tribes into a civilized society by getting shitfaced. The date of his death, March 17, 460 AD, has somehow become Pejorative Irish Stereotype Day across the globe.

I don't understand what it is about this holiday that makes everyone want to be something they're not; in this case, extremely drunk. But even people who can legitimately claim a shred of Irish heritage must understand that acting like a drunken buffoon only dishonors their Irish ancestry. How would people react to a Black History Month special that featured blackface performances of Jim Crow plays? What would the Hispanic community say about a Cinco de Mayo that involved cleaning white people's houses? Yet once a year, the Irish (read: white) community comes out of the woodwork to publicly shame themselves in bars and discotheques across America, and then later on, again in the bathroom

If you have any respect for the country of Ireland, or are just plain not racist, you won't want to celebrate St. Patrick's Day unless you do so properly. Here's a list of perfectly acceptable ways to reflect on your alleged ancestry on the one day a year you decide it's important to you.

1) EAT A SHIT TON. So you don't want to drink yourself fucking retarded this year, but still want to gorge yourself on stuff that's terrible for you? Well put down the crystal meth and pick up three or four plates of corn beef hash, because in the Episcopalian pantheon, March 17 is a feast day. Instead of wasting your Monday on a tavern floor, waste it in a booth at Arby's, where Reuben sandwiches are two for one all day! That's not even a fucking joke. Got get some Arby's!

2) KILL SNAKES. Remember the Whacking Day episode of The Simpsons? Reenact that shit and make St. Patrick proud! I doubt any animal rights collectives would even be pissed, because really, who likes snakes? Snakes suck! Of course, people who are familiar with Ireland's zoological history will tell you that there were never snakes in Ireland, and that this legend is actually an allegory for St. Patrick's stance against traditional Irish Druidism. So the only Irish holiday most people celebrate is really about an English guy showing up and telling people they're believing in the wrong god(s). Funny.

3) PLANT A TREE. St. Patrick once turned his trusty walking stick into a tree, and seeing as St. Patrick's mythos has more metaphorical imagery than a Kubrick film, I wouldn't be surprised if this story was actually about curing erectile dysfunction. Still, as a staunch supporter of Michelle Obama's Let's Move! initiative, I'm legally required to tell all of you to be less fat and go outside more. Seriously, she's making me do it. She's right here, behind me, making me type all of this. Why won't anybody stop her?

4) HAVE A PARADE, NO HOMO. If there's one parade the gays have been dying to get their glittered gloves on, it's the NYC St. Patrick's day parade. Maybe it's just because I'm a New York native transplanted to a mostly parade-free New Hampshire, but hot damn do I love a parade. Not seeing them in person, of course, but watching them from the comfort of my own futon. This affords numerous benefits; I don't have to worry about people pinching me because of my all out refusal towards made up traditions, and I can play Mass Effect during the commercials.

Taking a note from Thanksgiving, St. Patrick's Day comes complete with a pretty extravagant parade through New York City, albeit with tons of policemen everywhere. Unlike the Macy's Parade, however, the Irish parade (I'm tired of typing out the guy's name) upholds a long-standing Irish tradition of not trusting butt pirates. In fact, this year several corporate sponsors withdrew from the parade citing the homophobic bylaw as their main bugaboo. You'd think this policy would have come under fire before 2014, especially considering it takes place in New York City, Boston's gay older brother, but that goes to show just how little most government officials care about the gays. But did a lack of funding and alcohol stop those plucky Irish bastards? Fuck no! The parade went off without a hitch, further reminding Irish-Americans across the country that there is absolutely nothing gay about men wearing miniskirts and thigh-high socks.

Racist Movies Everyone Loves

Does anyone else remember the night Barack Obama got elected in 2008? I do.

I remember watching it on a little TV I used to keep by my bed, because the living room was twice as far from the my room as thee kitchen, and going back and forth twelve times a night was making my thighs chafe. At about one or so, CNN or FOX or some kind of news or whatever said Obama was projected to win; a cheshire smile spread across my face like butter across a big piece of ham, and a small palpitation of joy erupted within my heart. I got up and walked over to my mother's room, where she was sleeping. I gently shook her shoulder and said, "My guy won, you owe me five bucks".

Since then, the impact of the first half-black president has waned; nowadays the President can't even lengthen the lifespan of the citizenry without the Republicans literally taking the ball and going home. But there is one way B-Hussein has indelibly changed America: by making racism completely acceptable.

You remember how old people became a trend in film making recently? White superiority is another genre on the rise. What's worse, these racist pieces of shit are scooping up awards left and right. It's as if Hollywood only cared about making money and exploiting the white man's fear of black people for profit. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that these movies are praised as modern classics when they really should be razed as modern crappics. Get it? Did you get what I wrote?

SECRET LIFE OF BEES

Good god do I hate this movie. For starters, when Queen Latifah and Dakota Fanning are your headliners, the hull has already been compromised. To add to those casting mistakes, the supporting cast is filled out by Alicia Keys and Jennifer Hudson, who don't sing at all for some reason. I'm not saying the movie would have worked better as a musical, but if there is no singing involved in these respective roles, why cast them with musicians? Why not get better actors?

Anyway, the real groans come from the trite portrayal of black women, namely that they are somehow more in touch with nature than white people. This movie screams out, "We have so much to learn from them! Clearly I'm not a racist, because I've acknowledged that!" Let's be frank: black people are not treefolk, here to drop wisdom on the white protagonist they were written solely to advise. This movie is in no way about a black family struggling to start a honey business, or their trials and tribulations living in the south in the sixties; it is about Dakota Fanning having the courage to hang out with black people, and what a radical, new thing that was. This film celebrates white ineptitude, and the stigma placed on blacks by white people osmosing themselves into black culture. If movies were people, this movie would be Robin Thicke; a white person taking a stab at black culture. Interpret that however you like.

RACISM RANK: 6/10

THE HELP

 

Yet another film that celebrates whites for not being racists. Here's a fact of life: you shouldn't be a racist. Not being a racist isn't some sort of goal, just like being a racist isn't some affliction whites are born with. Choosing to not be a racist does not yield reward anymore than washing your hands after you take a dump. It's something you should do, every day, or else society will think less of you.

Clearly this move doesn't give a fuck about that last paragraph! I can't even say this movie is about black people dropping wisdom on the whites; it's about a white woman taking advantage of working class black women for her own personal gain. Emma Stone, not playing a high school student for once, is a journalist looking for her big break when she finds out her parents fired the black nanny she had been raised by. Go back and give that sentence a second lap. Notice I didn't say Emma Stone had any problems being raised by someone who was not her parent, nor did she have any problems with her parents practically owning a geriatric woman to do their housework. In fact, her only problem is that they let the old lady stop working. As part of her grieving process, Emma Stone pitches a book of stories about the help (her verbatim line, and one I've always found disturbing. These women you think so highly of are still just the help when you're talking to another white woman). Note that this isn't a non-profit book. Emma Stone isn't starting a charity or relief fund for older black women who have had to struggle in the south during the sixties. She's keeping all the cash for herself, splitting up only her advance check from the publisher amongst the women who, you know, wrote the book for her. We never even see the actual check from the publisher, either; Emma Stone could be shorting those ladies and we'd never even know.

I hate this movie. It portrays black women as fools to be taken advantage of by white women, and how this arrangement is the best for both parties. The one time a black woman shows ambition by taking revenge on her abusive matron, she is wracked with guilt for the rest of the film. Why? Justice was served. Shouldn't she be proud of herself by standing up to the woman who made her life hell? Oh, wait, black people are treefolk who feel only purity within themselves, and taking revenge would shatter the audience's acceptance of that fact. Silly me!

RACISM RANK: 8/10

THE BUTLER

We're scraping the bottom of the barrel here, people. When I first saw the poster for this, with Forest Whitaker in a seersucker tuxedo replete with white fucking gloves, smiling at you like he's so fucking happy to be a butler, I was disgusted. Hollywood had reached a new low. I thought that up until I actually watched the piece of shit just before Christmas, and man was I wrong. Turns out Hollywood can go much lower.

This movie is a gigantic middle finger to black culture from start to finish. Forest Whitaker's character is how every white person sees black history: full of treefolk moments. But this movie goes above and beyond those tired old Uncle Remus stereotypes and into newer, much worse stereotypes. What's worse, Whitaker is told at every opportunity to abandon his black culture in favor of the more affluent white culture. He is told not to say the n-word as young man. "That's their word," explains an indoctrinated Uncle Tom in the first act. I laughed aloud when I heard that line. The cultural impact of hip-hop, the gangsta and g-funk movements, the careers of people like Ice Cube, Dr. Dre, and the work they did together as N.W.A., possibly the greatest hip-hop group of the eighties, undone in a sentence fragment by this movie. Oy vey!

Then Forest Whitaker becomes a man and marries Oprah Winfrey. Not really a racist thing, but still a head scratcher: why would Forest Whitaker marry his grandma? Makes no sense. Anyway, they have kids, one of whom I thought was a terrific character, and one of whom is barely a character at all. Older son Louis works hard through high school, gets accepted by a prestigious HBC, and becomes involved in the civil rights movement of the early sixties (okay, we need to stop making movies about black people in the sixties; black people were culturally relevant for more than one decade). Meanwhile, Whitaker sits at home, watching the revolution on TV, ruminating aloud, "I don't know what to think of this Malcolm X character." That's yet another verbatim line, btdubs. One of the most influential civil rights leaders of all time, a brigadier for black Americans, and our hero just doesn't know what to think of him. Wow, what a role model. Also, that's the only time the film brings up Malcolm X, probably because most white people don't know much about black culture beyond Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks, two people who, objectively, did  little for black Americans. The movie doesn't even bother to bring up H. Rap Brown or Huey P. Newton, even though the Black Panthers are brought up, albeit for one scene and in a negative light.

As for the younger son, Charlie? He dies in Vietnam. That's it.

This movie is terrible. It promotes lackadaisicality amongst black people, saying that the greater reward is in waiting for white people to give you your reward. That's right black people, don't stand up for yourselves, don't demand anything from society as reparations for eighty-six years of slavery and inhumanity, just wait. Sit around, be quiet, and fucking wait for your revolution to come. To add one more piss stream to the dumpster fire that is this film, most of it isn't even true. For one, Charlie, a character who serves almost no purpose in the film other than staring at a woman's hairy armpits and dying, never existed. I'm guessing the producers were like six minutes short of their desired run time and said, "Fuck it, he'll have another kid." This movie blows

RACIST RANK: 10/10

So what have we gleaned from these three shit stains on the underpants of black culture? Namely that white people love throwing awards at movies starring black people that behave how they want them to. Did Jamie Foxx win anything for Django Unchained? Did Denzel win anything for American Gangster? Would you be surprised to hear that Secret Life of Bees won two people's choice awards? And how the hell did the shit-pie lady from the Help nab an Oscar? She only has one good scene, and the rest of the moving is her waxing remorseful about the awesome dump she took.

Even my white half is feeling guilty having dedicated an entire article to films that ruin black culture. To rectify that, I leave you with this.

Thanksgiving Isn't a Holiday

Thanksgiving to me means getting up at nine in the morning, chugging black coffee mixed with Kahlua, and watching perhaps the greatest annual television event ever: the Macy's Parade. No, I'm serious, fuck you if you don't like the parade, especially since it's the only thing that validates the bullshit packaged with this meaningless day. For three hours, the last place network blows the wad it saved by defunding its other shows all over your screen. While you sit on your ass and enjoy, those hard working men and women (mostly men) brave the elements head on to bring you the absolute best in entertainment.

 Fucking American heroes. They might as well be in Iraq.

Thanksgiving means nothing. Not even, "Thanksgiving is stupid", or "Thanksgiving used to mean something". Thanksgiving means nothing at all, and it meant even less than that until Macy's bought it in 1924. Since then, we have all had a reason to gain consciousness on the last Thursday of November, and up until that point in time the day would have been better used as a full work day. At least then something other than asinine rituals that further materialistic ends and immense personal greed would come out of it.

Thanksgiving is a twenty-four hour window into vacuous needs and vapid solutions for those needs. Thanksgiving is a tailgate party to Christmas, hanging out in the parking lot of the arena, passing out beers to sixteen-year-olds, promising them a great time at Christmas, but hey, let's chill for a bit, listen to my stories about seeing the Scorpions in '88. Thanksgiving should be abolished, as it truly serves no purpose.

But keep the parade. I love the balloons, and David Alan Grier's commentary, and figuring out who's lip syncing and who's trying to keep from passing out due to exposure. I especially like how every year they stroll out a Native American-themed float, just as a way of saying, "hey, water under the bridge, white people". If they made the parade a full twenty-four hours long and called that Thanksgiving, I would fully support it. The parade represents a sense of unity and camaraderie between Americans as we celebrate walking down the street in the cold. That's what this day is really about; turning up your collar, facing the icy winds that herald winter's approach and saying, "fuck yes". The pilgrims can suck a high hard one.

I mean, does anyone ever stop and think about what we're all being commanded to celebrate by big-box retailers and our own federal government? White douchebags sailing to someone else's country, forcing their religious beliefs down the throats of the locals, and deciding then and there that this was a day to be remembered. You know, when you say it out loud, like really spit it into your Grandpa's face, Thanksgiving  makes you feel like an asshole for celebrating it.

Plus, in what way is that event significant to our history, or to that of the world at large? We have about as much in common with the pilgrims as we do with Leif Ericsson or Christopher Columbus, two people who did exactly what the pilgrims did, albeit centuries before and with much greater success. Why are we supposed to get the whole family together to celebrate a group of people who failed collectively in their only historic enterprise? Fuck the pilgrims.

Lastly, there seems to be a minority of Americans who find spiritual significance in Thanksgiving, saying that because the pilgrims were of puritan-protestant faith, the day should be a commemoration of God helping his followers find a new home. That's a load of shit-dick, because the writings that catalog the events of the First Thanksgiving don't appear until 1850, a scant nineteen years after Abraham Lincoln decided God liked us enough for us to have a pre-Christmas in November. No, really. So Lincoln just so happened to pick a day of significance to the Christian God, thus sealing our nation's allegiance to a bronze-age education for centuries to come. Great job, beardo.

Mourt's Relation is the only publication of the era that could possibly have included an honest account of the First Thanksgiving, except it was written by a man who didn't live in Plymouth colony at the time, and was only ever affiliated with Thanksgiving in 1841, so no dice there either.

Thanksgiving has no meaning whatsoever, except as a free day off to watch the awesomest thing ever forever on television. Though I suppose by the measure of our time, that's more than enough to consider Thanksgiving a religious holiday.