Stuff I Saw in the News

I was watching The Matrix Reloaded when I came to that really boring part where Neo was talking to the Architect. It was then that I remembered something that I saw on the news late last night. There were two women who wanted to be married and the place that they chose to hold their ceremony refused to allow them to marry there. They filed a lawsuit on the grounds of discrimination. But here’s the catch: The facility that they chose was a church.

Now, I’ve got no problem with gay marriage. I see no reason why I should care what two people do in the privacy of their own home, if it’s not hurting anyone. Hell, I believe that life is short and that we should have just a little bit of happiness in that time. If the person chosen happens to be the same sex as they are, so be it. I truly do not care.

Also, I am no fan of the church. I think that organized religion is an oppressive practice, more often that not used to divide instead of unite. I think its purpose is to control who we are and what we think. There is no such thing as freedom when it comes to the church, and if the church had its way, we would be back in the Dark Ages, when no one could read, no one ever questioned the church, and the church was the only connection between man and God.

However, if you’re gay, why would you expect a church, of all places, to allow you to use their property to perform your immoral, hell-worthy, ceremony? These aren’t my words. The church says that gays are immoral, etc, etc. I think gay people are the most fun one can have without having to put your dick in something.

Let’s be real here. It clearly says in the Bible, the book that is the be-all, end-all as far as the church is concerned, that homosexuality is a sin; an abomination before God. It says it in multiple places, so it stands to reason that a church would likely see a gay person dead before it allowed them to hold a ceremony there. Wouldn’t be such a bad thing as far as the church goes, because that’s two less gay people sucking and fucking their way into Hell.

The women contest that they’re being discriminated against, and they’re right. The church in question makes no secret of that fact. The women also contest that the church is public property and anyone who wants to should be allowed to use it, but it isn’t. The church isn’t public property, because it’s a church. They don’t receive public monies; they are run completely on donations. They can allow you to use it, and they can refuse you. Churches are privately owned and they can kick you out as they see fit, much like Burger King, country clubs, or my apartment.

I don’t see why these women would want to use a church for their ceremony, and upon being refused, I don’t see why they would want to take this matter any further. This is what’s known as “rabble-rousing.” The church has no obligation to these women, because these women are not members, and they are gay, but the women start raising sand, anyway. It would be nice if the church let it go down, but they aren’t, so let it go. It would also be nice if Arabs found a way to express their anger that didn’t include burning something down. We can’t always get what we want.

I also do not believe that this church should be forced to allow these women to use their facility. If it’s against their religion to accept gays, then gays need to go somewhere else, simple as that. All places are not all-inclusive, like gay clubs, for instance. They’re not inclusive to men who don’t like swallowing cock. Sure, they’ll let you in, but at some point, you’re going to be asked if you’d like to smoke some man’s meat cigar, and that’s when you need to ask yourself just what the fuck you were doing in there in the first place.

It’s time for people to understand that things aren’t always going to be what they want them to be. All arenas of life are just not fair, but this isn’t about fairness. A church cannot be made to kowtow to a group that they publicly abhor. If these people get their way, what’s next? Is the Klan going to be forced to accept black people and Jews? The Legion of Doom taking on the Superfriends as members? My mouth accepting swordfights? Sure, it would make them all-inclusive, but it would also just make everybody miserable and someone’s likely to die during the transition. Which isn’t to say these women want to be members of this church; they just want to rent it. But the church publicly hates gay people, so it’s insane that gay people would even want to use church property for anything.

Speaking of churches, in Saturday’s paper, I read about the pastor who attacked his wife. Sad situation, but what there was a part at the end of the article, where one of the parishioners said that she wasn’t going back to the church in light of the pastor’s actions against his wife. The lady was engaged and was about to be married. She claims that it wouldn’t be in her best interests to take relationship or marriage advice from a person who was going through the marital problems that he was having.

I say, all the more reason to listen to him.

At the very least, one should take the opportunity to pick his brain to see what led him to making the decisions he made. I’m only suggesting learning from his mistakes. It can be done from afar, but to truly see what led him to do what he did, it would have to be done face to face. Assuming he’s willing to talk openly and honestly about it. Even if he hasn’t come to terms with what he’s done, he’s still got an experience under his belt that can be learned from. If I was thinking about jumping my wife in a parking lot, I’d probably go talk to a guy who already did it so I could see what I’ve got coming.

And perhaps, the day will come when he sees where he went wrong. When that day comes, he will be able to steer others from making the mistakes that he made. At the very least, he’ll have an entertaining story about life in jail.

My point is, just because someone is making or has made the mistakes that you are trying to avoid doesn’t mean that they can’t be a source of wisdom. If someone has had a failed marriage or birthed a child out of wedlock, it doesn’t mean that you can’t go to them for advice. People believe that going to people who are having relationship troubles or aren’t in relationships themselves is stupid. I say listen to them, because their stories can keep you from punching your wife in the face for putting socks in your underwear drawer

Lastly, there was something else that I saw in the paper, some letters about the specter known as global warming. I’ve wanted to say something about this for a while, but I kept writing blog entries about the Falcons or some crappy movie I saw.

Some people believe that global warming is caused by man. After all, the levels of pollution during the last 100 years is higher than at any other time in human history, mainly because we’ve got smokestacks and nuclear power plants, and so far archaeology hasn’t shown any evidence of an ancient Sumerian rubber factory.

Some people believe that global warming is a buzzword created by liberals and environmentalists and that global warming is a simple climate shift caused by an earth whose temperature ebbs and flows over the millennia. What we’re experiencing is simply the same thing that our distant ancestors went through just before the last ice age that brought us to the brink of extinction. Nothing to worry about.

Personally, I believe that there’s a kernel of truth in both sides. Yes, the temperature of the earth changes over the years, and eventually, the polar ice caps will melt, which is going to start the chain of events that will bring us back to an ice age. I mean, I saw “The Day After Tomorrow” just like you did. At the same time, I don’t believe that it was supposed to happen anytime soon. Our species was supposed to be destroyed by pole reversal or a meteor, not a new ice age. Because regardless of what the Bush Administration or oil companies will have you believe, breathing bus fumes or cities covered in smog is not a natural or healthy thing. Your eyes aren’t supposed to burn when you drive into downtown. The ancient Sumerians didn’t have air quality advisory warnings. I don’t think they had skin cancer, either.

My point is, no matter which side you’re on, I’m sure both sides can agree that all the crap that America puts into the atmosphere can’t be a good thing.

My Talk With Donovan McNabb

The following is a completely true story.

For anyone who doesn’t know, my favorite football player is Philadelphia Eagles starting quarterback Donovan McNabb. I think he is the best quarterback in the NFL and I would pick him over any player if I had to start a team tomorrow. Well, early Sunday morning, it was my privilege and honor to meet Mr. McNabb after a press conference that he held behind the Jiffy Lube at the corner of Wesley Chapel and Snapfinger Rd. in Decatur. As the press conference ended, he began to walk down Snapfinger Rd. in the direction of Hwy. 155, and as I was headed the same way (my parents live down there), I caught up to him, and we had a pretty interesting chat.

Of course, I told him my opinions about his game and he was flattered by my compliments. He took them very humbly, and even cracked a few self-effacing jokes.

I asked him about his friendship with Daunte Culpepper and the similarities and differences between their personalities and games. I also somehow worked in a follow-up question about Terrell Owens. He had nothing but good things to say about both.

I asked him what he thought about his team this season and if he thought that he was the best quarterback in the NFL. He declined to talk about himself and instead referred to the team’s goals this season.

All in all, I found him to be a very humble, genuine, and humorous human being. He was the kind of person you could walk up to on the street and start talking to and you’d feel as if you’d known him for years.

We found ourselves just past Ray of Hope Church, when an odd thing occurred. In the middle of our conversation, I felt a hand on my dick.

My eyes got big, not out of surprise, but because they had been closed the entire time. I had been sleeping and dreamt the whole thing. I had been awoken by the surprise of my girlfriend readjusting my boxer shorts. It had fallen out during the night.

Should I ever meet Donovan McNabb outside of my head, I fully intend to tell him this completely true (true in the sense that I truly did imagine it) story.

The G.I. Joe Movie: Here's They Go Again

Just when the pain in my soul hadn't recovered from "Transformers," the Hollywood executives at Paramount have decided to reach inside my chest again, pull out my lungs and piss on them in front of me.

G.I. Joe is to be released sometime next year, because Hollywood hasn't kicked me in the balls enough. Keep trying, Hollywood. I think I can still produce kids out of the left nut. A perfect target for when that He-Man movie is finally released.

Here is the synopsis for the movie, as reported by Variety: "G.I. Joe is now a Brussels-based outfit that stands for Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity, an international co-ed force of operatives who use hi-tech equipment to battle Cobra, an evil organization headed by a double-crossing Scottish arms dealer. The property is closer in tone to X-Men and James Bond than a war film."

What the hell does that even mean? G.I. Joe is supposed to be a reference to our Army, and the term "G.I." doesn't even have any significance outside of our borders. I can't imagine an international organization pandering to us like that. Also, the fact that it's based in Brussels and is an international squad kinda goes against that "Real American Hero" part. I mean, G.I. Joe being American is right there in the name.

And Cobra isn't led by a double-crossing Scottish arms dealer. It's a ruthless terrorist organization led by Cobra Commander (and later on, Serpentor, when things started getting really ridiculous).

The changes are being made because Paramount is concerned about whether or not they can successfully market a movie about the U.S. Military at a time when our military is viewed in such a negative light around the world. They openly admit that it will be a "tough sell" and so they're changing things up to assure that "as many people as possible around the world will want to see it. " My solution to this would be not making the movie, but I'm not a movie executive. I don't think that there's a huge demand for a movie about G.I. Joe, so I'm sure no one would miss it if it wasn't there. Or, you could just not make the changes, because after all, it's G.I. Joe, not U.N. Squadron.

There was also talk of including G.I. Joe's overseas counterpart, Action Man. Thankfully, they didn't do it, as it would have just become two versions of every character. By the time I got overseas, Action Man was just the G.I. Joe line with a new logo on it. Plus, Action Man was always a stupid name. Was that really the best they could do? It could be worse, though; they could have called it "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles."

Wait, what? You're kidding, right? No, for real. "Hero Turtles?" I thought I just made that up.

Of course, what it all should come down to in the end is the characters and giving the fans what they want. I don't have much faith that they will, because after all, you saw what I thought about "Transformers." G.I. Joe was a show based in Reaganomics, Cold War America. There's was an emphasis on big guns, cool planes, and hardcore patriotic action stars. The kind of guys that chewed glass and liked the salty taste of their own blood. Like an entire group of Rambos that couldn't shoot, but things would blow up anyway.

This movie most likely won't be that way, but at least I won't have to worry about this movie focusing too much on humans and the government, because that's what this one is about. But no quote screams "failure" like the one from Paramount producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura: "My experience with beloved properties is that characters, attitude and tone are even more important than plot." Just the perfect attitude to dash the hopes of fans of a long-dead property. Reading between the lines, it says that they'll get all the catchphrases in the movie, which will be nothing more than a series of explosions. The hero will have a love interest. Roll credits.

With thinking like that at the helm, (it's directed by Stephen Sommers, director of "The Mummy," a series so bland, even The Rock couldn't make me like it) I can't wait for He-Man now. They'll probably make He-Man more slender, because they don't want to upset anyone thinking that he could be on steroids. Man-At-Arms will be his gay sidekick to promote acceptance.

The Fuck Is Going on in Jena?

For most of this week, I've been thinking about this Jena 6 situation down in Louisiana. I've been trying to think of some way to comment on what's going on down there, to muster the anger that I know many black people are feeling inside, and explode it onto my keyboard so the world will feel what I feel.

And you know what? I can't do it. I just don't feel the anger this time. Surprising considering how little it takes to set me off for most things. You'd think that blatant racism in 2007 would be a cake walk. But it isn't. And I can't figure out why.

I read some articles about the timeline and I felt anger boil up inside me. I did. But when it came time to write, it just wouldn't come out. It's not that I don't feel outrage for what's happening down there. I guess I'm just not the least bit surprised that they still do it. Even though I have white friends, I'm never surprised by the lengths that the white establishment will go to exclude black people from the idea of a stress-free life.

This entire thing probably could have been avoided had the school superintendent just nipped this in the bud and expelled the three kids that hung the nooses from the "white tree." Or if they had charged the kid who was pointing the shotgun at black people with a crime of some sort, like illegal pointing of a shotgun at people. Or maybe if the cops in Jena hadn't arrested the black kids who took said shotgun away from the homicidal racist that was pointing it at people. Any of those would have gone a long way towards diffusing any racial tension. But to blow off the concerns of the black populace of Jena by referring to the nooses as "youthful prank..."

...you're lucky that black folks didn't burn your fucking town down.

To any white people who might ever read this: There is nothing funny about 400 years of slavery. There is nothing funny about our struggle to be treated like men and women. There is nothing funny about lynching. There is nothing funny about discrimination. There is nothing funny about Klan rallies, or racism, or blackface, or any of that. And everything that black folks have gone through in this country and the evil, hateful feelings that have been directed at us, and the charges of being a lazy race, or the demands of us to "go back to Africa," all of that can be summed up by one symbol.

The goddamn noose.

How about you go tell the family of Emmitt Till that it was a "youthful prank?" How about all of those black families that have lost a loved one because a bunch of white folks just randomly decided to go chase down and string up a black person just because he was black that it was a "youthful prank?" It's not like it's something that was going on a thousand years ago. This was something that was happening in some of our lifetimes. I personally have been chased through my own neighborhood by white people in a pickup truck, calling me "nigger", and that happened in 1995. I don't know what their intentions were, but I know there are a lot of oak trees in that neighborhood. Don't fuckin' tell me it was a "youthful prank." Toilet papering is a youthful prank. You don't hang a noose from a tree unless you're trying to send a message, and we all know what that message is.

I want to know what the black people of Jena were expected to do. Were they supposed to just take it and pretend it never happened? Let's say that they were and they did. So what do they do when the shotgun incident happened? The black men that took away the shotgun were arrested and the white human being, and I use that term loosely, wasn't even charged. Then, what about the black kid who was beaten up at the white party the night before the shotgun incident? None of the white people involved in any of those incidents were punished severely. So what happened next? A white kid gets fucked up by six black kids because he was talking shit and saying that everything that had happened prior to this historic beatdown was justified. No, you fuckin' cracker...getting your head stomped on, that was justified. And the beating couldn't have been that bad, because the white kid went out that night.

Even still, it's a wonder it didn't happen sooner. The black population of Jena had been taking and taking and taking, but when some of them decide to retaliate, they're not only wrong, but they're brought up on trumped-up charges of second degree assault, with bond set in the hundreds of thousands for each boy. But when you feel like you're backed into a corner, what are you supposed to do?

The black people at this school didn't have any back up. There was no one supporting them. No cops were there to say, "Hey, we're gonna get all this straightened out." No reassuring pats on the back. The cops weren't on black folks' side. The school superintendent wasn't on black folks' side. The district attorney of Jena wasn't on the black folks' side. In fact, he showed his true colors when he told the black kids at the high school that if they didn't stop raising so much sand about the hilarious noose prank, that he "can be your best friend or your worst enemy. I can take away your lives with a stroke of my pen.”

And he's in the process of doing just that to one Mychal Bell, one of the kids who was involved in beating up the cracker. He's facing 22 years in prison for charges of aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery. Charges like that for beating up a kid who went out that night? It couldn't have been that bad. But he was up against a racist system and an all-white jury, each of them being somehow connected to the "victim" or someone else involved in the case. Then, they claim that the jury pool was selected at random.

Lemme go change clothes real quick, because the ones I'm wearing right now must make me look like I just walked out of the cotton fields.

Funny...I wasn't angry as I started writing, but I'm pissed right now. But let me be clear: I don't hate white people. I just hate THESE white people. And I really don't know what I can do to help, other than talk shit in my blog, which is not much. But I did come across a petition to try to get the governor of Louisiana to intervene, but his name is "Blanco," so I don't know how much good that will do. It can be found at: http://colorofchange.org/jena/

There is also information there for those who would be able to make the trip to Jena on September 20 to publicly stand with the families and to anyone who wishes to donate to the legal defense fund for the Jena 6.

Mychal Bell can be sent letters at this address:

Mychal Bell
Inmate, A-Dorm
LaSalle Correctional Center
15976 Highway 165
Olla, LA 71465-4801

We're supposed to be past all this in 2007, but I get the feeling that it's just beginning. Again.

TM

I Can't Believe I Rented It: Action Jackson

The only way this movie could be any more awesome is if they retroactively added “Eye of the Tiger” to the soundtrack and a training montage. That would take it off the scale of recordable words of human speak and into the realm of telepathy between dogs or the binary language of moisture vaporators. It’s got action, it’s got explosions, and it’s got both Vanity’s and Sharon Stone’s exposed breasts. I could end this review right now and you’d completely understand.

I never saw “Action Jackson” when it first came out. Even at the age of 10, I just didn’t like the look of the whole thing. I mean, he was a black guy, so naturally, his name had to rhyme? I seriously thought about these things as a child. I’ll tell anyone who will listen about how I never liked the Junkyard Dog or Roadblock from G.I. Joe because I couldn’t identify with their stereotypical antics, like dancing all time or talking in rhyme. So, I took a pass on “Action Jackson” assuming it would be more of the same.

Then, when I was visiting some friends back in Jackson, “Action Jackson” was put on and they all crowded around the TV to watch, because they loved this movie. I didn’t watch it all, but I did see one part that piqued my curiosity…Action Jackson ran down a speeding taxi on foot. I thought to myself, “This movie must be terrible. I have to see the rest.” So one day when I was in Wal-Mart, the Devil’s Store, I saw it in the five dollar bin. I bought it, and probably three or four other movies that I didn’t need to get.

That movie sat on my movie rack, in the plastic, for about two years. Then, yesterday came, and feeling the need to make fun of something, I decided to finally watch it. And you know what? This is probably the most awesome thing I’ve seen all day. And I don’t feel bad ruining it for you if you haven’t seen it, because the movie’s almost 20 years old. Personally, I’m hoping for a 20th anniversary DVD to be released, with updated pictures of Apollo Creed, who plays Action Jackson, so I can see if he’s still wearing eyeliner.

This movie has every 80’s action movie cliché. A disgraced, over the top, renegade cop that’s living on the edge, a police chief that’s breathing down his neck, a respectable businessman who’s actually a murderous scumbag, complete with henchmen, hot women who get naked, the monologue where the bad guy details his plot to the hero, the romance between the hero and his love interest, no matter how trifling or shady the girl actually is, and let us not forget, the clever quips during and after the fighting. Not to mention, in true 80’s fashion, explosions where there probably shouldn’t be explosions (because in the 80’s, gas tanks were protected by a layer of aluminum foil wrapped in dynamite) and the rotating cast of men that you will only recognize from other 80’s action movies. It’s possible that I have a genetic defect that won’t allow me to dislike this movie.

What else does it have? It also has a scene that is so ridiculous that it came through the mists of time to embed itself in my brain, slap it in the face, and force it to make me spend $5.88 on this DVD.

Sharon Stone (because I couldn’t be bothered to remember her movie name) and Action Jackson are crossing the street, when Sharon makes the mistake of asking out loud why he’s called “Action.” In movies, you just don’t do things like that, because the Spirit of Dramatic Irony will be forced to drop an anvil on you or make zombies come out of the sewers. In this case, he sent a guy in a taxi to run them over, right on cue.

They jump out of the way, and at this point, the computer in his head starts giving him options. He can A:) Make sure the girl is safe. B:) Call for back-up. C:) Chase down a speeding cab on foot. And in true 80’s action movie fashion, he decides to pick the most ridiculous option possible, but because he’s black, he has to give it some flavor. So for a good two minutes, he’s running alongside a car that’s moving at least 50 miles an hour, yelling at the guy to pull over. The guy just sneers that 80’s henchman sneer at him and keeps driving, so Action Jackson leaps off of the ground, onto the roof of a parked car, and soars through the air and lands on the roof of the cab.

The henchman starts to swerve to get him off, but Action Jackson has the Grip of Righteousness on his side, so he stays on. Then, the guy starts shooting at the roof of the car, but that never works and all it does is piss off Action Jackson, a mistake that he warns you throughout the movie that you should never make, because it gives him superpowers or something. So he punches through the wind shield, which he could do without slicing his hand to ribbons because he braced himself, and starts grabbing on the guy, who slams on the brakes.

Action Jackson flies off the hood and rolls about half a mile down the road, and without a scuffed knee or anything, jumps to his feet and starts screaming nonsense at the guy, who sneers again and slams on the gas. And just when you thought the ridiculous couldn’t get no more ridiculouser, Action Jackson leaps into the air, clears the car by at least three feet, does a flip in the air and sticks the landing, just as the cab somehow leaves the ground and crashes into the building at the end of the street. The only reason this doesn’t cause an explosion was because Action Jackson had to get down there and see that the guy somehow got away without a trace.

And right after that, Sharon Stone winds up getting killed by Coach (Craig T. Nelson), who is her husband and the main bad guy. Coach frames Action Jackson for her murder and that sets up another 80’s mainstay: Action Jackson is on the run for a murder he did not commit and must clear his name and expose the insidious plot. While he was on the run, he hooked up with Vanity, who is Coach’s mistress, and forced her to help him because Coach was trying to kill her, too. Vanity spent a good half hour trying to get Apollo to give her the business, but he didn’t, because he was trying to get ready for the fight with Rocky. Or keep them alive. I can’t remember which.

I fail to see how you could walk away from a movie like this without a smile on your face. The only person who probably wasn’t happy with the results was Vanity, who played the junkie with a heart of gold (and panties of imagination). She was finally exposed as someone should only be holding a mic if she’s handing it to someone else AND as an actress who should only be called in if the waitress at the café down the street gets hit by a bus. If she’s ever worked again, it’s proof to me that she gives really good head.

I still liked “7th Heaven” though. That’s probably the best nonsensical song I’ve ever heard. And I liked “Action Jackson,” too, even if they expect me to buy that this cop was so dangerous that they took his gun license away, yet kept him employed as a cop. Or if they expect me to believe that one can drive a Ferrari at top speed through a crowd of people without hitting anyone before going up two or three flights of stairs. Or if they expect me to believe that Coach is a threat to anyone except Stuart or Luther.

For all its faults, I still loved it. I think I loved it because of its faults, mostly because they just don’t make movies like this anymore, and if they do, they call those “direct-to-DVD,” and usually those are so bad that they make my skin burn. It was a nice little throwback to the days when you could invent drinking games based on the cast or the amount of explosions in the movie. Next time you and your friends get together, put this movie on and every time you see a guy that you saw in another 80s action movie, you have to name the movie he was in and take a shot. You also have to take a shot for every explosion. I expect to see more than a few of you in the ICU or a liver transplant list.

Watch this movie because I saw Carl Weathers in some commercial last week for a product I couldn't even name. He's about one stint in rehab away from winding up on "the Surreal Life." He could use our support right now.

Should we still use the death penalty?

As far back as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to see murderers die painful deaths at the hands of the government.

It was a glorious time. Reading in the papers about how this murderer or that murderer caught that lightning bolt of justice right in the groin, I felt good about the chances that this or that murderer would show up in my house. Righteousness was all around us, and a lot of times, it was contained in a hypodermic needle, stuck in the arm of some rapist. In fact, my heart swelled with so much justice that I openly wished that the line on Death Row would move just a little bit faster.

I never doubted the death penalty, because I always believed that they were always throwing the right man in the gas chamber. So sure was I that I had begun suggesting that they bring back town square beheadings or hangings, like in the olden days. I wished they had shown that American kid in Singapore getting caned on live TV. Not only was I big on the death penalty, but capital punishment as a whole.

Then, they invented this stuff called DNA, which scientists claim is a foolproof way to identify people, much like they claim that the entire universe exploded into being. Poppycock, I say, but when they started using DNA to clear a lot of convicted rapists and death row murderers of their crimes, everyone started jumping on the DNA bandwagon. Or ladder, because that’s what it looks like.

Suddenly, the infallibility of the death penalty was in question. My world was coming down all around me. Not because the death penalty was going anywhere, but more because I had talked a lot of mess about how the death penalty should be used more and I don’t like being wrong. And if I can’t look forward to killers frying like fish in the deep fryer, how was I going to feel safe?

On top of that, there had been numerous examples over the years where witnesses had recanted their statements that led to convictions of murderers, many of which wound up on Death Row. Innocent people were being sentenced to death because of people who saw the whole thing not seeing what their lying eyes told them that they saw, or because of technologies that hadn’t been invented yet. Could it be possible that the death penalty shouldn’t be used because people it could be sending the wrong person to that eternal punishment in the sky?

That answer, most likely, seems to be “yes.”

I’ve been a huge supporter of the death penalty over the years, but after reading article after article about DNA evidence clearing people of lesser crimes, or witnesses recanting their testimony, most recently in the Troy Davis case here in Georgia. He was granted a stay of execution at the last minute, due to people changing their stories and jurors never feeling right about sentencing him to death or shooting a police officer. What if it turns out he’s innocent and he went to the chair anyway? I know there were some jurors who struggled with that decision and I couldn’t imagine being in their shoes. It’s one thing for the evidence to be overwhelming and it’s a slam dunk case. It’s something else entirely for the case not to be a sure thing. And that’s what leads to situations like Troy Davis’s.

No one was ever 100% sure that he did it, and in fact, the witnesses have fingered one of the other witnesses that testified as the actual killer. And this is happening in a state where a 17 year old boy got 10 years for fooling around with his classmate. If they can’t get one right with video evidence and common sense to work with, imagine what can happen in a situation far more complex. I’ll tell you what can happen…a potentially innocent man loses about 16 years of his life before being wrongly executed. I’m not as comfortable with those odds as I once was. Life is precious, and even though the appeals process can take decades, sometimes that’s not enough time for the truth to come out. Just like there are a hundreds of people that have been cleared by DNA evidence, I’m sure there are thousands more that never had that chance.

So what exactly am I saying? I still believe in the death penalty, because I don’t like the idea of a murderer becoming a repeat murderer. I believe that if you’re out there taking innocent lives, you’ve forfeited the right to continue yours. Sure, there are lots of murderers who have turned their lives around and regret what they’ve done, but there are a lot of murderers who remain unrepentant and probably be executed before they can even get to a holding cell.

At the same time, the process isn’t infallible and there’s no way of knowing how right we are when the guillotine falls on that prisoner’s life. We think we know, but are we always 100% certain? It’s not like Minority Report, where we have a way of seeing what actually went down so we can go stop it before it happens. The system we have doesn’t allow us to see through the mists of time. All we can do is react to the evidence we have in front of us. And sometimes that just isn’t enough to tell a man that he should die.

TM

Don Imus: The Return

As we all knew he would, Don Imus is trying to make his return to radio. He’s settled his lawsuit against CBS Radio and got $7 million. It’s just a matter of time before he’s back on the air, pissing people off and getting us talking again. Personally, I’ve got no problem with this, because I never expected anything less. After all, he is white.

In a surprising twist, Rutgers basketball player, Kia Vaughn, one of the women impugned by the forked tongues of Imus and his producer, has decided to file suit against Imus, alleging defamation of character or some other such allegations. I don’t really remember the details, and I’ve got no problem with this, because Don Imus is a terrible human being.

And unsurprisingly, Kia Vaughn is being criticized for suing Imus. When the controversy was going on, the Rutgers women’s team and C. Vivian Stringer were praised for handling the situation with “class.” They didn’t cause a big stink, they didn’t get loud and pissy. They quietly expressed their displeasure and they were done. White people love it when black people handle the situation with “class.”

But now that she’s suing, she’s selfish and all about the money. The words that were used to describe her and her team are now being thrown in her face. Her lawyer says that she wants to live a normal quiet life and the Imus situation took that away from her, so by gaining much more individual attention, she will get that back. I know it sounds ridiculous, and it is. Let’s be straight up about this: No one outside of Rutgers knows who the hell Kia Vaughn is. I can’t imagine someone walking up to her on the street and saying, “Hey, you’re Kia Vaughn.” It’s not like she’s Kevin Durant.

But should she be allowed to sue? Why not? What’s really so wrong with her lawsuit? We live in a litigious society, and everybody does it. That doesn’t automatically make it right, but with the amount of criticism she’s drawing, I wholeheartedly support her. Do I think it’s racial? Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. Because when the Goldman family wouldn’t leave O.J. alone, they were and still are, lifted up as saints. I saw the civil suit against O.J. as a way to profit off of their son’s death. When some slob sues a large corporation because of something that they’d done to themselves, no one seems to have a problem with that. Why can’t she sue Imus?

I Can't Believe I Rented It: Godzilla

When I sat in the theater watching “Jurassic Park: The Lost World,” there was a scene where a T-Rex gets loose in New York City and starts rampaging all over the place, and I, like so many others, no doubt, had a revelation. No, not that I shouldn’t have gone to the movies to watch “The Lost World,” but that it was just a matter of time before they made another “Godzilla” movie. And in 1998, our worst fears came to pass.

I didn’t go see it, though, and the reviewers ripped it apart. It was one of those times I decided to listen to the critics. Time passed, though, and with the passage of time comes two things: forgetfulness and in some cases, dementia.

In 2003, I met a girl who had “Godzilla” on DVD. She said it wasn’t as bad as everyone said, but I didn’t believe her. I borrowed it from her because I wanted to see just how bad the movie was. I mean, this was a failure of “Waterworld” proportions. The summer of 1998 had “Godzilla” plastered everywhere. There were fast food tie-ins, soft drink promotions, video games, even toys. None of it sold and “Godzilla” became the poster child for summer blockbuster excess.

I started to watch that movie after 30 minutes, I was already doing something else, with absolutely no memory of what I had seen, but I never gave the movie back, because I forgot. Then, came a fateful night in 2007, when my dementia kicked in and I made myself watch the entire movie. What follows is the recollection of my horrible, horrible decision.

In thirty minutes, you should be able to tell if the movie you’re watching is going to suck. Except for “Transformers,” which despite a really good first hour, provided me with two blogs worth of material, every movie pretty much fits into that. After 30 minutes with “Godzilla,” it was pretty easy to see why it flopped. The movie purposely opens in the South Pacific for one reason and one reason only: So they could have an Asian man says “Gojira” on camera.

But besides making fun of the way Asian people talk, this movie was goddamn boring. There’s no other way to say it. I don’t know where moviemakers get the idea that we’d rather see regular humans and government interworkings instead of iconic characters, but “Godzilla” showed Ang Lee and Michael Bay the path that they would later walk with “Hulk” and “Transformers.” And both of those movies were terrible.
For what felt like at least three hours, we got to watch the excitement of a nerd biologist researching a giant lizard and how it got pregnant. Along the way, we got to meet the mysterious Frenchman, the mayor of New York who’s trying to get re-elected, the military guy who’s stuck with the mayor, the governor of New York, the other military guy who’s actually on the ground, a news cameraman and his girlfriend, and an aspiring reporter who just happens to be the ex-girlfriend of the nerd biologist. What do any of these people have to do with a giant lizard rampaging through New York? Except for the nerd and the guy with the guns, not a damn thing.

Honestly, I think the screenwriters forgot what movie they were writing at times, because there were whole hours that went by where they weren’t even talking about the eminent threat to Manhattan and by proxy, life on Earth. I mean, there was a failed relationship to talk about, or the re-election campaign, or the how the ex-girlfriend keeps getting screwed over by her boss at the news station. These are pressing concerns, people! We can’t be bothered with the giant lizard that’s trying to kill us all.

I swear, I thought I was watching Transformers again. Are you sure Michael Bay didn’t direct this?

No, we have the creators of Independence Day to thank for this one. I know this because plastered above the title of the movie is the statement, “From the Creators of Independence Day.” Thanks for telling us that, Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich. Now, I know where to send the shit sandwich for letting this one get out, sucking harder than the virgin girl who’s dealing with her first ‘materhead. It was the sort of experience that makes old ladies drink and babies explode.

I can only imagine what it was like for the people who actually had to sit through this in the theater, because once you adjust for inflation, the people in 1998 would have paid at least $77 to watch this. At least the people who worked for Tri-Star back then were getting paid for this abuse. Which leads me to wonder…how much money would you accept to let someone kick you in the groin?

The special effects were good, and truthfully, I’ve got no problem with the way Godzilla looked, mainly because he wasn’t a robot Godzilla or a turtle with jets for legs or a giant moth. Clearly, there was no opium usage during the creative process. The short time that you got to see Godzilla actually rampaging through the city was pretty okay. Too bad there wasn’t more of it. But where the awe-inspiring moments left off, the ridiculous scenes took over. For instance…

The first time Godzilla comes into full view, he’s just breaking buildings, running all over the place, doing his thug thizzle. Then, he walks up on the nerd biologist (played by a “trying way too hard to be nerdy” Ferris Bueller), gets right up in his face, and just stares at him. And Ferris Bueller stares right back, with all the childlike wonder he can muster. In the background, the music from E.T. when he makes the bikes fly is playing. I swear it is. Now think about that for a second. The perfect killing machine is standing in front of you, wondering what you taste like, but the music is laying out a mood of magical wonder and jumping over the Army on your bike.

As stupid as that sounds, what’s stupider is…Godzilla just walks away. And what’s stupider than that is, the U.S. Army, who was standing right behind him, had to be told to fire on the giant lizard that just destroyed half the city. I guess they were waiting to see if Ferris Bueller and the lizard were going to share a touching kiss. And who would want to ruin the chance to see some “interspecies erotica?”

Godzilla goes running through the city, outruns the gunships that are firing all over the place, then hides somewhere in the city. I would ask how, but it might ruin the illusion of ridiculousness that this movie has worked so hard to create. Although, you probably should remember this scene of Godzilla running at least 150 miles an hour through Manhattan, because later on he’s unable to catch a cab that’s directly in front of him.

Nor could his babies catch the people that were on foot in front of them. Yes, Godzilla has babies. Much like Superman, Godzilla is apparently a “baby daddy.” And his babies are susceptible to Vaudevillian slapstick, because when the people are running from hundreds of mini-Zillas, they’re able to get away when Ferris Bueller pushes some basketballs and a gumball machine into their path. Dear God, Godzilla has given birth to the cast of a Hanna-Barbara cartoon. I think I saw that trick on “Jabber-Jaw.”

Of course, the lizards all die in the end, and the most incompetent military in history manages to get out of this mess without accidentally letting off their grenades in the truck or running over their feet with their tanks. But who was it who actually saved the day? The French guy. That’s right, New York got saved by a French guy. Sure, it was The Professional, but he’s still French. And we just can’t have that.

I’m sure most of you have gone through life not having seen this and I would just like to suggest that you keep doing what you’ve been doing. I have just laid my life and my sanity on the line to assure that you continue to do this. Never see this movie. If you have any respect for me at all, you’ll slap anyone across the face who owns this movie. Just do that for me. Now, I’m going to go throw up.

I Can’t Believe I Rented It: Elektra

Well, truth to tell, I didn’t rent it. It was on FX one weekend, and if you’re the least bit familiar with FX, you know that they can’t show re-runs all the time. There’s no way in Satan’s Hell that I would have spent money to see this movie. It’s not that it was bad. It just wasn’t worth the imaginary money that I wasn’t going to spend.

“Elektra” is a spin-off of a movie that’s only claim to fame is that Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner (Bennifer 2), met on the set. That movie would be “Daredevil,” a movie that was only allowed to be made because “Spider-Man” brought in $403 million dollars. It’s not like anyone was clamoring for “Daredevil”, so judging by that, there might have been about 17 or 18 people looking forward to this.

In the lead role, Jennifer Garner plays a Greek assassin who died, but didn’t die, in “Daredevil.” Instead of trying to get into a blind man’s pants or going after the Kingpin, the man who was trying to have her father and boyfriend killed, she goes after some guy and whispers in his ear from across the room. That leads her to find some kid breaking into her place, who develops a girl-crush on Elektra and tries to hook Elektra up with her dad. Because, you know, there always has to be a love interest in these movies. And because a PG-13 rating and child protection laws won’t let Elektra get down with the girl.

So she goes and has dinner with these people, and in one night, she becomes so attached to these perfect strangers who practice breaking and entering at her house, that when her next assignment is to kill those lovable prowlers, she backs out and risks her life to save them from ninjas.

That led to them going on the run and hearing some claptrap about a ninja clan called the Hand whose members are mostly known for getting killed by Wolverine. And since the ninjas weren’t enough to take down Elektra while she’s rescuing these people, the Hand decide to step outside of their own reality, pull The 8 Devils on Kimon from my “Ninja Scroll” DVD and bring them into this movie.

I swear, anyone who’s seen “Ninja Scroll” knows that all they did was change the names of those guys. Unfortunately, they left all of their excitement and coolness back in the other DVD.

Then, it comes out that the 8 Devils are after the girl, because she’s the treasure or something, which I think might just be a nice way of saying that she’s going to be introduced to the child sex ring in Asia. Apparently, one of the 8 Devils, Typhoid Mary, used to be the treasure, and caught so many diseases that now she can spread them at will. It must be cool to be able to mentally control your gonorrhea.

And after that piece of information is revealed, the girl reveals that suddenly, she is an instrument of destruction who has the fighting skills to shove “the glow” up Leroy Green’s ass. The girl is flat-out awesome. So awesome that she could have, you know, been of use when Elektra was killing herself trying to fight off a horde of ninjas or men who turn into stone all by herself. Apparently, it’s more dramatic to reveal that you can stomp ass when you’re not in any danger.

That led to the girl getting her ass in trouble anyway, the 8 Devils getting killed, and Elektra having a showdown with the son of the boss of the 8 Devils and beating on her just long enough to make the people who have never watched movies before think that she could lose. I hope that was the end, because I really don’t remember much else past that.

I won’t get into the mistake that is casting Jennifer Garner as Elektra, because I really try to temper my “Dork Side” when I write these things. I would question the wisdom of making a movie about a superhero that no one outside of the comic book store has ever heard of. At least Meteor Man was an original creation. I would also question making a stand-alone, spin-off movie for a character who’s only notable story involved all of the main characters from the movie she was spun-off from.

But, having said all that, the movie wasn’t good or bad. It just was. It came on, it had a couple of cool scenes, it didn’t make my blood pressure rise or throw anything at the TV, and it ended, roll credits. It was pretty much a B-movie from the 80s. It was generic as generic can get. If you had added some cats, you could have called it “Catwoman” and no one would have known the difference. And for those who are curious, no, I still haven’t seen “Catwoman.” Unless you count the first time it was released under the title, “Batman Returns.”