cage, conan, and tears

I respect Nicolas Cage. It isn’t his mediocre acting, nor his awkward good looks and receding hairline. It is his work ethic. While most well known actors content themselves with the occasional big budget production, he dogs away at one B film after another. For a time I thought he was somehow constitutionally incapable of rejecting any script his agent threw at him, but the answer is far simpler: He is a working man, and acting is his job. The varying quality of his projects and abilities is no different than the persistent swings in performance faced by any professional.

Unfortunately, after his appearance on Conan last night, it is clear he does not share this insight. He appears to have somehow misconstrued himself as an artist of some sort. Evidenced by his jilted and arrogant explanation of expanding his art form by working with foreign directors, observing how they can put his performance talents to work. Really? It would appear that talent has something to do with being inconsistent as fuck.

Discussion quickly turned to his upcoming cinematic travesty release: Bangkok Dangerous. After some brief talk is cheap pandering the ‘highly stylized’ (his words) clip came on. An action sequence, presumably near the climax of the film. You hear words like stylized thrown around a lot, but finally we can settle on a definition: coloring the frame red. Bold artistic expression aside, with double pistols, subtle slow motion, and horrible inaccuracy over extremely short distances, it was a brilliant parody of action clichés. But it wasn’t supposed to be. Reaffirming my wager, made after seeing the preview, that it is destined to reside in single digit rotten tomatoes glory. The man at least needs to stop taking himself so seriously. That way I can see him on talk television without getting that awkward feeling of watching someone make an international idiot of themselves.

In closing, I don’t much like Conan and Lord of War fucking rules

Of Cage, Clarity, and Cojones

Three things today.

First things first: Nic Cage

Everyone who watched Conan O’Brien yesterday was in for a magnificent treat: Nicholas Cage. After the audience slogged through about 25 minutes of typical Conan dada, the king finally strutted out to plug his new movie Bangkok Dangerous and palaver with Conan for a little while. Two things caught my attention almost immediately: his bizarre hair and his exceptionally un-magnetic presence. My god, the hair. His forehead has grown exponentially and consumed even more of his hairline, yet he doesn’t look like he’s balding. Hollywood clearly has access to some pretty advanced hair transplant technology, but it doesn’t look any less fucking weird then the cheap monstrosities you see semi-ashamed business executives with. As for his presence, I don’t know what I was expecting exactly; maybe that he would be a little more animated or funny, or even interesting at all. I guess in my head I imagined him in real life as being kind of like that guy he played in face off: bug-eyed, loud, animated, a little scary but no more so than the neighborhood bum…

After he was done talking he showed a weird red clip (by that I mean it looked like someone had put red cellophane over the camera lens) of him shooting at a bad guy guy in what looked like the sparkletts bottling plant. The camera cutting to a side view and revealing that Cage and his foe were actually only a few feet apart made for some pretty solid unintentional hilarity. As Nabokov’s Humbert quipped about a Western analog from his time, there was a “robust atmosphere of incompetent marksmanship.” Will this be the next Wicker Man? I will be praying.

Line of the night: “This scene is really stylized.” in reference to the clip he showed (shewed?)

Clarity of a New Variety

The New Republic caught something disturbing in the prepared text of Sarah Palin’s speech yesterday: nuclear was spelled “new-clear.” Hooked on phonics worked for me.

Cajones

Little in the world is as heartstraining as grabbing the last perrier. You want to drink it, but part of you just doesn’t want to let it go. Not like that. Love made me poke my slippered foot into the den of discarded gull bait, rub it against the package. Maybe there could be one left, maybe this isn’t goodbye. Sorrow clouded my aim. My foot exploded in a crack of white flame as nerves shot watts to my brain. Writhing floorbound in agony, in the throws of most extreme angst, my brutish colleague supposes to characture the nature of bravery.

There is a continuum between bravery and ballsyness. On the former side you have running into a burning building to save a crippled gifted kid, on the latter, anything done at rodeos. Sometimes the line is narrow. Resisting your torturers is slightly more stupid than brave. At least lie or something.

Anyway. Sensitivity to pain is not cowardice.

In order to respond to this I’m going to have to invoke two of the most misunderstood figures – some would say philosophers – of the past century: “Dalton” and Yukio Mishima.

Dalton, of course, is the badass bouncer in 1989’s Roadhouse played by Patrick Swayze. He’s been beaten, shot, stabbed, run over and all kinds of other bullshit. But, true man that he is (or possibly it’s that intense insight he gained from that philosophy degree from NYU that the movie purports he has), he doesn’t show pain. He revels in the shit. Upon being semi-scolded by a smokin’ babe doctor, he utters the immortal line “Pain don’t hurt.” If it’s good enough for Swayze, it’s good enough for me dammit.

Yukio Mishima is an acclaimed Japanese author and military man who died in 1970 at the age of 45 under pretty spectacular circumstances. After a bizarre attempt at a coup against the Japanese government (they were not sufficiently militaristic) he committed seppuku with the help of a few friends. Nevermind that, like his coup attempt, even his suicide didn’t go quite as planned (his friends had some difficulty chopping his head off – I shit you not) he died like a badass, not showing any sign of pain.

I realize my main argument here has been appeals to badassness. Well there is more to it than that. Mishima’s death and his non-reaction to the immense pain it involved is inspiring to some. That we can fight against our own nature to make a statement against who or whatever is one of the things I think we humans should cherish the most. If one is being tortured but continues to act stoic and not reveal any information, more torturing is obviously on the way. But it’s a psychological victory – it shows that there is more to human beings to simply collaborating to avoid pain. It is an essential part of what makes us human, and one of the most important.

courage vs cojones

Little in the world is as heartstraining as grabbing the last perrier. You want to drink it, but part of you just doesn’t want to let it go. Not like that. Love made me poke my slippered foot into the den of discarded gull bait, rub it against the package. Maybe there could be one left, maybe this isn’t goodbye. Sorrow clouded my aim. My foot exploded in a crack of white flame as nerves shot watts to my brain. Writhing floorbound in agony, in the throws of most extreme angst, my brutish colleague supposes to characture the nature of bravery.

There is a continuum between bravery and ballsyness. On the former side you have running into a burning building to save a crippled gifted kid, on the latter, anything done at rodeos. Sometimes the line is narrow. Resisting your torturers is slightly more stupid than brave. At least lie or something.

Anyway. Sensitivity to pain is not cowardice.

dimensional determinism

We intuitively appreciate the fourth dimension, which we know as time. This is a pragmatic approximation. You understand you not only need to know where to meet someone but when. If we break the distinction, however, we can more accurately view when as where in the fourth dimension. Three dimensions coordinate systems employ three axis, each perpendicular to the other two. Though difficult to envision spatially, a four dimensional grid is constructed in the same fashion. Four axis are each perpendicular to the other three. What we refer to as duration is more precisely graphical depth in the fourth dimension. This is important in the consideration that four dimensional objects have shape and substance. Even more so than three dimensional shapes, following that we hardly consider anything two dimensional substantial.

Now, Imagine passing a corkscrew through the world of a two dimensional creature. A tiny dot starts to form. As you continue, it spins into an active ball. Finally, as the straight neck of the corkscrew approaches, the ball slows to rest. What appeared to be two dimensional motion was just the effect of moving a two dimensional frame of reference through a static three dimensional object. Just as the ball could not spin without passing through the third dimension, so things in the third dimension cannot move without shifting through the fourth dimension. In effect, you are a three dimensional ball of a complex four dimensional corkscrew, your four dimensional shape no less determinate than its three dimensional analogues. Thus, the only way to alter your four dimensional shape requires interaction with the fifth dimension. Specifically, by passing your four dimensional plane of reference through it. Since we only perceive the first four dimensions, this movement determines our reality. Therefore, to be able to exert any influence on your four dimensional shape, which we might inaccurately refer to as the future, you must demonstrate agency in the fifth dimension.

Awesome Speech About John McCain from the GOP Convention Thursday

*Update*: The popularity of this post is a little bit eerie.  For all of you who thought this was a stirring example of speechifying, I regret to inform you this is actually a parody of typical Republican speeches about John McCain that I wrote.  It was not, in fact, given at the GOP convention.

Did anyone else hear this speech @ the GOP convention tonight? I don’t know the name of the guy who delivered it (he was white, looked to be in his mid 50’s), but I was blown away:

“I want to talk to you tonight about John McCain. You’ve been hearing about how his years in the senate and his military service make him the best candidate for the office. You bet they do. He has proven, time and time again, he has the grit and the determination to fight for what he believes in until the very last. But there’s another element of this that hasn’t been much talked about here. You see, John McCain’s lifetime has straddled the two most important conflicts of the past century. The way he has acted in the face of each of these challenges show that he embodies what we look for in great presidents: not the values he possesses, which, indeed, are common to all of us; but the way in which he defended them.

As a fighter pilot, McCain bravely flew mission after mission over North Vietnam for his country. He knew that more was at stake than a simple victory like any other; this was a battle of values. The Vietnamese communists, like their Soviet counterparts, hated how we lived. As Godless communists, they hated our religion. As dictators, unable to take criticism, they hated our freedom and our individual liberty. As jealous tyrants impoverished by their own system, they hated our markets and our prosperity. John McCain knew this well, for he spent 5 years in hell on Earth: the Hanoi Hilton. He was beaten, tortured, and taunted for who he was, and more importantly, for what he represented. You see, John McCain is the American promise. He refused to back down, and he refused to go home when offered freedom by his captors because going home without his fellow soldiers was no victory, but a retreat. McCain, and our values that he represented, won a victory every time he refused to give in. Finally, the war ended, and John McCain was freed, but the challenge continued. All the negotiations and appeasement of the democrats had no effect – Communism just kept expanding. It took a Republican president with real values to put a stop to it and do what we all knew had to be done. Ronald Reagan, with all of our help, faced down this challenge and defeated it. As a loyal soldier in the Reagan Revolution after he returned from Vietnam, John McCain was there.

Today, we face an equal, if not greater task: the transcendent challenge of Islamic fundamentalism. Like the communists, they thrive on people’s misery. Like the communists, they are not above lying and propaganda to win people to their side. And, like the communists, they hate everything we stand for. But unlike the communists, they are so full of hatred for us they are willing to destroy themselves and engage in cowardly acts of terrorism. Our enemy now has no one state. But we know where he thrives: any place there is misery and suffering, one can step out, and blame it all on the United States. On our religion, on our prosperity, on our cherished freedom. On 9/11, that threat hit home far harder than any before. We pursued the murderers through Afghanistan, and we extended the war on terrorism to potential future threats like Saddam Hussein. John McCain had the foresight to support these actions. And while, as a member of the Senate Armed Services committee, he had been rightfully critical of some aspects of the handling of them, he always had the troops foremost in mind – and he never forgot: America is the greatest force for good in the world. Our cause is virtuous and just. And time has born out his correctness: even the liberal media now mostly acknowledges that last year’s surge was a success. The Republic of Iraq is becoming a thriving democracy and a strong ally. We have brought freedom to millions and struck a blow against Islamic Fundamentalism, not just materially, but psychologically. They know we Americans are unafraid.

A new era is upon us, of challenges from all sides. Be they in Iran or the Caucasus or elsewhere, John McCain has the experience to face them; not only because of his experience, but because of what he is: a man who has straddled the two great challenges to our values and prevailed – and continues to. “

Of course, there were tons of cheers in between. I even caught myself nodding silently in approval like the rest of the audience even though I was alone at home eating a sandwich! I knew John McCain was a hero and that that gave him the moral fiber to be president, but I’d never heard it put so succinctly.