A "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" Review That Doesn't Spoil Shit

Straight off the top:  Star Wars does not feel right without the 20th Century Fox fanfare at the top.  I wish Disney could buy them just for the purpose of making Star Wars feel whole again.

Back in 2007, I tore apart Superman Returns, partially for holding the balls of Richard Donner's Superman movies as if it's trying to keep them warm and shielded, like Superman does for Metropolis.  Because of that, and because Bryan Singer didn't think Superman should fight anything, it never really comes together as an original work.  Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a lot like that.  It doesn't hold the original Star Wars' balls quite as tightly, but there's definitely some light ball-tickling going on.

In other words, I hope you like Star Wars, because JJ Abrams is about to show you how much he likes Star Wars.  Yes, I call it "Star Wars."  "A New Hope" is stupid.

Anyway, JJ Abrams is way into that movie.  So much, in fact, that he takes great care to recreate some of the scenes from Star Wars in his movie, but he JJ's them up so you don't notice what he's doing.  It isn't a knock on The Force Awakens, because his story is its own thing.  He just has a clear love for Star Wars that he can't help but let us see.  JJ loves Star Wars so much that I bet he still calls it "Star Wars."

As a result, two-thirds of the movie is really good.  He's really good about allowing us to find out what happened to the characters we really love while letting us get to know these new characters.  In true Star Wars tradition, you don't find out anything about the new characters so much as you get to hang out with them for a while, before realizing later that you don't know much about them at all.  They're just so funny and likable that you never notice.

Like, Finn, for instance.  Finn is what would happen if you took a regular person from here and dropped them into Star Wars.  Unlike every other character in Star Wars lore who grew up in a place where slugs become crime lords and people can be choked from across the street, Finn ain't about this life.  And it shows.  Everybody in the world who dreams about living in the Star Wars universe, thinks that if they went there, they'd suddenly learn the force or enjoy living in space, but Finn is your reality.  Finn is what you'd actually be like.  He's not a coward, but he's terribly confused about what life is like out here, and really doesn't get why we all need to be out here fighting when we can all get ships that go to the Outer Rim.  In a way, he's a twist on Han Solo, who didn't think it was worth sacrificing his life in the service of the Rebellion.

Then, there's Rey, a scavenger girl surviving on a desert planet.  She lives a difficult life, getting ripped off by the local scrap yard guy who pays her in food, and sleeping in the wreckage of an old AT-AT Walker.  When she isn't scavenging or fixing stuff, she sits and watches the ships fly off this barren desert planet.  And even though she lives this hard knock life, she still manages to have a heart for sad sacks that come stumbling across her front door.  She's almost the inverse of Luke Skywalker, because she doesn't dream of leaving this world at all, even though she should probably want to.

Kylo Ren isn't likable, though.  Not at all.  The previous villains were cool or charismatic in different ways, or carried themselves with a presence.  Darth Vader was awe-inspiring and ruthless.  Darth Maul was designed to be cool.  Christopher Lee's voice alone made Count Dooku memorable.  Even General Grievous was completely original, with some old school built in.  But Kylo Ren isn't like that.  He comes off like he's trying to be someone else, and acts very much like a spoiled child at times.  For all I know, that was the point.

As for what happens in the movie, there's a lot of action, it looks really good, and it is imaginative, because after all, this is a JJ Abrams movie.  If nothing else, he's going to take your breath way with his action scenes.  There was never a worry about that, because if he could make the Starship Enterprise exciting, imagine what he could do with the Millennium Falcon.

But then, there's that last third of the movie.  I remember reading a review about Revenge of the Sith when it came out that said that George Lucas was basically forcing the plot to go where he needed it to go, logic be damned (and that review was right).  There was an end point that had already been predetermined, and he needed to get these loose ends tied up before the credits roll, which is why Yoda just up and decided that he needed to go into exile.  There are moments like that, where it felt like they had decided where these characters needed to end up and they were gonna get there, logic be damned.  The last third of this movie kinda felt like JJ remembered that he needed to hit a couple more beats before he wrapped this thing up.

In my mind, it's like he delivers the script, and its brilliant, but someone at the studio was like, "There are no clips from the third act that we can put into the trailer.  Give us some trailer moments."  And he gets mad and hate-writes a new third act for them.  I mean, it's just kinda there, aside from discovering that Princess Leia had an army of Jedi babies without Han or Chewbacca deciding that he's had enough of Han's shit and they finally scrap it out.  The last third of the movie left me with questions, and not the kind where you're like, "I wonder where this is gonna go next?"  No, it's the kind of questions like, "Lemme rewind this and watch it again, because I must have missed something."

But it's a good movie.  Just one that's going to take some time for me to really appreciate.  JJ did a good job of working in the original trilogy's universe organically, and there are so many moments where I was pointing at the screen in excitement, because I suddenly saw something I recognized.  He also wrote this thing as if the prequels never happened, which is good, because I doubt anyone's gonna go into this like, "This thing better address the final fate of Watto, or I want my money back."  No, The Force Awakens dovetails out of Return of the Jedi, but in a way that is both familiar and new at the same time.  It's kind of comforting to spend another couple of hours in a that galaxy again.

Will Smith, Independence Day, and boring-ass off-screen deaths

I don't think there's a person out there that likes off-screen deaths in movies.

Not the kind where they're killed off-screen, but then, you learn later on in the movie what happened.  I mean the kind where you spend two or three hours (or more) investing emotionally in these characters, then when the new one comes out, you find out that they died, and no one cares.  That shit sucks.

Some movies handle it better than others, because the Rocky movies killed off Adrian and Paulie that way.  But the Rocky movies dealt with it by making it part of the story.  Adrian's death was part of the reason why Rocky and his son had a wedge between them in Rocky Balboa, and (SPOILERS), it was the reason why Rocky gave up on his own failing health in Creed.

Then, you got those assholes over at Fox who gave you two and a half hours of Ripley trying to save this little girl from acid-bleeding aliens, in the middle of space, only to find out that Newt died anyway in between Aliens and Alien 3.  Alien 3 is almost twenty years old and people still list that as one of the reasons why they never liked that movie.  They just brushed all that joy and goodwill aside so they could tell their story, instead of giving the payoff that the fans wanted.  It's just one in a long list of reasons why Sylvester Stallone is a better filmmaker than you.

No one likes that second method, why is why Roland Emmerich did exactly that with Independence Day: Resurgence.  

Now, let's be clear:  I seriously doubt that anyone was emotionally invested in any of the characters in Independence Day.  I know I'm going out on a limb here, and please correct me if I'm wrong.  Tell me that you felt the emotional depth of the angry teenage boy who just wants to love his family, or the war hero President of the United States.  However, the way they got rid of Will Smith's character in Resurgence is kinda lame.

You didn't know Will Smith wasn't coming back for Resurgence?  My bad. Spoilers.

Because they didn't offer Will Smith enough money he's too big a star for this foolishness now Suicide Squad has a better shot at keeping his name hot they didn't offer Jaden a role as his stepson that looks just like him Will Smith declined to come back to the movie that started July 4th as "Will Smith Weekend," they had to kill off his character.  It only makes sense, because he can't be alive anywhere in the world while this is going on and not come back.  It had to be this, because only the Avengers can get away with not having to explain why Iron Man couldn't come help Captain America take down three flying aircraft carriers, or Thor had to fend off another alien invasion by himself.

And you know what, I'm fine with Will Smith's character being dead.  I get it.  It wasn't that kind of movie, where people get attached to the characters.  Really, we just like Will Smith.  But if you gotta kill him off, you gotta do better than this:

"While test piloting the ESD’s first alien hybrid fighter, an unknown malfunction causes the untimely death of Col. Hiller. Hiller’s valor in the War of ‘96 made him a beloved global icon whose selfless assault against the alien mothership lead directly to the enemy’s defeat. He is survived by his wife Jasmine and son Dylan."

You don't have to show any of this shit on screen, so there isn't a single reason why it has to be that boring.  Maybe the producers feel like they needed to show respect to Will Smith's character, but that's really dumb, because he doesn't work there anymore.  Besides, they already disrespected him by killing him off-screen.  We're already past the point of disrespect, so you might as well go all the way.  Because if I was writing the movie, Will Smith's Capt. Steven Hiller would have gone through some shit before he died.

Why the hell not?  It's not like you're limited by your special effects budget.  So why couldn't we find out that Capt. Hiller, despite all his confidence and bravado, had a really hard time dealing with the knowledge that the fate of humanity rested on his shoulders?  Maybe that led to some drinking, some depression, some PTSD.  Maybe he broke down completely, and believed that the aliens were still out there and were trying to control minfd.  No one really knew how to help him, and he believed he was alone in this.  So he tries to fight back against his perceived enemies in the government that he believes have already been compromised.  And his story ends with him driving his car off of a bridge, because he believes that the aliens have finally broken his mind as well.

Now, Vivica A. Fox is back in this movie, and evidently, her son (Hiller's stepson) is supposed to be one of heroes of this movie, because of course he is.  And I'm sure their characters will be sufficiently boring.  But it would be so much better if they came into the movie with something like this over their heads.  Of course they're gonna fight the aliens, but now, it's personal.

And maybe Will Smith sees that synopsis, and it looks interesting to him.  He could work with that material.  And he calls up Roland Emmerich, and asks to make that movie, because that's what Will Smith does now.  He just goes around making movies that seem interesting to him, and it's good to know that someone thought After Earth was interesting.  A movie about the complete mental breakdown of the hero from Independence Day is way more interesting than that same guy fighting the aliens again.  And Fox is dying to make a franchise out of this.  $50-70 million would be in their hands before Will Smith could come to his senses.

That sort of thing should be the template for off-screen deaths.  I'm not naive.  I know that those times can't be avoided sometimes.  But if you're already going to have to do it, you might as well make it count for something, and change the story going forward.

The Police Need to Sack Up

I'm confused by these police out here.

On the one hand, the police are supposed to be brave souls, the thin blue line that stands between decent society and chaos, the protectors of the vulnerable.  When everyone is running away from danger, they run towards it.  On the other hand, police are actually delicate flowers that need our love and support to adequately do their jobs.  That's what all these police union heads and chiefs and sheriffs are out here saying, and it's making their guys look kinda soft.

Yeah, the police aren't looking so good in the realm of public relations here lately, what with all these protests against them, just because their weapons keep accidentally discharging into people.  And the police aren't gonna stand for it.  They want you to know that they put their lives on the line to protect you every day and that you should appreciate what they do.  And in a perfect world, we probably would.  Except, we don't live in that perfect world.  We live in a world where they shoot unarmed black people of all ages, for no reason at all.  We live in a world where police are attacking school children for standing too close.  We live in world where people actually don't want to call the police, because less people will get shot if the police don't get involved in the business of protecting people.

People are actually starting to say, "I just got robbed, but it's safer if you don't come. I got my future to think about."  You're not supposed to say that to the police, that's something you say to your crazy uncle that keeps a straight razor in his boot.

But this is where we are, and the police are really in their feelings about it.  Despite all of the unwarranted shootings and assaults that they don't get charged for, they still feel like they're heroes.  They don't think anything is wrong with the idea that a segment of society fears them.  They still want everyone to tell them how much they're appreciated.  To them, it's unfair that people should say the harsh things that they say about the police these days.

Well, it's unfair to us that we can get assaulted or killed by them and no charged are ever filed.  Looks like we both have grievances.

And what's worse, they think that mean words and unequal violence are on the same plane.  Like, in their minds, I said to them, "Hey, you shot and killed me," and they're like, "Well, you hurt my feelings.  I guess we're even."  So, to recap, the police think a sassy teenager and an armory filled with machine guns are the same thing.

They would also have us believe that the Black Lives Matter movement is inciting violence against police, and there are two things wrong with that.  One, police killings have been trending downward for a while now, and two, anyone that wants to kill a cop was already in the business of killing cops before Black Lives Matter became a hashtag.  Like that dude rode the bus from Baltimore to New York to shoot some cops didn't have that in mind long before these protests started.  If killing cops wasn't already part of his daily thoughts (and it was), then a six hour bus ride would have been more than enough time for him to come to his senses.

So cops getting shot was already a hazard of the job, and has been since the day guns were invented.  Probably because your entire job is to stand in the way of someone's illegal hustle.  You're essentially a professional hater.  So when some dude got around to inventing the gun, the first thing he probably tried to do was use it on the government empowered peacekeeper that kept messing up his bootleg textiles operation.

So, no one sprung this on you, cops.  This is the job that you signed up for.  We didn't ask you to become cops, especially if you're gonna be out here shooting 12 year old kids.  I guess you thought this job was gonna be all shooting black people and violating our civil rights, but it turns out there's more to it than just the fun stuff.  Sometimes, the bullets come back.  Sometimes, people aren't going to like you.  Sometimes, it's going to be your fault and people will want you held accountable.  And if you can't deal with that, then maybe you shouldn't be a cop.

Because it seems like cops doing their job better is completely off the table, based on the statements that these police are making.

And it's not like they need the support of the people they police, anyway.  They haven't had the support of black people probably ever, and it hasn't stopped the police from getting pretty much whatever they want from Americans.  The police of Doraville, GA have a tank, and the population of Doraville is like, 10,000 people, and barely has crime.  They probably don't have tasers in Doraville, but they have a tank.  And the only time that tank is getting used is when they have to make YouTube videos about it like this one.  But they have it, because police get what they want, no questions asked.  The troops don't even have it that good, and the wars they fight aren't rhetorical.

So, let's not act like public support is necessary for operations.  You just want someone to pat you on the back and tell you that you done good.  And to act like your feelings are important at a time when you're shooting people like you're on XBox Live is fucking disgusting.

WWE sacrificed Hulk Hogan to save themselves

Hulk Hogan is one of the most well known people in the world. He's also, apparently, a racist, and WWE has disassociated itself from him. They have to do it, because they don't want anyone looking their way for more racism. And we all know if people start looking there, THEY WILL FIND IT.

Hulk Hogan worked for WWE for more than 20 years, and has been closely tied to the company at the highest levels for all of that time. He used to hang out at the Vince McMahon's house and help write the shows. He used to tour with Vince for more than 300 days a year. He helped Vince get into movies. And he helped make Vince a billionaire. So they're close.

Hulk Hogan was exposed as a racist last night. I'm sure this news was no shock to Vince McMahon. Because he's probably told the same racist jokes and stories as Hogan himself.

Now, I don't have any proof of that, but I do know that WWE has a history of racist stereotypes. They've only had one black WWF Champion in their history, and they won't even refer to him as black. Vince McMahon got real close to saying some racist stuff about Booker T on live TV years ago, and said the word "niggardly" on Smackdown once, I guess, because he feels like he should be able to say "nigger" as openly as he does in his own house.   Then, called John Cena a "nigga" in front of Booker T because he thought it was funny.  D-Generation X did a skit mocking the Nation of Domination with four white guys wearing blackface.  More than once, the WWF has tried to run a "race war" angle in their programming, which was an excuse for white people to say bad stuff about black people in promos.  They had a Mexican tag team drive riding lawnmowers to the ring.  A couple of years ago, they fired Alberto del Rio for defending himself against racism. And they've employed Michael P.S. Hayes since the dark ages.

Continuing to employ Michael P.S. Hayes when people know him as a racist before they know him as a wrestler speaks volumes about WWE. Because you know he isn't the only one. I kinda wish Mark Henry wasn't under contract, so he could tell us every racist he's confronted backstage.  WWE has gotta be infested with them, because one thing I know about racists is that they like to hang out with other racists.

And if Hogan is a racist, and Vince is most likely a racist (a Republican from North Carolina who employs racists for 20 year stints, and hangs out with racist Republican candidate Donald Trump), then who else in WWE is a racist?  Racists always prefer to create environments where they're free to be racist, so you know there's gotta be a lot of them. 

And that's why they shut the door on Hulk Hogan, because they don't want anyone asking that question.  They had to get Hulk up out the paint before folks start connecting dots on this.  Sure, they don't want their company "associated with such virulent hatred and yadda yadda yadda, we totally nailed that press release."  Yes, they want people of all races at their shows because black and Latino dollars spend, too. They're just covered in chicken grease and dried beans. But the real reason is because they don't want anyone coming for them.

And that's not to make Hogan the victim. Hulk Hogan should be out on his ass. It's kind of hard to say that knowing how much I bought in to Hulkamania as a child, teenager, and young adult, but facts are facts. He doesn't like me or anybody who looks like me. So for that, fuck him. I'd be a fool if I wasted time trying to figure out the context for why this guy hates black people.  The answer, evidently, is that everyone famous in the 1980s was a piece of shit.  Sylvester Stallone is next, and having a small Italian beat up black men in five out of six Rocky movies is gonna be the proof against him.

So no, Hogan isn't a victim and WWE isn't mistreating him. They're just throwing him under the bus to save themselves. But it's too late. The racist train has already left the station.  Just like Donald Sterling, though, they aren't cutting ties with Hogan because he's racist, otherwise, they would have done it 20 years ago.  They're cutting ties with Hogan because you know he's a racist. 

This is a huge story already, and it will only grow from here. When we hear this racist tape, the question will inevitably become, "Did WWE know that Hulk Hogan was so repulsive?" And that's when all your favorite minority wrestlers will come out with stories to tell. Alberto del Rio is READY for your airtime, television media. And this might be the come-up that Virgil has been looking for. Koko's gotta make sure that the curl is juicy. And we might finally get an explanation about what the hell Akeem was supposed to be.

Bioshock: Infinite - A racial look at a racial game

Heads up: Here be spoilers.

Bioshock: Infinite has a storyline filled some some of the most disgusting racists of all time.  It's a world where a bunch of racist elites leave mainland America to start their own floating colony called Columbia.  In the early 1900s.  It really is the kind of shit we all expect the rich to do, anyway, except in 2015, they'll call it "Elysium."  They're going to leave us all behind and create a world where they can do what they want, without us begging for "their fairly obligated tax dollars," or "a living wage."  

Columbia is just a more racist version of that, because they plaster that they hate black people on their walls, in posters, and in statues, all over the city.  Problem is, they have black people living up there, because everyone knows that racist elites can't be expected to do for themselves.  They need an oppressed underclass to serve them, otherwise, we might not know that they're rich.  

So these rich white folks brought black people to their new enclave and insulted and demeaned them at every turn.  And that's the undercurrent of this story where you're a white guy that's coming to rescue a white girl being chased by a giant bird.

All of which is fine with me, because I expect this racist society to be brought down by a black uprising.  You can't put that much racism into a game without the racists getting what's coming to them.  You just can't.  Otherwise, I'd wonder exactly how racist the staff at Irrational Games actually was. 

And that's exactly what happens.  In between Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth running and shooting and jumping between alternate universes, the black folks get guns and airships and start killing white folks.  As you do when you're an oppressed underclass fighting for your dignity.  Booker DeWitt gets caught up in their story, even though he doesn't give a shit about their rebellion, and in one of the universes, becomes a hero to these rebelling Negroes.  

This is where my problem with the game starts.  

Because up until this point, there was a very clear racial divide and in the story, there was expectation that the black folks were going to rebel and the white elites were going to get what was coming to them, and it was going to be amazing.  Honestly, it was the main reason why I kept playing the game.  But when we got to the rebellion, and the black folks started killing these crackers, the writers of the game decided that, morally, these murdering black folks were just as bad as the people who sought to oppress them. 

And that's fucking insanity.  

It's a very "color-blind" way of looking at things, and not at all based in reality when it comes to fighting for freedom.  It's the kind of thinking that has removed Martin Luther King from the list of black revolutionaries and added him to the list of people who want us all to hold hands and love each other.  Which he did, but he wasn't a fool.  And he was way more radical than he gets credit for.  But after 60 years of people only listening to the part of his message that makes them feel good, we're left with "I Have A Dream," and no understanding that freedom has to be fought for and people might have to die to accomplish that.  

The people of Columbia were never going to give up what they had in order to allow these people that they viewed as "inferior" and "subhuman" to sit alongside them.  They weren't.  And they would have killed them all and replaced them with some other black people before they let that happen.  The black people in Columbia were not viewed as human by the white people.  So I don't know how Booker DeWitt expected the black folks to gain their freedom without an armed rebellion, and yes, killing a bunch of white folks.  For him to judge them as being "no different" than the people in Columbia really turned me off to the game.  

To put it simply, you can't oppress people, and then expect them to talk to you when they've had enough.  You weren't willing to talk when you were oppressing them, so when folks have had enough, the time for talking is done.  

Because, to put it in it's proper context, this was 1912.  The Civil War ended 47 years ago.  There were people in Columbia who had fought in that war.  We were knee deep in Jim Crow at this time, and Columbia is an ultra right-wing community, filled with people who thought less of black people than the people who actually fought in the war.  The Klan was practicing open terrorism at this time.  Black people were still not allowed to do much of anything, aside from working for white people for low pay, then walking back to their segregated neighborhoods across town.  Which were not nearly as nice, because there was no money coming into them.  And this was considered "freedom."  

Yeah, the rebels were "no different."  Get outta here with that.  

Normally, the politics of the game makers doesn't really bother me, because being black, you learn to tune these things out.  But this game made black people and our history part of the story.  We weren't playable characters (still pushing that rock up that mountain), but we were a major part of what was happening.  And suddenly, these people were making judgments on things that still happen in the real world today.  It really took me out of what was a pretty fun game.  I haven't played it since.  Maybe one day, I'll get around to finishing.  In the meantime, I'll play something that doesn't make sweeping judgments about racial issues.  

Batman v. Superman: The stupidest argument of all time

Apparently, you have to have qualifications before you can criticize movie trailers now.  You can't just chalk it up to taste anymore.  You have to prove your impartiality before you can speak on movies now.  I don't know where this shit started, but it really needs to stop.  The Batman v. Superman trailer was leaked over the weekend, and naturally, some folks didn't like it, but folks got mad when they dared express that online.  Like, more than usual.

We're talking about a movie trailer about a fictitious alien that wants to be friends fighting a fictitious rich guy with an inability to let go of the past.  It sounds like the plot to a Pixar movie, but people were acting like they were investigating a murder, trying to figure out the motives of people who didn't like it.  This isn't exactly serious scholarship here.  Taking on critics of this movie trailer isn't going to get you a job at The Atlantic.

It just blows my hair back when people get this serious over fictional characters, as if it's going to make a bit of difference either way.  Instead of people just enjoying the fact that we're all nerds, people are out here acting like people who didn't like it are going to block off the theaters in an act of censorship.  People are actually drawing conclusions about the characters of real, living people based on what they thought about a movie trailer.  Because, as we know, movie trailers are the modern iteration of Rorschach tests.

And the thing is, I don't think people defending the trailer really understand where the problem is coming from.  People aren't loving the way this movie is turning out (and the one before it) because it continues the Batman-ization of the DC Universe, and it was something that a lot of people could see coming after The Dark Knight came out.

See, Batman is grim and gritty.  He's tormented.  He wreaks vengeance on those who wronged him so that others don't have to suffer like he did.  Basically, this dude is broken inside and uses that to punch criminals until they're broken like him.  That formula for a superhero made Warner Bros. a billion dollars.  And because movie executives are generally unimaginative, they said, "Hey, Superman is having trouble.  Why not make him like Batman?"  You know, completely ignoring the context surrounding Superman's movies.

I mean, the problem with Superman Returns wasn't that Superman isn't tormented, it's that it was two and a half hours of washing Richard Donner's balls.  But who has time for a true examination of the issues?

And that's why Man of Steel is the way it is.  That's why Superman is morose, everything is dimly lit, and there's no sense of joy or fun in a single frame of the movie.  That's why Superman doesn't save anyone.  Superman lives in Batman's world now, and in Batman's world, you need to learn that life is shit.  

Except that's not the world Superman lives in.  Superman is supposed to represent all of those good things.  He tries to save people before he punches people.  He's supposed to inspire people to be good and do better.  He always tries to de-escalate the situation, even though he's powerful enough to turn the person in front of him into a fine, red mist.  That's what makes him Superman.  Of course he can kill everyone on Earth, but he doesn't want to.  He wants to show us a better way.  Even if he's existing in Batman's dark, depressing, basement of a world, at the very least, he needs to be that.  He wasn't, and right there is the difference in opinion on Man of Steel.

Superman fans didn't need for Superman to change.  Batman fans needed for Superman to change.  And Batman fans loved that movie.

That's why some people weren't excited to see the Batman v. Superman trailer, because they're worried that it's gonna be more of the same: A Superman that Superman fans don't recognize. And there's a huge possibility of that if the movie is based on "The Dark Knight Returns," a story that paints Superman as a government-owned bitch.  The only people who want to see that are Batman fans.  It has nothing to do with a secret love for Marvel or an inability to let go of the Donner Superman movies or any other of the silly shit I've seen thrown out there this weekend.  Maybe it just doesn't look that good to some people.  We're talking about art, not an arms treaty.

We won't know for sure until the movie gets released, but in the meantime, dial back the hostility.  We're all allowed to have opinions, and none of us need to justify them to you.

The Real Issue With the X-Men: Apocalypse Casting

Last week, Bryan Singer announced the recasting of Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Storm for X-Men: Apocalypse, and nobody really seemed to care, because who the fuck are these people?  They're like the cast of the new Fantastic Four flick, except for Michael B. Jordan. In fact, they're so anonymous that they might be the same people.  

The Storm casting did get some buzz from Storm fans, because she is once again being played by some girl who doesn't fit the Storm mold.  I get it, because everyone wants to see their favorites represented properly on screen.  It's the reason why I have decided that the Transformers movies are nothing more than a series of night terrors filled with slow-motion action shots and blurry metal shards that I can't wake up from.  Storm fans (myself included) want to see their girl shown as the powerful African leader that she is, instead of the sidekick to Jean with a white wig that she's become.  

But the really important issue with this recasting hasn't even been addressed:  We no longer have to watch Wolverine's love affair with Jean Grey that never made a lick of sense.  I assume it won't be there, because it would be really, really creepy.

See, I'm a masochist, evidently, because I've watched all of the X-Men movies.  And I watched them closely enough to realize that Wolverine knew Jean Grey for maybe a week, in total movie time.  So watching him tearfully kill Jean in the third one, and dream about her years after the fact, always made me sick.  I should have been crying, because I was the one who sat through X-Men: The Last Stand. 

That plot thread is something that is well known to folks who read the comics.  For a couple of decades, the comics teased the idea that Jean and Wolverine had a long smoldering attraction for each other, and in another world, they might have been together.  But Scott had that on lock (for reasons that continue to mystify us), so Jean would never act on it, even though Wolverine would sometimes press the issue.  

In the flicks, Wolverine met Jean, spent almost no time with her in the couple of days he tooled around the mansion, then left the X-Men for an undetermined amount of time.  He showed up back out there just in time for them to get invaded, and never saw Jean again until a few minutes before she died.  She was an evil zombie throughout the next movie, so it's not like she was in a position to further explore their relationship.  Wolverine worked hard on his chest to impress her, so her rejection forced him to kill her.  Some of this might have been made up, because that third movie was so awful, and I really don't want to watch it again.

But saying that Wolverine knew Jean for a week is being generous.  

It's kinda like in Man of Steel, where Superman and Lois have no reason throughout the movie to get together, but they still have to kiss at the end, because that's the expectation.  Wolverine is a dude who trusts no one and hasn't for decades, but he meets this girl who's already booed up, spends no time with her, but when she dies, he's suddenly so close to her that he's on the brink of tears?  And in the next movie, he struggles to kill her, even though he hasn't had a problem killing complete strangers since this trilogy started?  Even though these movies were supposed to walk their own path, Wolverine and Jean had to eye-bathe each other, because those were the times.  Even if it doesn't make sense.  

That's the kind of foolishness that this recasting gets us from up under.  Sure, Storm is still underwhelming (and probably wasn't going to be a big part of the movie, so they're just filling a roster spot), but we're just that much closer to a movie that makes sense.

#CancelWWENetwork is a thing, and I don't blame you

Please don't misunderstand, WWE.  People aren't canceling their WWE subscriptions because Roman Reigns won the Royal Rumble.  They're not canceling because Daniel Bryan lost, either.  That would be pretty stupid.  People are canceling their subscriptions because they're tired of your shit.

Your show is trash, WWE.  Raw is trash.  Smackdown is trash.  NXT is cool.  Your pay-per-views are trash.  And have been for quite sometime.

I quit watching WWE in 2007 or so, because your shows started crapping out.  They were not worth my time.  They were not entertaining.  And WWE was not missed.  The Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania came to Atlanta during that time, but I didn't care.  I wasn't watching, and I didn't, until 2011, because I heard about CM Punk and the "pipebomb" promo.  And once I saw that things hadn't changed at all, I quit watching again.  But I wanted to watch wrestling, so I watched TNA instead.  At the time, TNA still qualified as "wrestling."

I'd check in from time to time with WWE after that, right up until the present day, and it was never getting any better.  Boring angles, uninteresting wrestlers, the endless three-hour death march known as "Monday Night Raw."  Like, they named a guy "Bad News Barrett," in the tradition of "Bad News Allen/Brown," who was named such because, if you got into it with him, it was bad news for you.  The updated version of this gimmick?  He literally came out and gave people bad news.

We went from a tough guy to a guy whose gimmick was to say, "I've got some bad news. Your city sucks," or whatever he said that week.  This is the level of creativity we're dealing with here.

And all the while, ticket prices are rising and pay-per-views are getting astronomical in price.  Wrestlemania had reached $60.  The average price was $45, and there was at least one every month.  And you're getting Bad News Barrett for your money?

So then, WWE introduces the WWE Network in 2014, and for $10 a month, you can watch all of their pay-per-views, WCW's pay-per-views, ECW's pay-per-views, and all kinds of old shows and content.  Not only that, you can watch the new pay-per-views live each month, for no extra money.  It's a great deal, and eventually, I signed up for that.  Not to watch the new shit, mind you, because it's dogshit.  I signed up to watch the old shit.  But if you're gonna throw in that month's show for free, I'll check it out.  And that's what I started doing back in November.

And the three pay-per-views I've watched haven't been worth the ten bucks.  Just some of the shittiest damn wrestling shows I've ever seen.

Now, I know how disappointed I was, and I had just started watching again.  I can only imagine how folks feel when they've been watching the entire time.  Before the network, when you had to pay full price for these shows.  When you were paying all this money in ticket prices.  When you were watching their shows every week.  And the shows are just awful, but the people running the show don't care.  You're still coming, you're still watching, so why change?

But WWE has invested a lot in this network, and they want it to take off.  It's been struggling to get subscribers, even at that low price.  They can't afford to lose the subscribers they have.  That's their weak spot.  They could ignore you when they were just on TV or on pay-per-view, because there are other entities involved that are providing money to the company.  Ratings had been dropping since 2002.  They didn't care.  They had advertisers and such to keep giving them money.  But this network is all on them.  And these numbers come to them in real time.  So frustrated viewers can make their voices heard.  By canceling.

Enough was enough, and when you can't do any better for one of your big four shows than what we got last night (and Survivor Series before it), well, I don't blame folks for canceling.  I don't know where this idea comes from that people can't dislike the shows that they watch, and they can't complain when something that was good isn't good anymore.  Some people enjoyed the Royal Rumble, but a lot people didn't.  And that's not because Roman Reigns won and Daniel Bryan didn't.  It's because it was a shit show, and along the way, they seemed to take special care to keep people from enjoying the guys they like.  If you gave Daniel Bryan fans (or Dolph Ziggler or Cesaro or Dean Ambrose) a good showing before he lost, people might not have reacted the way they did.

It wasn't worth $45 for PPV, or whatever people paid for tickets, or even the three hours it took to watch it.  Here's hoping that WWE finally starts to understand that.

College players don't play any harder than pros, you fool

I get that some folks like college sports more because of this myth that college students play harder.  I don't know where it came from, but it had to have been started by someone who doesn't understand football. It's a really stupid argument that NFL players aren't playing hard all the time, because you will be killed if you play football at half-speed while everyone else isn't.  You could try to argue that teams collectively decide to slack off, but we've seen that before, too.  It's called the Pro Bowl, and the Pro Bowl sucks.

People really push this idea when it comes to basketball, though.  Personally, I don't buy the fact that pro players don't play hard, because there is no other sensible reason for Kobe Bryant to sweat that much.  If Kobe is sweating like that and not playing hard, I suggest that he see a doctor.  I mean, besides the one about to cut open his shoulder.

Now, if you told me that pro players didn't play hard every night, you might have an argument, and even then, I don't blame the players.  The players aren't slacking off because they're overpaid fat-cats that can't be bothered to entertain the fans.  The players are slacking off because they have to play the Knicks six times.

The NBA season is already an 82 game grind, and you expect these players to bring the same fire that they'd give to Chicago to the Philadelphia 76ers?  The good teams get more of a challenge playing themselves in practice.  Playing the Sixers multiple times is like the morning conference call of basketball games.  It has to be done to make the boss happy, but you're not about to pretend like it's truly necessary.

It's only an expectation because it's believed that Michael Jordan did it.  Oh, Jordan never took a game off.  And he probably didn't, because Michael Jordan is a lunatic.  You saw from his Hall of Fame speech how much trouble he's having adjusting to civilized society, where every perceived slight isn't grounds for some form of revenge.  When regular people do that, they usually need to seek some form of counseling, because making the other person keep shooting half-court shots for two hours until you win (this actually happened) isn't a realistic option.  But let's make Michael Jordan's rare psychosis the standard for NBA players.  Kobe shares this affliction, but you hate Kobe, and right now, he's trying to figure out how to tape up his rotator cuff so he can play next week.  This isn't healthy behavior.

Besides, the NBA season is four times as long as a college season.  Who can't bring it for twenty games?  True, being browbeaten by some redass college coach could be exhausting, but if you're any good, you're only gonna be there for a year or two, anyway.  When you're a 19 year old college player who has agents secretly telling him that he's going in the lottery, and girls sneaking in and out of your dorm room, you're not listening to the coach, anyway.  Play defense? Defense is for suckers.  Carmelo didn't play defense at Syracuse (and it was a zone defense, at that), and he has a $124 million dollar deal.

And that's what it's all about, anyway.  They're not doing this for some mythical love of the game.  This is their audition for the same millions that Carmelo gets.  They don't love the game any more than the pros do.  They just don't have to keep up the illusion as long.

But let these kids have to go on a six game road trip in the middle of a forty game season, through flyover country, against a bunch of schools that even Digger Phelps would struggle to recognize, and see how much effort you get.  John Calipari could offer his players cash bribes on top of their secret signing bonuses and Kentucky still wouldn't show up against Kennesaw State.  Hell, if they did show up against Kennesaw State and beat them by 70, these same folks would complain that Kentucky ran up the score.

So I don't mind if players take a few games off because who cares, they're playing Charlotte.  If Golden State really brought it for four quarters against Charlotte, Charlotte would lose by 200 points and Michael Jordan's anger would make him try to suit up again.

And you shouldn't care, either, because it's not like those games get aired by anyone except NBA TV.

CM Punk should be your hero

Seems like everyone has had a few choice words for CM Punk this year, whether it was because he left, how he left, or because he explained his reasons for leaving. Everyone seems to think he's a bitch for walking out on Vince McMahon, like doing the right thing matters in that situation.  In 2011, he was cool for saying everything we had been saying about the company, but now, he's whining. And I don't get that, because the people who are talking shit should really understand where he's coming from. I know I do.

Right now, I'm working a job that I hate. It isn't the first time, but hopefully, it'll be the last time. I get burnt out dealing with the same, easily fixable bullshit that happens around here, or being told that management is listening, but they ignore you when you show up with ideas. Or having to be the one who takes the hit when other people can't or won't do their job correctly. That shit gets tiring and stressful, and if it wasn't for the fact that I don't have millions in the bank, I'd tell that place to go fuck themselves expeditiously.

So I understand where Punk is coming from, and that's before you factor in that he had to risk his already injured body to make dangerous people like Ryback look good for six nights a week. No matter how much money you make, some days, you just lie in bed and dread the amount of shit that's coming your way.  And goddammit, you just don't want to deal with it anymore.

Maybe we don't want to understand his side because he's living our dream, and we think that's what we want. And because it looks awesome, that's what he should want, too. He ain't digging a ditch.  He travels and he's famous.  He gets to be at Comic-Con and on Talking Dead.  Plus, he's a millionaire, and stupid people think that means you lose your right to complain.  But that's part of the problem, and like Punk says, Vince is taking advantage of that.

Just because everyone wants it and thinks they're willing to put up with it or its been done this way for so long doesn't mean it's correct. Slavery was practiced in America for 400 years. Rape and dowries used to be a part of the courtship process. Drilling holes in the skull used to be a legitimate medical practice. And just because John Cena is willing to go 400 days straight with no break doesn't mean that CM Punk should have to suffer in silence. If he isn't physically or mentally capable of holding up anymore, for whatever reason, then he should go home.

And that's before we get into the petty shit that WWE does.

Yeah, WWE is petty, and we've known this since the Huckster and Scheme Gene. We've lambasted WWE for decades because Vince McMahon is a very small man when he wants to be. He was the bad guy when he did those skits and he continued to be the bad guy up until he fired Alberto del Rio for slapping a racist backstage. He lets all sorts of bigots, sexists, and bullies run rampant in his locker room. He encouraged his wrestlers to use steroids, while at the same time telling those wrestlers that they didn't really work for him.  And even though they didn't really work for him, when they left his employ, he limited their employment opportunities elsewhere (no-compete clauses). He's your best friend when he can make money off of you, and when you're all used up, ready to die, or completely hate the business, you never hear from him again. And people don't put up with it because they love fake fighting or because they're heroes. They put up with it because they've been raised to believe that this is how it's supposed to be, as long as Vince is paying you.  For one guy, the money wasn't incentive enough to keep coming back. And that's the guy you call a bitch?

Man, fuck that. You've walked away from jobs and people for way less, so miss me with this shit about how Punk should have stuck it out or that WWE was somehow in the right. If Punk's story is correct, he went home because he was hurt and burnt out, WWE didn't want to fix anything that was wrong with him (because he's an "independent contractor"), then they fired him on his wedding day (and of course they knew all about it, because fucking AJ Lee had to have that time off).  If Punk's story wasn't true, don't you think WWE would have immediately sued him for telling it?  Don't you think they would have responded online? Vince had the floor just last week on Stone Cold's podcast, and didn't refute a damn thing. 

No, I don't fault CM Punk at all. In fact, I'm jealous, because I wish I could do that shit.

Because as badly as I'd like to see him cutting promos and giving me one solid reason to watch WWE, now he's living my dream. He has the freedom, like Chris Jericho or Rob Van Dam, or John Morrison before him to go explore the other shit that they like to do. And if he ever decides he wants to wrestle again, he can. And if not, he doesn't have to.  CM Punk should be your hero, because he told the establishment to kiss his ass, and legally speaking, they did it. 

Only this time, it wasn't kayfabe.  And that's unfortunate, because I was hoping he'd demand the ice cream bars again. 

Dion Waiters doesn't have to stand for the National Anthem, and neither do you

I swear, y'all get so touchy about the wrong shit.

There's a story going around that Dion Waiters, shooting guard for the Cleveland Cavaliers, declared that he isn't standing for the National Anthem anymore, because of his religious beliefs.  He's a Muslim, and as we all know, Muslims hate America.  Well, we would all know that if we all did the right thing and watched Fox News.  

And as you'd expect, there's a whole lot of people mad at him, because reacting without knowing reasons is so commonplace in America that you'd think it was in the Constitution.  To let the folks I saw online tell it, we should all be offended that he hates America so much, and that he should go play in the Middle East if he loves Islam so much.  Only the most measured and reasonable responses go on the internet.  It's not like he'd stand for the National Anthem over there, either.

Now, as an old man, it isn't the first time I've seen this.  I remember when Chris Jackson, later known as Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, of the Denver Nuggets (and hated Gulfport High School), did the same thing back in 1996, for the same reasons.  He eventually decided to stand and pray, as a way to, um...what's the word that means "meeting in the middle?"  Compromise.  You'll have to excuse me for forgetting the word, but it never happens in our culture anymore, so I haven't needed to remember it. 

But in the meantime, people went crazy, just like they're on the verge of doing now.  Insults, death threats, the whole nine.  And over the stupidest of reasons:  Over a song written by a slave owner who ironically didn't want his own freedom restricted.  And for a song about freedom, people out here sure are hell-bent on Dion Waiters not keeping his.

After all, it isn't a crime not to stand for the National Anthem.  It's a nationalistic custom that became codified, but no one ever goes to jail for this, and people refuse to stand for the National Anthem all the time.  Hell, I've personally refused to stand for the National Anthem before.  And it's not like there aren't things happening in America that give people reasons to feel like America isn't with them.  Dion Waiters is black and a Muslim.  Buddy's got a list.  

But he probably isn't doing it for those reasons, anyway (although he'd be justified).  It isn't some political statement that he's making.  Muslims simply believe (according to the Google research I did right before sliding into an endless vortex of Salon articles. There's one that explains why we have pubic hair. Pubic hair.) that they're not supposed to humble themselves or stand in veneration for anyone except Allah.  There's a lot I don't agree with when it comes to Islam, but I have no problem with that.  After all, they're trying to stay good with their omnipotent and eternal Creator, and you want to give them grief about a custom built up around a song written 200 years ago that'll probably be forgotten in another hundred.  When it comes to historical importance (from their perspective), you might as well be mad at them for not wanting to do the Schmoney Dance. 

And if you're a Christian (and most of you are claiming to be, because atheists really don't care that much), you probably should back up off all this anger, because your religion says something similar, all up in the Bible.  Yeah, revering this flag and song is tantamount to idolatry.  I'm an unrepentant heathen, and even I know that your God doesn't like that.  Come on now, you know that dude is jealous and angry.  You think he's gonna be reasonable about your nationalism?  I guess you could throw Romans 13:1 at me (Google it, like I did), but again, there's no authority that says you have to stand for the flag.  Just advisory rules that suggest how you observe the custom.  

Really, none of this means anything at all, because while Dion Waiters didn't stand for the National Anthem in Utah on Wednesday (he was still in the locker room), he did stand for it Friday night in Denver.  Waiters says that the story isn't true at all (might not even be a Muslim), and what's more likely is that he was pouting about being pulled from the starting lineup in Utah.  Waiters has been talking shit about how he should start from the minute LeBron said he was coming back to Cleveland, so I'm sure he wasn't happy about coming off the bench.  But I felt like I should address it, because I know how Americans like to overreact about meaningless things.  

It's what I get for insisting on reading the comments.  Never read the comments.

Blogger Can't Pull Her Head Out Of Her Own Ass: The Eric Garner Edition

It took a lot of effort to write this and not make it about trashing feminists.  I just feel like I need to you let you know that up front.

I don't need to tell anybody that the Eric Garner murder by the NYPD is all fucked up.  I think we all agree there.  And I'm not telling you that you have to go protest and hit up every rally that breaks out, because let's be totally honest:  I won't be there, either.  I am a lazy person in general, and I work ten hour days in a city whose only defining characteristic is heavy traffic.  I barely even visit my parents, let alone attend protests.

So there's no shame in not attending any of those marches, and I'm not just saying that to cover my own ass.  But if that's what you're gonna do, just don't be a self-involved dickhead like this lady, who wrote a piece over at "For Harriet," (read it here) where she declares that she won't join any protests for Eric Garner because men don't support the fight against misogyny.  I was gonna call her a "twat," but I don't want my own inherent misogyny to take this discussion off course.  I think "dickhead" is a fair compromise.

Kimberly Foster, the writer of this piece, argues that, while she will shed tears over Eric Garner (because there are no other ways to express sadness or sympathy with this family than writing that you're literally shedding tears), she will not join the fight for justice, because we men have not converted to full time feminists.  To fully drive her point home, she also says in the piece, "you're not my friend anymore," and "I'm taking my toys and going home."  It's the kind of writing that exemplifies why people make fun of thinkpieces.

It really is a childish argument to make, that she's not going to do anything for him, because all of us (penis-wielders, that is) don't do anything for her kind (feminists, I assume).

Now, to be fair, men really don't do much for women's rights, or understand how women navigate a world where there are a lot of men are trying to fuck them, regardless of their wishes.  I'm stealing this line from Louis C.K., but essentially, the number one threat to women are men.  And it's true.  Men stay raping women, killing women, beating women, insulting women, calling them names because they told them no, putting them in those ratchet ass strip club rap videos, you name it, we do it.  Generally speaking, the number one skill that men have is hurting women or breaking down their sense of self-worth.  To put it in Madden terms, we have a 99 ranking in that department.  And speaking of Madden, that's our number two skill.

It's not all men that act like this, but from a woman's perspective, she doesn't know who is or isn't going to be that asshole, and has to keep her guard up.  I get that.  While it isn't 100% of men who act like that, probably 99% percent of people who act like that towards women are men.  The remaining 1%?  Bull dykes, I guess.  Are we still calling them "bull dykes?" I don't even know if that's offensive.  Anyway, these statistics probably aren't 100% accurate, because "the inside of my ass" isn't a legitimate source.

And yet, because all men aren't on board with her crusade (which is a worthy cause), she isn't going to take up this crusade.  As if women aren't wrongly arrested, assaulted, or killed by the police.  This isn't a man/woman issue, because the cops don't give a fuck about anybody.  She must have missed that video where the cop pinned the lady down with his knees and started teeing off on her face.  I wish I could have seen the little hamster inside her head stumble on his running wheel as she was thinking this shit up.

Just because it was a man this time, that excuses her from all protesterly duties.  She'll save her bile and rage for when it's a woman being assaulted by the police, so she can charge him with a violation of her rights and misogyny.  She ain't getting out the bed for no less than misogyny.

This is the divide-and-conquer shit that prevents justice from being served.  While you're drawing your line in the sand, the police are still beating on people with impunity.  But don't worry about that, because reciprocity is the more important hill to die on.  All you're doing is showing that when the shit goes down, you're not gonna be there.  And if you're not gonna be there, that's fine.  Just don't paint yourself as someone who's taking a noble stand by leaving people hanging when they need help.  You ain't no hero. Anybody can do what you're doing.  Ignoring homeless people on the street can give you that same sense of self-satisfaction.  What you're doing is trying to position yourself as some sort of victim, when you're actually someone who can't think outside of themselves for five minutes before you have to ask, "What about me?"

But hey, it's your blog.  Whatever works for you.

Josh Gordon ain't no political prisoner (also, weed is delicious)

Rob Van Dam once talked about how all these world class athletes all smoked weed.  Can't find the quote, but he said something to the effect of, "Why is it that all of the finely tuned athletes who know so much about their bodies are choosing to smoke weed?"  Maybe it was Joe Rogan.  Anyway, they're basically saying that if there was something really wrong with it, these people would know and wouldn't use it.  I tend to believe them, because they both have (or had) shows built around smoking a lot of weed and talking about it, so I assume they'd know. 

I personally don't think there's anything wrong with weed.  I've said since I was a teenager, I'd rather my kids smoke weed than cigarettes.  And yet, it's still considered a part of the same category as heroin.  In the eyes of the law, weed and heroin are the same.  It's a ridiculous idea, because one has been killing people since it came out and the other is responsible for American weight gain.  They're not the same thing, and I think one of them should be legalized, even if it is responsible for putting Taco Bell on the map. 

Josh Gordon, wide receiver for the Cleveland Browns, obviously feels like I do, because he just failed a second drug test the other day.  He could be suspended for a year as a result. 

And like with all drug suspensions, some people are calling him stupid and other people are like, "hey, man, weed comes from the Earth, man."  Personally, I don't think it's worth an actual debate.  At least not about the rightness or wrongness of a Gordon suspension.  The debate needs to be about weed laws and how the NFL eventually will treat them, not whether or not it's fair that he could be suspended a year, while Ray Rice, who punched out his fiance in a casino (allegedly, even though we all saw the video of the aftermath), will be starting Week 1 of the season.  Or that Jim Irsay, who was arrested with pills and cash in a pillow case, got his situation swept under the rug.  It isn't.  We all know the NFL doesn't hand out punishment fairly. 

But Josh Gordon ain't no political prisoner.  He's a weed head.  And I don't even say that negatively, because weed heads are fun people to be around.  I don't know Josh Gordon, but I'm sure he isn't any different.  I don't really follow Cleveland sports, because reading about Cleveland makes dark thoughts crop up in my head, but I haven't heard anything about him being lazy or causing a problem up there.  In fact, he's a really good player, so clearly, he can handle his high.  But let's not act like this man is facing a grave injustice.  His civil rights aren't being violated.  The NFL has clear rules and testing procedures for weed.  I don't think they have one for punching your girlfriend in the face, otherwise, half the league would be actually be practice squad players, because everyone else was already suspended.

I'm not saying that to justify spousal abuse, either.  The NFL and the Players' Union need to crackdown on players who do stuff like this, unless it's good business for them to represent a gang of wifebeaters.  Even if it's just smashing their toes with a hammer, or a series of paper cuts, they need to do something to let players know that attacking their wives is not okay.  In a perfect world, they would do this and fight for a loosening of drug restrictions.  But there's no sense in that, because their only choices in this are "conform or nah?"  The NFL is never going to budge on this.  Ever. 

It was suggested (on Twitter, admittedly) that because weed helps with brain injuries and stuff like that, and because the NFL has a huge problem with brain injuries, Josh Gordon shouldn't be suspended.  And that sounds reasonable until you realize that we don't know if that's why Josh Gordon was smoking.  He might just like making smoke rings.  And we can't ask him now, because of course he's gonna say that's why he was doing it.  Hell, I'd tell you it was curing my crippling erectile dysfunction if it kept from me getting suspended.

Another thing to realize is, the NFL has proven that it doesn't give a shit about players and their stupid brain injuries.  To them, that's just a left-wing conspiracy cooked up to bleed the job creators dry.  That's why they hid information about brain injuries from the players and that's why they nickel and dime former players now.  Junior Seau shooting himself in the chest didn't mean anything to them.  They're far more concerned about the image of the league (WE GOTTA PROTECT THE SHIELD, MAN!), and while weed is still illegal, they're not going to change anything, no matter how many tests prove that it helps with brain injuries.  They won't even change if it's legalized, because after that, there will still be a lingering perception of weed as a "drug."  As far as the NFL's concerned, you better grab a fistful of somas or a cortizone shot and get back on the field. 

That's where the real debate needs to be.  Not whether or not Josh Gordon is getting screwed, because Ray Rice is living out his Mike Tyson fantasies and Jim Irsay is playing "Breaking Bad," and nothing's happening to them.  Unfortunately, the rule is the rule, and they don't have one for punching women or owners going to buy $29,000 in drugs.  Or smoking fake weed and jerking off in a parking lot (this one is absolutely true).  Or even for players causing a national security uproar at the airport.

See, that's the problem right there.  Josh Gordon isn't being as imaginative with his infractions as everyone else. 

Maybe Mark Jackson ISN'T a victim. MAYBE.

So Mark Jackson got fired from the Warriors yesterday, despite being the best coach they've had since the first time Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came out.  Remember those days?  You could still buy a black and white TV.  Michael Jackson being white was a new thing. 

All the reports are saying that no one liked him and that's why he got fired.  Well, no one except the team.  You know, the most important people to impress.  Because there's plenty of coaches that got along great with the front office who would get outcoached at the YMCA youth league, which is why they now have a well paid job working the telestrator on ESPN.  ESPN is nature's way of removing shitty coaches from the business of winning basketball games. 

Logically speaking, though, that's probably the dumbest reason of all time to fire a coach.  The dude won 51 games, got the team into the playoffs the last two years, and has the support of the team.  You know, the guys who put asses in the seats.  He's making you money and he's winning games.  How fragile does your ego have to be to end all of that just because the coach doesn't like you, Joe Lacob?  I would say that coaches have been fired for less, but there will always be Jerry Jones and George Steinbrenner.  You have to sink to subhuman levels of pettiness to get where they are, but that's where Joe Lacob seems to be now.  Firing a coach for not getting along with the owner is like firing a coach who just won two Super Bowls for you, because the media didn't give you enough credit for putting the team together. 

Now, everyone's mad at the owner, because everyone loved Mark Jackson, and in basketball, that's important.  The media needs to like the coach, otherwise, they'll start a campaign to D'Antoni your team.  Of course the players have to like the coach.  The fans should like the coach, because they're buying tickets.  Who gives a fuck what the people working for the organization think?  No one's coming to see you.  And do you know how irrelevant the owner can be when it comes to public outreach?  Donald Sterling is a racist and has owned the Clippers for 33 years.  When he bought them, almost everyone I know was semen.  He's been a racist the whole time, and it hasn't stopped the Clippers from selling tickets. 

So as long Mark Jackson isn't messing up that cash, it really shouldn't matter.  Then again, scuttlebutt around the Bay says there's more to it than that. 

Word from the SF Gate has it that Mark Jackson, who is a pastor (I honestly had no idea until a few hours ago), and team president Rick Welts, who is "a gay (that's a quote from Donald Sterling)," were at odds about Welts's openly gay lifestyle.

Well, that changes everything.  Because if that's true, then it changes from a story about a sensitive ass owner to a guy who was openly insulting his boss.  'Cuz Mark Jackson wasn't shy about weighing in about gay issues in the NBA, and he didn't seem like the most gay-friendly guy.  On a scale from "one" to "Tim Hardaway," I would hope he was closer to "one," but he doesn't exactly sound welcoming.  When Jason Collins came out, Mark Jackson said something about having "beliefs of what’s right and what’s wrong."  He also said he was going to pray for Collins's family.  And as a guy who hasn't been to church since the last time the Warriors were good, someone saying that they're going to pray for you means that they want something about you to change.  By some accounts, Jackson really wasn't feeling "the gays."

And if this is true, it's probably going to become a thing about how a "God-fearing Christian man" lost his job because of his religious beliefs, and I'm going to start insulting people for being hypocrites again.  If it is true, Mark Jackson lost his job because he wouldn't shut the fuck up.  You can't go around insulting your boss, even if you believe your religion entitles you to shit on everyone else's lifestyle (it doesn't).  That's what this is about.  Mark Jackson isn't a victim when you put it like that.  Mark Jackson isn't even a man of conviction.  Mark Jackson is stupid.  Just because you believe something doesn't mean it needs to be said all the time. 

Besides, can you really get that mad about some religious guy getting fired by his openly gay boss?  It's actually kind of ironic, considering all of the roadblocks people are throwing up at gay people in the name of "religious freedom."  I almost hope this story is true, just so I can laugh at the people who get mad. 

But if it isn't true, then I retract all of that and I'll meet everyone at the picket line to cape up for Mark Jackson.  I'll have my trash can ready for optimal window-throwing and everything.  Promise.  

Darrell Trigg for President: Please let this happen.

We've reached that time when all manner of fringe elements have started declaring for the Presidential race.  Most of the people won't make it the distance because they don't have the resources to get onto the ballot (which is why we need electoral reform), or because they started running two years in advance and ran out of money.  And then, there are those who could have all the money they wanted and won't make it because they are just a fucking lunatic.  That's the category that Darrell Trigg falls into.

Darrell Trigg is an Engineering Consultant from Virginia, and I suspect that the only reason why this information got into his biography is because he had to prove that he wasn't some sort of drifter who killed an old widow for her money.  Aside from those four sentences, the other three pages are about how much he loves God.  Nothing wrong with that.  I just find it startling that a person who wants to be President has almost nothing to say about his employment history.  I mean, if you spend 30 years working at Target and now you want to be President, I'd like to know that, because if nothing else, I expect you to have good customer service skills. 

But Darrell is one of those kinds of people who really wants to be a pastor, but got the words mixed up and said "President" instead.  And being an old man, I see how something like that could happen.  When you see Darrell's platform, it'll all make sense, because this is a man whose only difference from the Taliban is that girls will still be able to go to school.  FOR NOW.

He wants to impose all kinds of holy restrictions upon all of us, and maybe 30 or 40 of you out there will think this is cool, but for the other 300 million, it's going to be a problem.  Well, not really, because it's not like this guy has a shot at winning, but if he did, someone would have him assassinated long before the election.  I'm not kidding.  If this man had a realistic shot at being seen on television outside of public access, he would alienate so many people that the Democrats and Republicans would forget about each other and tear this guy to pieces.  And now that I've said it, I truly hope to see something like that happen.

Thanks to The Everlasting GOP Stoppers and Joe My God for bringing this guy to my attention.  His platform is below and in italics, and I'll be chiming in here and there. 

1. Separation of Church and State will be changed to the Union of Church and State. God will be asked to be an integral part of the government of the U.S.

• The national religion of The United States of America will be the Christian religion . Those belonging to other religions, such as Islam, will be free to live and worship here as now, with their own religion;  however, the Christian religion will be the one chosen to form the basic moral principles of our nation, to give it a strong moral foundation, and a right relationship with God.

See, right away, you'd think that he'd be cool with Republicans, because this is what they claim to want.  But don't you worry; this cozy relationship won't last long. 

2.  Public Schools – all schools supported by the U.S. Federal and State tax systems: 

• The Bible will be a standard required subject in all public schools and universities, for all grades , the same as English and Math.
• Each day of school will begin with prayer and the Pledge of Allegiance. 
• The salary and total compensation package of school teachers will be increased.
• The total budget for our school system will be increased.
• The school day will include one period of physical education that includes 30 minutes of exercise four days per week.

There are actually some good ideas in here that aren't really ideas, but instead empty platitudes.  The people who would support increasing teacher salaries and school budgets have already checked out, though, because there's already too much religion in this.  I'd be surprised if they haven't already burst into flames.  Personally, I wish a motherfucker would tell me that my kid had to learn the Bible.  Hell, I'd make sure I was in college during his presidency just so I could tell him "fuck you" when he tried to make me learn it.  Digging myself further into debt would be totally worth it. 

3.  Homosexuality will not be recognized legally, or in any other manner, by the United States government or any state, city, or county government.
 
4. Public - Traded Corporations :

• The income and other compensation,  received by the managers and officers of public - traded corporations will be limited to $300,000 per year. 

...and now, the Republicans have turned on him.  It was all good just a bullet point ago.  Hating gays, forcing the Bible on folks, that was cool.  But you want to limit our--I mean, corporate pay?  I hope your affairs are in order, Mr. Trigg.  And it just goes downhill from here. 

5.  The income of coaches of sports teams at universities will be limited to $300,000 per year .

Yeah fucking right.  They'd let Jerry Sandusky go back to Penn State before this ever happened.
 
6.  The legal drinking age will be increased to 25 for any alcoholic beverage. 

• Alcohol will not be allowed on university campuses.

Because alcohol is allowed there now.  Please don't think your Bible is going to keep college students from getting fucked up.  Also, you just lost their vote, too.  They weren't even listening until you said this.

7.   Marriage and the family will be protected by the following :

• Marriage will be defined as the union of one woman with one man.
• The legal age for marriage will be 22.
• A couple wishing to get married must first attend Christian marriage counseling classes.
• Divorce will only be allowed in cases of abuse, infidelity, or incarceration. 
• The penalties for abuse and infidelity will include large fines and jail time.
• Married couples who become pregnant must attend Christian parenting classes.

Uh-huh.  You got it, chief.  Especially that divorce part.  That genie isn't going back in the bottle.  Or maybe I should say "toothpaste" so you don't feel the need to tell me that genies are agents of Satan. 

8.  The rating system for movies and T.V. shows will be drastically overhauled :

• No show or movie will be allowed on T.V. systems or computer systems accessible by homes that contain nudity, strong sexual content, excessive foul language, blasphemy, or any form of homosexuality.

This is the statement of a man who doesn't understand how technology works.  I'm tickled that he specified that this stuff wouldn't be "accessible by homes," though, because I read that to mean that this is what he'll be looking at inside the Oval Office. 

9.  Abortion will only be legal in situations where the child has a small probability of living and the pregnancy is placing the life of the mother in extreme risk.

He's actually to the left of much of the Republicans here.  Go figure.  YOU SOCIALIST SCUM.
 
10.  Industries in the United States ( U.S.)  that have suffered from foreign competition with much lower labor pay rates, lower employee compensation costs, and lower environmental compliance costs will be assisted and protected. Assistance will include financial help in building or refurbishing manufacturing plants and training employees and low capital gains taxes. Protection will include tariffs on imported goods in order to establish a market fair for these U.S. industries. These tariffs will be used to help prevent inflation on these manufactured goods.

This is him begging for lobbyist money, because American industries ARE their foreign competition.  Either that or he truly doesn't understand how outsourcing works.  I'm so cynical that I really believe it's the first one.

11.  The Welfare Department will be overhauled. This overhaul will include training welfare recipients for jobs that match their abilities. The financial responsibilities of caring for children of mothers who are not married will be shared by the father .

I wonder if he realizes how socialist he sounds, except that the 30 minute video he posted to announce his candidacy suggests that he isn't self-aware at all.</a>  The first part is actually a good idea that President Obama has been trying to get in place for a while now.  The second part, is pretty random and also what is supposed to be happening already--child support.  Perhaps you've heard of it.  

12. The insurance and medical system of the U.S. will be overhauled. Employers will be required to provide insurance for their employees. The costs of medical services and pharmaceuticals will be reviewed. These will be offered at a fair price without excessive profit for the providers.

If the corporations don't get you for limiting their pay, then Big Pharma certainly will.  Sir, don't say this stuff in public, because your life will be in danger. 

 
13. Illegal immigration laws will be enforced . Laws will be passed to assist this enforcement.
14. Several laws will be reviewed, including several statute -of-limitations.
15. Marijuana will not be legal  except for medicinal purposes.

Yadda, yadda, yadda.  Look, Trigg, I just don't want to see you waste your money here.  Just stop.  I know you said that God wants you to be President, but God has met us, even if you haven't.  He's clearly playing a practical joke on you, which I think he does from time to time.  All of these people out here claiming that God told you to do something, I think he just wants to see if you'll actually do it.  There's no way he really thinks you're going to become President until all 300 million of us die first.  And if that's what actually happens, you'll just be the leader of about 40 people until Mexico claims the empty husk that was America.  

The Donald Sterl-mancipation

So I guess I'm supposed to be happy that Donald Sterling got a lifetime ban from the NBA.  Yeah, that's fantastic, considering that his days on this earth are probably in the single digits, anyway.  It's a lifetime ban for a person without much life left.  And he still owns the team, so all Adam Silver really did was tell him he can't come to the stadium.  When you buy Clippers merch or tix, you're still putting money in his pocket. And speaking of money, on a percentage basis, the amount that he got fined is about the same as you being fined around $20. 

Yeah, we got a huge win today.

But during a few checks on social media when I was supposed to be working, I see y'all out here acting like we just got emancipated.  Like it was the OJ verdict all over again.  And I gotta ask, what are you so happy about?

Now, I'm not one of these people who's gonna try to ruin your good mood by saying that there are more important things to be concerned with.  Those people are assholes, because of course there's always something to be more concerned with. It's just that there hasn't been much change on the Keystone XL Pipeline and Congress still isn't passing any bills.  And since The Walking Dead still hasn't come back, we're pretty starved for excitement.

No, I'm going to ruin your good mood by telling you that this is nothing to be happy about, because Donald Sterling didn't get banned because he's a racist.  Donald Sterling got banned because it became big news that he was a racist. 

Donald Sterling was a racist a long time before now, and there were a whole lot of incidents that he was involved in that were reported on and promptly ignored.  The only difference between this one and all of those was how you found out about it.  The other ones came out through lawsuits and court depositions and OH MY GOD THIS IS SO BORINGZZZZZZZZZZZZ. This one came out because his jump off (I refuse to call her anything else) goaded him into talking about black people so she could record it and leak it to TMZ.  Already, this story is more sexy.  Certainly, sexier than she is.  She looks like she used to be a man. 

All of a sudden, Donald Sterling is an embarrassment and needs to be removed, but wasn't he just as embarrassing, if not more so back in 2009, when he paid out the largest settlement on housing discrimination lawsuit ever?  Or what about those sexual harassment suits?  His callous nature when it came to evicting tenants?  The time that he made his wife pose as a government worker and visit the residents of his buildings to find out what race they were, so he could evict them?  Refusing to rent to Blacks or Latinos at all?  Donald Sterling has been a horrible piece of shit racist for a long time.  So really, it should insult all of you that this is what it took to bring him down. 

You mean to tell me that the NBA didn't know about any of this?  And that his racist views expressed in a private conversation is worse than the stuff listed above that the NBA certainly knows about?  The NBA doesn't care that Donald Sterling is racist.  The NBA cares that you know he's racist.  If this was about his racism, they would have banned him in 1983 when he asked Rollie Massamino, "I wanna know why you think you can coach these niggers."

The truth is, if Donald Sterling's jump off was a woman of a higher character, you wouldn't know anything that he said and they wouldn't have done anything.  Period.  Despite the fact that he's continued to make himself rich by denying living space to minorities.  Despite the fact that he's sexually harassed women in his employ.  Adam Silver can get in front of reporters and make his dramatic statements, but the truth is, it wasn't a problem for them before.  It only became a problem when it became public.

And the same goes for all of these sponsors who cut ties with the Clippers.  If y'all don't stop acting like you have morals.  Every one of you is a conglomerate of corrupt pieces of shit.  Every one of you knew who Sterling was and chose to sign deals with him anyway, because OOH LOOGIT BLAKE GRIFFIN JUMPS HIGH.  And now that everyone knows that he's a bigot, you don't want your brand associated with him.  Good thing those lawsuits got swept under the rug, otherwise, you would have been forced to leave all that money on the table.  So CarMax, State Farm, Kia, Corona, AQUAhydrate. Red Bull, Sprint, Lumber Liquidators,  LoanMart, Yokohama Tires, Samsung, Mercedes-Benz, and Virgin America, you ain't shit.  Not a single one of you.

So don't get too excited about all of this.  All that happened is that they reminded you what their real priorities are.  No progress has been made.  Unless you're Donald Sterling's jump off.  She's about to come up when she gets that spot on Basketball Wives.

I totally get your Kardashian anger, Vogue readers.

Some people wonder why you wasted all that time being upset about Kim Kardashian on the Vogue cover.  "She's just getting her money and not hurting anyone." Someone probably told you to stop hating, because they have no idea how to form a legitimate argument.  But I understand, Vogue readers.  That's right, Thad Ochocinco, sporadic blogger who knows nothing about anything outside of sports or comic books, feels your pain. 

To sum it all up, It's worlds colliding, except no one asked or wanted them to. 

See, on some level, people read shit like Vogue so they don't have to deal with lowbrow shit like the Kardashians.  It's supposed to be a safe space away from all of that.  People who like the Kardashians have the E! Network, where they can have all of the Kardashians and Chelsea Handler and Joan Rivers that they can handle.  The rest of us program our cable boxes to skip over the E! Network, because ignorance of what is on that channel is bliss.  "You keep that over there, and I'll stay over here."  "I don't bother you and you don't bother me."  It was like a storefront church in the middle of a red light district, except that in this metaphor, the Kardashians are actually the church and the red light district is the rest of the free world.  You know, come to think of it, maybe this metaphor doesn't work.

But to stick with it, say the church starts venturing out to convert the people.  Now, my ambisexual S&M Massage parlor isn't hurting anyone, but here comes this nun, trying to save souls, which kills my business.  She's making people think that there's something wrong with the sexual gratification of a massage while being whipped by a person of an unidentifiable sex.  But we had an understanding:  You keep inside the church, and I won't have your building firebombed by the mob underboss who controls this neighborhood.  Basically, this metaphor can also double as the pitch for Quentin Tarantino's Sister Act.

That's what's happening here.  Kim Kardashian is invading what was supposed to be a Kardashian-free zone, and we all deserve one of those, because without it, we're likely to devolve into whatever we call people from Tennessee.  She's breaking the terms of the agreement, and a lot of people are upset.  True, it wasn't her decision (the editor of Vogue said this would never happen, then magazine sales got low), but Vogue readers didn't want this.  Vogue readers (I guess, because I don't know any) believe that they're too high class to watch a show about two sisters smelling each other's vagina sweat (this actually happened on "Keeping Up With the Kardashians").  When the bar is that low, I'm not gonna say that they're wrong for feeling that way.

Usually, when worlds collide, something good comes out of it, like when the Justice League fought the Avengers, when Larry Bird played against Magic Johnson, when Spider-Man started selling Twinkies in the 1970s.  That was both adventurous and delicious.  This is more like what happened to Ashlee Simpson at the Orange Bowl.  Or when RoboCop showed up on WCW Capital Combat.   Yeah, worlds were colliding, but in the same way that the world of sports cars sometimes collide with the world of the underside of a truck.  There was symbolic blood everywhere that night, and it was in the form of Sting's expression when he realized that he was actually standing in front of people pretending to be saved by RoboCop.

So I understand the anger of Vogue readers, and you should, too.  For all everyone's talk of "She's just doing her thing, let her make her money," or whatever stupid shit people say to make it appear like they're above it all, you know you'd be pissed if someone tried to feature her useless ass in three episodes of The Walking Dead. 

No One Cares If You Approve Of Their Life Choices

It's pretty common these days to say, "I just don't agree with his lifestyle," as if people are sitting around waiting for your fucking approval.  You usually hear this in conversations about gay people or gay marriage, but I don't see why people even waste time thinking about it.  Gay people haven't gotten the approval of lots of people in human history, and it hasn't curbed the inherent lust for same-sex flesh even a little bit.  So clearly, they're not waiting for you to give the thumbs up. 

In fact, the more people that come out against gay activities has led to a response in the other direction:  More gay people are being openly gay.  The idea that you think your approval is needed has actually drawn more gay people out of hiding.

Back when people didn't talk about gay sex so much, because everyone was sexually repressed, gay people just kept quiet and snuck off to their bathhouses or the Blue Oyster, or wherever gay people got together.  But now that gay sex is on everyone's lips, gay people decided to fight back.  And yes, that particular phrasing was done on purpose.  

See, you don't have to approve of anything, because it's still going to happen.   For instance, I don't approve of bigotry, but it hasn't stopped you from saying stupid shit about gay people, has it?  In fact, to drive the point home, try that strategy in other scenarios to demonstrate how effective it is.  Next time a bear attacks you or a guy tries to rob your house, you should tell them, "I don't approve of this lifestyle choice," and report back here to let me know if it prevented you from getting shot or eaten.  My thinking is that I won't ever hear from you again.


That's why, despite this overt lack of approval, we still have gay people.  The arrogance needed to believe that approval matters is why we still have thickheaded people walking around worrying about cock-ravenous gay men attacking them in showers and alleyways.  I wish bigots understood how funny it is to listen to them fear the lustful urges of gay men without ever considering that:

A: Gay men might also have self control.

B: The bigot in question probably isn't even their type.  

Instead of saying that you "approve" or "agree" with something, you should really ask yourself if you do or don't care.  If you don't care, then you generally don't give a shit, and never think up stupid phrases like, "I don't agree with his lifestyle," or "What if he looks at me in the shower?" If you do care, then you probably give more thought to the activities of gay men than actual gay men do.  At this point, you have to ask yourself why you care so much what gay men are doing.  The answer is either one of those things:  You're fucking ignorant, or you're...you know, curious. 

You probably also assume that your own life is worthy of approval.  It probably isn't.  You probably cheat on your wife, or steal pens from your job, or vote Republican, or contribute to Love & Hip-Hop's ratings.  Maybe you drink too much, or let your kids sag their jeans, or cheer for John Cena.  Any number of things that deserve to be frowned upon.  By my standards, I think that saying kind words about Justin Bieber should come with a mandatory jail sentence.  And if you're thinking right now that it isn't about your standards, but the standards of your religion: I don't approve of your religion.  Odds are, it's a manmade invention designed to placate the masses so they don't attack their wealthy overlords.  It probably has a well-entrenched history of murder, genocide, racism, and misogyny, and in the modern age, does nothing but drive wedges in between people and/or hides pedophiles from justice. 

So instead of wasting all that time and energy being judgmental (because this is a game that we can all play), why not just go live your life and let everyone else live theirs?  All of that focus on manlove is time you could be spending inventing a Fruity Pebbles drink, or an iPad that does more than waste time.  We don't need another person trying to stand in the way of other people's happiness, but we can always use another person who really couldn't give two fucks what's happening in someone else's bedroom.